On the evening of Sunday, August 10, I asked for citations of research papers in reputable scientific journals that examine the causal link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and global warming and that quantified the extent of this warming.** In most areas of science, when a clearly articulated theory dominates, a student can nominate several seminal papers that have influenced and directed thinking in that area.
Many people believe increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide lead to increases in temperature. This can be demonstrated in a laboratory, but when you scale up laboratory experiments to the real world, what happens? We know from ice cores that global temperatures have decreased in the past even as carbon dioxide has continued to rise. There are some so-called skeptics who claim that in the real world the radiation forcing of carbon dioxide is overwhelmed by the more powerful constraints of evaporation cooling from the tropical oceans.
I cross-posted my request for papers as a comment on John Quiggin’s blog as I was interested to see what those who follow the issue and generally subscribe to AWG theory would suggest by way of best papers. The next morning my request turned into a bet when Michael Duffy offered to put up $1,000.
By Monday evening the thread at Professor Quiggin’s blog had thrown up three papers that the commentators suggested potentially provided explanation of the causal link and a quantification of the extent of warming. Interestingly one of them was published as long ago as 1938 – perhaps it was a seminal paper.
The papers are:
1. Callendar, G.S., 1938. The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., Vol 64, 223–237.
2. Hofmann, D.J., J. H. Butler, E. J . Dlugokencky, J . W. Elkins, K. Masarie, S. A. Montzka and P. Tans, 2006. The role of carbon dioxide in climate forcing from 1979 to 2004: Introduction of the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, Tellus B, Vol 58, 614-619.
3. Crowley, T. 2000. Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years. Science Vol 289: 270-277.
I have posted comment on two of the papers concluding they do not fit the criteria (part 2 and part 3 of this series of blog posts) and I understand that the author of one of the papers, Thomas Crowley, posted comment at John Quiggins site acknowledging that his paper did not deal with causation.
This is a key point acknowledged by Professor Quiggin in the thread at his blog, though he initially went as far as to claim that there are “hundreds of papers on both the causal link and the question of sensitivity” but could only cite a few papers which he suggested dealt with the issue of sensitivity later in that same thread.
While many scientists would claim you can’t deal with sensitivity if you haven’t established causality, this is attempted in climate science including by correlating output from computer models. Aynsley Kellow has explained this as a technique of post-normal science in his book, Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science (Edward Elgar, 2007).
The 1938 paper by G.S. Callendar is the closest of the three to fitting the criteria in that it attempts to answer the types of questions that a scientist would need to consider if a credible link is to be established between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and warming in the real world. However, it is clear from the discussion section within the paper that Mr Callendar’s findings were not peer reviewed, and furthermore not accepted by his colleagues. Indeed, the following comments are included as part of the discussion within that paper which is presented as ‘a reading’ followed by discussion (pg 237): 1. the numerical results could not be used to give an indication of the order of magnitude of the effect of carbon dioxide, and 2. it is not clear how absorption energy by carbon dioxide is calculated. These are important points that the Callendar paper explains have not been properly examined.
There are of course the voluminous reports from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with their findings and theories on popular Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory. The content of these reports, endorsed by governments around the world, have been repeated over and over, for example, in the recent influential report by economist Ross Garnaut to the Australian government. It is apparent, however, that a body of science published in peer-review journals, establishing a causal link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and warming and quantifying the extent of this warming, is lacking but would be expected to exist to support popular AGW theory.
———————————
** I understand causality to be the relationship between cause and effect. American Environmental Scientists, S Marshall Adams, suggests seven causal criteria for evaluating the relationship between specific environmental stressors and observed effects: strength of association, consistency of association, specificity of association, time order of temporality, biological gradient, experimental evidence, and biological plausibility (Establishing causality between environmental stressors and effects on aquatic ecosystems. Human and ecological risk assessment. Feb 2003, 9, 1, pg. 17-35).
Part 1
Part 2 including comment on Hoffman et al.
Part 3 including comment on Crowley
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Well, well! How farcial!
*****
Everyone said, loud enough for the others to hear: “Look at the Emperor’s new clothes. They’re beautiful!”
“What a marvellous train!”
“And the colors! The colors of that beautiful fabric! I have never seen anything like it in my life!” They all tried to conceal their disappointment at not being able to see the clothes, and since nobody was willing to admit his own stupidity and incompetence, they all behaved as the two scoundrels had predicted.
A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.
“The Emperor is naked,” he said.
“Fool!” his father reprimanded, running after him. “Don’t talk nonsense!” He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy’s remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:
“The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It’s true!”
The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn’t see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.
yup – that’s The Word. 🙂
An interesting experiment Jennifer, if its carried out appropriately.
Perhaps you could formalise your criteria of what exactly a “causal link” is a bit better, and have a separate post detailing those criteria very clearly and explicitly, maybe with examples. And then you could also put a control into your experiment.
e.g. you could ask your readers to come up with a scientific paper that examines the causal link between smoking and lung cancer. (I’m assuming you are happy to agree that there is a causal link between smoking and lung cancer), but if nobody can find a paper that fits your “causal link” criteria to demonstrate this, then maybe your criteria and definition of “causal link” aren’t very appropriate or useful.
Also, if someone does come up with a paper that you agree adequately describes the causal link between smoking and lung cancer, then people would have a better idea of the level of paper you are looking for with respect to global warming, and can compare your judgements.
Without doing these sorts of things, its far too easy for your experiment to be dismissed as biased and invalid.
In other words, Dr Marohasy, if I had left out the “discussion” at the end of the paper you would not have been able to find any fault with it.
Dr Marohasy writes:
“However, it is clear from the discussion section within the paper that Mr Callendar’s findings were not peer reviewed, and furthermore not accepted by his colleagues. Indeed, the following comments are included as part of the discussion within that paper which is presented as ‘a reading’ followed by discussion (pg 237): 1. the numerical results could not be used to give an indication of the order of magnitude of the effect of carbon dioxide, and 2. it is not clear how absorption energy by carbon dioxide is calculated. These are important points that the Callendar paper explains have not been properly examined.”
1) The discussion process, which took place, IS peer review. It was clearly considered sufficiently robust to be published in a scientific journal after this peer review process.
2) What you, Dr Marohasy, write about global warming is not currently accepted by a majority of your colleagues (for example, CSIRO, or Barry Brook). Do you therefore argue that your writings should be ignored? You are adding an additional criterion of “accepted by one’s colleagues” that was not present in your original request, and moreover would be hotly disputed if it was used as a criteria. You don’t list “acceptance” as one of your causal criteria in your footnote.
Callendar was, at the time, in a minority as he clearly acknowledges at the start of his paper. Global warming has since become the majority belief through the accumulation of evidence.
3) You have misquoted the discussion by Sir George Simpson. He actually said:
“he felt that the actual numerical
results which Mr. Callendar had obtained could not be used to give a definite indication of the order of magnitude of the effect.”
You have omitted the significant phrase “the actual numerical results which Mr Callendar had obtained”, which acknowledges that he quantified the warming resulting from CO2.
In other words, Mr Callendar produced actual numerical results (which is what you asked for in your initial call for papers), and Sir George is not sure of their accuracy. That was his perogative. That doesn’t mean that the paper does not fulfil the criteria of quantifying the warming caused by carbon dioxide.
In regard to your second point from Sir George Simpson, that it was not clear how Figure 2 was obtained, Mr Callendar answered that at the end of his paper on page 239 where he provided answers to the discussion:
“As *stated in the paper* the variation of temperature with CO2 (Fig. 2), was obtained from the values of sky radiation, calculated for different amounts of this gas, substituted in expression (5) at S1, S2. If the changes of S shown in Table V are used for expression (5), it will be found that the temperature changes lie on the curve of Fig. 2 when the total sky radiation is 7/10 of the surface radiation. The sky radiation is calculated as a proportion of that from the surface, hence, at constant heat supply, a change of sky “ temperature ” involves an equilibrium change of surface temperature as in expression (5).
It was found that even the minimum numerical explanation of the method used for calculating sky radiation would occupy several pages, and as a number of similar methods have been published from time to time, it was decided to use the available space for matter of more direct interest.”
Sir George did not dispute this explanation.
(* – my emphasis)
Really Jennifer, have you ever read an important scientific paper that was not followed by discussion in which people ask for clarification or dispute this or that point? It is standard practise!
Mr Duffy: $1000, please.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your comment, but instead what about having a read of S Marshall Adams or just think about his criteria for establishing causality and in the context of carbon dioxide and global temperatures:
1.strength of association,
2.consistency of association,
3.specificity of association,
4.time order of temporality,
5.biological gradient,
6.experimental evidence, and
7.biological plausibility.
The paper is ‘Establishing causality between environmental stressors and effects on aquatic ecosystems’, Human and ecological risk assessment. Feb 2003, 9, 1, pg. 17-35.
Cheers,
Up to you Jennifer – but I’m not sure how biological gradient or biological plausibility relate to a proof that anthropogenic CO2 causes climate change.
Surely adopting a good, common sense experimental approach (ie clearly stating your criteria and providing a control reference case for comparison) will be more valuable than adhering to the ideas in a random paper?
I’m not familiar with the literature on causation, do I have to go and read half the content of the peer-reviewed literature on causation to ascertain whether the paper you cited is any good?
James,
The 1938 paper is interesting in that it includes a results section, and then a discussion which is something of a post-publication peer-review.
It is clear from the discussion section in that paper that the results don’t pass peer-review and were NOT peer reviewed before publication.
In short, the paper does not fit the criteria as a reasonable person would understand I made the request on August 10 in good faith, that is asking for an examination that had passed peer reviewed i.e. been accepted by those with appropriate expertise within the scientific community before publication.
Steve,
Why not throw caution to the wind and just think about these criteria in the context of popular AGW theory:
1.strength of association,
2.consistency of association,
3.specificity of association,
4.time order of temporality,
5.biological gradient,
6.experimental evidence, and
7.biological plausibility.
Now how does it shape up, in your opinion, given these criteria?
“that had been was peer reviewed”?
If the discussion was considered by the editors of the paper to invalidate the paper presented, it would not have been published.
The discussion was clearly not “post-publication”, or else the discussion could not have been included in the *same* publication as the paper. The discussion quite obviously took place before the paper was published, or it would have appeared in a later edition of the journal. Therefore, it was peer reviewed before publication.
That this paper is still being cited 70 years later is evidence of its robustness and acceptance by those with appropriate expertise.
According to Google Scholar, the paper has been cited 104 times since being reprinted in 2002, let alone all previous citations.
[CITATION] THE ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF CARBON DIOXIDE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON TEMPERATURE
GS Callendar – Climate Change: Critical Concepts in the Environment, 2002 – Routledge
Cited by 104
http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=Callendar+1938&hl=en&lr=
The paper fits your criteria quite well.
I also note that you are now, to be frank, quibbling about definitions of peer review rather than admit that the paper fulfils the substantive criteria you asked for in its content and analysis.
Steve; I do not think the definition of causal link needs definition to rational people, I saw no criteria listed in Dr. Marohasy’s article. If you wish a series of questions to be answered I will post an article of mine which requires information to establish a causal link by the IPCC.( again sorry about the length but this subject cannot be abbreviated)
The subject of global warming and in particular human influence on it has become a very emotional issue which has caused a great loss of objectivity. In addition, since it has entered the political arena the alarmist press releases have become a staple of the news media. It is not surprising therefore that the public are so ill informed since not only is this a very complex subject with new discoveries being made regularly but, with respect to the news media, bad news is good for business so that is where the emphasis is placed.
The principal reason for transferring the emphasis from science to politics is the enormous sums of money involved in the cap and trade programs being sponsored by the United Nations. In the first version of the Kyoto accord the developing countries like India and China were given a free ride and excluded from the countries required to reduce their emissions. Russia was given 1990 as its target CO2 allowance and since 1990 they have modernized their industry consequently they are under target and have $60 Billion in carbon credits to sell. Thus over 50% of the worlds CO2 emissions are not effected by the Kyoto accord and the western developed nations can continue business as usual as long as they buy the carbon credits from the underdeveloped countries.
The real test will come when the second Kyoto accord is finalized in 2012, this time there should be no free rides and targets should be reset. This will cause the accord to fail, a prelude to this was seen at the Bali conference when the Canadian prime minister suggested that we need to set as a target everyone sharing the load and create a level playing field. This suggestion was greeted with overwhelming objection and criticism by the news media and environmentalists.
The International Panel for Climate Control ( IPCC) is a part of the united nations which is comprised of about 170 have not countries and a dozen haves so in a democratic vote guess who has the majority. The very name of the panel assumes we can control our climate which is far from proven. Basically the IPCC is a political organization with a thin veneer of science, the assessment report was prepared by 22 authors and co-authors with approximately 630 contributors. The IPCC now proudly proclaim that there is a consensus of opinion in the scientific community and there is no longer any requirement to debate the issue. In 2007-8, however, a petition known has the Oregon petition was put out on the web for people to declare their opposition to the Kyoto accord and to date over 32 000 degreed professionals, of which over 9 000 were Ph.D’s, have signed the petition, surely the claim of a consensus is an exaggeration.
The IPCC media relations team are masters of deception, examples of this are given here.
“ carbon dioxide the major greenhouse gas” This phrase is included in a vast number of news articles. In the IPCC report the statement is “carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas in anthropogenic emissions” The first statement is totally false the second true, who actually made the edit is not known but the IPCC never correct the news releases.
The statement that there is a consensus and there is no further need for debate, yet the IPCC report is filled with statements to the effect that little is known on many subjects and much more research is required. In addition the range of uncertainty is given for much of the data published and it can vary as much as +/- 75% of the stated value, this range of uncertainty is more like a shot in the dark.
Computer programs are compiled based on the knowledge as described above, therefore the accuracy of these programs must by definition be virtually zero and yet the 23 global models produce a very wide range of results for the same scenario then these predictions are scattered around the news media as if they were cast in stone certainties. In the computer world there is a basic premise “ garbage in garbage out” the computer is incapable of making reasoned decisions it will only process the data input in accordance with its programs which are manually input. The IPCC report conclusions rely heavily on computer simulations, in reality the computer programmers tell the computer what they want to hear, then the computer dutifully produces the result they want and IPCC claim they have solid scientific proof. All they have is circular logic which is not scientific proof.
There is a fundamental process in the world of science whereby an idea or hypothesis is generated, usually by making some observations then trying to explain the observations by some mathematical formula.
The next step is to validate the formula by the strict application of the laws of science and developing a logical mathematical proof. In most cases the proof will contain some assumptions which require careful scrutiny to determine if the assumptions were reasonable. This is part of the peer review process.
Next, experiments are designed and conducted to provide additional data which must fit the original formula. This can be considered as the prediction and verification stage. The methodology and data analysis is again subject to careful scrutiny by independent experts and is part of the ongoing peer review.
At this point one has a working hypothesis or a theory.
Unfortunately this process has been severely short circuited by the IPCC. Although a very large amount of data has been collected and is presented in the form of graphs of temperature v’s time ; CO2 v’s time ; sea level v’s time etc. when the data bases from which some these graphs were constructed are required for independent peer review they somehow go missing or the author refuses to produce the data. Frequently when data bases are disclosed the manipulation of the data to obtain a predetermined result is apparent.
The methodology in obtaining the data is also examined and when obvious flaws in the accuracy are demonstrated by IPCC peer reviewers or other experts the edits, which are supported by peer reviewed papers from other scientists, are simply cast aside by the political editors of the IPCC report.
An effort has been made by the IPCC to formulate an empirical formula from the carefully edited data previously described which is used in the computer programs to predict the increase in global temperatures for a given increase in CO2 . The IPCC has not included any reference to this formula or the resulting graph in the 4th report. It seems a little strange that the entire subject revolves around the effect of atmospheric CO2 on global temperatures and yet in over 1000 pages it cannot be specifically addressed. There is absolutely no correlation between the classical laws of physics and the IPCC’s empirical formula although many papers have been written and peer reviewed by eminent physicists based on the laws of physics using different approaches and all basically coming to the same conclusion which is that the effect of the CO2 in our atmosphere levels off with respect to effect on temperature before 100ppm and thereafter has little or no effect.
In 1998 the IPCC published the predictions resulting from their computer programs, over the past 10 years all their predictions have been drastically wrong so even the attempt to leap frog the classical proof has backfired.
Thus the IPCC have failed to address legitimate peer review comments with regard to their basic data, methodology or conclusions from their data. They have failed to make public the basic data on some of their critical presentations. They have failed to validate their hypothesis using the classical laws of physics. They have failed to make any valid predictions.
At this point one has to ask where is the solid scientific proof?
I wonder if the world will be able to stand the shock if AGW is disproved?
As a past B.U.G.A.U.P. activist, it must be said that Steve’s analogy with the supposed lack of causal link between smoking and cancer is pure sophistry. The link between smoking and cancer is found in the contents of the smoke, not the act of smoking. Ingesting creosote in any form can cause cancer, ditto for Polonium, and all the other toxins found in tobacco smoke.
So once again we have the climate zombies repeating one big lie to justify another big lie.
And perhaps Haughton might like to suggest which of the seven criteria listed above are not appropriate or suggest some additions? If he cannot then he is just another shonkademic on day release.
“I do not think the definition of causal link needs definition to rational people”
I didn’t read the rest of your comment yet barry, but on this point, i couldn’t disagree with your more.
In formal logic the idea of cause is in a strict, deterministic sense ie if A happens, then B must also happen (A implies B).
But in real life (and in many disciplines e.g. medicine), most people do not use ’cause’ so formally. So most people are happy to say that smoking causes lung cancer even though Uncle Bob lived to the age of 96 and smoked every day.
The real life usage of the word ’cause’ leaves room for enormous confusion -especially for complex problems and systems with multiple causes – because it is used so subjectively. What is a causal factor for some, is only a risk factor, a vulnerability or a contingency for others.
You see this in the papers every day, when you see headlines like
(today’s paper) “Oxygen tank blamed”
instead of
“Dodgy quality control blamed”.
or (i made these up)
“Single mothers cause an increase in youth crime” “television causes obsesity”
“gambling causes crime”
It would appear, Jennifer, that you’re not looking for papers which establish a causal link between ACO2 and GW and reading what they have to say. Rather you’re looking for any way you can discredit or diminish anything sent your way, regardless of how the scientists in the field the work in question, in order to protect your ego and Duffy’s chequebook..
“It has been. 50 billion dollars and no evidence is pretty much a falsification. Sometimes I use understatement for effect.” Bird
Yep, I’m willing to lay some money down. I think my STUPID, PURITANICAL country (but I am a patriot) forbids online gambling. How about Australia?
The Marshall Adams criteria are based on the work of Bradford Hill who did much of the original research on smoking and cancer: Austin Bradford Hill, “The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation?,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 58 (1965), 295-300.
Richard Peto’s paper Smoking and Death gives an overview of the smoking story with the key references. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/309/6959/937
for an interesting comment
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/math99/math99276.htm
For the record, I am happy to say that “smoking causes lung cancer”. I am not trying to suggest it doesnt. I’m just trying to ensure we all use the same idea of what a ‘causal link’ is, because i think it is a subjective concept (unless you are into formal logic). I suggested a control to calibrate everyone’s definition of ‘causal link’.
It was an excellent idea too Steve.
For a start, it could avoid confusion between Bird’s ludicrous empiricism on stilts and what is actually possible. A paper could argue that moving the Earth closer to the sun would warm it. Most would find that uncontroversial and accept that it describes a causal relationship between proximity to the sun and global climate.
It would however fail Bird’s test of having been empirically demonstrated.
It might also fail Jennifer’s brand-spanking new test of being uncritically accepted by the entire scientific community. Someone in peer-review might, after all, question the precision of the mathematical model, rendering the whole thing unacceptable.
Jennifer writes:
“It is apparent, however, that a body of science published in peer-review journals, establishing a causal link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and warming and quantifying the extent of this warming, is lacking but would be expected to exist to support popular AGW theory.”
There is, very obviously, a body of scientific literature claiming to do those things, whatever the merits of the three papers that you list (and dozens more were suggested in comments here). You may find a fairly systematic statement of what is to be proved here:
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Book_chapters/Rahmstorf_Zedillo_2008.pdf
Here’s Rahmstorf’s analysis of what is to be proved:
First, a proposition about the past: “human activities already have noticeably changed global climate”, which is to be inferred from two subsidiary propositions: “global climate is warming”, “most of the observed warming over the past fifty years is anthropogenic”.
Second, a proposition about the future: “anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases will lead to significant global warming”, which is to be inferred from three subsidiary propositions: “the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration is rising”, “the recent rise in CO2 is entirely anthropogenic”, “carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas; doubling its concentration will warm global climate in equilibrium by 3°C ± 1.5°C”.
It’s that last sub-proposition which *quantifies* the expected relationship between CO2 and temperature change. And in my opinion it is the one that should be of the greatest interest to skeptics. The attribution of the mild climate changes of recent decades to human beings is also of interest, but the case for AGW being catastrophic rests upon the argument that climate sensitivity is several degrees strong. That is where the “climate auditing” should focus.
Steve stop trying that old red herring of smoking and cancer to distract people from the subject at hand talk to the point please. I agree with you completly that causal link must incorporate solid scientific proof, that is the whole point, IPCC has no solid scientific proof. All they have is correlation which is not scientific proof. I really do not know how much clearer this definition can be.
Now with regard to Callendar If you look at Zbigniew Jaworowski’s paper “Ice Core Data Show No Carbon Dioxide Increase” you will see Callendar’s total data base from which he cherry picked his data thus totally invalidating it as a reputable scientific study.Callendar like so many others was a total FRAUD.
Jennifer you should have ended this blog one post ago…
Barry, since Callendar nowhere discusses ice cores I infer that you haven’t read his paper…
Graeme (to break my own rule for a moment in order to save you from an aneuryism) since you have shown yourself incapable of having a discussion without resorting to abuse, despite repeated requests to be polite, I have no intention of responding to anything you write.
But since I’ve broken this rule for this post, why don’t you READ CALLENDAR’S PAPER and FIND OUT?
Smoking being a cause of lung cancer was
established by autopsy. They found the incidence of lung cancer icreasing which led to a series of
investigations which established smoking
as being a major cause. If they had simply used rats , the link would not have been definitvely
established .
RRP
Smoking being a cause of lung cancer was
established by autopsy. They found the incidence of lung cancer icreasing which led to a series of
investigations which established smoking
as being a major cause. If they had simply used rats , the link would not have been definitvely
established .
RRP
I know this will be ignored, but here are two papers I found on the infra red properties of carbon dioxide gas.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/tmph/1981/00000044/00000001/art00009
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1721794
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0486480
This book would also have references if you cared to find it.
http://www.gbv.de/dms/ilmenau/toc/509264093.PDF
Graeme, have you ever considered that it is actually your contributions that have led to the downfall of this blog?
Mitchell; O.K. so after $50 Billion in research and 4 assessment reports there is no proof. Just a lot of correlation smoke and mirrors from manipulated unsupported proxy data. Frankly I would expect more from $50 billion. Rhamstorf is exactly correct these questions need to be definitely answered before we sink hundreds of billions of dollars into this fraud, the trouble is these questions have not even been remotely answered. Just repeating valid questions does not answer them.
Jennifer, my congratulations. A debate.
NT I actually went to your web sites They were just selling papers $43.75 was the first one the others were just simple high school physical properties I am starting to believe Graeme is absolutely correct you people are absolute morons and you publish nothing but garbage. Honestly I try to be rational and positive but you folk make it very difficult. Give me another few weeks of this childish nonsense from the AGW lunatic fringe and I will be cussing like Graeme.
NT I actually went to your web sites They were just selling papers $43.75 was the first one the others were just simple high school physical properties I am starting to believe Graeme is absolutely correct you people are absolute morons and you publish nothing but garbage. Honestly I try to be rational and positive but you folk make it very difficult. Give me another few weeks of this childish nonsense from the AGW lunatic fringe and I will be cussing like Graeme.
NT I actually went to your web sites They were just selling papers $43.75 was the first one the others were just simple high school physical properties I am starting to believe Graeme is absolutely correct you people are absolute morons and you publish nothing but garbage. Honestly I try to be rational and positive but you folk make it very difficult. Give me another few weeks of this childish nonsense from the AGW lunatic fringe and I will be cussing like Graeme.
I find Steve’s argument about “causation” very tedious.
The question is very simple: does CO2 causes GW?
If so prove it!
Sorry about the repeat in ran into some screening which I had not encountered before I do not mind it I just was not expecting it.
Johnathan the answer is no and I have tried very hard to present, unfortunately at length, on this and other blogs in strict scientific terms why it does not look around you will find the answers.
After all this we have one paper from 1938 that might fit Jen’s criteria ‘quite well’ (although I would dispute paying out $1,000 if it was me). So, that’s it then?
Well, the bits without Graeme in are a debate (and a far better one than usual). Sadly the bits with Graeme in taste more like burnt toast.
C’mon all you warmers! You can do better than this. Give us something with meat on its bones!
Why don’t you go over to Deltoid and ask all of the “scientists” over there to help. I’m sure they can each rattle off dozens of papers that show anthropogenic CO2 causes global warming. You can be back here with the citations before dinner.
Lazlo; I agree with you and I have already posted proof that Callendars paper presented very biased data thus I think that it is disqualified.
Graeme Bird – I find it hard to take anything you say seriously purely because of the way you say it.
James Haughton I note you use the term “infer” thus you have no proof but you infer. This is a very common unscientific ploy, why don’t you just ask the question instead of assuming remember to assume make an ass out of u and me. Therefore this is a very unscientific thought process. I gave a reference why don’t you just check it out. If you are unfamiliar with the peer review process let me remind you that you never take a paper on its face value one must examine the data from which the paper was written, that is what I was demonstrating.
Great Blog this. Think I will come back. I have waited for years with great anticipation for some real evidence for any significant man-made CO2 Global Warming. Bet I’ll be waiting a long time yet though. I expect a much longer wait to see any measurable difference Australia can make to the impact on reducing global levels of CO2. What evidence is available to show sending our industry and jobs overseas will make any difference? Why should Australia’s economy be ruined and our standard of living slashed for no evidenced based reason at all? Got me buggered!
Lazlo: It’s not easy to find a single paper (as opposed to, say, a book full of them or referencing lots and lots of them, like the IPCC reports) that covers all the major points as opposed to one specialist point. Which is why I went back in the historical record to an early, “seminal” paper (also to avoid the two most common reasons for rejecting evidence out of hand – “AGW’s just a computer model” which a paper published in 1938 certainly is not, and “AGW was invented in 1988 by Al Gore and James Hansen”, which the existence Callendar disproves). I also supplied a second, recent paper which gave up-to-date CO2 data (the Hofmann et al paper), but Dr Marohasy inexplicably insisted on treating these as two separate entries in the contest rather than a complementary pair.
Dr Marohasy did not receive many entries, because very few people believe that she and Mr Duffy would ever pay up (see here: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/duffy_does_a_hovind.php ). Instead, as predicted, she appears to be moving the goal posts – for example, insisting that the Callendar paper must suit her re-definition of “peer review” rather than her original criterion of “published in a reputable scientific journal”, which the Quarterly Journal of Meteorology certainly is.
There is a discussion of the historical evolution of climate science (including the place of Callendar’s paper in it) and the various pieces of evidence that gradually changed the scientific community’s minds about CO2’s role in climate change here: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
HTH
I thought this blog was ending… Why is it still here?
In a less passionate way but equally sincere I agree with Graeme. The proof that the Kyoto accord is totally without foundation is overwhelming.
I started this investigation 10 years ago with a personal commitment just to learn the truth, I have no other ulterior motive.
I am still ready to change my mind if anyone can provide the EVIDENCE.
I have read technical papers until my eyeballs fell out I have gone to university courses by fanatical IPCC believers. I have struggled through the IPCC reports, in all honesty I can find no scientific proof of the IPCC hypothesis. In fact I am more convinced today than ever that the IPCC is a total political farce and con job.
“I thought this blog was ending… Why is it still here?”
I think Graeme is doing is best.
Graeme, did you go to the link James suggested at the end?
This one: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
It gives references to the information.
So you then look up those references and read them.
Thing is I know that both you and Jennifer aren’t not actually interested. So you won’t and then you’ll shout and rant a bit more and damage Jennifers reputation even further.
Hi Jennifer. Asking for the casual connection is pivotal in science. It has to be there before anyone does a thing to change the climate one way or another.
There is a good medical joke. A lot of doctors are at a conference in the country. They decide the papers are all boring and so they go on a duck shoot. A psychiatrist steps and yells “Quack! Quack!” Birds fly everwhere. But he pscyh says, “I can’t shoot them – they would feel pain.”
A physcian steps up, yells “Quack! Quack!” and birds fly everywhere. He looks and says, “Are they ducks? Or are they geese?” And doesn’t shoot and moves off to poner the difference.
Finally a surgeon steps up and yells “Quack! Quack!” Birds fly everywhere and the surgeon shoots everything. When the smoke clears, he turns to the pathologist and says “Make sure they are ducks!”
And so it is with climate science. There are hundreds of papers demonstrating causality and they are all ducks.
“And no-one offered up any study that could win it.”
and that’s because jennifer will happily tweak her definition of ‘causal link’ to an arbitrary level of strictness so that whatever paper is offered doesn’t qualify.
Here’s how the competition works:
“Gimme a paper to prove a causal link between co2 and AGW! Cmon! Prove it! I’ll give you $1000 if you do!”
“Here’s a paper.”
“Nup, i dont reckon it proves it!. You fail!”
“I thought it did prove it. What exactly are the criteria for a causal link as you understand it anyway? Can we agree on them and make them clear and unambiguous?”
“Stop being tedious! Just prove it! Its simple! Cmon, give us just one paper!”
repeat until everyone gets bored, then claim victory.
Haughton; I have said it once and I will say it over and over again ” Correlation does not prove causation” The IPCC reports are nothing but a collection of correlation reports and computer simulations based on IPCC’s interpretation of those correlations. This is not scientific proof. Callendar’s paper was based on selected data which was not in any way representative of the original data base , I have already posted proof of that which you chose to ignor since you have no rebuttal. I find it incredible that you and people like you categorically refuse to answer direct and specific challenges to your statements. We are specfic and to the point but you waffle and ignor those many questions and challenges which you cannot answer. In all honesty Sir I have to consider you a complete FRAUD.
“But mitchell. Does he come up with the evidence? If so where? The changes in climate are not unusual in the 20th century. In fact if anything they are feeble given the extraordinary solar activity.”
With respect to the 20th century, Rahmstorf argues as follows:
1) There has been a rise of 0.8°C since the late 19th century.
2) The radiative forcings due to a doubling of CO2, due to the increase in CO2 so far, due to ocean heat uptake, due to aerosols, and due to the sun during the 20th century, are respectively +3.7, +2.6, -.6, -1, +0.3 W/m^2. The sources for those numbers are Rahmstorf’s footnote 20; an article by Lindzen in the same volume, to which Rahmstorf’s article is a response; and Rahmstorf’s footnotes 21, 22, 23. (Footnote 20 just leads to IPCC 2001, but Steve McIntyre dug up some of the primary literature, see his postings on “Lacis et al 1981”.)
3) These numbers are said to imply a climate sensitivity of 2.3°C – this is calculated on p.40-41 of Rahmstorf, but he’s just solving for X in 0.8/X = (2.6-.6-1+.3)/3.7. (I can’t quite figure out why those -.6,-.1,+.3 corrections aren’t in the denominator as well, but at this point I’m just trying to reproduce Rahmstorf’s argument.)
4) Furthermore, the uncertainties in aerosol and solar forcing are such as to increase the numerator on the right-hand side, which would increase the value of X, climate sensitivity, and thus the anthropogenic component of the 20th-century warming.
There’s other stuff in the article but this looks to me like the central chain of reasoning.
First of all; thanks to Jennifer for posting this topic; it is astounding that the basic mechanism by which AGW is supposed to work has somehow been assumed to be; I say that without re-reading Callendar’s 1938 in detail; but as I have said before Callendar only works if his assumption that pre-industrail levels of CO2 were lower than today and evenly mixed; and he hasn’t, IMO, resolved the logarithmic limit to CO2, or for that matter, all GHG’s.
So to NT and his Weart piece; Weart revisits Callendar and reinforces the semi-infinite opaque model which AGW relies on; we have talked before about how both Miscolczi and Chilingar, for all their faults, establish that the AGW model is problematic; it is also the case that Miscolczi and Chilingar are not mutually exclusive as some pro-AGW commentators assert; Chilingar is about heat transfer, Miscolczi is about heat balance.
NT’s other reference is more to the point of this crucial topic;
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0486480
This Taylor paper confirms a number of things in the way that CO2 interacts with IR which are contradictory to AGW; firstly it shows that the kinetci/vibrational transfer of heat from the CO2 to the relatively IR inert bulk of the atmosphere, N2, occurs; but here is the kicker; this transfer “forces the two components to subsequently approach equilibrium with the same rate.” One of the stumbling blocks to those arguing against the opaque atmosphere was the difference between the rate of collisional excitation and collisional deexcitation, with the former being much slower than the latter; this meant that there was no saturative limit to a layer of CO2, with more CO2 not being subject to the logarithmic limit. With an excitional/deexcitional equivalance there is no bar to the logarithmic decline. This decline is not solely due to Beer’s Law because the absorption and emission is not uniform or able to be averaged as if the Earth were a grey body; it happens because 99% of CO2 absorption occurs within only a few tens to hundreds of meters of the surface; at this level 2 things happen; firstly, transmission is inversely proportional to concentration and wavelength; so with CO2 absorption restricted to 14.7 mu ( and note pressure smearing may broaden that peak, but the total amount of IR absorbed and reemitted is not changed), a doubling of concentration means half gets through; but with the near atmosphere effectively opaque that saturation prevents further absorption; the second thing is not even disputed by AGWer’s; as Chilingar’s paper shows, a convective driven heat transfer takes the near surface saturated air to the upper atmosphere where the IR is radiated to space;
http://www.climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=268#p5125
Arrhenius thought that a doubling of CO2 would have a forcing of 5.5K; the IPCC forcing is between 3.5 and 5C; since 1900 CO2 has increased by 40%; there should have been, on this basis, an increase of about 2C; even the corrupt NASAGISS shows only an increase of .7C, which is easily accounted for by solar and PDO; given this, AGW is shown not to be.
“3) These numbers are said to imply a climate sensitivity of 2.3°C -…….”
No you cannot DO that mitchell. I warned you about that already. There is no such things as a climate-senstivity. We want to know about the effect of SPECIFICALLY CO2.
You cannot infer the behavour of CO2 from the behaviour of aerosols.
No good.
Try again.
Let me explain mitchell. Climate sensitivity is an almighty fudge factor. Its a correction after the fact to make up for a model that bears no relation to earth or any other planet.
In this model only gasses and light matter. The planet is a black body. It is twice as far from the sun as the earth is. It is noon all the time. There is no conduction or convection on this planet. There is no insulative capacity at all of the non-greenhouse gasses. There is no water. No 7000 kilometres of earth down to the centre. No overturning where warm air is forced back down under therefore creating a heat budget.
Everything else is added back in a very clumsy way later on in the model. But the first step starts on this ethereal non-planet.
There is enough greenhouse effect in this model already to raise the temperature of this hypothetical surreal planet at least 30 degrees at the surface more than it otherwise would be. Since in our planet there is a great many other things maintaining that warmth, then on this planet already there is a powerful greenhouse effect the likes of which we don’t know.
Now because this model bears no relation to anything we’ve seen before or will ever see they go through some steps. One of them is to hypothesise a fudge factor called a CLIMATE SENSITIVITY aka LAMDA.
But Lamda does not exist. We have evidence that aerosols will cool. We have evidence that solar activity changes will cool or warm. We have evidence that orbital cycles make a difference.
What we do not have is evidence that a slightly higher CO2 level will make a difference.
The climate sensitivity is therefore a myth. Where these guys attempt to use evidence from aerosols to prove evidence for CO2. Evidence which they do not have.
Well, thanks to Cohenite for at least reading the stuff.
The whole saturated gas thing is something that has kept me awake at night. OK, not really, but I haven’t resolved it in my mind.
What I think, and I certainly can’t back this up, is that because the Sun acts like a pulsed heat source it isn’t so important. Just before dawn the Earth should be at it’s coldest, as the sun rises it warms, I figure with increased CO2 it will warm faster and reach ‘saturation’ quicker. What this means is there is a longer period during the day time that the atmosphere is warmer which in turn acts to slow the release of heat from the surface. There will be a lower thermal gradient between the surface and the atmosphere. And in reverse as the sun sets the additional CO2 will act to retain heat for longer.
This focus on CO2 alone is unhealthy however. As all real AGW zealots know, there are other gases involved and other feedbacks.
Graeme, you’re the one who ruins the debate here. Jennifer is going to be pretty mad with you.
“Arrhenius thought that a doubling of CO2 would have a forcing of 5.5K; the IPCC forcing is between 3.5 and 5C; since 1900 CO2 has increased by 40%; there should have been, on this basis, an increase of about 2C; even the corrupt NASAGISS shows only an increase of .7C, which is easily accounted for by solar and PDO; given this, AGW is shown not to be.”
Precisely. Its just not there. And they don’t want to find it. Because to find it you’d have to look for times when the CO2 was higher than usual in the past. They are not going to recognise Becks evidence that CO2 has moved around enough for them to get a fix on it.
So either way they will refuse to look for the evidence and do not care about it.
“I figure with increased CO2 it will warm faster and reach ‘saturation’ quicker. What this means is there is a longer period during the day time that the atmosphere is warmer which in turn acts to slow the release of heat from the surface. There will be a lower thermal gradient between the surface and the atmosphere. And in reverse as the sun sets the additional CO2 will act to retain heat for longer.”
Well OK. So why haven’t we seen this. That ought to make a mighty difference if you were right.
So where is that difference?
What about the 40’s where Beck has the CO2 climbing high. Thereafter the CO2 didn’t keep the warming continuing. Rather the CO2 and the temperature plunge.
That doesn’t sound much like your scenario.
One place that is just a tiny bit closer to their otherworldly model is the far north during the long daytime of summer when the midnight sun dances around in the sky.
Consider:
1. Not much overturning. Since pretty much all the air is dry. So we don’t have a situation where humid air is rising next to dry air and causing this overturning.
2. Not noon all the time but for many weeks the sun is always in the sky.
3. There isn’t the water vapour up there to mask and make irrelevant the effect of CO2.
So while it isn’t the same as their nonsensical models assumptions its closer to it.
“Quack! Quack!”
Now what is that all about gavin?
Graeme, just substitute the phrase “temperature increase per CO2 doubling” for “climate sensitivity”. It’s not a fudge factor, it’s a way of quantifying what happens to temperatures when you double CO2 without changing anything else, and it will be well-defined for situations far more complicated than the unrealistic model you describe. The question is whether it is valid in the real world or not. Rahmstorf thinks it is, you think it isn’t, but I don’t actually know why. I can think of various hypothetical scenarios under which it is not a valid concept, but I don’t see why that would be so even for your paradigm.
Their must be more coherence to this issue of co2 forcing and it seems to me after reading all the alarmists views above that illogical thinking seems to prevail.
If you want to find out if you can get positive feedback to increased co2 in the real atmosphere ( in real 21st century time, not 1938 theory ) why not look at Spencer’s research and findings from the AQUA satellite program?
If every climate scientist agrees that there must be a hotspot over the equator at a height of 10- 12klms to prove co2 forcing why can’t it be found?
Is the .7c of warming in the last 100 years unusual ( mostly in NH btw ) when the planet is just recovering from the LIA which even Wiki says lowered the temp by 1c to 1.5c, plus the planet has recieved more radiation in the last 100 years than at any time in the last 10,400 years?
So logically just the recovery from the LIA more than covers the .7c of warming with at least .3c at least left over to ponder and strengthen the skeptic’s case.
The alarmists case is based on religious nonsense and certainly not on practical, observable, real atmosphere science.
“Graeme, just substitute the phrase “temperature increase per CO2 doubling” for “climate sensitivity”. It’s not a fudge factor, it’s a way of quantifying what happens to temperatures when you double CO2 without changing anything else, and it will be well-defined for situations far more complicated than the unrealistic model you describe.”
But it doesn’t happen Mitchell. Thats the problem. You see you’ve unwittingly already included the conclusion within the working out. So the argument is circular.
You see we can see the evidence for the volcanic aerosols. For the solar variability. For the orbital cycles.
But there is no evidence for CO2-warming. So you cannot include that which you do not already have. You cannot merely assume warming from CO2 from evidence taken from cooling from aerosols.
I know they do it. But this is religion and not science.
See if I say the evidence for CO2-warming comes from the warming the CO2 would have due to a doubling…. thats circular reasoning. When what we wanted was the evidence that CO2 warmed the planet globally.
I mean if you are already going to include the answer in the question you ought not be surprised that you find out what you thought you already knew.
But this is not science.
“Rahmstorf thinks it is, you think it isn’t, but I don’t actually know why. I can think of various hypothetical scenarios under which it is not a valid concept, but I don’t see why that would be so even for your paradigm.”
Rahmstorf can think what he likes. But him thinking something cannot be a substitute for evidence. The thing is I’d LOVE IT if CO2 had that effect. That would be the best dumb luck that the human race had ever experienced. What it would mean is we had a thermostat to avoid the glacial periods. Just as Arrenhius and Callendar hoped. Arrenhius would be absolutely dumbfounded by what these guys are trying to do in his name. He wouldn’t want anything to do with these people. He’d be totally mystified by them. The idea is to avoid glacial periods.
I was the same. I hoped it had an effect and surmised that it did. GREAT. Like Callender and Arrenhius I thought it was just a great bit of luck that we almost didn’t deserve.
But no-one has the evidence so the effect must be tiny.
Negative or positive it has to be tiny.
Graeme the co2 effect is covered by Spencer’s work, he found a small negative feedback, so panic stations we’ll just have to stop athro co2 because we might enhance our way into the next ice age.
“See if I say the evidence for CO2-warming comes from the warming the CO2 would have due to a doubling…. thats circular reasoning. When what we wanted was the evidence that CO2 warmed the planet globally.”
Talking about the warming that a CO2 doubling would produce is just a way of quantifying the relationship. You could talk about “warming due to CO2 increasing by half” and you would have a different set of numbers, but it would be the same concept.
It does sort of presuppose that temperature goes up logarithmically with CO2 concentration. So Rahmstorf needs to show that this is a valid or at least a plausible assumption for the real world. The argument about paradigms might be relevant there.
But talking about temperature-increase-per-CO2-doubling does not presuppose anything about the *magnitude* of the increase; it only presupposes that the concept makes sense. Having made that supposition, Rahmstorf then calculates the magnitude and finds it to be large rather than small. It is not circular reasoning but it does assume the validity of certain concepts.
“Talking about the warming that a CO2 doubling would produce is just a way of quantifying the relationship.”
Stop right there. Circular reason. The problem is it doesn’t produce any warming. A doubling doesn’t produce anything.
We have the evidence for a number of things impinging on temperature. You cannot take aerosol COOLING and infer CO2-WARMING from that?
So just back up. Because we needed the evidence for CO2-warming IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Thats what we were after. Thats what we were looking for. We cannot mentally wish it into existence.
You cannot ontologically conjure the Sasquatch. You cannot bring him into being by logical argument. Or mathematically derive him. You need evidence for the Sasquatch. Carelessly scattered bananna peels. Giant footprints. A big steaming shit in the snow. You cannot conjure CO2-warming through a mathematical model or derive it through logical reasoning.
There was enough of an indication to form the hypothesis. It was an ok hypothesis. The problem came with trying to find evidence for it. The evidence didn’t show up. It should have shown. But it didn’t.
As soon as you need to plug in numbers to do with a doubling than you’ve already blown the detection and attribution.
Its like saying that God exists because the bible says so. And God must exist because he’s said something in the bible which implies his existence.
Thats not going to fly. Its circular. A paradigm cannot be proven by reference to itself.
I haven’t examined the paleoclimate stuff yet. But I gave Rahmstorf’s calculation above. There is an observed temperature increase, an observed increase in CO2, and there are values for solar, aerosol, and ocean contributions to temperature change. From all of that he derives a number which represents the strength of CO2-warming. But it’s just what’s left over when you account for solar, aerosol, and ocean. So unless there’s some other cause of warming that he left out, he has proceeded empirically as well as logically. You might attack his numbers or his paradigm or both, but he does actually have an argument.
“I haven’t examined the paleoclimate stuff yet. But I gave Rahmstorf’s calculation above. There is an observed temperature increase, an observed increase in CO2, and there are values for solar, aerosol, and ocean contributions to temperature change. From all of that he derives a number which represents the strength of CO2-warming.”
But you already told us that he brought this climate sensitivity into it. Which means he didn’t do the exercise straight. But used the aerosol-cooling business to conjure a CO2-warming inference.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yeah thanks for that Neville. A slight negative. Well at least thats consistent with the record.
Supposing he’s doing the numbers straight.
The transmission goes like this…. Solar increase….reduced cosmic ray amplication of the solar increase ….. buildup in oceanic heat budget….. buildup in water vapour……… warmer troposphere…..
Now from there is where he needs to start adding and substracting.
If he hasn’t gone through the above transmission than he’s treating the deal like its a mythical flat-earth black body.
NT said:-
>The whole saturated gas thing is something that >has kept me awake at night. OK, not really, but I >haven’t resolved it in my mind.
>What I think, and I certainly can’t back this up, >is that because the Sun acts like a pulsed heat >source it isn’t so important. Just before dawn >the Earth should be at it’s coldest, as the sun >rises it warms, I figure with increased CO2 it >will warm faster and reach ‘saturation’ quicker. >What this means is there is a longer period >during the day time that the atmosphere is warmer >which in turn acts to slow the release of heat >from the surface. There will be a lower thermal >gradient between the surface and the atmosphere. >And in reverse as the sun sets the additional CO2 >will act to retain heat for longer.
I’ve been led to believe that all of these matters are fully understood. The debate is over! We understand the climate well enough to know, within 1C or so, what the average temperature will be in 50 or 100 years. So, NT, why are you feigning ignorance over such simple concepts as these?
They have all be factored precisely into the models and their effects are known with an unprecedented degree of precision. How else do you think we managed to project 100 years intot the future? Surely you don’t think we just took a straight-edged ruler and drew an upward-trending line, do you? [Some people!]
>This focus on CO2 alone is unhealthy however. As >all real AGW zealots know, there are other gases >involved and other feedbacks.
Halle-freakin-jah for someone on the AGWing side admittin to that! However, I don’t suppose you’re talking about water vapour here, are you?
>Graeme, you’re the one who ruins the debate here. >Jennifer is going to be pretty mad with you.
He can be a complete SOB and may well be one of the reasons Jennifer is having misgivings. I think he might suspect that (he’s evidently intelligent, if opinionated and abrasive) and that’s why he’s being on his best behaviour today.
[Would you like to add anything to my description of you, Graeme? Hobbies, favourite foods, last thing you bought at Bunnings, etc.]
Graeme, Rahmstorf’s argument is just this: Assuming that temperature change is arising from the combined effects of CO2, solar, aerosol, and ocean, and that the magnitudes of the contributions from solar, aerosol, and ocean are like so, how big is the contribution from CO2?
He performs that calculation within a certain paradigm. So you can criticize the paradigm or the numbers or both. When you object to talk about “climate sensitivity”, does that mean you’re objecting to the logarithmic paradigm, which says that *multiplying* the amount of CO2 *adds* to temperature in a consistent proportion?
“This can be demonstrated in a laboratory, but when you scale up laboratory experiments to the real world, what happens? We know from ice cores that global temperatures have decreased in the past even as carbon dioxide has continued to rise. There are some so-called skeptics who claim that in the real world the radiation forcing of carbon dioxide is overwhelmed by the more powerful constraints of evaporation cooling from the tropical oceans.”
ouch. with this approach, it would be basically impossible to show that smoking causes cancer. there could be a minority of scientists, who believe that the increased cancer rate in smokers might have some other reason.
basically you would need a test. with MANY people. under completely controlled conditions. with them not knowing, whether they are smoking or not. until sufficently of them develop cancer, to make a statistically stable claim.
good luck.
oh and i would love to hear the answers of Jennifers students, about papers that “prove” evolution….
Motl has a good take on the ‘dispute’ between Lindzen and Rahmstorf;
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/03/lindzen-vs-rahmstorf-exchange.html
Motls’ last comment about the hypocrisy of AGW supporters comparing their ‘science’ with general relativity is particularly telling; Einstein was troubled by one assumption, the cosmic constant; in AGW there is nothing but arbitary assumptions; speaking of which, relooking at the Taylor paper and the collisional transfer between CO2 and N2; this transfer occurs at fairly high pressure;
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0022-3700/10/3/018
Thus, between N2 and O2, which has similar properties, about 20% of the emitted photons are absorbed by the inerts; this makes this process another of the long list of AGW mitigating mechanisms; a list of them is instructive;
1 the N2/O2 collisional transfer.
2 the logarithmic decline.
3 the dominance of the convectional heat transfer a la Chilingar over the CO2 heating.
4 the operation of various -ve feedbacks from water, albedo, decline in RH, enthalpy.
5 the uneven mixture of CO2, or as the AIRS sampling shows, “substantial spatiotemporal variability.”
http://yly-mac.gps.caltech.edu/A_EGU2008/YungEGU08CO2/SCIENCE%20CO2_Paper_V2F%20copy.pdf
6 Steve Short’s ‘Little Mothers’, the cyanobacteria.
Surely such a list, combined with the total predictive failure of AGW, and the manifest lies, obfuscation and lack of transparency, and the, at best, ambiguity of the AGW mechanism, extra CO2, should put this thing down. Nah.
Well I’m not objecting to it. But we need evidence for it. See it might not go like that.
No doubt it would go like that if it was noon all the time, there was no conduction or convection. It was a flat earth. Twice as far from the sun. And so forth. We cannot take these things for granted bipartisan or not. On our planet there may be a great deal of serendipity about it.
Where is the heat budget buildup in the ocean, the cosmic ray amplification, the water vapour buildup… all this in a certain sequence…. Where is all that coming into it.
You see thats what happens on THIS planet. He ought not be doing things on the basis of an otherworldly flat earth.
“Solar increase….reduced cosmic ray amplication of the solar increase ….. buildup in oceanic heat budget….. buildup in water vapour……… warmer troposphere…..
Now from there is where he needs to start adding and subtracting.”
OK great, I think there is some basis for further dialogue and discussion here. Unfortunately I’m not Rahmstorf so my ability to act as his proxy has its limits. Still, we’ve at least managed to arrive at the quantitative part of the argument for catastrophic AGW. Up until now, I haven’t seen any AGW advocates here locate a single, simple calculation like that.
To bring in the cosmic rays and the troposphere and so forth, we first need to understand the internal logic of Rahmstorf’s calculation. I’m not at that point yet. (Though if anyone’s wondering about the absence of water vapor from the list of causes considered, that just goes back to the difference between forcings and feedbacks. Feedbacks are influences whose magnitude is dependent on the forcings, and H2O falls into that category because of its very short atmospheric lifespan.) I would need to be absolutely clear on the physical basis of the logarithmic paradigm, and the logic behind the algebra, before I could then examine whether adding more physical detail is going to violate the premises behind the calculation. But at least I see a way forward now.
Spencer, R. W., & Braswell, W. D., “Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A Simple Model Demonstration”, in press, Journal of Climate, November 2008. I claim this fits Jen’s criteria. $1,000 to a mutually agreed cause Michael.
Steve, August 29, 2008 01:33 PM…. You said this amid your post…
“e.g. you could ask your readers to come up with a scientific paper that examines the causal link between smoking and lung cancer.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/143/3603/247
In among the reams of material I read, I came across a paper (not the one above. I just grabbed that one) that detailed the mechanism for lung cancer….. It explained it, as my imperfect memory will endeavour to remember, as this.
All plant material is exposed to the breakdown products of uranium in the form of Radon gas, which further breaks down into Polonium 210 Because Polonium 210 (remember Alexander Litvinenko), is amazingly toxic it’s effects will cause cancerous changes to tissue in anybody exposed to burning plant material over long periods of time.
Tobacco, because it’s leaves are particularly furry on the undersides, accumulates more uranium decay products than other plants…
So, in actuality, the link to Tobacco and lung cancer is a generic process comparable to all growing plants. Non smokers exposed to a lifetime of open cooking fires would have increased risks of cancer, etc.
It is also necessary to add that there is no link between nicotine and lung cancer… But of course nicotine is addictive, thus it is understandable that using smoking as a delivery method for nicotine and the habit formed, would increase the risk of cancer if the above mechanism is correct.
Anyway Steve…. What’s the Causal link between CO2 and the AGW Hypothesis?
Hate to put this, but the initial hypothesis was first proposed by Arrhenius in 1906.
So when are the illuminated idiots here going to look at the facts.
sod:-
“ouch. with this approach, it would be basically impossible to show that smoking causes cancer. there could be a minority of scientists, who believe that the increased cancer rate in smokers might have some other reason.”
Well, technically it still is impossible to prove that smoking causes cancer. Technically, we still cannot describe the processes behind cancer, at a cellular level.
Therefore, all we can say is that there is an association between certain things and cancer. In fact, lung cancer is still a minority cause of death in smokers (approximately 8%-10%).
Therefore, it is completely correct to say that smoking is correlated with a significantly higher rate of lung cancer than in never-smokers.
However, it is completely incorrect to assert that smoking causes cancer, because we don’t fully understand cancer and it only correlates strongly with a minority percentage of lifetime smokers. [One day, when we truly understand cancer, we might be able to say something about causation with precision, however we cannot say it with our present state of cancer knowledge.]
Feedbacks are influences whose magnitude is dependent on the forcings, and H2O falls into that category because of its very short atmospheric lifespan.
I think that Spencer outlines an exception to that;
“internally-generated radiative forcings, which are uncorrelated to the temperature variations which result from them.” These are cloud formations which are due to “other, chaotic, internally generated mechanisms.”; that is, other than CO2 or greenhouse caused temperature increase. These causal factors have a Hurst quality; Spencer establishes a -ve feedback correlation by doing what Tamino did in a recent post; by scaling or interpolating over a less than infinite sample; Spencer uses a 100% correlation; examples would be a combination of surface hydrology and evaporation; these are long-lived process and their atmospheric proxy would have both a short-term and long-term effect.
cohenite; your first mention of motti had me rolling the mouse again
bed time hey
somebody may wish to look up the latest theory on fruit bat population stress and virus protection in my absence
TheWord
My late father was a physician and commented, from his extensive experience, that people who developed cancer, tended to smoke cigarettes.
I accept this anectodatal evidence from a physician at the coal-face of human existence more than the hypothetical crap proselytised here.
Oh Sorry, we empiricists form our conclusions from the waste of humanity, as opposed to, the sterile deliberations of the progressive abstractions favoured by the CO2 freaks here.
NT Blurts… “I thought this blog was ending… Why is it still here?”
I say….. Go away NT. 😉
That should be, Spencer developes a +ve correlation.
Yes, gavin, it’s bedtime. I’ll stay up and find some more Motl pearlers.
Louis,
Don’t worry – I don’t doubt the association, nor the added risk.
However, we’re talking about “causation” here. That has a very particular meaning in scientific terms.
It does not mean correlated, nor associated, nor implicated. It means “caused”.
There are loads of words in the English language and I’ve found that people who are passionate about certain things will often choose the stronger words and overstate their case.
When X causes Y, it is a matter of some substantial (if not absolute) certainty and inevitability.
“Cause” is science’s strongest and most abused word.
TheWord
I am a practising scientist – so misuse of the verb cause, causes all sorts of reactions, especially by those who don’t.
But, writing that, no evidence has been put here by way of a refereed scientific paper supprting Arrhenius’ 1906 proposition – that a reduction in atmospheric CO2 content causes ice ages. Nor that increasing atmospheric CO2 content avoids ice ages.
Turns out that people in AI are interested in inferring causality (for the purpose of having the robot build proper models of its world automatically). There’s quite a sophisticated theory (see Judea Pearl’s
eponymous book, for example).
I’m working on that sort of stuff myself in the context of robots whose knowledge representation is in the form of dynamical systems. I have a few ruminations about causality inference (click thru my name to the page),
which include an application of a possible technique to the CO2/temperature case.
Hey, why isn’t Spencer and Braswell fitting the bill? Jen didn’t say it had to support the link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and global warming, just examine it. This paper examines and disproves the link. OK I’ll waive the $1K if that’s a problem..
Future history of AGW
There was a big tree limb;
it seemed very strong.
So, many climbed on it;
how could they go wrong?
But then came a cold spell
and the limb shattered.
Many reputations
now hang in tatters.
Lazlo; do you have a link to or preview of the paper?
Folks, from my view point we have seminal paper(s) in the G. S. Callendar set. He, along with S. A. Arrhenius, appear be the seminal fathers of the CO2 and AGW theory. Are their efforts correct using today’s technologies? Still TBD.
Jenn, “?I believe?” we do have a winner of the bet. Of course, it is easy for me to say that as it isn’t my money.
“I understand that the author of one of the papers, Thomas Crowley, posted comment at John Quiggins site acknowledging that his paper did not deal with causation.” – Jen
Oh Jennifer, misleading to the end.
I emailed Prof Crowley for a comment on your hand-waving dismissal of his paper and then posted his reply. He certainly did not “acknowledge that his paper did not deal with causation”. Quite the opposite. He stated the general principle that science deals in evidence and probabilities, and that in the case of AGW, the evidence supports it.
Just to recap,
“the pile of evidence in favor of global warming is quite convincing, which is why IPCC made such a strong statement.
alternate explanations do not wash either, nor does the natural variability argument, which I showed cannot explain the unusual nature of the 20th century warming (when compared against the background of the last 1000 years).
one can choose not to believe in global warming, but it is a choice, a believe, and trying to change the minds of people with that mindset generally does not work because very often (although not always) their mindsets are grounded in emotions, resentments, political leanings, etc that are concealed under a hazardously thin cover of ‘logic’.” – Tom Crowley.
There are various ways to derive the basic effect of CO2, and they all lead to numbers close to 1.2 Deg C for CO2 doubling, as shown in IPCC and derived by Monckton among others (discussed ad nauseum at Climate Audit)–BUT: to get more warming than than one must invoke a water vapor/clouds positive feedback that can NOT be calculated analytically and is just assumed in the GCMs without proof. It is never ever in any literature laid out explicitly how this works with a demonstration of proof. Roy Spencer’s work by contrast supports Richard Lindzen’s theory of the infrared iris–that as it warms the hydrological cycle speeds up and more clear sky is produced, allowing more heat to escape, a NEGATIVE FEEDBACK, not positive.
“,,, to get more warming than than one must invoke a water vapor/clouds positive feedback that can NOT be calculated analytically and is just assumed in the GCMs without proof. …”
But its worse than that. Because cumulative warming can only come from the ocean. The air could never hold enough energy to last even a single weak solar cycle. And water vapour is proof of massive refrigeration of the water. Hence if the troposphere termperature is pretty much a function of the amount of water vapour in the troposphere there cannot be a positive feedback of water vapour that leads to cumulative warming.
See they look at the metric of atmospheric temperature and they miss out the metric of imbedded energy in the ocean. Only the latter metric can even possibly lead to cumulative warming, because the atmosphere cannot hold enough energy.
So how can you even POSSIBLY get cumulative warming from water vapour feedback? You cannot. The idea is dead-in-the-water.
But thats all nonsense Michael. It sounds all right but its not true. The IPCC don’t have any evidence whatsoever. As we have seen. Since it would be right there on your browser if they did and you could make that case.
As I’ve shown the CO2 CANNOT lead to long-term cumulative warming via water vapour feedback.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Now we know right of the bat that negative or positive the effect must be small. And Spencer thinks its small and negative and has come up with the evidence for it apparently. This poses a problem for policy. It means when this deal swings around the leftists will be demanding the destruction of humane civlisation on the basis that its cold.
I want to suggest that the jury might still be out on this if Spencer hasn’t had imbedded energy in the oceans front and centre. If he’s thinking about air temperature alone.
“Roy Spencer’s work by contrast supports Richard Lindzen’s theory of the infrared iris–that as it warms the hydrological cycle speeds up and more clear sky is produced, allowing more heat to escape…”
Heat to escape from the ATMOSPHERE. But clearer skys might lead to more heat energy being punched into the ocean. So we want to see if when the CO2 is cooling the atmosphere by one mechanism as a net negative, whether it might not be letting the ocean to warm. You see we are used to this watts-per-square-metre jive which robs our thinking of all sorts of overlapping influences working over different time periods.
But when you look at the historical record…. Sadly its inherently more consistent with a small NEGATIVE feedback.
There…….
I’ve said it.
“Hey, why isn’t Spencer and Braswell fitting the bill? Jen didn’t say it had to support the link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and global warming, just examine it. This paper examines and disproves the link. OK I’ll waive the $1K if that’s a problem..”
Good point. But note that we don’t want to slip into the deal where we invest the phrase “global warming” with all sorts of cosmic meaning. We want it to be a technical term. And the Spencer study seems to relate CO2 to COOLING. Global warming is about warming not cooling. As a matter or original intention Duffy would be being fair not to hand over the money if he didn’t feel like it.
Still if we looked back and found out who mentioned the Roy Spencer study Duffy might be willing to hand over the money purely to promote a more sensible view of the situation.
All this fuss drummed up internationally because someone practices the heresy of asking for evidence. If the prize-winning study suggestion is a study that says its a negative feedback that could get real publicity.
“I would need to be absolutely clear on the physical basis of the logarithmic paradigm..”
I’m sure that you’ll find its a good inference that unfortunately relates to a flat earth, noon all the time, black body, no overturning, conduction etc.
I can just see the little wheels the the AGW heads whirling; “less clouds means more sunlight how can this be negative” Although it is true there will be less reflection, during the day, so more sunlight energy reaches the surface. Clear skys do however mean that much more IR escapes both during the day and night so the net balance is a loss of heat. Graeme’s note about water vapour being proof of refrigeration could get lost on some people too, when water evaporates the liquid left behind cools down, when it condenses i.e. forms clouds it gives off heat this is a primary mode of transporting heat from the surface to the lower troposphere. As Craig says this cannot be analytically determined or even measured experimentally at the present time or for the forseeable future so here is another example of a critical component in the computer models which is just a wild guess, how anyone can assign credibility to GCMs with so many unknowns is totally beyond my comprehension.
You want evidence for the greenhouse effect (of which co2 plays a role)?
Why is the hottest part of the day (on land) around 2:00 or 3:00pm, instead of 12:00pm, when the solar intensity peaks?
Because of the soil temperature regime and the water vapour and co2 about the soil surface.
Now you think 280ppm to 380ppm co2 is going to make big a difference? I don’t think so.
However, it will have an effect, although I dont need a scientific journal to tell me the sky is blue.
I’m not relaxed in this august company but fairly certain that Spencer does attribute some of our weather, climate to the various oscillations, particularly the PDO, so there’s his ocean connection as well.
I add climate above because the last cool phase PDO ( 1945 to 1978 )lasted at least 30 years.
That cool phase tracked our very wet thirty year period in Australia when the Murray flooded many, many times.
No drought worries then I can assure you having lived on the Murray over the entire period.
Let me try that again; Spencer finds a +ve correlation of a -ve feedback.
“Why is the hottest part of the day (on land) around 2:00 or 3:00pm, instead of 12:00pm, when the solar intensity peaks?”
Its because the joules keep accumulating. Thats why the ice in the Arctic has its greatest melt in September and not in July. The joules keep accumulating.
This is what this watts-per-square metre jive has robbed us of. The understanding of joules accumulating.
Bird,
The heat also accumulates in the land on an annual regime, over the summer and autumn, and then heat is lost over winter and spring…
And then theres the ocean, which has currents!
Arrrrggg
Right. And we should surmise that the average temperature of the globe taken as a whole ought to hit its highest point, not WHEN the earth is closest to the sun. But some time after that.
None of these peaks hit all at the same time. This is not due to the god-of-gaps that industrial-CO2 has become. But just due to accumulating and decumulating joules.
This is where the outrageous furphy of CO2-magnification is introduced when it comes to Malinkovitch cycles. These guys say that the “forcing” is insufficient to cause the glacial-interglacial cycle. So who steps in the make the difference? Why its god-of-gaps CO2-amplification to the rescue.
All rubbish of course.
And not needed when accumulating and decumulating joules are brought back into the scene after being banished from their make-believe flat-earth radiation-only model.
Its just amazing how the curse of the lone paradigm can throw blinkers on people. Often on both sides of the argument.
And when you consider the role of the ocean, and how it can acummulate heat for thousands of years,
we start to understand how the warmists are wrong on so many levels. They say it cant be solar…but the sun’s output now may effect temperature in 10,000 years time….so how can they dismiss all these things. The world is non-linear, chaotic, not some static rock.
Corelations are positive for decade….then negative for a decade!
As Craig Loehle at August 30, 2008 02:37 AM points out >>”There are various ways to derive the basic effect of CO2, and they all lead to numbers close to 1.2 Deg C for CO2 doubling, as shown in IPCC and derived by Monckton among others (discussed ad nauseum at Climate Audit)”>I will pay $1,000.00 to the first person to provide a reference to the sort of paper Jennifer has described.
Posted by: Michael Duffy at August 11, 2008 09:06 AM
>>Anyway, he says there must be some work/some research results that have been published in reputable scientific journals that:
1. examine the causal link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and warming, and
2. quantify the extent of the warming from anthropogenic carbon dioxide.
What he really want is links to research papers or citations to research papers.
Posted by jennifer at August 10, 2008 10:14 PM>>
The IPCC defines climate sensitivity as equilibrium temperature change ΔTλ in response to all anthropogenic-era radiative forcings and consequent “temperature feedbacks”. This is the basis for meeting the criteria supported by the IPCC.
However as GraemeBird has repeatedly pointed out, this is in the most real of ways, a circular argument. Just how do you measure this ΔT, and how do you prove equilibrium? The principle of conservation of a quantity S states that accumulation of S is equal to the flow of S in the system minus S out of the system plus amount of S generated in the system minus the amount of S consumed in the system. But specific heat, latent heat, heat of evaporation are about energy not temperature. In fact, mass and energy balances are done in units of mass and energy, because temperature at equilibrium exists only with reference to a state of mass and energy that is in equilibrium. The atmosphere is not such a system. Not only does water changing state impact equilibrium, but air in a non-ideal state (typical state of the atmosphere) acts as a refrigerant under certain conditions. GB is also correct pointing out that W/m^2 as though it is in equilibrium as the standard, presuposes an equilibruim known not to exist in the real earth environment, especially the temperature relationship to outgoing energy at TOA (top of atmosphere).
One can see from this, that at some point, a decision was made that this ΔT was due to CO2 produced by man. How was this done? Reading the IPCC, it is stated that basically they could not find something else so it must be CO2. This is the collolary of trying to place your opponent into proving a negative, while maintaining a circular argument. I think this is one of the reasons GB is ranting about fake science. The proposer must provide the proof. This reasoning of the IPCC is proven a fallacy everyday in the work place. Just went through one today. They looked in their area, and could not find the problem, therefore it had to be in my area. Later, the lab data came back and showed that it was not in my area, but it was in their’s. I agree with GB, this argument is anti-science. Science is data, science is demonstrating a realtionship, not just a correlation. And most definetly science is not saying I couldn’t find anything else that explained it, so my circular argument must be true, and you are wrong.
Right. Look at the great ocean conveyer. Doesn’t it take about 5000 years to circulate? When it gets deep down in the ocean and under pressure it must be like some sort of giant mass of toothpaste the way it moves.
In fact we know that the accumulation and decumulation can be on the order of 1000 years for some things else we wouldn’t have an 800 year lag between temperature and CO2 as the strongest longer-term signature. And we wouldn’t have the Milankovitch cycles peaking at about 6000 years ago but the holocene optimum only ending about 5000 years ago.
Hardly evidence for the slavish devotion to a flat-earth black-body-model instantaneous-radiative-heat-balance model.
Here is another reason why after a period of the most powerful solar activity for at least 1000 and possibly 8000 years, that there ought not be a one solar cycle delay before the temperature finally peaks and turns down.
In fact I saw one Sami Solanki paper that I cannot now find that makes it that the correlation with air temperature and the PRIOR solar cycles activity is a little bit better than the corellation with the current cycles activity. Which makes perfect sense and ought not be construed as a CO2-god-of-gaps thing.
But despite all that chaos we ought to be able to sort out the more important from the less important and build up a body of knowledge that way.
J.Hansford: “Non smokers exposed to a lifetime of open cooking fires would have increased risks of cancer”
You used the expression “increased risks of”. Is that the same as causation?
Does a lifetime of exposure to open cooking fires “cause” cancer? From reading what you posted, I think I would be happy to answer yes.
Jen’s answer as to the level of “increased risk” that equates to “cause” is fundamental to this competition.
PS. That was fascinating info by the way, thanks for that!
I think it is easier to just assume that increased CO2 will lead to some amount of warming which is greater than Zero.
The real question is how much?
If it is only 1.2C per doubling as the basic physics (without feedbacks) indicates, then global warming will not be a problem at all. Within the next 1,000 years, we will reach 2 doublings and temps will have increased by 2.4C, nothing to worry about over 1,000 years.
The warming which has occured over the past 150 years, 50 years etc. also points to a low sensitivity number (1.0C to 1.5C).
The historical climate over the past 500 million years also points to a low sensitivity figure (1.0C to 1.5C).
The warmers cannot produce a real paper demonstrating the 3.5C sensitivity figure – it is ALL based on CLIMATE MODELS.
The EMPIRICAL data shows 1.0C, 1.2C or 1,5C per doubling is the correct CO2 impact.
“I think it is easier to just assume that increased CO2 will lead to some amount of warming which is greater than Zero….”
No we cannot simply ASSUME that. We have to DISCOVER that or the contrary actuality.
“….If it is only 1.2C per doubling as the basic physics (without feedbacks) indicates…..”
No we cannot assume that either. Despite how many climate rationalists sign onto something like this. This conclusion doesn’t come STRAIGHT from basic radiative physics as is commonly claimed on both sides. It comes with a whole set of bizzare and inapplicable simplifying assumptions…’
“… then global warming will not be a problem at all…….”
This we can assume but for other reasons.
“……. Within the next 1,000 years, we will reach 2 doublings…”
We can rule that out strongly. In fact Hansen has CO2 levels peaking at less than 600 ppm and falling. This on the false basis that CO2 levels would be low and stable but for the human race.
“….The warming which has occured over the past 150 years, 50 years etc. also points to a low sensitivity number (1.0C to 1.5C)…..”
A generalised sensitivity is not even a valid concept. We want to know about the influence of specific factors. We cannot assume that EXTRA CO2 warms or cools in the first instance. We can only assume that the influence is small either way.
“The warmers cannot produce a real paper demonstrating the 3.5C sensitivity figure – it is ALL based on CLIMATE MODELS.”
Right. In other words on computations applied to stupid assumptions.
“….The EMPIRICAL data shows 1.0C, 1.2C or 1,5C per doubling is the correct CO2 impact….”
No it doesn’t.
I’m not saying you are being illogical. You are precisely where I was at with this not long after beginning to investigate the matter. Thats approximately the Patrick Michaels thesis.
“This is what this watts-per-square metre jive has robbed us of. The understanding of joules accumulating.”
Well, yes and no, I’d say. Exposed to a continuous beam of 530 watts per square meter, an object will reach a maximum temperature of 100 F and no more — it can’t get hotter. Certainly a massive object takes time to warm up, so accumulation is a relevant factor. But radiant energy and temperature obey set limits. Trace-gas heating theory was invented because the earth’s near-surface temperature does appear to exceed this limit, which is an ongoing problem. The theory is full of holes and ought to be dismissed, but the temperature mystery still remains.
Since the air pressure vs temperature profiles of other planets are similar to ours, I think Heinz Thieme could be on the right track.
http://www.geocities.com/atmosco2/atmos.htm
Does anyone have a good understanding of hydraulics where in part of the system you have a large body of water moving slowly and in another part of the system you have a small body of water moving fast?
You have resistance to circulation and you have factors pushing the circulation. You have pulsing of circulation.
In our real-world example of the great ocean conveyer you have the further complication of the large slow-moving part of the system being under intense pressure. And the smaller-faster-moving part of the system not being under much pressure.
A Priori the average global temperature of the upper oceans and the air can go on increasing after the solar activity has dropped and is falling if the surface-flow of the conveyer (particularly the Gulf Stream) maintains a strong, if pulsing momentum. This via Stefan-Boltzmanns law.
So part of the potential for further warming can be tied up some way in the momentum of the great ocean conveyer.
In which case you would expect continuing warming in the Far North even after the global peak in temperature has been reached. And I think we had that to some extent.
But it would be good to get a conceptual understanding of such hydraulic systems in the general sense.
“Well, yes and no, I’d say. Exposed to a continuous beam of 530 watts per square meter, an object will reach a maximum temperature of 100 F and no more — it can’t get hotter.”
I’ll certainly believe that. But you are thinking a flat object twice as far away from the sun getting a continuous beam, and its always noontime everyewhere. The mystery is solved when we realise thats not what we have. So we have the potential for heat buidup and retention in various strata.
Also we can surely learn things by looking at other planets. But our planet, with its liquid water, is quite unique.
Well apart from Europa. But its liquid water is not on the surface and I don’t think you have that liquid-water/atmosphere interaction.
“Hi Jennifer. Asking for the casual connection is pivotal in science. It has to be there before anyone does a thing to change the climate one way or another.”
To carry on the smoking analogy, do you know how smoking causes cancer? Apart from that, we know that CO2 is a GHG, all the more reputable anti-AGW scientists acknowledge that, due to it’s physical properties.
“Also we can surely learn things by looking at other planets. But our planet, with its liquid water, is quite unique.” Bird
A book called “Rare Earth” by two non-theists argues that earth maybe the ONLY planet in the universe capable of supporting intelligent life.
How long has SETI been searching without success? The silence is deafening. I hope we do checkout every body of water in the solar system. The results should be very interesting since current evolutionary theory claims that life is almost bound to arise in the presence of liquid water.
“Son, quit poking the atheists.”
“Sorry, Mom, I couldn’t resist.”
“Apart from that, we know that CO2 is a GHG,…..”
Wordgame. Trying to conjure the Sasaquatch. Invalid. Already dealt with. You are irrantional.
“… all the more reputable anti-AGW scientists acknowledge that, due to it’s physical properties….”
Invalid. Appeal to authority. We know what happens in the lab. The question was whether this translates to the climate system globally with more than negligible effect. The hypothesis needed evidence for it. That evidence wasn’t forthcoming.
So you are using the hypothesis as justification for itself. Circular reasoning.
Attempt not to be irrational.
How about tommorrow SJT? Are you going to pull the same irrationality tomorrow.
You are essentially saying that the hypothesis proves itself without empirical evidence. You are just irrational.
“A book called “Rare Earth” by two non-theists argues that earth maybe the ONLY planet in the universe capable of supporting intelligent life.”
Well I wouldn’t buy that. But one beloved Professor, much-cited and the receiver of volumnous research-grants, uses the CO2-god-of-gaps cognitive tool to solve just this mystery. The beloved Professor Barry Brook put forward the concept of CARBOCIDE. After already noting another hypothesis to do with an intelligent species developing nuclear warfare. And nuclear warfare being another threshold of sorts. This latter theory has legs so Australians ought to be planning with nuclear intimidation as the central fact in our plans.
Other theories explaining this seeming lack of intelligent life would be the exploding planet hypothesis. And we have with the idea of planets suitable for life also being capable of blowing up the idea that our technology is not separate and distinct from our capital accumulation. That technological development is imbedded in capital update. And capital update in the extent of the market.
We start going backwards with these things we can lose it all. And even return to being basically animals.
Each star is held to go through whats known as “the main sequence”. This is where our sun, for example (under current theories) is held to increase its output every billion years by about 4%.
If a combination of these paradigms were true it might leave any one planet only really suitable for macroscopic life for a few hundred million years. So that if capitalism failed under those circumstances there would be even further to fall than there is now.
Alan Siddons; the Thieme paper is very interesting; there are a host of papers about Venus’s atmosphere and the greenhouse effect, but very few on atmospheric weight/gravity as a cause of temperature; the corollary is that Mar’s atmosphere, although as CO2 rich as Venus’s, is vastly lighter; here is a paper which compares the 3;
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ea.15.050187.001131
As an adjunct to Venus’s temperature being approx 750K; at that temperature surface CO2 would exist as a supercritical liquid. An interesting comparison would be between the Heinz Thieme paper and Smith’s paper endorsing the greenhouse as the cause of the temperature conditions on Earth;
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0802/0802.4324v1.pdf
John Pittman; a post which reveals the contradiction at the heart of AGW; for AGW, climate sensitivity is paramount because the forcings for increased CO2 are based on it; underpining this is the notion of a radiative equilibrium which CO2 caused opaqueness disrupts; this in turn creates a deviation in the heat balance as measured by global average temperature; none of these indices have any meaning outside a computer model; and even if they did they can be disproved by application of Kirchhoff and Stewart’s Laws. In the real world a recent paper by Pielke shows that neither the radiative equilibrium or the average temperature paradigms have any meaning; Pielke uses the simple elegance of Stefan-Boltzman to show that the effect on temperature of radiation leaving a surface, be it the Earth’s surface, a parcel of air or TOA, will depend on the temperature of the emitting surface; thus radiation leaving the poles will have less consequence than radiation leaving the equator; a TOA radiation balance model will have no meaning because it does not regionalise the incoming/outgoing flux; this is why uniform mixing of CO2 is so important to AGW; if the opaqueness is universal Pielke’s thesis will not be applicable; but as AIRS shows CO2 is not uniformly mixed so an opaqueness caused by an increase in CO2 does not necessarily have the climate sensitivity ramifications on temperature that the AGW model relies on. Pielke’s paper is here;
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/publications/pdf/R-321.pdf
“The beloved Professor Barry Brook put forward the concept of CARBOCIDE.” Bird
The eggs have been scrambled.
The crow has been stewed.
The guests are arriving
to get their just due.
One day, many will try to recant.
But will they give back
those government grants?
Bring on the cold! Chances are we can survive that easier than the leftists.
Posted by: SJT at August 30, 2008 12:19 PM
says >>To carry on the smoking analogy, do you know how smoking causes cancer? Apart from that, we know that CO2 is a GHG, all the more reputable anti-AGW scientists acknowledge that, due to it’s physical properties.<<
But as expressed correctly “Smokers exposed to a lifetime of smoke have increased risks of cancer.” This is the scientific conclusion. The mechanism can be radioactive, it can be alpha or beta toxins, it can be from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and other known chemicals with known properties. Data, tests, stats, real science and a real conclusion. Compare with climate science that claims that antropogenic CO2 causes the warming seen in the last 50 years (SPM IPCC). Not that it increases the risk, but that it causes. This statement requires more proof than the correct assessment of smoke increasing the risk of cancer. Where is it? It is in a scientific false statement that nothing else could be found, therefore it is CO2. If the statement was CO2 increases the risk of warming, it could not be contested. But it is claimed it does and has been measured, and that it is 90% likely. Where is the proof, where is the data, how and where are the confidence intervals of 90% determined. Oh yes, 90% was by a show of hands, sorry that I forgot. Other sciences have to provide this, I know I do, but not climate science.
“a TOA radiation balance model will have no meaning because it does not regionalise the incoming/outgoing flux” – WTF – which is why there are models with 3D grids?
Cohers – stop buggering around and make with the guest post.
If you guys think you’ve done anything take a stocktake. There are massive climate programs rolling out for years. You’re ants. You’re wanking in a dark room in the basement of a skyscraper.
Alans link shows very clearly that a surface warmer than what the average watts-per-square-metre would predict is INHERENT IN GAS PRESSURE AND GRAVITY.
This means that the greenhouse component is wildly exaggerated, and that even the lower bounds usually given of 12 degrees are likely to be an absurd overestimate.
We have to get serious about this. Clearly everywhere we see this difference where pressure and gravity are concerned.
Alarmists often say that the greenhouse component is about 30 degrees. Hence they expect the effect of CHANGES to this component to be quite high. But even climate rationalists take this sort of gear on faith. And so even they will say the greenhouse effect is 13 degrees or something.
Well what if its 4 degrees?
What if its 2 degrees?
Then changes to it become of minimalist importance.
I say we take nothing on faith at all.
After going through a great deal of hypotheticals with simplified models (not just one like the alarmists but many of them) the authors of Alans link say the following:
“The cause for the higher temperature at the base of an atmosphere it is that the removal of energy from the atmosphere toward space occurs essentially via radiation from the upper layers of the gas atmosphere, where the transition from the gas state into a vacuum-like state takes place, on the basis of temperature.
At lower altitudes, the laws of THERMODYNAMICS apply for the gas atmosphere, which means that with increasing gas compression its temperature rises. The increasing pressure with decreasing distance to the planet’s surface is caused by gravity.
Thus gravity essentially determines the temperature conditions within an atmosphere.
Atmospheric temperatures can be calculated using thermodynamic laws (general gas equation, adiabatic change in state) and considering in particular the changes in the humidity content and their physical states.
The considerations here show that without absorption of radiation within the water-free atmosphere similar conditions of average temperature occur as in the terrestrial atmosphere. Therefore the contribution of radiation absorption can only be of subordinate importance to the average temperature in the atmosphere.”
Alright. So its THERMODYNAMICS thats of greater importance than just RADIATIVE-PHYSICS-alone, when considering CHANGE.
Radiative physics may have a part to play (when considering CHANGE). But thermodynamics is the more important factor AND the factor we ought place our analytical framework around.
Here’s Alans link again:
http://www.geocities.com/atmosco2/atmos.htm
“But as expressed correctly “Smokers exposed to a lifetime of smoke have increased risks of cancer.” This is the scientific conclusion. The mechanism can be radioactive, it can be alpha or beta toxins, it can be from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and other known chemicals with known properties.”
You told me what causes it, not how. I WANT PROOF!
“the real world a recent paper by Pielke shows that neither the radiative equilibrium or the average temperature paradigms have any meaning; Pielke uses the simple elegance of Stefan-Boltzman to show that the effect on temperature of radiation leaving a surface, be it the Earth’s surface, a parcel of air or TOA, will depend on the temperature of the emitting surface; thus radiation leaving the poles will have less consequence than radiation leaving the equator; a TOA radiation balance model will have no meaning because it does not regionalise the incoming/outgoing flux;”
This is the sort of gear I’d been arguing on his and my blog a couple of years before. I’d been saying that the economists had sussed out marginalist thinking in the 1870’s. But the climate scientists hadn’t sorted it out at all. And had aggregated everything. So that by taking a marginalist point of view you came to radically different conclusions.
I hope I inspired the old man to greater things.
If you go back on my blog the sheer ignorance I would display while I was nutting this sort of thing out will be a cringe factor. But this marginalist thinking I brought to it very early on. And Stefan-Boltzmanns law.
This is why I had argued early on that one of the most important things in the paleo-climate was the resistance to circulation of the oceans. Most visibly approximated by viewing the layout of continents.
“if the opaqueness is universal Pielke’s thesis will not be applicable; but as AIRS shows CO2 is not uniformly mixed so an opaqueness caused by an increase in CO2 does not necessarily have the climate sensitivity ramifications on temperature that the AGW model relies on.”
That doesn’t follow cohenite. Thinking marginally has all sorts of ramications regardless of whether the CO2 is uniform or not. The aggregated models have sucked all the reality out. Thinking through the implications after starting to think hyper-regionally about things has all sorts of implications. You have to get it into the blood.
Luke, I hate to insult you, but you do a worse job than GB. At least when GB posts (not rants) he stays focused on the subject.
Lets talk about Model E. You say >>a TOA radiation balance model will have no meaning because it does not regionalise the incoming/outgoing flux” – WTF – which is why there are models with 3D grids?<< Well if you google. I do believe that you have made a point of belittling those who can’t google, you will find that Gavin S of RC has stated in an explaination of problems with these 3-D models that they set the parameters to exclude a negative mass in that 3-D grid cell model you refer to. They increase the viscosity of air to hyperviscosity to prevent this negative mass. First as someone who designs heat and mass transfer units, such a constraint invalidates the model and literally reduces it to a watch that is correct twice a day (once a day if a military watch). As you say WTF?? This is a model they claim has the physics right, yet has an inclusive self-contradicting human (not physics) set unreal condition?? Perhaps you should google the citations listed in “Koutsoyiannis et al 2008: On the credibility of climate predictions”. And documented at ClimateAudit for the Pat Frank article. I suggest you start with Tebaldi & Knutti 2006 and 2007.
mitchel porter said…”re Rahmstorf…”the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration is rising”, “the recent rise in CO2 is entirely anthropogenic”, “carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas; doubling its concentration will warm global climate in equilibrium by 3°C ± 1.5°C”.
In a recent attack on Richard Lindzen, Rahmstorf showed an inability to understand the basic problems of global warming. He likes to talk in absolutes with emotion thrown in for good effect. He’s an oceanographer primarily, yet he saw fit to criticize Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist with 40 years experience, who teaches at MIT.
Consider what you have said above. Levels of CO2 have increased significantly since the end of WWII, yet temperatures have declined, risen and leveled off. They rose minimally from 1970 to about 1995, then they leveled off. If what you say above is true, I would expect a linear decadal rise of temperature for such a significant rise in CO2. I would expect a smooth rise in temperature with no 10+ year leveling off period.
I know what’s coming next. You will claim there is no one to one relationship between CO2 and temperature. RC already pulled that one off when they claimed cooling in Antarctica had been foreseen in AGW theory. You talk about skeptics being unable to see Rahmstorf’s logic, how about your own?
luke; can’t I have one of Alan’s lights in my basement?
Posted by: SJT at August 30, 2008 01:37 PM You told me what causes it, not how. I WANT PROOF!
The cause is disruption of the DNA RNA communication/creation sequence. The proof has been in the proof of mutagen chemically induced cancer including polyploidism. This is the mechanism, and there are others such as T-T dimer suppression by radioactive materials. The basics are the interference with the normal DNA-RNA chemical reactions. Cancers tend to be specific to what DNA-RNA-protein sequence they effct. An example of this is the protein test for prostate cancer that has been shown to be helpful in identifying prostate cancer early. Because, cancer is most often specific, there are many false positives and false negatives, yet this test is a powerful tool for helping reduce prostate cancer deaths. It also outlines one of the real problems: thousands of men, cancers, and studies have shown the efficacy of these tests. However, we have only had one climate run. If you you use geologic history it is good news/bad news. There have been many warm/cold cycles. Our abitlity to actually measure most of them was nil. Proxies and induction can only do so much. As in, it should be phrased, as I phrased the smoke, “Smokers exposed to a lifetime of smoke have increased risks of cancer” Example, there is increased proof of cold relationships when it was cold and there is increased proof of warm relationships when it is warm versus the null hypothesis.
“Luke, I hate to insult you, but you do a worse job than GB. At least when GB posts (not rants) he stays focused on the subject.”
Why are people so unkind? There is no comparison between me and Luke. Shame on you.
Here is some notes I made a long time ago when trying to nut out the implications of thinking marginally or hyper-regionally about matters. Now the point is not whether I got Stefan-Boltzmanns law completely right. Its the inductive principle of the thing.
We show how aggregated models are highly misleading. We come to the conclusion that ocean circulation is not just important for regional warmth. But it is important for planetary warmth. This is proved by reference to Stefan-Boltzmanns and more than amply backed up by the Paleo record.
“MORE OF THE EXCESS HEAT RADIATED WHEN THE AVERAGING ASSUMPTIONS ARE DISAGGREGATED
Lets look at the myriad ways in which taking a marginal approach seems to suggest that the extra joules from the industrial CO2 will tend to, in the long run, only heat things by a fairly small amount.
Imagine if you have two areas of 100 square kilometers each.
And your boss at first tells you that these two areas have a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius.
Lets say he tells you at first that both these areas radiate 100 units of energy per hour out into space in the first hour directly after sunset.
So the total amount of energy they will radiate out is 200 units.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But supposing you’ve figured out precisely what this 200 units would be in Joules.
Then the boss comes along and says…. “No no. We need to do it again. See what we did the first time is average the temperature over both areas. We have to disaggregate this and try again….
….Since in reality the first area is in DEATH VALLEY and is 60 degrees celsius… And the second area is in this valley in the Antarctic Peninsula, and it is minus twenty degrees Celsius…….
Now you might not know right off the bat what the answer is. But will it be more then 200 units that get radiated out into space?
Would that be your best guess?
More or less then 200 units?
Given that it works to the fourth power of Kelvin I suggest that it surely would be more then 200 units this time.
Lets see:
If 20C degrees leads to 100 units in area A then the lesser radiation should be something like……
((253/293) to the fourth power)) multiplied by 100 units.
which works out at less then 56 units.
But what about the other area? That was the Antarctic. How about Death Valley?
Death Valley ought to give off something like:
((333/293) to the fourth power)) times 100 units.
This comes to 167 units
167+56 units equals 223 units……”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Eli once claimed that since the earth wasn’t a black body its more appropriate to use the third power. I don’t know the reasoning behind that. But still it doesn’t change the principle of the thing. The greater the heat difference the more is radiated.
Hence moving joules from warmer to colder areas via the ocean current doesn’t just move the joules around. It allows for greater warming of the planet itself.
Exactly Graeme; Motl has done the same thing;
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/05/average-temperature-vs-average.html
I have variously thought that the energy difference between the average temperature and average SB was the energy available for weather, a measure of global tolerance of radiative ‘imbalance’ or the atmospheric/gravitational component of temperature; maybe it’s none of those; maybe it’s how much money the UN is going to make from AGW.
Robert E. Prudhomme said…”Smoking being a cause of lung cancer was established by autopsy…”.
Robert…with all due respect, I am not a smoker, and I do not wish to defend smoking in any way. However, we have no idea what causes cancer of any kind. All we know is that it involves abnormal cell growth.
It makes a huge amount of sense to conclude there are carcinogens in cigarettes because people who smoke tend to get cancers where the cigarette products travel through their systems. They get mouth cancer, throat cancer, lung cancer, esophigeal cancer, stomach cancer, liver cancer, etc., in much higher amounts than people who don’t smoke. In fact, people who smoke and drink heavily have an even greater chance of developing those cancers. From that perspective, it is apparent that tobacco products cause cancer, however, there is no direct causal link.
There’s an interesting aside to this. Vitamin C is possibly the most important nutrient required by the human body. It is involved in making the intracellular cement that holds us together. It’s also an important ingredient in muscles and arteries. Each cigarette a person smokes uses up Vitamin C, and in the average diet, there isn’t a lot of it to spare. It was concluded by Linus Pauling, an expert in chemistry, that most people were Vitamin C deficient. Smokers compound that deficiency to the point where they may be into a state known as sub-clinical scurvey.
That condition in itself could explain the high incidence of cancer in smokers but obviously it doesn’t fully explain the incidence of localized cancers. However, Durk Pearson, a nutritionist with a double degree from MIT, suggested that smokers should be complimenting their diets with mega-doses of Vitamin C and other nutrients.
Scientists should be very careful about jumping to conclusions based on what seems obvious.
Once again I completely agree with Graeme. I read a paper by Dr.Vincent Grey recently where he pointed out that if you apply Stefan’s 4th power rule to the global average you get one total for radiated energy but if you divided the world into 4 equal areas and took each average temperature then applied Stefan’s law you get a different total. This one size fits all global average type of calculation has no foundation if everything was linear it would be valid but nothing is linear.
Note on Graeme’s earlier reference to thermodynamics and its importance. I live in Calgary Alberta Canada about 120 km from the rockies. During the winter the westerlies come over the mountains then decend, as the air gets compressed it heats up and this is called a Chinook, temperatures in Calgary can go up 20 deg C in a matter of hours so do not underestimate the power of thermodynamics.
Yes it is all about total heat content, how it is stored, how it is transferred etc. The IPCC obcess about radiant heat flux but this is only a part of the total equation.
“Exactly Graeme; Motl has done the same thing;” Yeah but not before me he didn’t.
Hey I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. Can you ascribe ANY warming to the greenhouse effect after gas laws and everything else is pulled up? Because it hardly seems productive attempting to track down any damned CO2-effect if the greenhouse effect is not there as a meaningful effect in a dynamic system.
I mean for my part, until I understand more about it I’ve just got to assume its there but that its smaller than the former low-end estimates.
When Art Robinson and his team went to review the science they couldn’t agree on what it should be. If its not there or barely there that should surprise no-one. So they settled on 13 degrees following, I think, Lindzen. But that they couldn’t even sort if out and had to go at a guess that doesn’t speak real well for the science of it.
Karoly, over at ABC Unleashed had it at about 30 degrees. I just got angry at him making such an extraordinary claim.
Like from your point of view could it be 2 degrees? Rather than 30 or 12? Or are you and Alan and others saying that its just not there?
The other thing is this. I had figured that in the paleo climate that if CO2 had been really high that this could help warm via air pressure. But at what point might extra CO2 make any substantial effect to air pressure?
Its such a trace gas now you would think it would have to be up in whole integer percentages to make any difference.
“Exactly Graeme; Motl has done the same thing;” Yeah but not before me he didn’t.
Hey I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. Can you ascribe ANY warming to the greenhouse effect after gas laws and everything else is pulled up? Because it hardly seems productive attempting to track down any damned CO2-effect if the greenhouse effect is not there as a meaningful effect in a dynamic system.
I mean for my part, until I understand more about it I’ve just got to assume its there but that its smaller than the former low-end estimates.
When Art Robinson and his team went to review the science they couldn’t agree on what it should be. If its not there or barely there that should surprise no-one. So they settled on 13 degrees following, I think, Lindzen. But that they couldn’t even sort if out and had to go at a guess that doesn’t speak real well for the science of it.
Karoly, over at ABC Unleashed had it at about 30 degrees. I just got angry at him making such an extraordinary claim.
Like from your point of view could it be 2 degrees? Rather than 30 or 12? Or are you and Alan and others saying that its just not there?
The other thing is this. I had figured that in the paleo climate that if CO2 had been really high that this could help warm via air pressure. But at what point might extra CO2 make any substantial effect to air pressure?
Its such a trace gas now you would think it would have to be up in whole integer percentages to make any difference.
barry moore said …”The IPCC obcess about radiant heat flux but this is only a part of the total equation”.
This paper by Lindzen exposes the simplicity of the IPCC model:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~wsoon/ArmstrongGreenSoon08-Anatomy-d/Lindzen07-EnE-warm-lindz07.pdf
According to Lindzen, vertical radiant heat near the Tropics is blocked by opacity, and it is transferred from the Tropics north and south till it can find an elevation at which it can radiate. This transport involves clouds.
He later cites a paper that claims surface warming can be accounted for by the Atlantic and Pacific Oscillations. The IPCC is assuming CO2 warming because it claims it is the only obvious warming, Maybe they should have asked a real climate scientists like Lindzen.
John – you have to try hard to insult me as dealing with the inmates here has somewhat cauterised my sensibilities; but I thank you for your consideration nonetheless.
I’m not saying that there are no model issues – simply that solutions are attempted explicitly on a spatial basis not a global average equation.
“Karoly, over at ABC Unleashed had it at about 30 degrees. I just got angry at him making such an extraordinary claim.”
It’s not extraordinary, it’s the generally accepted value.
No it isn’t. And the general acceptance is backed by nothing. Only another god-of-gaps presumption.
30 degrees is not merely god-of-gaps presumption I would want to stress. Its disengenuous idiocy and a sort of terminal ignorance going on there with such a high estimate. Its basically saying that nothing else matters. No air-pressure. No gravity. No overturning. Nothing.
This level of public stupidity is something only mass-sackings can cure. But general estimates seem to be more in the range of 12-18 when we exclude the obvious frauds. Probably from where I sit the lower bound is way high. But I don’t understand all the other processes well enough to make my own estimate. Or to know whether cohenite and Alans implication that its not a real important influence is on the money.
I’m not prepared to trust and parrot in the way you are.
On Koutsoyiannis et al – yet sceptics typically don’t believe surface station records, microsite effects are many – so a fingerprint analysis over a wider area would be more appropriate.
luke; a couple of things; AGW is predicated on a global average temperature basis; Essex McKitrick and Andressen argued against this;
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/globaltemp/GlobTemp.JNET.pdf
And were castigated by eli;
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/03/once-more-dear-prof.html
With that in mind your comment about microsite effects is rather disingenuous given the efforts of McIntyre and Watts and others in relating the manipulation and adjustments made by NASAGISS and the other land-based temp agencies to site data; apart from base-period failings, GISS appear to apply knees to step functions, which as they increase, create an upward trend. An alternative method was proposed by Runnalls and Oke;
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2FJCLI3663.1
Eli’s solution is the local thermodynamic equilibrium which is really quintessential regionalism;
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-is-local-thermodynamic-equilibrium.html
Graeme; the CO2 heating mechanism seems to have an ineluctable problem; a CO2 molecule absorbs and thus gains energy; it loses energy by reemission and kinetic transfer; how does that not produce cooling to the molecule; alternatively, as the CO2 molecule reemits it gains energy by collisions with thermally excited N2 and 02 thus cooling them.
Here is a very good article coming from the point of view of the greenhouse effect ITSELF being nonsense. It must be noted that climate rationalism doesn’t rely on alternative paradigms and is fully justified by the empirical evidence alone.
The thinking is that the greenhouse effect relies on backradiation. And that there is no such thing as backradiation.
So like you shine you torch into the sky. None of that light comes back. Except to the extent that it can be REFLECTED. So no backradiation. Only reflection. Backradiation is a myth. Right there thats a thesis that is very hard to escape isn’t it? I mean if there is back-radiation than what is reflection. And if its reflection how do you differentiate it from back-radiation?
Its like contemplating the Jackson family in the old days. Janet is Michael. Michael is Janet. Who is Diana?………..
If we cannot differentiate backradiation from reflection than we cannot have backradiation.
Being as infrared radiation is still light, but only light that we cannot see, it follows that it ought to act the same as with your torch. And it does in fact act the same. What light goes out doesn’t come back except as reflection. So if we have a powerful infrared light. And to make it easier to think about we have it that this infrared is just under the spectrum that we can see….. well it goes out just like our laser torch that we use to bring down commercial airliners and it simply doesn’t come back except by reflection on the clouds.
Although I would point out, that if there is overturning and the greenhouse gas absorbs some of the “light” then we can get some of the energy back as warmth in that way. Although under this thinking we wouldn’t get all that much back in this way. Since after all the air would warm and tend to rise. Then these greenhouse gasses would only expect to warm things a bit well above sea level. This would diminish the importance of greenhouse in our minds once we had been well and truly quits with any notion of back-radiation.
I cannot quite get my mind to shift completely to be able to deal with this paradigm but I’m trying to explain it the best way I can.
Here is the link:
http://freenet-homepage.de/klima/indexe.htm
I certainly would be happy to know if I’m explaining this paradigm correctly.
I know this is only what you have been telling us all along cohenite and Alan. But is the way I’m explaining it pretty much right?
“Graeme; the CO2 heating mechanism seems to have an ineluctable problem; a CO2 molecule absorbs and thus gains energy; it loses energy by reemission and kinetic transfer; how does that not produce cooling to the molecule; alternatively, as the CO2 molecule reemits it gains energy by collisions with thermally excited N2 and 02 thus cooling them.”
Right. I had often explained things this way but thought it might be just me. I figured that once the energy had made it above my house it was as good as gone so far as I was concerned. Or at least most of it.
“AGW is predicated on a global average temperature basis” well yuh shucks – broadly but not necessarily in all regional detail. Depends how all the interactions play out. Which is why you need a model.
“With that in mind your comment about microsite effects” – nope – just reminding YOU actually ! You are the guys banging on about the surface record! I reckon CRU, UAH and RSS all tell the same general story. Woodfortrees an all that…
BTW did you see this last Wednesday http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/crucial-to-keep-open-mind-in-a-climate-of-change/1255345.aspx#
Something for everyone there. Basically and solar downturn has to feedback into the greenhouse effect anyway. A drives B.
Graeme; have a look at eli’s ‘rebuttal’ of the Essex paper;
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/03/once-more-dear-prof.html
eli replaces the nominated r value of 1 with 3 to obtain a much wider anomaly pattern and therefore larger trend; on p21 of the Essex paper they have nominated r=1 because this produces a peak decadal warming trend of 0.06C, which tallies with reality; ie not the IPCC model projections; eli justifies his different conclusion by the use of grid weightings based on distance to the grid point; eli says “if you calculate anomalies you can directly compare trends at places that are at different latitudes.” Essex says this is wrong and that their r and s values give mostly -ve trends. In my opinion, as Essex state, you cannot avoid the dominance of the LTE by “substituting statistics for physics”.
“And that there is no such thing as backradiation” – well a duh ! How come a thing called a pyrgeometer can measure it then in clear skys ?
Well you tell me how you differentiate between backradiation and reflection. Look you might be right. I’m just trying to interpret this alternative paradigm and might be making a hash of it.
“I know this is only what you have been telling us all along cohenite and Alan. But is the way I’m explaining it pretty much right?”
You understand what they are saying, but they have got it wrong.
Pat Michaels says that CO2 is a GHG, and that the GHG effect is real. So does Paul here. They just disagree on the magnitude of the effect.
There is indeed backradiation and it is measured but because the only IR emitter in the atmosphere are the GH gases, one is logically compelled to assume that these might be the source of this IR back radiation.
There is a problem, according to Kinninmonth, in that there seems to be 3 times more back radiation than what is being emitted from the earth (I am not sure of the precise numbers but it’s in that order).
This suggests that the GH gases are only part of the explanation but climate scientists seem to be at a loss to work out what else could be a source of IR.
Those who deploy the principles of the electric universe theory and plasma physics are not at any loss to supply this IR source.
But just as a horse can be taken to water, if it doesn’t want to drink, so be it.
The big puzzle is why mainstream science is to set against using electrical forces as part of the arsenal of natural forces to explain physical reality.
Yes I know what Pat Michaels says. He clearly overestimates the CO2-effect. The data isn’t backing him up. More is the pity.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But I’m trying to get a handle on this back-radiation deal. You see alternative paradigms do tend to be like the ruling paradigm in that they speak to some truth and yet they can push their idea too far. The ruling paradigm is just blinkered and stupid. So I want to see if this alternative is right, partly right, or basically right but pushing a good idea too far.
Graeme: not such a big hash of it that Luke would have you think even Keihl and Trenberth 1997 show a net upward heat flux (all modes) of 235W going to space. The back radiation while real does not warm the surface the upward radiation, conduction/convection (one way), latent heat warms the atmosphere and cools the surface.
Jan,
and we should point out that there is a direction to the thermal flow – outwards – earth to space. But don’t show them the profile of the earth’s temperature – it actually rises above the ionosphere. 🙂
AGW theory posists that by standing in front of a fire and being warmed by it, we then radiate IR to then warm the fire.
I don’t think this idea has been thoroughly thought through.
Birdy – “clear sky back radiation” – what reflection – no clouds when sky is clear ?
Interesting of course is latest from Nature – asserts CO2 responsible for Greenland glaciation. hmmmm….
Nature 454, 1102-1105 (28 August 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature07223; Received 14 November 2007; Accepted 27 June 2008
Late Pliocene Greenland glaciation controlled by a decline in atmospheric CO2 levels
Daniel J. Lunt1,2, Gavin L. Foster3, Alan M. Haywood4 & Emma J. Stone1
It is thought1, 2 that the Northern Hemisphere experienced only ephemeral glaciations from the Late Eocene to the Early Pliocene epochs (about 38 to 4 million years ago), and that the onset of extensive glaciations did not occur until about 3 million years ago3, 4. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this increase in Northern Hemisphere glaciation during the Late Pliocene5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Here we use a fully coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model and an ice-sheet model to assess the impact of the proposed driving mechanisms for glaciation and the influence of orbital variations on the development of the Greenland ice sheet in particular. We find that Greenland glaciation is mainly controlled by a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide during the Late Pliocene. By contrast, our model results suggest that climatic shifts associated with the tectonically driven closure of the Panama seaway5, 6, with the termination of a permanent El Niño state7, 8, 9 or with tectonic uplift10 are not large enough to contribute significantly to the growth of the Greenland ice sheet; moreover, we find that none of these processes acted as a priming mechanism for glacial inception triggered by variations in the Earth’s orbit.
So hang on Jan – you can measure the back radiation but it doesn’t warm the Earth’s surface. Howzat?
Luke
Because the back emitted radiation is at a lower temperature by definition.
“Those who deploy the principles of the electric universe theory and plasma physics are not at any loss to supply this IR source.”
Right. These ideas seem to make sense and have not been falsified. But I’ll press on with stuff closer to home. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It ought not matter what I believe. People get too hung up on that. I’m trying to think this thing through. But actually I believe that there is a greenhouse effect but that its exaggerated and it will likely be less than this 12 degree lower limit that people sometimes use. But my current position ought not matter. I’ll tell you what I know for sure. That the effect is way way lower than 30 degrees. No-one has an excuse to sell that to the children.
Supposing you have this pyrgeometer. Is it measuring back-radiation? Surely its measuring ALL downward radiation. As well as reflections from isolated droplets, aerosols and so forth, the reflection not made null-and-void by it being a clear night.
Does not the air have warmth in its OWN right. Does it not have insulative properties? A specific heat capacity? For this to be back-radiation as such are we not talking about something that comes straight off the ground is absorbed and bounces back in the blink of an eye?
But surely the pyrgeometer on a clear night measures the air cooling down in its own right, back-reflection due to water droplets (perhaps microscopic) aerosols, and every other damn thing and the back-radiation has to be sorted out from amongst all of this gear. Something that the pyrgeometer cannot do, it being only able to measure all downward radiation.
Now just clear up where I’m getting this wrong. Because it will help others who have even less understanding than me.
Thats a thought isn’t it. Water might be in liquid form in the air but still be microscopic. And surely this must be the case since how else could these droplet things get started.
So the clear night business doesn’t really do it. This backradiation could be a small part of the picture to the totality of whats going on here.
What do people know about microscopic liquid water? That would seem to be of vital importance if there was such a thing.
I’m going to google it right now.
Graeme
It’s a lot more complex of course and Hans Jelbring has reviewed a peer reviewed paper by Tinsley on atmospheric electricity in the latest AIG News – Tinsley’s schematic of the inputs into the system are somewhat mind boggling in terms of complexity.
But if you think of the earth’s interface with space (which is essentially a diffuse electric plasma) in terms of Langmuire Sheafs or Double Layers, then the source of IR becomes readily explicable.
It’s a pity that scientists, while making use of the power of electricity in their thinking at the neuron level, are quite blinded by its application at the macro level.
“It is thought1, 2 that the Northern Hemisphere experienced only ephemeral glaciations from the Late Eocene to the Early Pliocene epochs (about 38 to 4 million years ago), and that the onset of extensive glaciations did not occur until about 3 million years ago3, 4. ”
Their glacial history is correct. But their diagnosis is idiocy. We know what happened. North and South American began to cut off one ocean from another and eventually fused entirely. Thus increasing the resistance to oceanic circulation and therefore cooling the earth directly via Stefan-Boltzmanns law. That ones a no-brainer.
Graeme,
Air in itself is a gas and its physical properties explained in terms of Brownian motion. It is physically a single phase – gas.
Suspended water, as clouds for example, is a different physical phase – liquid.
Now while one might increase the amount of N2 or He in the air one breathes, physically we would not notice it, because these are, at the pressure and temperatures we exist in, gases.
However add water and one detects its physical presence quickly as humidity, so I would disagree with the idea that water vapour is actually a gas per se.
Gases have no phytsical structure – but water vapour must have in order for us to detect it. In fact water is one very peculiar substance and you are on the right track into researching its microscopic properties.
I’m off to a posh dinner at the Kimberley Hotel in Halls Creek tonight, and I’ll scour my database for some odd reported properties of water when subjected to electricity if you have not, in the meantime, located it in your search.
That will be tomorrow of course 🙂
“It’s a pity that scientists, while making use of the power of electricity in their thinking at the neuron level, are quite blinded by its application at the macro level.”
Ha Ha Ha Ha. I’m happy that I understand that enough to find it really funny.
Hey look how do you define electricity here? I have this clunky view of it as electrons moving along a wire. Sometimes very slowly. But my preferred gravitational theory is push-gravity and has some sort of neutrino-like particles moving about at at least several billions of times the speed of light.
So when you talk about an electric universe you are talking about charges able to move really fast are you not? You aren’t talking about clunky electrons mucking about right?
Wonder what Deltoid will make of all this?
Cohenite – mate – talking to Rolf over the intertubes re:
Anthropogenic greenhouse forcing and strong water vapor feedback
increase temperature in Europe
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 32, L19809, doi:10.1029/2005GL023624, 2005
Rolf Philipona,1 Bruno Du¨rr,2 Atsumu Ohmura,3 and Christian Ruckstuhl3
……..
Rolf says “The reason why we have chosen 1995 to 2002 is because our radiation budget measurements start in 1995 and by the time we wrote the paper we had analysed the data until 2002. The good thing is that this is a period with large temperature and humidity changes over Europe and this makes our radiation analyses more clear and obvious.
The radiation results shown in Fig. 3 are the key results of our paper. Here we show that while solar radiation DECREASES temperature increases and this because longwave downward radiation increases. After correcting for the proper temperature increase at the surface we correct for longwave downward radiation changes due to clouds and we are left with longwave downward radiation changes under cloud-free skies, hence due to greenhouse gases (water vapor and anthropogenic greenhouse gases (Fig. 3 d ). We find that the larger part is due to water vapor but after subtracting the longwave increase due to water vapor we are still left with an increase that must be due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
The beauty in our analysis is that the relation between changes in longwave downward radiation (from the greenhouse gases, Fig.3 d ) and temperature matches for the individual months. It also nicely matches with water vapor for the different months. ”
Birdy – to do all thsi properly they have an upwards facing pyranometer (measuring short wave) and a downwards facing pyranometer ; and a upwards facing pyrgeometer (measuring longwave) and a downwards facing pyrgeometer.
4 instruments gets what comes down and what goes up ! short wave and long wave
Piccy here: http://www.pmodwrc.ch/gallery_subwin.php?bildnummer=64
These guys do this research: http://www.pmodwrc.ch/
“The radiation results shown in Fig. 3 are the key results of our paper. Here we show that while solar radiation DECREASES temperature increases and this because longwave downward radiation increases.”
Dim bulbs. No accounting for cumulative heat budgets. No accounting for stored up momentum in the vast great oceanic conveyer. No accounting for the idea that the records going way back suggest that the correlation between air temperature and solar cycle activity is as good if not a little bit better for the previous solar cycle.
They don’t know what they are talking about. Climate peaks don’t all come together like some cosmic orgy. Every thing peaks at different times. There is a chain of transmission.
These guys have no idea. They have it entirely wrong. They are in contempt of the historical data.
Graeme
Electricity is essentially electrically charged particles in motion.
Electric currents passing through plasma exhibit 3 modes – dark current flow, the currents we measure in wires, glow mode when the current increases, and the sun is one such example, as are the polar auroras, and arc mode, similar to the lightning and the currents produced during electric welding jobs.
The surface of the earth seems, I emphasise “seems” to be dominated by electric currents operating in dark current mode.
I stress seem because science has simply not been measuring this on a routine basis because no one believes in it.
Science that is based on an aprioristic belief isn’t science.
“Because the back emitted radiation is at a lower temperature by definition.”
No wonder they told Jen to shut this place down.
As a general comment, if electricty is described as electrically charged particles in motion which generate magnetic fields, then what underlying medium is being modulated by the passage of these moving electrio charges to produce the observed magnetic fields?
And to introduce the chicken and egg conundrum, electric currents cannot exist in the absence of a magnetic field, and vice versa. Neither was first, both must have existed as inseparable phenomena.
Disproof of the Big Bang Theory?????
Graeme,
One final point – Electrical forces involve both attraction and repulsion, gravitational ones only attraction.
Occam’s razor would need to be applied here.
SJT,
“Please explain”.
Gordon (2.11pm) – I brought up Rahmstorf’s article because I found in it the schema of an argument for AGW (i.e. the various propositions that I quoted) more substantial than what is normally offered here. In my observation, AGW defenders here either bring up the basic physics of CO2, or they appeal to complicated computer models. I would like to find something realistic and yet simple enough to understand.
In Spencer Weart’s history, there is a period in which individuals like Plass and Revelle stand out because they do something to make AGW *plausible*, and then there is a period in which it has become the majority view and research is now about details. It may be that the papers that Jennifer is looking for belong to the transition between those two periods, when AGW went from being just one possibility to being something in Earth-science textbooks.
Luke,
Go look at the voltage profile of a transitor and compare it with the measured temperature of the sun’s profile.
Make sure you present graphs to explain it.
Right Lois. But aprioristic speculation can be the beginning stage of true science. Its just that when they try and fail they have to go back to the drawing board. Thats what some folks refuse to do. And they suck all the oxygen out of promising new ideas. I liked that Austrian duck on Disney. Things would go marvellously wrong but it was always back to the drawing board. Not with the kids.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Now look people. The pyrgeometer must only measure radiation of a certain frequency. It must measure 4.5um to 100um. Let us not include the conclusion in the hypothesis by claiming this is all BACK-RADIATION without a valid reason to do so. The pyrgeometer measures certain frequencies. It cannot discriminate.
If air is cooling down the pyrgeometer will receive and record certain frequencies. It cannot by itself jump to the conclusion that what it is telling you is anything more than the frequencies that it is measuring. It cannot tell you the source of these frequencies.
“Birdy – to do all thsi properly they have an upwards facing pyranometer (measuring short wave) and a downwards facing pyranometer ; and a upwards facing pyrgeometer (measuring longwave) and a downwards facing pyrgeometer.”
Yes but you need certain theory to tell you what you think you are measuring with this arrangement of gear.
The gear won’t do the discriminating for you.
So you pull it apart further and tell me why it is you think you are getting what it is you were looking for?
Are you telling me that common air cannot emit long-wave radiation if it is warm and cooling down at night?
What is it supposed to emit? Only ultra-violet? And how about if some water vapour clusters of H20 molecules, effectively become liquid but in too tiny a way to be thought of as a droplet? Will they not emit some sort of latent heat between 4.5um and 100um?
You kids expect to turn the expensive equipment on and it do everything for you. Give you all the test answers, wipe the baby’s butt, take the other kids to school. Write your thesis for you with all the footnotes at the bottom.
“Disproof of the Big Bang Theory?????”
Big bang theory is so idiotic it hardly needs disproof. In and of itself its a reduction-to-absurdity of the theories that lead to it.
Its the first creation theory that science has come up with still more idiotic and implausible than the religious creation theories that it mimics.
“As a general comment, if electricty is described as electrically charged particles in motion which generate magnetic fields, then what underlying medium is being modulated by the passage of these moving electrio charges to produce the observed magnetic fields?”
Too hard for me. But I suppose it could be either…..
….. Space…. Or Gravity.
“One final point – Electrical forces involve both attraction and repulsion, gravitational ones only attraction.
Occam’s razor would need to be applied here.”
Ah yes. But which is the deeper principle? You see in the macro level we have no such thing as PULL.
If we loop a rope around a blonde and pull her after us caveward its actually the rope pushing her towards us. So we struggle to see a pull-force.
Hence we have the possibility that whenever we see tiny particles that attract eachother perhaps we are seeing still tinier particles, billions more of them, setting up a situation where they are pushing these things together by bombarding them with particles only some of which are stopped by the two particles being pushed together.
Occams razor might be saying that ultimately there is no force of attraction. No PULL….. only PUSH.
It is harder to see which is the deeper principle. The one that William who came from Occam would have approved of.
Bird – very very stupid to try that on without even reading the paper. You know – given your own extensive personal publication record.
And doofus doodle – a few minutes ago you said back radiation didn’t exist. ARE YOU EVEN ON THE PLANET !
So stop being a trollesque tool and start thinking.
A lot of people here are trying to be inclusive and include you in discussion. So bit more consideration eh?
Louis – my man – why don’t you check an infra-red handgun thermometer and find out that temperature can be measured. Although you’re probabloy also against mercury thermometers.
Come on Louis – you can do better than that as a rebuttal. Attack the paper on process at least. You’d have to be a mad bastard to take on the Davos Radiation Center. Go tell a chook how to lay an egg might be more worthwhile.
COHENITE – WHERE ARE YOU ! Save me from these dills !
Louis: “I don’t think this idea has been thoroughly thought through”
It has by some who conclude it amounts to a mirage. Everything that is not at zero K radiates according to Stefan-Boltzman or Einstein coefficients if spectrally selective absorber/emitters are present. The radiative transfer must also obey the second law of thermodynamics and any transfer will be from hot to cold and if the temperatures are equal transfer ceases.
Since atmospheric elements radiate isotropically lower layers radiate upward with equal (very nearly) intensity as it absorbs if the temperature is the same as the surface. Thus the net radiation from the surface is actually unchanged by the back radiation.
“Bird – very very stupid to try that on without even reading the paper. You know – given your own extensive personal publication record.”
No they don’t know what they are talking about. They are being foolish. The only way you are going to make this one fly is by trying on some sort of conflation.
“And doofus doodle – a few minutes ago you said back radiation didn’t exist. ARE YOU EVEN ON THE PLANET !”
There is the conflation you moron. It matters not what I believe. I’m investigating this matter. I said what my current position is. You are too much of a dim bulb to realise that my current position is totally immaterial.
Lets go again.
Post of 8.18PM.
Apparently you find that post too scary Luke. You are doing a runner from it and I haven’t even contradicted you outright.
“Louis – my man – why don’t you check an infra-red handgun thermometer and find out that temperature can be measured.”
Cause if we can’t, out goes the impeccable satellite temperature record everyone loves here.
cohenite said last night: ‘Lazlo; do you have a link to or preview of the paper?’ If you have not tracked it down already the relevant publisher’s page is here http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2008JCLI2253.1 and you can get the pdf if you subscribe. A related and accessible article is here http://www.weatherquestions.com/Climate-Sensitivity-Holy-Grail.htm Spencer’s recent testimony to US Congress covers the same ground and is here http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/?s=spencer+congress for which he copped a gratuitous ad hominem from committee chair Barabara Boxer. He uses satellite data, which I think qualifies as evidence, although the postmodernists might disagree.
Reflection vs back radiation – I think “back radiation” is thermal release of previously absorbed energy as infrared radiation, whereas reflection involves the radiation coming back immediately and on the same wavelength it went in.
Actually, ignore that last comment, I wasn’t following and it has nothing to do with atmospheric back-radiation. I had been thinking the other day about the difference between reflection from the ground and thermal radiation from the ground, that’s all.
Lazlo: “which I think qualifies as evidence, although the postmodernists might disagree.”
postmodernist or luddite?
That sounds good mitchell. Now when you had out your pyrgeometer how would you differentiate this back-radiation from any other gear that was going on?
Thanks Lazlo;
luke; your new Philopona link says; “while solar radiation decreases temperature increases….because longwave downward radiation increases.”
Philopona then says he corrects for the proper temperature increase at the surface (what does that mean?); and apparently has a forcing figure for cloud caused radiation changes (Spencer will be pleased, as will IPCC); he can also seperate the downward radiation which is caused by water vapor from that caused by CO2 opaqueness (how one asks, do they have distinct wavelengths; how can that be when at the very least there is spectral absorption overlap between CO2 and H2O vapor?).
If the insolation is decreasing the available pool of primary radiation is diminishing; isotropic effects will half each new generation of surface supplied longwave to the atmosphere; where does the increased downward longwave come from if each succeeding generation of atmospheric LW is 1/2ed? This would seem to contravene Kirchhoff’s corollary that emissivity cannot exceed one or that fraction of absorption which applies to the radiating surface.
Jan; a thought; Kirchhoff applies in circumstances of thermal equilibrium; Philopona seems to have discovered negative energy; does negative luminescence play a role here; I can’t see that luke’s conjecture makes sense otherwise.
“No they don’t know what they are talking about. They are being foolish.”
This would have to be THE greatest Bird mad bastard-ness of all time. I am truly in awe of the depths of your eccentric loopiness.
You haven’t even read it – you don’t even know what’s been said in the paper – yet you know it’s wrong. WOW !
You tosser. Look just STFU ! Try and still your demented mind. DO NOT think about a white polar bear for 10 minutes.
Here is how: http://poptech.org/popcasts/?viewcastid=163
Cohenite – it’s cloud free data. You see you’ve responded with your physics beliefs. Real world data seems to have become a problem for you. The SW and LW are measured. If you’re serious you’ll email Rolf !
Louis; are you back from your posh dinner? What’s your take on negative luminescence?
luke; I know the point to Philopona’s study is emphasising the clear-sky flux; that is the pro-AGW issue. But consider this; higher surface temperature as postulated by Philopona will mean higher evaporation and a lowered lapse rate which cools the surface and exceeds the surface heating from the CO2 back radiation; Philopona’s results are a contradiction in terms.
Perhaps I can help: After switching from mechanics to pneumatics, then to electronics and radio waves etc I find all this back radiation, atmospheric emitters stuff a bit of a blind alley. When measuring signals in any form of radiation from DC to X-RAYS, we aren’t too bothered about air, gas or space emitting or reflecting anything. The one big exception is of course HF radio and that travels round the globe depending on the time of day.
Key words in studying all the above are frequency, amplitude, power and attenuation. We can add a few others like modulation, bandwidth, band pass, transducer etc. The problem for many of you is we can just about cook something anywhere with most frequencies regardless of the transmission medium.
In testing a big variety of instruments I developed a tendency to feel for vibrations with my RH index finger. At the nth routine tune up one day I forgot to replace a short whip on a 5w Motorola two way before I transmitted and burnt a hole in my pinky on the stub with 400 + something MHz. Normally I could hold that end of the radio by the protruding rubber covered antenna. It’s worth wondering how that energy got through my skin.
Email him !! but also read the take on the paper here – http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=212
I could also throw in a red herring and ask if the earth’s emissions come into calculation in regards to ST on the moon.
gavin: “I could also throw in a red herring and ask if the earth’s emissions come into calculation in regards to ST on the moon.”
You could also try being a little less turgid for our friends without a solid science/engineering background.
The nice thing about http://www.weatherquestions.com/Climate-Sensitivity-Holy-Grail.htm is that it is internally consistant with the known effect latent heat of vaporization of water. It also shows the problems with using W/m^2 versus an energy balance.
>>”One would need to find some additional, natural source of warming. And the most likely culprit? A small change in cloud cover. The question is, then, Have there been natural changes in cloud cover (only about 1% would be needed) in the last 100 years which have caused some, or even most, of our warming?
Unfortunately, we may never know, simply because our observations of global cloud cover are nowhere near long enough, or good enough.”<<
The other item to consider is that part of the analysis assumes that we have gotten impact of the solar sensitivity correct. At present the sun is providing us with empirical data that may well show that its sensitivity is greater than assumed, and/or that there are relationships of the sun/earth system that have not been properly determined.
The 0.5C sensitivity to CO2 doubling may well drop off the map.
“luke; I know the point to Philopona’s study is emphasising the clear-sky flux; that is the pro-AGW issue. But consider this; higher surface temperature as postulated by Philopona will mean higher evaporation and a lowered lapse rate which cools the surface and exceeds the surface heating from the CO2 back radiation; Philopona’s results are a contradiction in terms.”
You are describing an inherently unstable positive feedback system as far as I can tell. If heating actually causes cooling, so the more heat, the more it cools……
cohenite: :an; a thought; Kirchhoff applies in circumstances of thermal equilibrium; Philopona seems to have discovered negative energy; does negative luminescence play a role here; I can’t see that luke’s conjecture makes sense otherwise.”
The Ramban knew about negative energy long ago. 😉
Negative or dark energy also called vacuum energy is a quantum field effect that makes my head hurt to think about it. There is little in the universe that is more complex than nothing.
Negative luminescence is just (it’s a quantum effect too but makes my head hurt less) that some semiconductors will absorb IR energy to create electron hole pairs. They probably do it when there is no current but the pairs may recombine to give back the energy so we don’t see it but with a potential difference they are whisked away from each other and can’t recombine to return the energy from whence it came. It has nothing to do with kirchoff’s law as a device with a current passing through it is not in thermal equilibrium.
I don’t think they are in any way related.
WRT to Phillonna’s paper it’s difficult for me to see that there is a shift in spectrum due to a change in solar radiation because that must be accompanied with a solar temperature lowering and this does not happen. The sun radiates more because it’s surface is rougher when there are sunspots i.e. its emissivity changes it’s temperature does, as far as I’m aware, not change.
I can dig up references if you need them.
For a start the spectrum shift with temperature is Wien’s displacement law derived from Planck’s.
SJT: “If heating actually causes cooling, so the more heat, the more it cools……”
Not positive feedback but negative heat capacity (or specific heat). Less energy => higher temperature. It’s real and exists in collapsing gas clouds they get really hot that way as they shed energy. This heat and the increasing pressure ignites the thermonuclear reaction and a star is born.
I don’t think it applies to earth’s thermodynamic system though it’s already a collapsed system.
Clear sky flux is going to increase if it is warmer. If the climate warms, you will have more water vapour in the air. This can happen though the solar activity falls. Since we don’t get all these peaks happening at the one time.
But if the temperature increases as the solar activity decreases, as it does everyday after noon for example, how would you NOT say that there is more back-radiation? How would your instruments tell you otherwise?
Since warming goes like this….. solar activity….leads to ….. heat buildup in the oceans….. leads to….. more water vapour….. leads to…. higher tropsopheric temperature. These things not coincident in time. And not independent of other influences like the great ocean conveyer.
So we are saying that the solar activity decreases and the temperature went on increasing, there was more water vapour in the air.
But where does this back-radiation jive come into it. The solar activity came down, the temperature went on rising, these peaks not coming together in time.
And so what?
How could the instruments come to the conclusion that they have come to?
I say they are being ignorant and ahistorical.
“After correcting for the proper temperature increase at the surface we correct for longwave downward radiation changes due to clouds and we are left with longwave downward radiation changes under cloud-free skies, hence due to greenhouse gases (water vapor and anthropogenic greenhouse gases (Fig. 3 d ). We find that the larger part is due to water vapor but after subtracting the longwave increase due to water vapor we are still left with an increase that must be due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. ”
How is this not completely consistent with simply a buidup of energy in the oceans? The oceanic heat budget kept on increasing through that time period. And right up to late 2003 last time I looked. They corrected the figures at least twice. But I don’t think they changed the time of the peak by much.
Its a CO2-God-of-Gaps conclusion. They corrected for ground temperature (!@#$%^&). Did they correct for more heat in the northern ocean?
I want to echo also everything that Pittman is saying here. I think he’s right on the money. And the first person who I’ve seen use sensitivity variably. Rather than this fictional Lambda for every influence.
As to these different influences in the general. It really does matter where the joules are added to the system. From time to time I’ve been witness to many new models of Kettle. But they all have the element near the bottom of the kettle. You are advised to stick your central heating in the basement and not in the attic. If CO2 brings more joules mid-troposphere that is going to be pitiful extra energy for where I am. To get my house warmer you need more warmth in a strata LOWER than where I am.
An increase in solar activity punches extra energy deep in the oceans. Down further than the photic zone. Adding more aerosols reduces the energy punched into the oceans. So its very easy to see how this is going to affect things where we all live.
The moronic thing about watts-per-square-metre models is that they fail to notice any difference as to where the new joules are theoretically added. Not only do they ethnically cleanse time out of it and make us blinkered in that regard. They also ethnically cleanse PENETRATION. But its all about penetration. There is a lot of space out there. And its awfully cold. We only get the heat here to the extent that the energy penetrates down below where we live before coming up again. We need to think in three dimensions. In up-down movement of energy.
Everyone might know that. But they are one-eye-blind to it thanks to the otherworldly models and the curse of the lone paradigm.
Whose to say that every mole of water vapour carries with it a completely invariable amount of energy? Surely not. When the correct for water vapour whats the bet they are correcting on the basis of alleged greenhouse properties of water. Which no-one will agree on for starters. Whats the bet they aren’t using any notion of heat conveyance of water vapour?
Its definitely a CO2=God-of-gaps angle they are taking.
Water vapor is no free lunch either. The high specific heat of water means that it takes more energy to raise its temperature than that required for most other substances. Consequently, yes, it can also retain its temperature a longer time — but as you see, it’s an energy trade-off, zero-sum.
This ties into the problem of what people mean by a “greenhouse gas” to begin with. On another recent thread, Cohenite touched on the insulative properties of ‘greenhouse gases,’ to which I replied that the vacuum surrounding the earth makes “insulation” beside the point: space is an exotic environment that isn’t “cold” in the way we think of cold. A low-energy mass will steal heat from a high-energy mass. But a vacuum has no mass, which makes it an ideal insulator. Only if space were truly frigid would the need for insulative gases arise.
But to address Cohenite’s point directly, it takes far LESS energy to raise the temperature of dry air than humid air — so which of the two is more like a “greenhouse gas”? If you’ve got a fixed amount of thermal energy to play with and your aim is to raise the air temperature, water vapor would be the first thing you’d REMOVE!
“But a vacuum has no mass, which makes it an ideal insulator” but it won’t work with light etc
sorry Alan
GraemeBird: I’m really struggling with your ideas too despite a much improved stream of rhetoric
“Its definitely a CO2=God-of-gaps angle they are taking.”
You haven’t read the report, have you?
“The gradual temperature and humidity increases from west to east are not related to circulation but must be due to non-uniform water vapour feedback.”
SJT. Look I cannot get the original. But the inferences are just silly. The West side of continents are often the drier side of continents. Thus they have a lot more topside for water vapour increases when the ocean warms up. Of course you would have to know about the individual wind systems involved. But these guys are just ready to jump on greenhouse feedback as the answer to any mathematical gap they think they have. And they are not willing to look at the fact that the oceans gained massive amounts of extra energy during that time.
“The gradual temperature and humidity increases from west to east are not related to circulation but must be due to non-uniform water vapour feedback.”
Brians Mother must have been a virgin. She had to be. This is the immaculate conception of greenhouse feedback over time. This is one way to make sure you get published and another research grant but is it SCIENCE. I think you will find that the gradual increase from West to East is probably in line with the buidup in warmth of the ocean.
Try the experiment again when the ocean is cooling. Try it in New Zealand South Island 2004-2008 and see if you get this gap. But any gap they get in their own personal calculations they are going to say……. “Ho ho Greenhouse”
This is a great career move for these guys. But is it Science?
“Water vapor is no free lunch either. The high specific heat of water means that it takes more energy to raise its temperature than that required for most other substances. Consequently, yes, it can also retain its temperature a longer time — but as you see, it’s an energy trade-off, zero-sum.”
Aint that the case. The Sahara gets warmer than Singapore during the day though it is farther from the equator. But its cold in the night. So the average temperature is less. Plus there is a gain if you are talking day and night. Since you yourself have stressed that there is a definite maximum temperature you can get to given a certain amount of watts per square metre. So a substance with a much higher specific heat capacity, and particularly one that carries LATENT-AND-NOT-JUST-ACTUAL heat will never get near this point of diminishing returns. So you throw day-and-night into your model there is your potential for gain. The water saturated place, in a day and night scenario, has a lower peak but a higher average than the dry place.
Here’s another bogus claim ignoring the fact of the heat budget in the ocean increasing during the time of the study:
“Water Vapor Feedback is Rapidly Warming Europe’
Water vapour feedback? What a load of nonsense. Its oceanic heat budget buildup. Which we know has turned around, except perhaps in the very far north, since the time the study period ended.
Water vapour feedback cannot warm the system entire once you are concerned with the oceans as the only thing having the potential for cumulative warming. Because water vapour buildup (ludicrously described as “feedback” is proof-positive that the oceans are being robbed of thermal energy.
This is proof of one thing and one thing only. The Greenhouse model is a land-lubbers-light-show model. These guys cannot even be taking the ocean into consideration.
“GraemeBird: I’m really struggling with your ideas too despite a much improved stream of rhetoric…”
Thats because you can’t break out of the ruling paradigm. It takes a while for the mind to shift. And its not going to happen if you are bigoted about it. In economics I try to get people away from thinking about GDP to thinking about Gross Domestic Revenue as the key to progress and the better metric for quarter-to-quarter comparisons. But I have not been successful in this as far as I know.
And yet I remember it taking me a very long time to make that shift myself. The curse of the lone paradigm is a powerful thing indeed.
Here is my understanding of the back radiation process.
The temperature of any surface is determined by the average wavelength of the IR emitted since all black body radiation is a spectrum of wavelengths ( Stefan –Boltzman distribution ). The majority of the earth’s surface temperature generally lies between –10 deg C and 30 deg C which translates into an average wavelength of 12 to 9 micrometers. ( For reference 7.77 micrometers is equal to 100 Deg C and 10.61 equals 0 Deg C, 1.16 equals 2200 Deg C which demonstrates the non-linearity)
Molecules of gas in the atmosphere are effected only marginally by the visible light spectrum because they do not have resonant frequencies in the high frequency range, however, they do have a number of resonant frequencies within the IR bandwidth. CO2 has resonant frequencies in the 2.5 to 3: 4 to 4.7 and 14 to 15 micrometer ranges. Water vapour has resonant frequencies in the 0.7 to 2.0;, 2.5 to 3.7; 4.6 to 8 and 15 plus micrometer ranges.
The “greenhouse gas effect” basically only occurs in the long wave IR absorbing molecules #1 water vapour #2 CO2 ( methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, all insignificant) All these molecules absorb only specific radiation frequencies which are in their resonant frequency bands, in the case of CO2 only 8% of the outgoing IR spectrum can be absorbed ( if water vapour doesn’t get it first). The molecule gains energy but transfers it by colliding with other molecules thus there is some energy extracted from the outgoing radiation and converted into an increased temperature of the gasses in the atmosphere. However once the frequencies have been removed they do not magically reappear so the CO2 at higher levels has nothing to work with. There is a little reradiation back to the surface from the energized CO2 molecules but this occurs only in the first 2 or 3 meters of atmosphere and is minor. Water vapour reacts in a similar manner but absorbs more energy than CO2 because it has more resonant frequency bands closer to the peak of the spectrum. The total greenhouse gas effect of CO2 is estimated to be 3 deg C which occurs in the first 50 meters of atmosphere by the 8% energy extracted and once removed from the spectrum there is no longer any energy left so increasing the CO2 has no effect.
Now the big guy on the block is water droplets or aerosol. Aerosols which include smoke, volcanic ash, fly ash etc. behave entirely differently, they will absorb the entire spectrum and reradiate the entire spectrum just like any black body thus they do behave like a blanket, the gasses because they are frequency specific do not.
From Beer’s law it can be seen that the distance travelled by a photon of IR radiation is quite short at sea level and increases as the density decreases. Even at 385ppm, CO2 will extract all its resonant frequencies in the first 10 meters of atmosphere. This applies to IR leaving the earths surface and IR trying to return.
Reflection should not be confused with radiation, about the only thing the greenhouse gas dogma gets right is that glass will transmit light but reflects LW IR radiation. So the reflective properties of different media with respect to LW IR can not be equated with the reflective properties with respect to light.
So on a clear day or night only the IR of specific wavelengths will be absorbed and will increase the energy in the atmosphere all the rest will continue unmolested into space. On a cloudy day the IR will get absorbed and reradiated many times before escaping, but as noted downward radiation gets captured just as easily as upward radiation and because the atmosphere gets less dense with altitude the net effect is an upward flow until it escapes. The number of times it is captured and reradiated is immaterial because the net energy change is zero.
“So the reflective properties of different media with respect to LW IR can not be equated with the reflective properties with respect to light…..”
Right. Thats the difference I was after.
“So on a clear day or night only the IR of specific wavelengths will be absorbed and will increase the energy in the atmosphere all the rest will continue unmolested into space. On a cloudy day the IR will get absorbed and reradiated many times before escaping, but as noted downward radiation gets captured just as easily as upward radiation and because the atmosphere gets less dense with altitude the net effect is an upward flow until it escapes. The number of times it is captured and reradiated is immaterial because the net energy change is zero.”
It seems that the no backradiation point of view in the link is too extremist in the point that it makes. But it still means that more CO2 ought not make a difference until and unless it increases air pressure.
I wasn’t going to bring it up but Jan’s “turgid” comment is quite unfortunate in the context of this debate as it’s been clear to me for a while that a few people here don’t understand what radiation is. What I hoped would happen as a result of introducing the moon as another reference in Earth’s IR energy budget hasn’t happened.
Let’s go back to comparing all radiated energy between bodies in the solar system to the transmission of “light” in general instead of pussy footing around with the supposed knock on effect in the sub atomic “gas” particles loose in the atmosphere and then return to energy band pass issues in a practical way.
“The number of times it is captured and reradiated is immaterial because the net energy change is zero”
Barry in particular should start thinking about the changes we can all see in “moonlight”
“Let’s go back to comparing all radiated energy between bodies in the solar system to the transmission of “light” in general instead of pussy footing around with the supposed knock on effect in the sub atomic “gas” particles loose in the atmosphere and then return to energy band pass issues in a practical way.”
No I’m afraid you cannot ethnically cleanse cosmic rays from the story.
I want to emphasise another thing that is ethnically cleansed from the situation when you are doing things on the basis of a flat earth, always noon, twice as far from the sun.
Specific heat capacity. We have already seen how a certain output in electric or radiation wattage implies a maximum temperature. But its not going to be a dead cutoff. Long before you get close to that maximum point you are going to get some sort of diminishing returns.
But on our world any given area is getting a different input of radiation depending on, for one thing, the hour of the day. No deep and wide area of water on this planet will be anywhere near diminishing returns at noontime. Whereas in the Sahara the temperature will soar quickly we would not expect it to go on accepting all the energy it would if it were cooler much past 1 or 2 pm. But deep ocean water seldom makes it into the 40’s no matter where it is. It can go on accepting energy with no topside and since this energy manifests itself in such things as phase-change to water vapour, or warming the deeper water, or moving it about it will be nowhere near the maximum equilibrium temperature until the very late afternoon when the suns energy has waned and the air begins to cool.
If its windy that energy will translate somewhat into water vapour more. But in any case it will go on accepting energy because typically even in the very hot places it seldom gets past the mid-thirties in absolute temperature.
CO2 has a poor specific heat capacity. More feeble than air. This is going to matter with day and night, but it will probably be overmatched by its effect on air pressure one would think.
“These guys cannot even be taking the ocean into consideration.”
read the paper you frigging ignorant moron. You are now beyond stupid – you are “ultra-stupid”.
Here’s the way it works – you have a body of published theory – and some serious scientist from a serious institution provides some empirical evidence of that theory, published in GRL. It’s survived some peer review to get there.
The normal reaction should be “gee is that right I’d better check it out”.
Not a massive sledge of disconnected stream of consciousness verbal diarrhea with added pseudo-philosophical twaddle.
Now if you were a top flight researcher with some credentials we might listen to you – but given you’re an unpublished unelectable doofus suffering an ongoing Walter Mitty fantasy that you’re some great Aussie libertarian philosopher with “insight” well, we might say that you could possibly be a total dickhead and numb nutz. So STFU !
Barry,
I wasn’t ignoring you – I just went home for the weekend. You’re right – I didn’t read Jaworowski’s paper, since a title about ice cores had no obvious relevance. Have had a look at it now. (I note in passing that it wasn’t published in a peer-reviewed journal, as Jennifer requires, but in an anti-semitic conspiracy newsletter).
Jawarowski has a huge sample of measurements – most of which must be wrong, since it’s impossible for the CO2 content to change that much in a short period. Callendar followed a process to exclude the most unreliable (e.g. urban island effects, one of measurements, etc). The best way to check the results he picked is to back project from the universally accepted Mauna Loa measurements after the Keeling process for measuring CO2 was adopted as the standard. If you do this you will see that Callendar’s chosen measurements overlap neatly with Mauna Loa. They also agree with the ice core measurements.
See here:
http://timlambert.org/2005/01/hissink3/
PS you should be careful about accusations of fraud, which leave you open to a libel case. Why not stick to random abuse like Graeme does?
gavin; “as it’s been clear to me for a while that a few people here don’t understand what radiation is.”
You’re getting the idea. There are some concepts with that field that are very difficult to get the head around. For instance how many people around here do you think are comfortable with Maxwell’s equations let alone the quantum effects that determine what can be absorbed and emitted.
“Jawarowski has a huge sample of measurements – most of which must be wrong, since it’s impossible for the CO2 content to change that much in a short period.”
Now why do you assume THAT?
“SJT. Look I cannot get the original. But the inferences are just silly. The West side of continents are often the drier side of continents. Thus they have a lot more topside for water vapour increases when the ocean warms up. Of course you would have to know about the individual wind systems involved. But these guys are just ready to jump on greenhouse feedback as the answer to any mathematical gap they think they have. And they are not willing to look at the fact that the oceans gained massive amounts of extra energy during that time.”
You have got it all wrong. The oceans are an intrinsic part of all the complex models. They aren’t stupid.
“PS you should be careful about accusations of fraud, which leave you open to a libel case….”
No problem either way. Its a chance to highlight this science fraud and help bring it down earlier than otherwise. Every month counts.
“You have got it all wrong. The oceans are an intrinsic part of all the complex models. They aren’t stupid.”
No all climate alarmists are in fact idiots. You can’t pull that one on us. This particular study isn’t about a MODEL dopey. Its about them filling in the gaps with their chosen conclusion.
What sort a pig ignorant moron criticises a paper they haven’t read. One G Bird ! The end. Begone!
Cohenite:
Negative luminescence? That’s when an electric current is passed through a semiconductor that emits less thermal radiation than when it’s at thermal equilibrium.
But thermal radiation isn’t luminescence per se – and the description I looked at seems to confuse the two terms.
It is regarded as a violation of Kirchoff’s law.
Posh dinner was Thai meal 🙂 And for Halls Creek the venue was indeed posh 🙂
GB You said “Specific heat capacity.” One cannot use specific heat capacity without accepting/acknowledging thermo. You said “Water vapour feedback cannot warm the system entire once you are concerned with the oceans as the only thing having the potential for cumulative warming. Because water vapour buildup (ludicrously described as “feedback” is proof-positive that the oceans are being robbed of thermal energy.” It is not about the feedback per se; it IS about water’s ability to store heat through latent heat of evaporation. Do not think that water boils at 100C but rather that the triple point of water is 0C. Yes “water vapour feedback cannot warm the system”, but it can hold energy and allow for an overall buildup in energy as stated by the AGW croud (except that they use temperature and W/m^2 which have different state definitions/expressions depending on the state that is exhibited). If you want to use the specific heat paradigm, you need to stick to AGW using tmeprature rather than energy, and the AGW using W/m^2 rather than a true energy and mass balance. Can’t remember the paper, but they approached falsifying amplified AGW using specific heat and heat capacitance for air and CO2. That part of the paper was correct. The other parts ignored the thermo that the specific heat indicated should be accounted for, and provided ammo for the AGW crowd. Please don’t do the same. Concentrate on their quick switch from temperature (anomolies) and flux (w/m^2) to saying they have a mass and energy balance when they have not done it at all when they claim a cliamte sensitivity. Example stating that the world’s temperature has increased 1C and that the sensitivity has shown anthropogentic CO2 is the cause (remember deltaT is by definition at equilibrium) means that they have proven that point 0 and point 0+1 were at equilibrium. Also, never, ever forget that they also claim that the heat is in the pipeline!!! Concentrate, in order to determine sensitivity, by definition, one must be at equilibrium, yet in order to claim this positive feedback one must say that there is “heat” in the pipeline. Notice the switch. Temperature when explaining to us morons (defined as not IPPC accredited “climate” scientists). Heat balance or equilibrium (without stating the state or explaiming how to take an equilibrium difference without first empirically establishing equilibruim)is used in the next paragraph, when explaining how you determine climate sensitivity. Do Australians, ROW know of 3 card Monte?? Follow the GORE-acle, the carbon trading (confidence game)? The “I win, you lose” equation?? Inquiring minds want to know!
Well I cannot get hold of it. And the inferences that have leaked down to me are so stupid as to be worthy of writing it off. But certainly I’m openminded enough to reverse course if you guys that have read it can make a case for it.
What we know is this. The West of Europe and the East of Canada are the best spot there are for a pile-up of heat energy from the gulf stream when the oceans are accumulating energy.
And no allowance made for this is being included.
The dates of the study are immensely suspicious. Why not 2004 to 2008?
Its a study we ought to write-off in its entirety. A career-move study. Pure idiocy. Where is the talk in it that recognises they were getting accumulating heat buildup in the sea next to them.
Their stupidity doesn’t bottom out.
Luke,
Do you think before you write before you post anything here? Seems both you and SJT seem to think that I assert that IR radiation isn’t a measure of temperature.
How on earth one could form this conclusion on the available evidence here beggars belief.
The AGW hypothesis beggars belief.
Pittman I’m looking at it in terms of a time period of lets say 100 years. You can get warming to the troposphere based on the sun heating the oceans and the effect of extra sun being magnified twice. The effect of the sun magnified by
1. Cosmic rays and cloud cover.
2. Cumulative heat leading to more water vapour.
So thats a double magnification. But these guys are talking about a catastrophe based on CO2 causing further water-vapour amplication.
Well that cannot happen. Because the water vapour is proof of the ocean refrigeration. Since the ocean is the only place that can lead to CUMULATIVE warming. no such warming can occur on the backs of Water Vapour feedback. Extra Water Vapour is cooling the oceans even as it is warming the troposphere.
So how could you ever get catastrophic warming out of THAT.
Its a ridiculous lie. It CANNOT happen. Never could. If they want to pretend that we can have catastrophic warming it must come from the primary greenhouse gasses alone. Not from water vapour feedback.
James I was wondered when the intimidation would start, is this not a standard ploy by the AGW people when they get backed into a corner.
Frankly I think you would be unwise to question Jawarowski’s credentials or start nit picking, he is one of the world’s leading experts and pioneers in ice core analysis. Here are 2 more papers,
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/20_1-2_CO2_Scandal.pdf
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jdrake/Questioning_Climate/userfiles/Ice-core_corrections_report_1.pdf
The Drake paper offers an explanation for the ice core errors which is very credible, especially in light of the stomata proxy evidence and Becks work on the chemical analysis I think the ice core evidence is pretty much dead in the water and has absolutely no corroborating data.
How can you honestly say that Callendar was not cherry picking with a straight face, do you deny that was an accurate representation of Callendars data base or was this just another smoke and mirrors diversion to try and hide the truth.
Graeme I have given up paying any attention to Luke’s verbal diarrea lets face it if he had one more brain cell it would sing I walk alone, don’t even dignify his nonsense with any type of response. You are right I would take my day in court to prove the AGW people are full of hot air and I know I would a get lot of support.
Now that we have a better idea of accumulating heat in the ocean….. Where is this warming “in the pipeline” that these know-nothings are talking about?
It must be hiding down a well with the twelth Iman of Shia. Because clearly its Shi-ite to the non-believers.
This controversy should be over already. It ought to be a technical argument between the luke-warmers and the non-warmers.
We cannot wait another month to get serious about energy-production.
Hissink – you’re an eccentric old kook? A science moron. An unpublished goon. Forced to camp out in the Kimberley dust. Spare us the b/s.
Desist with the ad homs and make a significant post for once. Explain yourself fully. Of course that would mean you left hemisphere would have to agree with your right.
Don’t worry about us – dazzle us with your brilliance and we will dim in the presence of your personal super-nova.
So out of gramps mode Louis. Into rational dialogue.
Meanwhile I have tendered evidence (measured and empirical just as you like it) that says the amount of greenhouse back radiation seems to be there just like theory and the models suggest – an you want to talk about yourself instead !! Sheesh.
Meanwhile Birdy is dribbling on with his antipasto stream of consciousness. OMIGOD {and bizarrely overlooking a paper that says he’s talking utter crap}.
Since there has been a lot of discussion regarding heat capacity, sensitivity and the thermodynamic aspects of our overall energy budget I would like to submit this paper by Steven Swartz of the Brookhaven Institute which I think is a reasonably unbiased assessment on this subject
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
Luke
Ad hominem? Looking at what I wrote to cause your latest outburst merely confirms that you are marbleless.
I enjoy your rants because they indicate to everyone here when you are stumped for an answer – you go into screaming abuse mode.
Luke I made a promise to myself that I would not respond to any of your posts again, qualifer, until you said something intelligent,
With regard to back radiation I think I persuaded Graeme that such a thing does exist and it is measurable. The problem is we can measure the spectrum and get an accurate profile but the question is where does it come from. As I have said in previous posts molecules are frequency specific but the water vapour and CO2 overlap so you do not know if the radiation at that frequency came from water or CO2. An added complication is that aerosols radiate the full spectrum so how much came from aerosols. Remember back in high school algebra if you have 3 unknowns you must have 3 equations in order to solve the problem. Here we have one total and 3 possible contributers how can anyone solve the fraction of each contributor.
Louis: “It is regarded as a violation of Kirchoff’s law.”
It isn’t though because it occurs only when there is a current flowing which can do work on the electron/hole pairs created.
“And for Halls Creek the venue was indeed posh :-)”
Well compared to a camp stove it would have to be.:-P
From his web page
“It should be emphasized that one should not take any comfort with the fact that the aerosols may be negating much of the greenhouse gas forcing–in fact just the opposite. Because the atmospheric residence time of tropospheric aerosols is short (about a week) compared to the decades-to-centuries lifetimes of the greenhouse gases, then to whatever extent greenhouse gas forcing is being offset by aerosol forcing, it is last week’s aerosols that are offsetting forcing by decades worth of greenhouse gases. Because the greenhouse gases are long-lived in the atmosphere, their atmospheric loadings tend to approximate the integral of emissions. Because the aerosols are short-lived, their loading tend to be proportional to the emissions themselves. There is only one function that is proportional to its own integral, the exponential function. So only if society is to make a commitment to continued exponential growth of emissions can such an offset be maintained indefinitely. And of course exponential growth cannot be maintained forever. So if the cooling influence of aerosols is in fact offsetting much of the warming influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, then when society is unable to maintain this exponential growth, the climate could be in for a real and long-lasting shock.”
Jan,
Correct – I just repeated the statement in the reference I looked at – I should have made that clearer – so your correction suggests the particular reference I used is even more problematical – and it wasn’t Wiki either.
I wonder what Cohenite had in mind when he raised this point….
You would have to be absolutely tripping to think that Duffy would pay up on that peice of crap study. You’ve got a 7 years buildup that they are sheeting off to water vapour feedback when its obviously just the North Atlantic warming.
Where’s the CO2 warming. All they can honestly answer is that their sums didn’t add up because they forgot about the ocean.
Barry,
You can add a fourth contributer – atmospheric electric currents as another potential source of IR downwelling radiation.
“Luke I made a promise to myself that I would not respond to any of your posts again, qualifer, until you said something intelligent,”
Luke has said plenty of things that are intelligent, (or referred to them). Pretty well everyone just ignores those posts.
We know what the concentrations of each gas are, and the bands they absorb, and the amount in each band.
” Because the atmospheric residence time of tropospheric aerosols is short (about a week) compared to the decades-to-centuries lifetimes of the greenhouse gases…”
Whose website is that? He says decades to centuries for CO2. But where is the evidence for that? We had the nuclear tests and the nuclear bombs. We ought to know its shorter than that from the isotopes of carbon. What is he saying? Decades…. Or centuries. There is a bit of a difference. Is this some sort of lone loon or is it someone we know?
Barry – very debating wise position and I compliment you on your persistence;
Philipona et al 2005 explain as:
The forcing that is due to increasing greenhouse
gases can be isolated by subtracting the effect of surface
temperature rises from LDRcf. Using the first derivative of
the Stefan-Boltzmann law we subtract for each month
separately, the longwave radiation due to variations of
temperature in each year (residuals to the linear regression)
and due to temperature trends over the time period. An
increase of +1.18(0.7) W m2 remains on the annual mean
for the cloud-free and temperature subtracted longwave
downward radiation (LDRcf,Ts) (Figure 3e). The good correlation
between surface absolute humidity [g m3] under
cloud-free situations (Ucf) and LDRcf,Ts of r = 0.89 manifests,
that the dominant part of the LDRcf,Ts forcing is due
to water vapor increase. Sensitivity values [Philipona et
al., 2004] of 0.56 and 1.73 W m2 at 500 respectively
3000 meters a.s.l., for a 0.1 g m3 change of absolute
humidity at the surface (gradual decrease assumed in the
first 4 km), allow to subtract the water vapor forcing from LDRcf,Ts, and hence isolate the part that is just due to
anthropogenic greenhouse gases. A remaining annual mean
anthropogenic forcing of +0.35(0.4) Wm2 for cloud-free,
temperature subtracted and humidity subtracted longwave
downward radiation (LDRcf,Ts,Us) is shown in Figure 3e.
“Since there has been a lot of discussion regarding heat capacity, sensitivity and the thermodynamic aspects of our overall energy budget I would like to submit this paper by Steven Swartz of the Brookhaven Institute which I think is a reasonably unbiased assessment on this subject”
It’s not an unbiased assessment, it’s a serious piece of speculation that is a based on a very simple model, as the author states.
“Finally, as the present analysis rests on a simple single-compartment energy balance model, the question must inevitably arise whether the rather obdurate climate system might be amenable to determination of its key properties through empirical analysis based on such a simple model. In response to that question it might have to be said that it remains to be seen. In this context it is hoped that the present study might stimulate further work along these lines with more complex models.”
His maths is total guesswork. And its come down one way with the gap that he’s automatically laying at the feet of CO2.
He said surface temperature but he says nothing about increasing energy coming over from the buildup in North Atlantic energy.
Junk Science.
Three possibilities to save the AGW hypothesis since the world has cooled since 1998:
1. The world is heating up but the heat is being stored somewhere (the oceans). No sign of this; the ocean level has dropped slightly since 2006 (ocean warming should cause thermal expansion of the ocean).
2. The albedo of the earth/atmosphere system has increased TEMPORARILY. Maybe (perhaps due to increased cloud formation from cosmic rays due to a quiet sun).
3. Received energy from the sun has TEMPORARILY decreased. Nope, not significantly.
So AGWers, why are we cooling even though CO2 is going up?
“Three possibilities to save the AGW hypothesis since the world has cooled since 1998:”
You left out another possibility, your assesment of the situation is wrong.
“So AGWers, why are we cooling even though CO2 is going up?”
Posted by: Steve Stip at August 31, 2008 02:28 PM
But we ARE warming Steve, it’s just that the instruments aren’t recording it.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080530144943.htm
SJT,
I’m all ears.
“Europe’s temperature increases considerably faster than the northern hemisphere average….”
Well suprise surprise. It also cools quicker too. And becomes basically uninhabitable during glacial periods.
“Detailed month-by-month analyses show temperature and humidity changes for individual months that are similar for all Europe, indicating large-scale weather patterns uniformly influencing temperature. However, superimposed to these changes a strong west-east gradient is observed for all months.
The gradual temperature and humidity increases from west to east are not related to circulation but must be due to non-uniform water vapour feedback.”
How does THAT follow. Thats like saying the waves are going backwards out at Cronulla…… GLOBAL WARMING!!!!
Perhaps the centre of Eurasia isn’t used to a lot of water vapour when its cold and when it warms up has access to a bit more of it from all sides. That would make a great deal of sense. But to yell “Eureka, global warming” when they stumble on their first poser is not really the scientific way.
How would that be for the red centre of Australia. We don’t have a comparable gulf stream to the West of the continent. But if we had oceanic warming on either side we might well expect disproportionate change to the water vapour level as we went in from Western Australia.
Luke I applaud your return to a pseudo scientific argument however as I have said before the one size fits all type all calculation can only be applied to a linear relationship, since Stefans’s law is a 4th power equation one has to do a finite element analysis over the entire globe taking into account the average temperature, cloud cover, humidity, CO2 concentration, suns irradiance etc. etc. etc. of each element at the same moment in time. This has never been done so unfortunately your general averaging technique is totally invalid.
SJT “it’s a serious piece of speculation that is a based on a very simple model,” and what may I ask is the entire IPCC report.
SJT try doing a Beer’s law calculation to determine the mean path of IR.
” Because the atmospheric residence time of tropospheric aerosols is short (about a week) compared to the decades-to-centuries lifetimes of the greenhouse gases…”
I have to comment on this too, the aerosols are constantly being replenished on a daily basis clouds being by far the greatest.
Greenhouse gas residence time ? I did a mass balance on Fig .7.3. Pg 514 IPCC 4AR. I will re post.
Let us analyze scientifically Chapter 7 of the 4th assessment report by the IPCC page 514 Fig 7.3. This is a representation of the global carbon cycle in terms of anthropogenic and natural carbon fluxes between the air, land and ocean. I would say therefore that it is at the very heart of this subject so please do not accuse me of nit picking some trivial side issue. This figure by the way has been around for at least 10 years to my knowledge having seen it first in an earlier form on the NOAA-PMEL web site.
Now as an engineer the first thing I look at is the mass balance to see if it is valid.
But first some basic rules: I will abbreviate A= anthropogenic carbon N= natural carbon.
1. The N/A ratios must be the same for the content and the flux from either air, land or ocean ( surface )
2. Assume the total carbon content of land and ocean is reasonably close per Fig 7.3
3. The Air has about 840 GT of carbon. This model was from the 90’s so a little difference.
4. Total anthropogenic carbon since the Industrial Revolution is 244 GT as per Fig 7.3 and 100GT has been sequestered in the deep ocean.
Now try to do a mass balance.
The N/A ratio for the air is 597 / 165 , but the air to ocean flux is 70 / 22.2 and the air to land flux is 120 / 2.6.
The ocean N/A ratio is 900 / 18 but the ocean to air flux is 70.6 / 20
The land N/A ratio is, believe it or not, 2300 /(-39) totally ridiculous!!! The flux is 119.6 / 1.6.
This is the very heart of the IPCC’s case which has appeared in all reports and has been peer reviewed by the best of the best.
I formulated a simplistic model in excel and got all the fluxes and content ratios to agree and the result was the atmosphere contains 29.22 ppm of anthropogenic CO2 out of 385 ppm which if you take the quite conservative number of 1.2 deg C for a doubling of CO2 from 300 to 600 ppm gives you .004 deg C per ppm thus the total impact of anthropogenic CO2 is .05 deg C.
The residence time of anthropogenic CO2 is 1.83 years.
If you want my excel program give me your e mail I will sent it to you and have fun.
“Detailed month-by-month analyses show temperature and humidity changes for individual months that are similar for all Europe, indicating large-scale weather patterns uniformly influencing temperature. However, superimposed to these changes a strong west-east gradient is observed for all months.”
A strong west-east gradiant. That would be the case always with water vapour as you crank the amount of it up. The air only holds so much overnight. So when you crank the amount up over seven years the former drier areas, further away from the ocean, will exhibit more of it in the air in precisely and east-west gradient.
All this says is the warmer times are the wetter times. And the dispersal is opposite to what the liars at CSIRO tell us. The water vapour doesn’t flood in the already wet places in the warmer times and go drier in the already dry areas. Thats lies. The better warmer wetter conditions SPREAD OUT. The tropical and subtropical areas expand.
Their own theory is moronic. They seem to be saying that the extra water vapour is coming from the continent itself and not the oceans.
“You left out another possibility, your assessment of the situation is wrong.”
SJT
“But we ARE warming Steve, it’s just that the instruments aren’t recording it.”
Spangled drongo
You have no idea how much genuine belly laughter you guys are giving me I had no idea there were so many so many morons who were so willing to expose their stupidity so blatantly.
Barry
have you read Segalstad’s paper http://www.co2web.info/ESEF3VO2.pdf – he deals with a “missing CO2 sink” that the IPCC believes in.
The mass balance reconsiliation you did seems to confirm carbon cycle assumptions are baloney.
Louis: “Here we show that *while solar radiation DECREASES temperature increases* and this because longwave downward radiation increases.”
I think this had him perplexed.
Thanks Louis yes I have read the paper, Segalstads one of my favourites. Incidentally I love the comment on Page 446 of the IPCC 4AR “ Ice core records show that atmospheric CO2 varied in the range 180 to 300 ppm over the galactic-intergalactic cycles of the last 650 K yr ( Figure 6.3; Petit et al., Siegenthaler et al., 2005a) The quantitative and mechanistic explanation of these CO2 variations remains one of the major unsolved questions in climate research,” and I quote. The reason they can not be explained is because it never happened, 180 ppm for 10 000 years would cause 50% of the worlds flora to become extinct and there would be massive extinctions of the animals. This never happened so the ice core data is false.
Jan and Louis; yes, perplexed; throwing balls up into the air and expecting some to not come down; no particular reason for negative luminescence; it was either that or Casimir and ZPE; luke is putting great store in this Philopona business so I guess I’ll have to get my wife to do the maths.
Barry; informative posts; a correction on the Schwartz paper; he was subject to criticism from a number of sources including Hansen and Schmidt;
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d5/jdannan/comment_on_schwartz.pdf
And consequently made corrections;
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapCommentResponse.pdf
Basically, the lag increased from 5+- 1 year to 8.5 +-2.5 years; the equilibrium climate sensitivity from 0.3+-0.14K/(Wm-2) to .51+-.26K/(Wm-2) and the temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 from 1.1+-0.5K to 1.9+-1.0K. Still somewhat below IPCC figures but closer than before.
Barry: “This never happened so the ice core data is false.”
Or interpretation is faulty.
I think so too. These guys are just thrown by the fact that everything doesn’t work in unison and that things peak at different time.
“I slowed down the hot water tap in the bath yet the temperature kept building.”
“Global Warming.”
“Well yes you know that its global warming.”
The water vapour takes time to build up. The heat of the oceans takes time to heat up. The momentum of the gulf stream takes time to slow down.
“… Then I turned the hot tap off entirely. I washed the hotter water down to the far side away from the taps and the temperature continued to climb at that end.”
” Global Warming”
“You bet and I have the mathematics to prove it”
They get solar cycle 23 being less powerful than solar cycle 22 and immediately its EUREKA GLOBAL WARMING.
Imagine dealing with these people on a daily basis.
“the South Island of New Zealand had its coldest winter since the 1940’s this year. And the Antarctic is accumulating ice and getting colder……”
“Global warming?”
“Well yes for sure.”
It would be like that all the time.
Simple things like ocean conveyer momentum, accumulating ocean energy, the water vapour continuing to accumulate after that ocean energy has peaked and turned down. It throws these people. Totally mystified by stuff like this. And yet superb at raising stolen money from the government for another study.
These are very very stupid people.
Jan,
Ah, I see – I’ve just been scanning the posts here looking for something which might explain it.
Graeme Bird has pointed to an impotant discussion
http://freenet-homepage.de/klima/indexe.htm.
Barry Moore,
You have a brain so I would like to ask you a question. Why not just measure:
1.) the energy incident upon the earth (via satellite).
2.) the energy reflected/radiated away (also by satellite).
Subtracting 2.) from 1.) should give us the long term temperature trend of the earth, right? So why isn’t this being done?
Thanks, I learn a lot from your posts.
Steve
Barry,
“You have no idea how much genuine belly laughter you guys are giving me I had no idea there were so many so many morons who were so willing to expose their stupidity so blatantly.”
I was hoping someone would get the joke, but you could at least be a little more polite.
Steve:
I suggested our satellite could be the moon earlier thinking Jan could have a go but it involves thinking away from standards set here and by that I mean there is nothing wrong with accepting greenhouse as the concept in the first instance.
I think I just heard that it was Sydneys coldest August in 40 years.
“Global Warming?”
“Yes and the models predicted it.”
Its really about that dumb and we hear it every day don’t we?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The ocean-conveyer momentum issue is far more important than in the example of the bath. Since merely spreading out the heat energy helps continue the heat buildup via Stefan Boltzmanns law.
SD: I tripped up on it because I’m quite used to people blaming their instruments before thinking.
Look guys one of you must have good knowledge of the hydraulics involved. We have one part of the cycle with little pressure and where an individual bit of water can make it from Florida to the sea of Labrador in a matter of weeks…… then it sinks down mabe three kilometres and now its a slow-moving giant ooze that takes maybe 5000 years to get back to where it started.
So you have small, not under pressure fast-moving stream of about 20 amazons at one part of it. But if its so slow-moving elsewhere the size of the oozing mass must be truly gigantic.
The potential for at least a one solar-cycle tide-over thanks to the momentum of this whole system is clear if indeed that pulsing momentum can be maintained.
“But we ARE warming Steve, it’s just that the instruments aren’t recording it.”
Weird. The ground station records are totally unreliable, but weather balloons and satellites never have any problems.
Graeme
That reference you linked is excellent – basically summarises in more technical detail my assertion that there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas, though I would take issue with the Venus example that it’s temperature is high due to the CO2 in its atmosphere.
There is some excellent work by Brian Tindley on the role of atmosphere electricity and climate change etc
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/faculty/tinsley.html
But as we well know here, the largest force in the universe has no relevance to anything on earth except for cell phones, computers and reading lights etc.
A review of Tinsley’s latest is published in the next AIG News due out now……
In terms of Callendar’s work, Segalstad has some detailed criticism of Callendar’s theory – and as expected, the use of the Socratic method was employed to create the CO2 dogma.
You look at Venus. No moon or fast rotation to create disturbance to the thick CO2 down the bottom. The layered strata, including cloud strata above, and the strata within the planet. The heat cannot get out.
Extreme compression. Super-rotation of clouds, implying massive overturning of the higher CO2 beneath the clouds so the hot air is funnelled under, recycling the heat. The whole damn planet set up like a you-beaut furnace.
And if greenhouse is relevant the heat is such that its relevant for all three absorption spectra regions. Unlike earth one would THINK. That is probably only relevant at night for one of these.
It wouldn’t matter what the gas was so long as you could maintain the compression and this bizzare set of circumstances. Any other gas. Well it would be very very hot. I don’t know how hot. But very very hot.
“Weird. The ground station records are totally unreliable, but weather balloons and satellites never have any problems.”
SJT,
With ground station records there is strong visual evidence of both bad science and UHI.
The balloon and satellite data are, OTOH, generally accepted by both persuasions and are in all other respects correct.
But one thing is clear, the only scientific paper proposing a causal link between CO2 and “global warming” is the 1938 one by Callendar, and then his work is questioned, so we end up with none.
But this is simply the Socratic dialectic method where common assent deems that CO2 must cause warming – a sort ‘it must be true because no one has disproven it’ type of reasoning.
Well sorry but the facts show otherwise.
However Canberra will steam full ahead to implement the ET scheme.
Sigh Barry – shortwave down, aerosols down, longwave up. Temperature up. Go figure.
You’ve diverted onto climate sensitivity and global averaging 4th power bilge (analysis is at points). Maaattteee – settle the fudge down. Separate topics.
So instead of racing all over the place IMO we should debate whether we have any evidence of “greenhouse radiation” doing its thing. See topic of this post. Clouds, PDO, water vapour yadda yadda next.
Barry when confronted with a decent paper(s) with empirical data matching theory it could simply be telling you what’s it’s telling you. i.e. it checks out
Now if Birdy would STFU and Louis disconnect the prejudice and bullshit philosophy modules we might progress. Pretty difficult to progress here with so many mad bastards running about trying to show who has the biggest dick.
“Pretty difficult to progress here with so many mad bastards running about trying to show who has the biggest dick.”
That would be me.
SJT: ‘Weird. The ground station records are totally unreliable, but weather balloons and satellites never have any problems.’ So will you be the one to tell Kevin that there really is major uncertainty about all this?
We have just got to keep reminding people that only mass-sackings can cure these problems. Since the causal relationship between solar activity is obvious and the causal relationship with CO2 is OBVIOUSLY not there.
So they just don’t want to know. They are liars. They are frauds. They are traitors to their fellow Australians. And every last one of them in the public sector must be sacked for incompetence or malice.
Its not a line ball call.
Graeme
Mass sackings? That means writing out mass warnings according to the anti-dismissal laws. Three times! These are public servants as well – so it’s a big ask.
Be prepared for another period of darkness because we don’t have the numbers to make any difference in terms of policy.
And the ALP know this as well, hence their cynical electioneering in WA, for example.
Hmmmm: Which C-Thru graphics art ruler do we need?
“Mass sackings? That means writing out mass warnings according to the anti-dismissal laws. Three times! ”
We’ll change the legislation. This sort of civilisational suicide attempt is just that serious. Anti-nuclear and against fossil fuels. Thats a body blow to our viability.
Graeme
I work in the mining industry that is regulated by state laws of industrial legislation, under which we have an ever growing federal burdern.
And I see that Gavin has progressed to esoteric commentary – a sort of pensioned Humphrey Appleby waning in his dotage.
Right. Well we will need a severely trimmed down public sector and regulatory environment to escape the energy-capital vortex that we risk falling into. Its going to be tough going getting through the next 30 years of energy stress.
Energy stress is a bit like suddenly finding out that your capital investment resources have been cut in half. And we already depend far too much on foreigners for our investment resources.
In order to that one needs to be in charge of policy and as revolution is not possible under our philosophy, what then?
“SJT: ‘Weird. The ground station records are totally unreliable, but weather balloons and satellites never have any problems.’ So will you be the one to tell Kevin that there really is major uncertainty about all this?”
I’m just repeating back to you guys what I’m hearing here.
luke; Philipona’s paper; his measure of longwave down radiation (LDR) is based on the ist derivative of SB; that is the rate of change of the average of the temperature to the 4th power; I have referred to Pielke’s and Motl’s work on the difference between the average of SB and the 4th power of the average temperature before; I know you will say that Philipona’s study counters this because it is regionally based; but that is the point; you can’t generate a global average from in effect regional LTE’s. But the calculation has more pressing problems;
1 Philipona has chosen the period of 1995-2002; he derives his averages as the rate of change over this period, calculated as the annual variation for each year then deducted from each month; a simple linear regression like this is a form of running mean; running means are fraught with problems; they can give false trends in terms of the actual data; ie; 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 15 , 14, 13, 12, 11 is a sequence of 11 values; including the no 16 in adding the 1st 6 events you average 13.5; after the 15, average 14.6; after 14 average of 14.5 for 6 events; after 13 average of 14.5; the actual values are falling but the moving average is continuing to rise; since I presume each year is treated in discrete fashion, a false trend would be magnified over the full 7 years of data.
2 Philipona uses Hadcrut data anomalies; as you know I’m a fan of base period taint, so to illustrate this here is a graph of Philipona’s data extended from 95-2002 to 95-2005;
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/phil9505.gif
I guess the point here is that the first order curve fit can be of limited analytical value. It appears to be a straight line fit through the data, but the slope, or rate of change of that line, is dependent on the starting point, and in this case the finishing line, which is an arbitary decision. As an additional blemish the MSU temperature data for 95-2005 has only 38% of the warming of HadCrut.
3 Philipona says insolation (I presume, as opposed to an aerosol effect which some of his other papers have dealt with) was decreasing during this period; Fig 2.1 here shows this is incorrect;
http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/virgo/proj_space_virgo#VIRGO_Radiometry
4 Philipona extracts from his LDR figure a cloud-free component so as to be able to isolate the GHG source of LDR; there have been some good comments already on this thread about the difficulty of estimating the thermal effect of atmospheric water vapour but I’ll quote from Judith Curry; “Basically the “clear sky” radiative transfer problem is regarded as pretty much solved in terms of radiative fluxes” by the models. “But seperating cloud from water vapor feedback is rather artificial, they are both totally entertwined.”
SJT
You can’t hear anything here, you can only read what’s here.
That written, I don’t think you understand anything written here. So why bother?
You put the hard yards in before the time comes when the hard times can no longer be kicked down the road. If you have put the effort in and you don’t seem to have made any difference than when the crisis comes you can get a lot of things done quickly.
If people who don’t know better don’t put the effort in early the leftists sieze the momentum and wreck things by an unbelievable degree then spend the next century talking about what a triumph their wrecking ball activities were. Witness the FDR relentless ballsup.
Its all about “Crisis and Leviathan”. These clowns get to change everything for the worse in a crisis and expand the governmental footprint.
We have to reverse this logic and make it a crisis and anti-Leviathan.
You look what we’d have to do to set things right now. We’d have to bring ourselves into surplus by getting rid of taxes on retained earnings. Get rid of taxes on interest earnings. This to beef up our capital investment. We’d have to slash welfare but raise the income tax threshold to give low-paid workers a break. We’d have to raise pensions because those guys are already hurting. But raise the retirement age 1 day every 2. We’d have to take energy production right out of the tax system entirely and give a 50 year guarantee to keep it that way.
To pay for all this we’d have to close down government departments by the bushel. These guys would simply have to stop consuming all our resources and they’d have to start making a contribution. And if they weren’t going to do that at least we could have them contemplating their own self-importance in their bedroom or at centrelink.
“But seperating cloud from water vapor feedback is rather artificial, they are both totally entertwined.”
Especially if neither are based on sampled data.
Graeme
But it’s political reality we have to face.
Cohenite – if you’re using the missus put her on. It’s that obvious.
Mate – complaining about a regression now – far out ! He’s not measuring “insolation” at TOA?
All darting around the undergrowth – if you were FAIR DINKUM you’d be onto Rolf via email and checking out all your worries. Hanging close to your own hobby horses and not networking is mistake #1. To me these papers basically say that greenhouse theory in terms of radiation is working. So that’s dispenses with a whole bunch of b/s.
Anyway hopefully soon there’ll be much more of these data despite frigging idiots like Bird being out there.
A New Network for Monitoring the Radiative Forcing from Greenhouse Gases
Wayne Evans
NWRA
Category: Radiation
http://www.arm.gov/publications/proceedings/conf18/display.php?id=NTM3
A new network is proposed to monitor the radiative forcing of global warming by greenhouse gases. The calibrated spectrum of greenhouse radiation at the surface has been measured for the last 10 years in the Great Lakes area of Ontario, Canada. From these measurements the radiative flux from each greenhouse gas been extracted. A 10-year record exists of the radiative fluxes from carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The increase of these fluxes represent the forcing function of global warming, which is an experimental version of radiative forcing similar to, but different from, the radiative forcing used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is proposed that this radiative forcing be monitored similar to the ozone layer. A world monitoring network should be set up similar to the world total ozone monitoring network of Brewer and Dobson spectrophotometers. The AERI instrument already exists; 12 AERIs, manufactured by ABB BOMEM (a Canadian company), are deployed around the world. The spectral measurements have been processed to extract the radiative forcing fluxes from each greenhouse gas, which is related to the work of Philipona et al. (2007) who measured the total radiative forcing increase due to greenhouse gases in Switzerland with broadband instruments. The methodology will be to process the AERI infrared spectrometer measurements into the downward surface radiation flux in W/m2 from each of the major greenhouse gases. Well calibrated infrared spectral measurements of the downward infrared long-wave radiation have been made routinely by the AERI at three DOE ARM Climate Research Facility (ACRF) sites for more than 7 years with a 12-year record at the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site. These measurements are being processed into longwave radiation fluxes from each of the major greenhouse gases using a methodology already developed for similar measurements at 44° N in the Great Lakes area. Comparisons with surface radiation fluxes calculated from global climate models (GCMs) will be conducted using the methodology already successfully used to compare previous 44° N data with the Canadian and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) GCMs. The uses of the data would be to: 1. Investigate the seasonal and climate regime variations of the surface greenhouse radiation flux. 2. Compare the measurements with climate model simulations of the surface forcing radiation fluxes for each greenhouse gas. 3. Evaluate the reduction of the surface forcing radiation by various types of clouds by measuring the reduction in surface radiation forcing under cloudy conditions. 4. Conduct complementary measurements of surface radiation forcing with radiative trapping measured from space with overpasses of satellites. 5. Monitor the increase with time of the forcing radiation from each gas. This network will provide a new experimental dataset to complement the calculated radiative forcings from climate models currently used for policy determination of safe levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This proposed network will support the accomplishment of DOE’s long-term goal to deliver improved scientific data and models about the potential response of the Earth’s climate to increased greenhouse gas levels, thus assisting policymakers in determining safe levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It will provide the experimental capability to conduct long-term monitoring of increases in individual greenhouse gases without using an intervening climate model and add a new climate observation that potentially could be used to compare changes in the longwave radiation balance of the atmosphere with other climate variables. The analysis of the data from ACRF AERI sites, combined with the existing AERI instruments deployed around the globe, would be a big step toward building a network to monitor radiative forcing. These aspects also emphasize the extreme importance of continuing the DOE ARM AERI measurements for the foreseeable future. Philipona, R, B Durr, C Marty, A Ohmura, and M Wild. 2004. “Radiative forcing-measured at Earth’s surface-corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect.” Geophysical Research Letters 31, L03202, doi:10.029/2003GL018765.
And as always Bird STFU !
And what’s the MSU doing over his region? And do support Judith Curry’s position then?
“That written, I don’t think you understand anything written here. So why bother?”
The irony, it burns.
No SJT. The irony doesn’t burn. Its just that you are an idiot.
Luke:
It’s been raining all day and I reckon its time we gave this lot a going over
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/rain_ahead.shtml
SJT: ‘”SJT: ‘Weird. The ground station records are totally unreliable, but weather balloons and satellites never have any problems.’ So will you be the one to tell Kevin that there really is major uncertainty about all this?”
I’m just repeating back to you guys what I’m hearing here.’
So SJT, do you think there is any uncertainty, and if so should it be reported to Kevin and Penny?
So, SJT, as a scientist, no uncertainty..
by: Luke at August 31, 2008 10:22 PM
A New Network for Monitoring the Radiative Forcing from Greenhouse Gases
Wayne Evans
NWRA
Category: Radiation
It would appear that this type of effort should have b een done long before anybody should be willing to sink trillions of dollars into a problem. Seems a bit strange for the science to be started, long after the conclusion has been arrived at.
Well John – why not wait till the place is cooked and then we’ll be 100% sure.
Speaking of cooking, my wife, between doing the maths for my post, cooked a great baked dinner in our radiant oven. Mmmm!
Downward longwave radiation is not a spontaneous or independent phenomenon. It is due to the partial atmospheric absorption of infrared light being emitted by the earth’s surface. Unless it is more energetic than the source, downward longwave cannot raise the temperature of the source. That would amount to the source heating itself. As always, greenhouse physics is phony physics, forever leading to the same dead end.
Dispite all the rheotoric espoused aroung the world, the IPCC was still standing by that 2.5C or so climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 that will occur well in the future compared to an adult human’s expected lifetime. So, Luke, your >>Well John – why not wait till the place is cooked and then we’ll be 100% sure.<< looks to be as gracious and reasoned as some of GB’s remarks (hyperbole, actually).
spangled drongo,
I thought you might be being ironic but was not sure. But the naive innocence of your response was funny. Humor is often misunderstood.
Pittman. They don’t have any evidence for that 2.5 C JIVE. Thats no exaggeration. They don’t. They don’t have any evidence for .5. Or 2.5 or anything of the sort. They are just a UN scandal.
“Downward longwave radiation is not a spontaneous or independent phenomenon. It is due to the partial atmospheric absorption of infrared light being emitted by the earth’s surface. Unless it is more energetic than the source, downward longwave cannot raise the temperature of the source. That would amount to the source heating itself.”
Thats as good an explanation as any. Could it slow the cooling overnight? So it cannot warm the surface. But can it raise the average temperature by slowing the cooling rate overnight?
“But it’s political reality we have to face.”
I think its just education, education, education, when you cannot do anything until such time as can do something. These guys are determined to wreck everything. Even when it is snowing in Picton if these guys aren’t sacked they’ll be rewriting history and abusing climate rationalists. So the purpose has to be wider than merely sacking these irrational lunatics. Since otherwise is would be like these guys throwing tennis balls at the ground and sensible people having to catch each one of them.
We have the good times and we build up this parasitical overhead. But we cannot afford to carry these people since the bad times show up sooner or later and in this case sooner.
Guys like Luke et al and various beloved Professors have to get themselves proper jobs. Jobs of the sort they are capable of. Some of the younger blokes could probably retrain as plumbers or something. But no alarmist can ever be a scientist. Thats just sucking up the oxygen for everyone else. We could get 5 times the results for one fifth the price if we just got rid of the dead wood.
“if you were FAIR DINKUM you’d be onto Rolf via email and checking out all your worries.
There are no worries about it. Its just a silly study. What is all this gibber you are quoting Luke? This ARM. This is not where you work is it?
Imagine being a CO2-bedwetter? Such a thing to be worried about. If there was an effect it would amount to nothing more than taking the edge off a frosty morning.
Cohenite Thanks for the corrections to The Swartz paper I had missed them. As you say the numbers are still lower than IPP he also makes reference to 3 other determinations which place the effect of doubling CO2 between 0.29 to 0.65 deg C which is even lower.
Jan “interpretation is faulty” probably a better way of putting it but at the end of the day the published data is still wrong.
Steve a later post by luke identifies some of the work being done along the lines you suggest. Up to now trying to get a fine enough resolution to separate the frequencies associated with the different gasses then screening out the broad band from the aerosols has been a problem. They seem to be getting close to resolving this but I have not seen any published data, it is still in the proposal stage, and as we all know in this subject one needs several years of data. So it will be a while. Once again don’t confuse W/m2 with temperature there are some massive storehouses of energy which take a long time to react so you can not always relate two things which appear to be happening at the same time. As we have said so many times correlation does not prove causation.
Luke I am sorry but there is no theory on the side of AGW there is some pseudo theory based on empirical data but that is all assumptions and circular logic. Look if I write a computer program which says 2+2=5 then I ask my computer to solve 2+2 it will tell me 5 . How can I use this as proof that 2+2=5. This is precisely what IPCC are doing. Please point me to a Physics paper which uses the classical laws of radiation physics to support the CO2 concentration V’s temperature dogma proposed by IPCC show me the justification of Delta(F) = 5.35 ln(C/Co).
So what empirical data do you have, ice core data, I have shown 3 totally different examples of how this data is substantially flawed. Temperature data, GISS data is proven to be contaminated there is no correlation between CO2 and RSS or UAH. If you want correlation data check out Joe D’Aleo’s comparison for North American temperature verses CO2, solar irradiance and PDO and AMO. The ocean currents have it by a country mile. There has been no rise in lower troposphere temperatures as predicted by IPCC. Temperatures have been going down for the past 8 years , dramatically in the last 2. There has been zero increase in the Antarctic continental average temperature for 40 years. This is evidence greenhouse gasses are doing their thing? At least you can cut and paste.
Well GB, that is why I find the Luke post so interesting. It indicates a substantive effort to actually do some science about GHG’s. It has been awhile since I looked at the AR4. Perhaps you could tell wherre the section on delta T that they use to compute climate sensitivity in WG is located. I keep coming back to the comment, I believe it was Christy about the assumption that the climate was in equilibrium between two measurements of global temperature, and that is how they got it. However, this would then become problematic, if one then either said that there was warming in the pipe, or that CO2 magnified the H2O effect. Whether it is circular, or two unknowns with one relationship, or that the delta Temperature was just the first step, and other work was used, I can’t remember. But am curious.
cohenite: how about your kindly wife give’s us her own opinion re AGW next post just for a change
and no coaching from the side hey
John this is one of my bigest problems with 4AR there is nothing relating to the justification or derivation of their formula. I would have thought the physics deserved a complete chapter but nowhere does it even get an honourable mention. You have to go to other papers by Christopher Monckton or Vincent Grey to get the IPCC theory which appeared in previous AR’s. If you want the specific references I can dig them out.
“John this is one of my bigest problems with 4AR there is nothing relating to the justification or derivation of their formula. I would have thought the physics deserved a complete chapter but nowhere does it even get an honourable mention. You have to go to other papers by Christopher Monckton or Vincent Grey to get the IPCC theory which appeared in previous AR’s. If you want the specific references I can dig them out.”
If they included every piece of information they referred to, the 4AR would be ten thousand pages. What they do is they give you references to the papers that contain the more detailed information. That’s standard academic practice.
Barry Moore – spare me the tedious diversions. Try to keep on a subject and not describe the universe with 3 examples. And beware of the ides of cycles. Perhaps the PDO doesn’t really exist? Can you predict it? If D’Aleo is any good – get out the blogosphere and get published. Here’s how the shell game works http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/exclamation-points/ Cycles stories are a dime a dozen.
You’ve just had the 5th warmest July on record in a solar minimum and La Nina, with PDO changing. And near a record Arctic melt. Don’t pull my leg mate.
And Cohenite – we want to see Mrs Cohenite on the blog with her maths and physics degree. We knew you were too good. Will improve our manners.
“spare me the tedious diversions” darn it Luke and I thought I was learning something from you. You are the master of tedious diversions. Talking of which I gave you an 8 year and a 40 year time span you give me 1 month, now who is pulling who’s leg. Oh and where is that Physics paper I asked for. For once put your money where your mouth is mate.
“I suggested our satellite could be the moon…” gavin
Thanks. How strange that with satellites we can’t measure the energy in and the energy out of the earth?
Sorry – was trying to on the single topic of backradiation for a short while. Excuse moi.
Sent papers to you via Jen !
Has it ever gotten cold enough on earth for CO2 to liquify out of the atmosphere?
A Mrs Cohenite thread Jen?
could be good
“Has it ever gotten cold enough on earth for CO2 to liquify out of the atmosphere?”
Carbon effectively leaves the biosphere via “carbon rain” in the oceans.
“Well GB, that is why I find the Luke post so interesting.” etc etc etc blah blah blah
No thats all bullshit mate. You’ve really lost the plot. And the rest of your comments are an indication that you are simply not able to sort out the important from the trivial. There is a certain heirachy to matters. You could throw out 90% of stats and it would not be missed. And you might use the remaining ten % one-fifth as often and it wouldn’t impact that much on humanity.
Now this is not to say that statistics OUGHT NOT be useful. Its not statistics that lie. Its the people using it that lie. Statistics per se never lie. Its just that the emphasis on statistics has lead to a bogus heirachy being set up about it.
I’d put reasoning and set theory way above statistics. We never throw any tool away. But it would be good if you really dumb buggers could be taught to think in terms of Venn diagrams. So at least you could prioritise a little bit. Statistics-boy-101 isn’t going anywhere if he is fundamentally an idiot.
It must be an interesting matter of history how this statistics-idolatry got going. Wherein an obvious misfit and committed irrationalist like Lambert is actually taken seriously. There must be a real history as to how this inversion of the proper usage of cognitive tools came about.
Every time I’ve had to learn statistics its like starting from the beginning all over again. Its easy stuff, but hard to retain. And one of the reasons why its hard to retain is that most of it isn’t all that important. Like painting innovations after Leonardo and Michaelangelo. Its mining a pretty thin vein and it only really becomes famously important at the end of the process. When you have done all the hard yards getting your data right and working out all the inductive angles.
I always bring in the Master builder analogy. He needs many tools to make the house. Mostly he needs his blueprint and his brains. He never throws any tools away. But statistics is like the final coat of paint. Or the early coat of paint on the micronised model or the drawing of the house you intend to build.
But all these taxeating statistics-boy 101 types leap write in under a position of cluelessness and make themselves feel like experts by going at it with the turgid statistics esoterica and they just make fools of themselves.
Its the same in economics unfortunately. Most of the bigshots in the famous universities ought to be research assistance for the neglected Austrian school. But they wind up running things and making a complete hash of it.
Good point Graeme I had forgotten about that, of course CO2 at atmospheric pressure goes directly from gas to solid but in the oceans at depth the pressure causes the CO2 to liquefy thus it rains as Graeme said and will actually pool at the bottom of the ocean, this is one of the hair brained ideas for CO2 sequestration, of course no one ever calculates the energy required to compress the CO2 and transport it to the ocean.
“And beware of the ides of cycles….”
What a dope. Climate and weather are ALL ABOUT CYCLES. Like it or not THAT IS the subject matter. Night and day. The seasons. The oceanic momentums, the revolving planets lining up to disturb solar strata leading to the release of more than normal thermal energy and solar winds.
This is the subject we are engaged in.
The good thing is is that two hours flight north of Sydney and the next “little ice age” which will probably be known as the “Landscheidt minimum” is entirely neutralized for those who make the trip.
Oh I luv that GB post on stats!
“He needs many tools to make the house” however is way off.
My father started building houses, schools and a hospital after the war with several hand saws, a claw hammer, a couple of chisles, a rasp, a folding rule and very little else.
He had to save up for those cast steel hand planes and belly buster hand drill, also the floor and sash clamps. Most of these items were rushed into manufacture as the building boom gained momentum.
Well, GB, the interest is this:
1.) the >>A New Network for Monitoring the Radiative Forcing from Greenhouse Gases
Wayne Evans
NWRA
Category: Radiation<<
2.)Philipona et al 2005 with Sensitivity values [Philipona et al., 2004] of 0.56 and 1.73 W m2 at 500 respectively 3000 meters a.s.l., for a 0.1 g m3 change of absolute humidity at the surface (gradual decrease assumed in the first 4 km), allow to subtract the water vapor forcing from LDRcf,Ts, and hence isolate the part that is just due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
3.) Judith Curry comment about water vapor and the assumption “a gradual decrease ASSUMED in the first 4km). Note the incorrect statement to isolate the part that is just due to anthropgogenic greenhouse gases assumes that naturally occuring CO2, methane, and others, including aersosols is quantified.
4.) Now that temperatures have fallen worldwide, it may be possible to verfify or falsify Philipona approach. In fact the falsification could be that if we did totally different sensitivities for different temperatures 1998-2000 vs 2007-2009, showing that either the method
is wrong or the assumptions are. Of course the point being CO2 has increased in the 2007-2009 period compared to the 1998-2000 period. It may well show that the regional approach for determiing a world average phenomena cannot work. Or it may show that cycles are even more important than thought.
Get the data first. Make conclusions afterwards.
Gbird and Barry,
Thanks. Ouch! I learned something new. I meant, though, does CO2 ever condense out of the atmosphere at the south pole? Or has it in the past?
Since it is tomorrow where you guys live, what is the future like?
Steve CO2 sublimes at -78 deg C so it would be possible to snow CO2 below that temp but at 380 ppm its partial pressure is pretty low so it would have to be a lot colder, It liquifies at -57 deg C at 5.1 atmos.
Thanks Barry.
Gavin,
“”Quack! Quack!””
Rubber Duck??
Barry Moore,
“…of course CO2 at atmospheric pressure goes directly from gas to solid but in the oceans at depth the pressure causes the CO2 to liquefy thus it rains as Graeme said and will actually pool at the bottom of the ocean,…”
Pool at the bottom of the ocean??
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050104114942.htm
I don’t pretend to be able to calculate the densities involved, but, this article and pictures would indicate that there are conditions where liquid CO2 does NOT pool at the bottom of the ocean.
just filing this here
http://ecomythsmith.blogspot.com/2008/09/correlation-is-not-causation.html
There is a fundamental difference between correlation, two or more things appearing together, and causation, item A causing item B to occur. As shown by Levitt and Dubner, there are many examples in public policy where items correlate but there is no causative relationship between the variables despite common acceptance that there must be a relationship, such as homes with books in them and academic achievement (correlation but no causation).
But surely in science, causation can be identified, related mathematically and there can be no confusion between correlation and causation: right? Well, yes — except where the science does not show a causative relationship, one can not be demonstrated in the language of science (mathematics) and indeed, what we have is not causation, but correlation.
Examples abound in environmentalism, but the most commonly asserted relationship that is not causative is that between temperature increase and anthropogenic greenhouse gasses: the whole theory of AGW rests on the presumption that there is indeed a causative relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and temperature change.
Well, that’s easy, everyone knows that there is scientific consensus on this. O.K., if that’s the case, then citing a refereed journal publication that shows this causative relationship should be simple. Unless of course, there isn’t one. Which is the gist of a series of posts by Jennifer Marohasy who posted a request on a couple of blogs requesting citations of research papers that show a causative basis for AGW.
There are of course the voluminous reports from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with their findings and theories on popular Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory. The content of these reports, endorsed by governments around the world, have been repeated over and over, for example, in the recent influential report by economist Ross Garnaut to the Australian government.
It is apparent, however, that a body of science published in peer-review journals, establishing a causal link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and warming and quantifying the extent of this warming, is lacking but would be expected to exist to support popular AGW theory.
Asserting that a relationship exists is not the same as substantiating one. The IPCC was not established to see if AGW exists: its mandate is to examine what is to be done about AGW — a causative relationship is presumptive within the IPCC mandate.
Again, if something is so basic and so clear, providing a concise citation for supportive documentation should not be that taxing.
Posted by L Graham Smith at 9:09 AM|Permalink
“There is a fundamental difference between correlation, two or more things appearing together, and causation, item A causing item B to occur. As shown by Levitt and Dubner, there are many examples in public policy where items correlate but there is no causative relationship between the variables despite common acceptance that there must be a relationship, such as homes with books in them and academic achievement (correlation but no causation).”
Does he really think scientists are that stupid? Jennifer, you are a scientist. Are scientists that stupid?
Barry and Graeme.
I am very curious about your news that CO2 rains at the ocean bottoms and pools on the floor.
Can you please pass on your references so that I can pursue my investigation of these phenomena?
There is an advert available here
http://www.real-debt-elimination.com/images/IPCC_oven.jpg
which demonstrates a way of using the greenhouse gas effect as described by the IPCC.
Incidentally, having ploughed through most of the above, the idea of storing CO2 gets occasional mention, but I think that very few people who suggest this have ever thought about the actual magnitude of the problem.
To remove one part per million from the atmosphere requires that 5.15 BILLION tonnes of CO2 be stored somehow. Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but to me that’s a LOT of gas/liquid/solid CO2. In fact I worked out the volume it would occupy as dry ice and got 3.7 cubic kilometres, not including all of the refrigeration plant, storage buildings, power stations etc. that would also be needed. Incidentally, that’s almost exactly the volume of humanity on the Earth!?
Weird!
“which demonstrates a way of using the greenhouse gas effect as described by the IPCC.”
The only proble is, it doesn’t. What the diagram illustrates is sheer, bloody minded, ignorance.
No no SJT. This is just you being an idiot again.
Carbon rain is just dead organic material. Its not compressed CO2. Google it. And stop being an asswipe just because you thought you caught Barry out on a minor technicality.
Graeme Bird.
Barry’s words were “Good point Graeme I had forgotten about that, of course CO2 at atmospheric pressure goes directly from gas to solid but in the oceans at depth the pressure causes the CO2 to liquefy thus it rains as Graeme said and will actually pool at the bottom of the ocean”.
What would a third party reader of this think?
Seriously?
They would think you were an asswipe for trying to pick him up on a minor point when you yourself are a science incompetent who, by his own admission, has no evidence for the malicious fraud he is pushing.
You see while you might think that science can be evidence-free, and can exist on nit-picking opponents I assure you this is not the case and you have cocked up your epistemology. On with the dunce cap and head to the back of the class.
If CO2 does not pool at the bottom of the ocean I was badly misinformed by a lecturer ( multidisciplined Ph.D.) at our university who was very pro IPCC and informed us during his lecture that this was a serious consideration for sequestering CO2 which I think I mentioned. As I said I only gave it a passing thought and I admit I did not check it out but I thought this guy knew what he was talking about obviously like all AGW fanatics he was full of hot air.
Barry,
carbon dioxide coming up from beneath the crust has been known to be trapped under methane hydrate caps, but its presence in the described example is not ‘stable’ as the CO2 is lighter than water:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060830-carbon-lakes.html
Perhaps this is what your lecturer was referring to?
The ‘raining’ of liquid CO2 from ocean water to the floor is not described as far as I know.
And once again, I appreciate that we can engage sensibly. Thankyou for the opportunity for real conversation.
Graeme Bird, minor points make all the difference. You can be as rabidly ad hom as you like, but it’s not going to change what is science and what isn’t, in spite of your one-man-band attempt to rewrite the entire catalogue of scientific understanding.
Keep it all up though – there are countless people reading your efforts and laughing themselves senseless. You should charge admission.
I haven’t used an ad hom even once you filthy jerk. Its you that was using ad hom with just about every step you took. Alternating with its twin brother argument-from-mindless consensus and alleged authority.
You twit. You dumbass. You blockhead. You donkey. Note there has been not one ad hom offered in this post you stupid pompous git you cannot even get THAT right.
These are INSULTS.
Got it slowpoke?
INSULTS!!!!!!!!!
Insults.
Do you understand yet or are you still wrinkling your forehead like a four year old inbreed?
Insults are not ad homenim arguments. Ad homenim arguments are what the science fraud side of the argument specialise in.
Ad homs are something else entire. They are what your crowd practices incessantly.
I seem to have been caught in the censorship net, because I have tried to respond to Bird on three threads, each on a number of occasions, without my posts appearing.
On the off-chance that it is happening because of the inclusion of urls, I will simply say to Bird: read the references above, and if you need further evidence ask me at Deltoid where I have no difficulty posting material.