THREE Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.
The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.
“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.
“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.
“Climate researchers have long been aware that ENSO events influence global temperature, for example causing a high temperature spike in 1998 and a subsequent fall as conditions moved to La Niña. It is also well known that volcanic activity has a cooling influence, and as is well documented by the effects of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption.
The new paper draws these two strands of climate control together and shows, by demonstrating a strong relationship between the Southern Oscillation and lower-atmospheric temperature, that ENSO has been a major temperature influence since continuous measurement of lower-atmospheric temperature first began in 1958.
According to the three researchers, ENSO-related warming during El Niño conditions is caused by a stronger Hadley Cell circulation moving warm tropical air into the mid-latitudes. During La Niña conditions the Pacific Ocean is cooler and the Walker circulation, west to east in the upper atmosphere along the equator, dominates.
“When climate models failed to retrospectively produce the temperatures since 1950 the modellers added some estimated influences of carbon dioxide to make up the shortfall,” says McLean.
“The IPCC acknowledges in its 4th Assessment Report that ENSO conditions cannot be predicted more than about 12 months ahead, so the output of climate models that could not predict ENSO conditions were being compared to temperatures during a period that was dominated by those influences. It’s no wonder that model outputs have been so inaccurate, and it is clear that future modelling must incorporate the ENSO effect if it is to be meaningful.”
Bob Carter, one of four scientists who has recently questioned the justification for the proposed Australian emissions trading scheme, says that this paper has significant consequences for public climate policy.
“The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes.”
“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”
*****************
Notes and Links
McLean, J. D., C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter (2009), Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D14104, doi:10.1029/2008JD011637.
Excerpted Abstract of the Paper appearing in the Journal of Geophysical Research:
Time series for the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and global tropospheric temperature anomalies (GTTA) are compared for the 1958−2008 period. GTTA are represented by data from satellite microwave sensing units (MSU) for the period 1980–2008 and from radiosondes (RATPAC) for 1958–2008. After the removal from the data set of short periods of temperature perturbation that relate to near-equator volcanic eruption, we use derivatives to document the presence of a 5- to 7-month delayed close relationship between SOI and GTTA. Change in SOI accounts for 72% of the variance in GTTA for the 29-year-long MSU record and 68% of the variance in GTTA for the longer 50-year RATPAC record. Because El Niño−Southern Oscillation is known to exercise a particularly strong influence in the tropics, we also compared the SOI with tropical temperature anomalies between 20°S and 20°N. The results showed that SOI accounted for 81% of the variance in tropospheric temperature anomalies in the tropics. Overall the results suggest that the Southern Oscillation exercises a consistently dominant influence on mean global temperature, with a maximum effect in the tropics, except for periods when equatorial volcanism causes ad hoc cooling. That mean global tropospheric temperature has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord with the SOI of 5–7 months earlier shows the potential of natural forcing mechanisms to account for most of the temperature variation.
Received 16 December 2008; accepted 14 May 2009; published 23 July 2009. [End Abstract Excerpt]
via Climate Depot: http://climatedepot.com/a/2117/PeerReviewed-Study-Rocks-Climate-Debate-Nature-not-man-responsible-for-recent-global-warminglittle-or-none-of-late-20th-century-warming-and-cooling-can-be-attributed-to-humans Thanks Marc!
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Well not bad at all – the sceptics finally got into print – somewhere proper – no more E&E – no more Journal Forecasting.
That’s the spirit !
What happened to the global conspiracy that prevents such things. And now perhaps in the calm of hindsight – maybe Spencer just wasn’t up to the standards of these guys in his recent difficulty to get published (LOL)
Anyway – ya gotta respect them for having a go – and so I tips my hat !
Coho & Stocksy – take note – no more excuses.
But alas the boys haven’t kept up. The “Great Flippo” should have occurred in the 1960s – it was actually the greenhouse response that delayed the event to the 70s.
Read it and weep boys. Shot up on the starting grid.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/88Annual/techprogram/paper_133611.htm
Meehl, G.A., A. Hu, and B.D. Santer, 2009: The mid-1970s climate shift in the Pacific and the relative roles of forced versus inherent decadal variability J. Climate, in press.
hahahahahahahaha
Sorry – the PDO influence delayed the temperature rise
Well, this is certainly a far more credibly substantiated explanation for 80% of the warming than the IPCC’s infamous “90% certainty level” that five in-house nobodies plucked out of their backside.
Now lets just see, Australia produces 1% of CO2 emissions and total emmissions explain only 20% of past warming, and therefore 80% of the warming projections are wrong. And our livestock methane emissions have not changed for more than a century, so castrating the economy with an emmissions trading scheme will achieve???? Absolute jack $hit, thats what.
So tell us, Luke, how did Meehl incorporate Enso induced changes in cloud cover which may have had a direct impact on oceanic retained insolation, completely independent of atmospheric forcing? You do accept, I hope, that the response of the much greater oceanic mass could easily dwarf the forcing response of the lesser atmospheric mass, don’t you?
Hmmm Luke wisdom “We analyze an un-forced control run from a global coupled climate model as well as 20th century simulations” trumps study of actual data. How much of the 79 Billion (http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=104031&cat=12) are you getting to peddle this crap?
I think what he did might be a tad advanced for you.
Woefully silly comment DHMO – both papers are using actual data and analysing it with statistics, one also with models. Tell us when you have read both and stop arm waving. Try to make at least a serious comment.
”
Well, this is certainly a far more credibly substantiated explanation for 80% of the warming than the IPCC’s infamous “90% certainty level” that five in-house nobodies plucked out of their backside.”
What does it explain, Ian? It introduces a correlation, but no explanation for anything. AGW has a correlation and it has a physical basis.
Actually SJT, co2 doesnt even have a very good correlation, and its physical basis whilst demonstrated in the lab, has not been demonstrated in the real world and relies on unlikely positive feedback effects.
“When climate models failed to retrospectively produce the temperatures since 1950 the modellers added some estimated influences of carbon dioxide to make up the shortfall,” says McLean.”
Funny enough, I was just reading on that stuff today. I was reading an excerpt from the IPCC last night and they were quoting a paper from Hansen with Schmidt as a co-author. I wondered why they were so bent on quoting an astronomer and a mathematician who program computer models. I went looking for something and I came across a lot of references to Houghton et al. I knew Houghton was related to the IPCC as a big wig ( more like a Big Mick) so I started to trace his lineage, so to speak.
As I tried to find Houghton’s background, I became more frustrated. A similar thing happened while searching Gavin Schmidt who doesn’t list his curriculam vitae at NASA, you have to dig for it. Hansen has no problem telling you he’s an astronomer but Schmidt seems to have problems telling you he’s just a mathematician. Anyway, Houghton was listed as an atmospheric physicist, a term I took to be a generality, like Schmidt calling himself a climatologist. In North America, as far as I know, there is no degree program in atmospheric physics.
Out of desperation, I pressed the link to atmospheric physicist and here’s what it said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_physics
“Atmospheric physicists attempt to model Earth’s atmosphere and the atmospheres of the other planets using fluid flow equations, chemical models, radiation balancing, and energy transfer processes in the atmosphere…”
Bingo!! So Hougton, who co-chairs IPCC reviews, and who the IPCC quote liberally, is a climate modeler who once taught at Oxford in the UK. He’s also connected to the Hadley Centre. Now things are begining to make sense. The IPCC has been stacked from the get go by climate modelers and that’s why they have pursued virtual science a la climate models. It also explains why the British government latches onto every word spoken by someone like Houghton. He’s not only Houghton, he’s ‘SIR’ John Theodore Houghton and he’s from Oxford, don’t you know. Oxford Dons seem to turn British politicians into babbling fools with their toffey-nosed rhetoric. Even the current socialist regime are tripping over themselves to get in line.
I found this comment from Houghton interesting, if not typical:
“I remember in 1990 when the first IPCC report came out, the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher showed a lot of interest… one of the cabinet ministers asked me, “When’s all this going to happen?” I replied that in 20 or 30 years we can expect to see some large effects”.
Hey…SIR John…it’s 20 years later, and guess what? The changes we are seeing are going the other way. Hey, James Hansen, or should I call you SIR James, the changes you predicted 20 years ago are going the other way. Hey, Gavin Schmidt…aw never mind, you’re just a mathematician.
Well Toby – proof of CO2 ? – watch the candle at 1′ 38″
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610#play/all/uploads-all/2/D6Un69RMNSw
and you might ask yourself what’s up with all watts stuff too at 4′ 30″ onwards
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610#play/all/uploads-all/0/dcxVwEfq4bM
SJT “AGW has a correlation and it has a physical basis”.
I’m still waiting for you to explain that basis. You have two possible hypotheses: the blanket effect trapping IR or the surface radiating on the surface model. Neither one is a physical basis since neither one has been observed or proved.
With respect to the first, Craig Bohren, a physicist and a meteorologist, claimed it is at best a metaphor and at worst just plain silly. The only place CO2 has been observed absorbing IR is in a laboratory environment using high densities of CO2. From there, some clown has tried to extrapolate to the atmosphere where densities are as low as 38 molecules of CO2 per 100,000 molecules of air.
The second hypothesis is a model in which the atmosphere is regarded as a surface radiating against another surface, the Earth’s surface. It’s a highly controversial theory based entirely on a mathematical model. G&T have tried in vain to point out that the model is far too simplified to have any meaning. AGW advocates are too busy ad homming them to listen. Arthur Smith wrote a rebuttal that did not even adequately rebut one of many points made by G&T. The rebuttal leaped to a conclusion that CO2 must be causing the unexplained warming because nothing else accounts for it. Smith failed to even address the process of how CDO2 causes warming.
Let’s see your physical basis.
Gordon – don’t make me laugh – you DENIED this would happen with CO2 – just like you DENIED back radiation existed – you’re a chronic DENIER and CROOK ! DENY DENY DENY – if you can’t – just make shit up
we’re back to the 1900s in temps are we !!!
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1800
hahahahahahahahaha – gee you do rant on matey
Gordo – you’re bottom trawling – not even Spencer or Lindzen agree with you. Not even Coho I reckon.
Really, “no explanation” indeed, SJT. Put some gloves on if you are intent on jerking people about, matey. The only way the climate muddlers can get a correlation with reality is by ignoring all other factors.
So please do tell us, bright boy, what portion of the past half century of recorded temperature variation does the IPCC assign to Solar, ENSO, PDO and Volcanic impacts?
And out of the remainder, bright boy, what portion do they assign to urban heat islands, water vapour, cloud cover, landuse change, irrigation areas, changes in crop growth cycles and, oh yes, that little CO2 thingy?
And out of that little CO2 thingy, bright boy, what portion of it was human induced and what was entirely natural?
What, none at all? None of the above? Surely the sleazy IPCC boofogencia wouldn’t be so brazen as to claim that atmospheric forcing is responsible for the lot, would they?
toby “….co2 doesnt even have a very good correlation, and its physical basis whilst demonstrated in the lab, has not been demonstrated in the real world and relies on unlikely positive feedback effects”.
Regarding positive feedback…it not only unlikely, it’s impossible. Positive feedback requires an amplification. The engineer, Jeffrey Glassman, tried to explain that in a debate with Gavin Schmidt, who tried to explain feedback with a mathematical equation. He got the equation wrong. Of course, Schmidt gets in a huff when he’s contradicted and did not reply to Glassman, giving the impression that, as a mathematician, he’s way in over his head when it comes to talking real physics. He wisely backed out of a debate with Richard Lindzen as well, but his cohort at realclimate, Stefan Rahmstorf, did not, and got his butt kicked.
Lamers try to use solar radiation as the amplifier but a moments thought reveals the problem with that idea. For one, solar radiation is a constant and does not increase on demand. For another, the IR radiated from the surface is done at a loss of energy at the surface and there are further losses going through the atmosphere. The AGW theory treats the atmosphere as if it has no resistance to heat flow. Ultimately, any back-radiated energy must make up losses at the surface that solar radiation is already maintaining. There would have to be some other mechanism involved to raise surface temperature in order for positive feedback to come into effect.
I don’t know where the AGW crowd got the notion that back-radiated energy could be summed with solar radiation to produce a surface that is hotter than the surface temperature produced by solar radiation. They treated the atmosphere as an ideal medium and completely disregarded losses. Modelers should get off their high horses and consult with climate scientists who have practical experience rather than use equations in a literal sense. Spencer and Lindzen have been trying to tell modelers that their feedback signs are reversed, but they wont listen.
Luke “Gordon – don’t make me laugh….”
In Scotland they say, “dinnae make me laugh sae hearty or you’ll tear my frock”
I can always tell when I’m getting through to you by the hysterical oubursts. Here…I’ll send you the price of a pint of Fosters so you can pee down your leg. At least you’ll have a moment’s enjoyment before it gets cold.
Reading the abstract and the statements by the authors is decidedly at odds. According to the abstract, the paper is about the variance in the tropospheric temperature anomalies, not about longer-term trends. It is utterly unsurprising that ENSO events expressed by SOI are correlated with global measures of temperature: the abnormally high temperature of 1998 was connected with the extreme 1997-1998 El Nino, and the past two years of cool temperatures have been mainly caused by a moderately strong La Nina. The abstract even says at the end:
“That mean global tropospheric temperature has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord with the SOI of 5–7 months earlier shows the potential of natural forcing mechanisms to account for most of the temperature variation.”
There is no mention in the abstract — it will be interesting to read the actual paper — about the underlying trend that has caused the 1980s to be warmer than the 1970s, the 1990s to be warmer than the 1980s, and the past decade to be warmer than the 1990s — irregardless of skeptical bleating about a nonexistent “cooling trend” which really amounts to a nonscientific connect-the-dots analysis.
Furthermore, it is also unsurprising when a group of climate change skeptics (Mclean has previously published in Energy and Environment) congregate to write a paper and come up with one that is at considerable odds with current scientific understanding of climate change. When one examines the other co-authors of de Freitas and Carter, like Richard Lindzen, the level of unsurprise rises to higher levels.
This paper has not entered the scientific discourse. The skeptics will tout it widely as definitive. Within months the scientific community will show that the statements of the authors are groundless and the paper is a trivial exercise. But the damage will have been done and the purpose will have been served.
Gordon, I think you are being willfully misleading. I have previously asked you, in other threads at this site, to clarify for me the alleged quotes from “Craig Bohren” (who is, I assume, one half of the duo Craig Bohren and E. Clothiaux, authors of the book Fundamentals of Atmospheric Radiation). I assume also that you refer to content of Chapter One, which can be plundered from the Net for free. What they write there (e.g., p.37) is this (here we go again): analogies to “blankets” are incorrect, because blankets act to suppress convection (just as a greenhouse suppresses convection). However, saying that “the atmosphere does not absorb like a blanket” does not rule out GW! They are contrasting this explanation of “global warming” (a process whose reality they do not explicitly refute) with an alternative explanation, which they prefer, in terms of increased emissivity of the atmosphere (which is what you get when you add CO2, as CO2 has non-zero emissivity, at infrared wavelengths). As soon as you- and other contrarians- come up with an alternative explanation for the observations taken as consistent with increased GHGs- viz., stratospheric cooling, changes in the spectral signature of outgoing LWR, etc., and are able to explain the changes quantitatively- then I’m sure we’ll be attentive. Until then, I’m sure many of us would appreciate your not muddying the waters around the whole issue with selective quotes from the likes of Bohren/Clothiuax.
cheers
OK, I read the paper. They said that SOI and volcanoes explain a lot of the global temperature variation. No surprises there. In fact their punchline is: The findings presented here are consistent with the Southern Oscillation being a major driver of temperature anomalies, not only in the tropics but also on a global scale.. What they don’t do anything to disprove is the proposition that GHG are responsible for a rising trend. This has nothing to do with explaining fluctuations.
Anthropogenic Global Warming…. Is it a Hypothesis or atmospheric Homeopathy?
… at 38 molecules of CO2 per 100 000 molecules of air, of which only 1 CO2 molecule is probably Anthropogenic… I would consider it the latter 🙂
As for the above paper by De Freitas, McLean and Carter. It is refreshing to see good science being done properly.
Here’s a link to the “science” of Homeopathy.
I was wondering what the point of the paper was. There isn’t one. It will, however, be paraded around the blogosphere as proof that AGW has been falisified.
Nick; what rising trend?
http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1650
Luke says; “Sorry – the PDO influence delayed the temperature rise” Yeah, I got mixed up with Meehl to as my comment below from a prior thread shows;
“I just relooked at the Meehl mess and realised I misread it; it really is a Keenlyside clone writ large and stupid; Meehl says;
“Thus this inherent decadal variability delayed to the 1970s what would have been a forced climate shift in the 1960s”
My mistake was reading that to mean that GHGs extended what would have been a naturally short -ve PDO; what Meehl is really saying is that despite the veneer of natural variability, if it wasn’t for the [inherent] natural variability dominating [or in Keenlyside terminology ‘masking’] the GHG forcing the GHG forcing would have produced the GPCS much earlier; that is, if everything wasn’t behaving naturally then things would be unnatural due to AGW. Seriously luke, tell me that is not what is meant by Meehl.”
Meehl is a disgrace luke; it’s just AU [alternative universe] junk.
“Nick; what rising trend?”
What a stupid paper. Did some space aliens beam a laser ray over the earth to produce his ‘break’. The earth was cooling, then there was a massive, invisible laser beam that bumped up the temperature, then it started cooling again. If he has no physical explanation for his break, then his paper is totally pointless.
This paper explains one of the oscillatory components in the temperature record. The Meehl and Arblaster paper on sunspots explains another oscillatory component in the temperature record. If we accept their models, we can make a better calculation of the underlying trend.
Has anyone published, for peer review, a model of the last 50 or 100 years of temperature records with the effects of ENSO and sunspot cycles removed in accordance with these models?
Has anyone examined whether the amplitude of the SOI has changed over the 50 years of the study period?
De Freitas refers to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that makes El Nino more likely and La Nina less likely. What caused the 1976 climate shift?
Coho, they looked at the period from 1950-2008. And even though they were looking at tropical tropospheric temperatures, which required cobbling together satellite readings with a RATPAC (ever heard of it?) index from radiosondes for pre-1980 to get their “GTTA”, there is still a clear uptrend over that period. But they got rid of that quick enough. They actually analysed year-to-year differences, which converts any trend to a constant, which of course then doesn’t show up in the correlations they performed. So they haven’t, and can’t disprove any trend.
Luke – Santer is an AGW alarmist that works backwards from the answer to find the question – e.g. his greenhouse fingerprint paper response to Douglass et al used data that stopped in 1999, despite data up to 2008 being available, so Santer gets shot down by up to date data. The fingerprint of greenhouse warming isn’t resolved in favour of AGW.
The McLean et al paper adds to the likes of the 3 Tsonis et al papers demostrating natural variability drives temperature shifts, what drives the Earth’s underlying temperature is another question not resolved in favour of AGW, but heat is shifted around the clmate system by natural factors.
Lindzen has also joined the GRL club today:
http://climateresearchnews.com/2009/07/new-paper-demonstrates-low-climate-sensitivity-and-negative-feedbacks/
Thx for the utube links Luke, it is interesting to see the candle experiment and how co2 absorbs the heat…but that doesnt change the fact the co2 is logarithmic in effect and has a decreasing impact on temp as amounts increase. I do not dispute the “greenhouse effect”, but i do dispute the the positive feedback effects that modelers rely on to create a significant temp increase.
It was also interesting i must say to see that removing all of the “doubtful” weather stations did not change the temp trend…that was news to me and of interest.Thx.
I am still however very sceptical of models and their predictive abilities. And so much of the “fear” surrounding the warming relies on these models and their predictions…despite the IPCC admitance that they are not used for predictions!
Iv’e got news for you Lukefolk, this item has even been reported in pretty well unbiased fashion in tonights local rag here in Nelson NZ. The tide is turning.
What we’re talking about here is heresy bespoken by mainstream media.
“The two-year study by three Australasian scientists was published yesterday in the American Geophysical Unions Journal of Geophysical Research and casts doubt on the widely accepted view that human activities are responsible for recent global warming”
Notice they didn’t have the balls to say the warming was all bullshit too.
“The McLean et al paper adds to the likes of the 3 Tsonis et al papers demostrating natural variability drives temperature shifts, what drives the Earth’s underlying temperature is another question not resolved in favour of AGW, but heat is shifted around the clmate system by natural factors.”
Tsonis’ papers don’t do anything of the sort, that is just a myth circulating around the denialosphere, and he had denied that they do. This paper is really just an oversimplification of what Tsonis has been working on for years, in much greater depth and with much greater skill.
““The two-year study by three Australasian scientists was published yesterday in the American Geophysical Unions Journal of Geophysical Research and casts doubt on the widely accepted view that human activities are responsible for recent global warming”
Notice they didn’t have the balls to say the warming was all bullshit too.”
Their paper certainly had the desired effect. As Nick has pointed out, it does nothing of the sort, but it appears to. A marvellous conjuring trick that plays to a rapturous audience.
SJT you are just another AGW alarmist moron.
A new study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee could turn the climate change world upside down.
Scientists at the university used a math application known as synchronized chaos and applied it to climate data taken over the past 100 years.
“Imagine that you have four synchronized swimmers and they are not holding hands and they do their program and everything is fine; now, if they begin to hold hands and hold hands tightly, most likely a slight error will destroy the synchronization. Well, we applied the same analogy to climate,” researcher Dr. Anastasios Tsonis said.
Scientists said that the air and ocean systems of the earth are now showing signs of synchronizing with each other.
Eventually, the systems begin to couple and the synchronous state is destroyed, leading to a climate shift.
“In climate, when this happens, the climate state changes. You go from a cooling regime to a warming regime or a warming regime to a cooling regime. This way we were able to explain all the fluctuations in the global temperature trend in the past century,” Tsonis said. “The research team has found the warming trend of the past 30 years has stopped and in fact global temperatures have leveled off since 2001.”
The most recent climate shift probably occurred at about the year 2000.
Now the question is how has warming slowed and how much influence does human activity have?
“But if we don’t understand what is natural, I don’t think we can say much about what the humans are doing. So our interest is to understand — first the natural variability of climate — and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,” Tsonis said.
Tsonis said he thinks the current trend of steady or even cooling earth temps may last a couple of decades or until the next climate shift occurs.
Wisn.com: UW-Milwaukee Study Could Realign Climate Change Theory : Scientists Claim Earth Is Undergoing Natural Climate Shift (15 March 2009)
Oh dear – Tamino has just shown what they’ve done. How embarrassing. Statistically it shows nothing about trends. Sad really – thought the boys might have been on a roll. Oh well – move on – nothing so see here folks.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/old-news/ concludes
“It’s certainly not true that their analysis shows “natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in global temperature.” It shows no such thing; their analysis removes all the effect of trends.
Their only justification for the claim that ENSO has affected trends is to point out that “For the 30 years prior to the 1976 shift (i.e., 1946–1975) the SOI averaged +1.93 but in the 30 years after 1976 (i.e., 1977–2006) the average was -3.06, which represents a shift from a La Nina inclination to an El Nino inclination.” While a shift from la Nina to el Nino can cause a shift in temperature, there’s no evidence at all (nor do the authors provide any) that it can introduce a trend. This argument is nothing more than hand-waving, and is only apparently supported by the strong correlation they estimate using a methodology which eliminates all effect of trends.
Bob Carter’s statement in particular, that “The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions,” shows how little he understand the analysis he himself participated in. Of course, he wouldn’t be the first to fail to understand the impact of using estimated derivatives on correlation analysis.”
oooooo – road wreck…. yukky.
But what is funny as – is that indiscriminate hack of the denialist industry – Morano bought it hook line and sinker – LOL !!!
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2117/PeerReviewed-Study-Rocks-Climate-Debate-Nature-not-man-responsible-for-recent-global-warminglittle-or-none-of-late-20th-century-warming-and-cooling-can-be-attributed-to-humans
Sucked right in doofus.
SJT go easy on the lads – they don’t cop a knockout Exocet up the jacksie in under 24 hours.
almost forgot
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Hello, is there anyone there? I repeat, what trends?
http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1650
Strange times we live in… many skeptical papers are appearing in the literature, and Luke’s counter point is to reference the opinions of anonymous bloggers (“Tamino”) and unpeer reviewed papers by cherry pickers like Santer… the sort of behaviour he’s spent countless hours mocking in his critics.
That’s not to say that I find this paper inspiring… never been overly impressed with corelational studies (although most of the ‘alarming’ AGW papers take this form also… so let’s not let them off too lightly either).
But it is interesting that Luke can write countless thousands of lines of criticism but instantly turn around and engage in the same tactic he mocks, as soon as he’s cornered. SJT is similar, in that he/she/it can spots the weaknesses instantly in this paper, but is oblivious to the identical problems found in the AGW literature. Why can a right-winger never see the weaknesses of their arguments so obvious to left-wingers and vice-versa? Or why can a Christian apologist spot all the logical inconsistencies in the Koran yet view their own belief system as unquestionable? The human mind is fascinating, and rationality a fragile thing.
Coho – at 5.13pm
Check their Fig 1. They aren’t using ground temp – it’s a mix. But there’s still a clear trend.
Will,
The answer is pretty simple – in science empirical fact, physical evidence, determines outcomes.
Here it is the rhetoric, couched in scientifised terms, that is used to establish a debating point, and that has nothing to do with science, and certainly is not the scientific method.
The AGW hypothesis has been falsified by observation and measurement – those who cannot accept that then resort to all sorts of technically phrased rhetoricisms to support their debating position, but Titanic it is, it is sunk, and all the deck chair arranging cannot alter the
fact.
It’s much like mining entrepreneurs, selling a mining property, full in the belief that it holds an El Dorado, but when the mining people come in, drill a few holes, and conclude that the model is wrong, that result only causes the entrepreneur to invigorate his efforts to prove his belief correct. Lab assays are disbelieved for all sorts of reasons, excuses such as “they did not drill in the right place” are offered, but few will admit that the model they had in mind was fundamentally wrong.
So also with the AGW camp and their more strident opponents.
They have not got the physics right, and until that happens, it’s all hot air.
Will,
Well said and to expand on your comment why is that climate sceptics are always branded as right wing and christian by the left every time and why do the right assume that every believer inb AGW is an appologist for the left.
My politics lean more to the left than the right and I’m certainly no believer of any faith, let alone christian, yet if I adopt a position contrary to the pro AGW i’m almost certain to be branded the opposite.
Am I sceptical of the AGW hypothesis, you bet I am, but ony from the rational scientific point of view. I can certainly accept that with the millions of tonnes of co2 that is pumped into the atmosphere on an annual basis there may be an impact. Is it is a postive impact or negative impact? My understanding of the literature is that until clounds and water vapour are fully integrated into the gcm’s then our knowledge of the climate system is still limiting. We are starting to see more research adressing this issue, which is a good thing, but we appear to be a long way off truly understanding this important component of our climate sytem.
Nick; I was referring to David’s paper; I’ve made a comment at Niche on this issue of trends; feel free to do the usual polite finger-wagging.
Notice how our AGW believers highjack the thread away from the basic point of the paper:
That AGW, and its focus on human caused climate catastrophe, is bogus.
Hunter – stop being such a pathetic and disgraceful liar. The paper contends that ocean changes in the Pacific and El Nino alone explains the warming “trend” over the period. Alas it does not.
Strange times we live in… many skeptical papers are appearing in the literature, and Luke’s counter point is to reference the opinions of anonymous bloggers (”Tamino”) and unpeer reviewed papers by cherry pickers like Santer… the sort of behaviour he’s spent countless hours mocking in his critics.
there are multiple different big problems with denialist “science”.
1. no publishing at all. (blog posts, newspaer columns or “popular” books like Plimer)
2. publishing in low (no!!) – value journals (E&E…)
3. published articles that
a) are “same old” (same stuff posted by same guy in same journal) just not helpful in the long run.
b) are misrepresented.
and 3b) seems to be the point here. if you remove the trend from a time series, y you can NOT make claims about the cause of the trend. that is simply a fact, and tamino demonstrates this clearly.
————————
i see this study as the perfect test of your “sceptisism”.
i am looking forward to your sceptic approach to what those guys wrote. Tamino just gave you a hint. will you guys demonstrate that you can engage in critical thinking?
sod, here is my comment from Niche; go and tell tamino will you?
“Hi again Bob; I’ll try to be clearer than I was in a prior thread because this idea of ENSO causing or not causing trends is the gist of Tamino’s critique of the McLean paper. In your Reemergence post you say;
“El Nino events are not followed by La Nina events of equal and opposite magnitude. In fact, there are epochs when the frequency and magnitude of El Nino events greatly outweigh those of La Nina events. During those periods, the global oceans would integrate the effects of a predominance of El Nino events. This should appear as a gradual rise in global SST anomalies. The opposite would hold true for periods when the frequency and magnitude of La Nina events outweigh those of El Nino events. The result of the global oceans integrating the effects of ENSO during a period of when La Nina events dominate should appear as a gradual decrease in global SST anomalies”
I conclude from this that 3 possible scenarios are possible;
1 In an El Nino dominated period the temperature will increase
2 In a La Nina dominated period the temperature will decline
3 In a period where El Nino and La Nina are equivalent the temperature will be flat.
That is, over any nominated period the temperature will go up, down or remain constant; but the variable here is the length of the period; heat is not being created but redistributed. This is the oscillation effect with no true trend. The reemergence mechanism will intensify an El Nino period and mitigate a La Nina period.
David’s break paper is consistent with this. In the Australian circumstance [Figure 1] the flat periods before and after the break are scenario 3 situations. Globally [Figure 2] the slightly rising period from 1978 to 1998 is a scenario 1 while post 1998 is a scenario 2. In all scenarios there is no AGW effect because the ENSO effect occurs at the break with the reemergence effect [or lack thereof] creating the post break ‘trend’ [or lack thereof].
If this is plausible can someone go and tell Tamino because his gloating is not pleasant.”
OR Dear Coho
(1) ENSO/PDO is the 2nd EOF – and a long term trend warming signal on a centennial scale is EOF1
(2) If it looks like a PDO – maybe it is. EOF1 doesn’t !!
(3) Meehl et al shows us how IPO/PDO delayed the Great Warming Shift from the 60s to 70s
(4) AGW itself is interfering with ENSO components – i.e. Walker circulation and Pacific Mean Temperature State
Sod – play the last post – and lets pull up stumps.
“David’s break paper is consistent with this. ”
His “break” is a work of fantasy. To claim that a massive ‘break’ occured in the climate demands an answer to the immediate question, “What could induce such a massive spike that lifts the whole temperate up by such a significant degree, then disappears?”
Sod,
Just look at the papers published in the last few weeks… You need to update your arguments, or maybe you are suggesting that Science and Geophysical Research Letters, etc., have joined this sinister “denialist science” camp you speak of…? 🙂
On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data (Revised on July 14, 2009 for publication to Geophysical Research Letters)
Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature (Journal of Geophysical Research)
Consistency Between Satellite-Derived and Modeled Estimates of the Direct Aerosol Effect (Published in Science.)
I’m also still confused as to why you complain about ‘denialist science’ but then quote an anonymous blog poster (“Tamino”) as some kind of authority? There is so much rubbish on the internet, you need to stop reading postings by people who won’t even use their real names, much less are not identified as having reasonable scientific credentials. Aren’t you guilty in your last post of all the sins you’re complaining about?
luke; you are repeating yourself; I have explained how a centennial trend would not neccessarily, by definition, manifest itself during the 20thC and the lessor EOFs would have been captured by the Chow formula; if they were present; they weren’t; and Meehl belongs in a comic book.
Little will; even luke understands that major oceanographic events occured in 1976 and 1998; the break dates are well correlated with empirical phenomena; do read the paper, get the references and try and inform yourself for once.
Gordon, please read this.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/04/in-defense-of-the-greenhouse-effect/
‘skeptic’ hero, roy spencer, states that the greenhouse effect is real. Who are you going to choose between, Spencer or G&T?
Cohenite,
Why are you so satisfied with corelational analysis of trends when they are anti-AGW but are completely dismissive of them when they are pro-AGW ?
Regardless of which camp you are in, the approach overall is problematical.
I ask again since it wasn’t answered before how much of the 79 Billion (http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=104031&cat=12) are Luke, SOD, SJT et al getting to peddle this crap? For them it is a contest and has nothing to do with an actual discussion. They have read the books on the “Art of Being Right” and apply the rules. Don’t address the thread introduce something else is the usual crap method used. Attacking their opposition is the name of the game nothing else matters. They are not going to wynne this emmisions will continue to go up. The dam will burst when the public finally sees the whole thing for what it is a grab for power and money and the supporters will be damned.
Wow – 24 hours a long time in the blogosphere. Calls for the “paper” to be withdrawn and a review of editorial processes at JGR. A Litmus Test for Naysayers says Tobis http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/
RC panned it http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/friday-round-up-3/
SJT “’skeptic’ hero, roy spencer, states that the greenhouse effect is real. Who are you going to choose between, Spencer or G&T?”
Roy says several controversial things. He also made a comment that the GHE does not contravene the 2nd law, but he is muddled on that. No one said the GHE contravened the 2nd law, it’s the AGW theory that back-radiation can warm the surface to a higher temp than solar radiation can heat it that contravenes the 2nd Law.
He has also received emails from engineers trying to explain to him that positive feedback requires amplification. That’s when Roy spilled the beans on the climate science fraternity. They have redefined positive feedback to mean a not-so-negative negative feedback. Isn’t that cool, they take physics theories and redefine them. Wonder how many other physics basics they have played with? G&T think that is widespread. It says right in this article that early modelers added the theorized effect of CO2 to their models…another tweak.
If push comes to shove, I’m going with G&T. Roy is a meteorologist and they are not exactly experts in physics, unless they are like Craig Bohren, who also has a degree in physics. I enjoy reading Roy when it comes to meteorological events in the atmosphere because he describes heat flow using radiation, convection, conduction and condensation, as does Lindzen.
I would be nice if you left your curmudgeonly ways for a bit and read G&T closely and without bias. They say a lot of important things about physical phenomena that AGW advocates gloss over. Every time I read through their paper I find something new.
As far as the GHE goes, I don’t know what to think. Lindzen does a good analysis, claiming the model is far too simple, and he doesn’t agree at all with the models. However, he doesn’t come right out and say it’s completely wrong. If you read G&T closely, their main point is that CO2 has nothing to do with the warming. They describe how the atmosphere warms but they just don’t think it has anything to do back-radiation from CO2.
It makes sense that the atmosphere has warmed to a higher temp than it would have without an atmosphere and oceans, but I get nervous around people who pull out calculators and tell me how things would be without them. I’m sure there’s an effect between the atmosphere and oceans that warms the planet but I don’t think that mechanism has been discovered yet.
If you look at how thin the evidence is, upon which the IPCC base their theories, it’s pretty amazing. Some of them are refering back to Arrhenius and Tyndall, upon whom Callander based his hypotheses. It doesn’t exactly raise my confidence level to think we can’t do better with our modern instrumentation. Also, if you read Jaworowski without bias, he has at least created a reasonable doubt with regard to the 270 ppmv CO2 pre-Industrial density. I simply don’t trust proxy data.
DHMO – if you want a “nicer” discussion try making a “nicer” approach.
Will; there is no correlation underpining AGW; the failure of CO2 trends to correlate with temperature in a statistically meaningful way should have put AGW to bed but fanciful add-ons to the theory like ECS, the pipeline, the enhanced greenhouse and the positive effect of water have been promulgated to make up for the basis uncorrelative defect. I have no inherent problem with GCMs; you can’t test weather or climate in the lab but the artifice, manipulation and obfuscation which has occurred in support of AGW make it irrepairably tainted. Papers like the McLean et al paper which show a strong correlation between natural process and the indice of temperature add to the fallacy of AGW. I think the best way of viewing the McLean piece is that for the period nominated in the paper natural process correlates in a way with temperature which precludes AGW not withstanding Tamino’s critique.
At this point of RC’s melt down, their call for a paper to be withdrawn is abadge of honor,and only raises the likelihood that the work is significant, interesting and true.
Luke,
Just found you all calling me a liar.
So is AGW not predicting a climate catastrophe for humanity?
Or perhaps that was just a gavanic twitch to keep up your typing skills?
Here is even more historical evidence that we desperately need warming. The detailed and amazingly accurate Oronteus Finaeus 16th century map of the world shows Antarctic rivers, proving that it was not covered in ice 500 years ago. We are in a temporary cold period. A bit of warming would return us to those halcyon days and allow settlement of the Antarctic continent where Australia has extensive territorial rights. I’m tempted to suggest a crash program of burning coal as fast as possible, but the aerosols released would have a cooling effect. Anyone got any good ideas on how to warm the planet a couple of degrees?
Go look at the map:
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/egipto/fingerprintgods/images/finger4.jpg
Honestly Coho – if you try to defend McLean et al you have compromised the whole sceptic position. You will find a number of serious sceptic threads that advocate not trying to bluff though with bunk. I bet ya Bob will regret putting his name to it in the long run.
“Papers like the McLean et al paper which show a strong correlation between natural process and the indice of temperature add to the fallacy of AGW” – if you were in my class I’d wack you with a ruler for that try-on. The AGW position does NOT exclude natural processes so stop trying to make shit up.
And DHMO wonders why the quality of discussion suffers.
Luke “DHMO – if you want a “nicer” discussion try making a “nicer” approach”.
How’s this Luke?
I am nominating Luke for Australian twit of the year.
Can I have a second?
What does the phrase “Climate Shift in the Pacific Ocean” mean anyway?
peterd “What they write there (e.g., p.37) is this (here we go again): analogies to “blankets” are incorrect, because blankets act to suppress convection (just as a greenhouse suppresses convection). However, saying that “the atmosphere does not absorb like a blanket” does not rule out GW!”
Sorry if I did not reply to you peter, I have not been on a lot lately. I did not keep up on all of the threads I have posted to.
You should read Lindzen on that. Whether you agree with him or not, He’s an icon in the atmospheric studies, he has 40 years experience and he teaches at MIT. Lindzen does not rule out GHE completely but he claims the model presented is far too simplistic. Also, he claims the AGW version relies far too heavily on radiative transfer. As he puts it, we all learned in elementary school that heat flows in the atmosphere through conduction, convection and radiation. There’s also evapouration and condensation.
Lindzen also points out what those hung up on the simplified GHE miss. A lot of heat, perhaps most, is transfered from the surface poleward through winds and clouds. Those processes are convective and the heat transfered to the air from the surface is through conduction. To hear the IPCC talk, one would get the impression that all heat transport is through direct radiation from the surface. Warm air rises naturally after it is warmed by conduction and cooler air replaces it, to be warmed itself.
That process does not describe a greenhouse and it is not a greenhouse effect. The GHE applies only to radiative heat transfer. There is far more to atmospheric systems than radiated heat from the surface interacting with the atmosphere.
Lindzen has claimed that were it not for surface convection, the surface temperature would be in the 70 C range. That would be more like a greenhouse effect. Afterall, what good would a greenhouse do if all the doors were open and windows open all over the place, or if winds were passing through the GH to remove the heat? Conduction is also very important since it warms the air directly from the surface. That warms N2 and O2, which make up 97% of atmospheric gases.
The AGW theory would have us believe that the only heat transport system at work is radiative transfer from the surface and back-radiation from the atmosphere to the surface involving only GHGs. They want us to accept further, that an extremely rare gas, ACO2, is responible for up to 20% of atmospheric warming. What about the 97% component, N2 and O2, that is warmed through conduction at the surface? Satellite telemetry does not measure ACO2, or even CO2, it measures IR from oxygen.
The point made by Bohren, I think it is, in Chapter 1, is that the GHE is poorly named. They (B&C) take three chapters to describe the absorption, emission and scattering of photons. Along the way, they claim that the interaction between photons of EM and GHGs like CO2 and H20 is very complex. They claim the GHE theory reduces the interaction to that of a truant officer (GHGs) collecting truant school children (photons of IR). The problem with that, they claim, is that school children can be identified, but photons cannot. Not only that, the emission spectrum at the surface is different than the emission spectrum from the atmospheric GHGs.
Many people in these debates seem to regard photons of EM as well-established particles. The truth is still that no one knows if EM acts like a particle (photon) or a wave. B&C claim that sound waves could have been described in particle form since sound propagation involves the motion of molecules in air. However, the math would have been too cumbersome, so sound is regarded as a wave motion.
Photons are described as streams of particles that have energy, linear and/or angular momentum and no mass. We are usually taught that momentum is the product of mass and velocity, so how can a photon, with no mass, have momentum? As B&C point out, momentum is not the mathematical description but a phenomenon of nature. Momentum is a property that tends to keep a particle moving when it is motion, not necessarily the product of m and v. The difficulty comes in describing a field like EM that has no mass. The photon is a human guess at what EM is and how it works.
We get so used to thinking of physical reality through mathematical equations that we forget reality is not the math but something else altogether. That’s the point I am trying to make in my feeble attempt to interpret physicists like Bohren and G&T. Climate modelers can program all the math they want into a computer, and they can be highly skilled at math, however, much of the time they are simply not describing reality. They are describing someone else’s thoughts about reality.
When you stoop to representing so-called greenhouse gases as barriers that collect photons and re-transmit them to the surface, especially when you do that with single-line drawings to represent that heat flow, you are being misleading. The model may be helpful for some, to aid them in visualizing a theoretical process, but for many that model is the reality. People get hung up on the model, and emotionally so.
That’s essentially all I am saying. I understand that the planet is warmer than it would be without an atmosphere and an ocean, but I am not willing to buy into the mathematical smoke and mirrors based on a model of someone’s imagination. If you want to accept the model of the atmosphere as a greenhouse that’s your thing. I just cannot accept the theory because it makes no sense to me.
Nick Stokes “What they don’t do anything to disprove is the proposition that GHG are responsible for a rising trend”.
I think you have that backwards Nick. The CO2/warming theory has been imposed by climate modelers who seem to have taken over all the scientific journals. Not only that, they are taking over NAS and NOAA. I think the onus is on AGW advocates to prove that ACO2 has the properties they claim, namely that a gas which is 4% of natural CO2, which is 0.04% of atmospheric gases, can affect global temperatures by as much as 20%. Lindzen figures the overall effect of all GHGs besides water vaour and clouds is about 3%.
Studies done in labs used much higher densities of CO2 to test it’s properties. No tests that I know of have been done with concentrations as low as what are found in the atmosphere. As G&T put it, if CO2 had been discovered to have such properties it would been hailed as such.
A point of curiosity. Is there anyone on this thread who has read the paper (NcLean et al) and is defending it?
Luke July 24 @ 10:14
The paper contends that ocean changes in the Pacific and El Nino alone explain the warming “trend” over the period. Alas it does not”
Alas – it does not contend this.
Quote from the Conclusions of the paper:
“Finally, this study has shown that natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in global temperature, a relationship that is not included in current global climate models”
Note: ENSO is a major contributor to VARIABILITY and PERHAPS ( sounds sort of IPCCish) recent trends in global temperature.
I think you have that backwards Nick. The CO2/warming theory has been imposed by climate modelers who seem to have taken over all the scientific journals. Not only that, they are taking over NAS and NOAA. I think the onus is on AGW advocates to prove that ACO2 has the properties they claim, namely that a gas which is 4% of natural CO2, which is 0.04% of atmospheric gases, can affect global temperatures by as much as 20%.
the physical proportions of CO2 are clear. denying it, is denying reality.
Lindzen figures the overall effect of all GHGs besides water vaour and clouds is about 3%.
he is wrong.
Studies done in labs used much higher densities of CO2 to test it’s properties. No tests that I know of have been done with concentrations as low as what are found in the atmosphere. As G&T put it, if CO2 had been discovered to have such properties it would been hailed as such.
you offer me a lab, that has a 10 km column of atmosphere, and i ll do the experiments for you.
CO2 will extinguish a candle.
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-put-out-a-candle-without-blowing-it
but will it really kill people in high concentration?
show me the experiment!
You know very well Steve H that’s not how it’s being pitched by them and reported.
“Full Press Release and Abstract to Study:
July 23, 2009
Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.” from http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/23/surge-in-global-temperatures-since-1977-can-be-attributed-to-a-1976-climate-shift-in-the-pacific-ocean/
“The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes.”
Note: ENSO is a major contributor to VARIABILITY and PERHAPS ( sounds sort of IPCCish) recent trends in global temperature.
that is a great idea. but i ll add your PERHAPS to the claijs made about this paer!
“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can PERHAPS be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.
wonderful change.
“I just cannot accept the theory because it makes no sense to me.”
As I have pointed out before “If I can’t understand it, you can’t prove it”.
“Roy says several controversial things. ”
He says nothing controversial, all he is doing is agreeing with the accepted science.
Sod, Luke
“Perhaps” is all anyone can say about “climate science” no matter what side of the fence you are on. A “I don’t know” would be a nice thing to hear more often. Me, I am quite content to wait and watch what happens in the next 5/10 years. By that time old Sol might have decided what it wants to do, hopefully more science will be done, and the ~60 year cycle might have become more defined. I think we have time to wait at a “trend” of somewhere between .4 and 1.8 degrees/ century. I’m not a big believer in the models.
Steve H – I have no problem with your decision to wait nor cynicism about models. Our umbrage about the new paper however is that it’s message has been overstated, if not willfully distorted.
Gordon
No, I have it forwards. This post says:According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity. The study doesn’t say that at all. Can you find it in the abstract? And it certainly does nothing to justify such a statement.
Luke:
“Our umbrage about the new paper however is that it’s message has been overstated, if not willfully distorted.”
Welcome to both sides of the climate issue.
I look at all papers etc with interest but always with skepticism. I once contacted Bob Carter re the Andre Illarianov chart of Rate of Change Central Greenland for last 50K Years and asked if he knew how it was created. To my amazement, he did not. So I reproduced it and I have deep reservations on how it is used – (It was used a while back on this blog). It was a lesson on how to not accept anything at face value.
Nick asks:
A point of curiosity. Is there anyone on this thread who has read the paper (NcLean et al) and is defending it?
In a round-a-bout way I have a shot at it at Niche’s thread on the paper.
The paper’s claims seem modest. Ocean cycles may contribute to ‘natural variability’ over long periods of time. Not exactly a radical conclusion, is it? What’s the fuss? I suppose the Alarmists view it as threatening because it may imply a significantly reduced role for CO2’s ability to warm the atmosphere. Hence the uproar from the usual groups (RC, et al.) They’re also upset because the paper doesn’t really ‘explain’ anything in the way a CO2-causes-warming type hypothesis does. Because it doesn’t, they attack it as not being as good as the CO2 hypothesis. All completely true, but missing the point that a hypothesis not only has to be be better conceptually, but better in the sense that it has to mesh with reality.
What’s the fuss? I suppose the Alarmists view it as threatening because it may imply a significantly reduced role for CO2’s ability to warm the atmosphere.
even when CO2 would raise the global temperature by 1°C every year, their methodology would not find it.
and this would not be a problem, IF they were not making claims about the effect of CO2.
Will, yes indeed. The paper has faults, but the fuss is about what is being claimed outside( by the authors, among others). This post leads with: “According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity”. That is not a modest claim. And the paper in no way supports it..
You’re such a dope sod; how else to obtain a true measure for the effect of SOI then other by isolating it from other potential determinants of temperature; then, when the SOI correlation with temperature is established at levels of 72 and 81%, making the reasonable conclusion that other factors are less of an influence than SOI; ie SOI = 72%, other factors = 28%; SOI in tropics = 81%, other factors = 19%. Dumb. Then after you dopes are finished genuflecting at chief dope’s alter you don’t notice that Tamino has done a similar thing in the past in proving that ENSO has an effect on variability of temperature; the only problem is that T’s graph de-ENSOed is this;
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/g-m-v.jpg
and the graph with ENSO included is;
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1976/to:2010/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1976/to:2010
What a clever man!
Stick with the paper Nick.
“Our umbrage about the new paper however is…blah, blah, blather.”
Ummmmbrage? Me thinks apostle Luke protests too much.
My computer’s dictionary defines:
“Umbrage– to take offense, be aggrieved, be affronted, be angry, be indignant, be insulted, be hurt, be piqued, be resentful, go into a huff, have one’s nose put out of joint, chafe.”
So luke are you umbrageously chafed that a mere mortal dare question the Grand Groupthink Consensus? Ummmbrage! At a rather mundane piece of peer reviewed research? How revealing, Luke.
Do tell more.
chafe | ch āf|
verb
1 [ trans. ] (of something restrictive or too tight)
Ouch. LOL…
As Mark Twain said, it’s not what you don’t know that gets you in trouble but what you know for sure.
Yes, Nick, by all means stick to the paper; then the math. They use derivatives to account for VARIABILITY. A linear trend as proposed by the IPCC, among others, will be set to zero. Not that it is zero. The paper is modest in its language compared to the claims. In fact, outragous claims that it disproves AGW, are just that … outrageous. Without a trend and a mechanism, it does not have explanatory power for the gridded tempeature anomoly estimates. That the press claims are as outrageous as catastrophists seems to be accepted by some that 2 wrongs make a right. It just doesn’t work that way. However, the paper could become a basis for a competing theory to explain the phenomena of the past 100 to 150 years, but it will need a bit of work. It will definitely need to do trend analysis and have a mechanism to explain it. It may be that using SOI and LTP math one could claim that it explains recent events. However, those who complain of the necessity of waiting 30 to 100 years to see if GCM’s are correct, should be complaining about it could take upwards of 1000 years for LTP confirmation.
McLean, J. D., C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter (2009), Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D14104, doi:10.1029/2008JD011637.
This figure from the McLean et al (2009) research shows that mean monthly global temperature (MSU GTTA) corresponds in general terms with the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) of seven months earlier. The SOI is a rough indicator of general atmospheric circulation and thus global climate change. The possible influence of the Rabaul volcanic eruption is shown.
Excerpted Abstract of the Paper appearing in the Journal of Geophysical Research:
Time series for the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and global tropospheric temperature anomalies (GTTA) are compared for the 1958−2008 period. GTTA are represented by data from satellite microwave sensing units (MSU) for the period 1980–2008 and from radiosondes (RATPAC) for 1958–2008. After the removal from the data set of short periods of temperature perturbation that relate to near-equator volcanic eruption, we use derivatives to document the presence of a 5- to 7-month delayed close relationship between SOI and GTTA. Change in SOI accounts for 72% of the variance in GTTA for the 29-year-long MSU record and 68% of the variance in GTTA for the longer 50-year RATPAC record. Because El Niño−Southern Oscillation is known to exercise a particularly strong influence in the tropics, we also compared the SOI with tropical temperature anomalies between 20°S and 20°N. The results showed that SOI accounted for 81% of the variance in tropospheric temperature anomalies in the tropics. Overall the results suggest that the Southern Oscillation exercises a consistently dominant influence on mean global temperature, with a maximum effect in the tropics, except for periods when equatorial volcanism causes ad hoc cooling. That mean global tropospheric temperature has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord with the SOI of 5–7 months earlier shows the potential of natural forcing mechanisms to account for most of the temperature variation.
“Stick with the paper Nick.”
Coho, Jennifer doesn’t make it clear, but the claim I quoted was from the leading para of the press release that accompanied the paper.
No bleating – they’ve set themselves up with their own spin in their press release. It adds nothing to what we already know anyway. e.g. Parker et al shows ENSO to be a 2nd order impact.
By the way Wessy Wonk – do try to keep up.
SJT “As I have pointed out before “If I can’t understand it, you can’t prove it”.
That’s exactly the point you’re missing. There is no proof for anthropogenic global warming, it’s all opinion. The very basis of the theory is CO2 density in the atmosphere, which against good evidence to the contrary, has been set at 270 ppmv for the pre-Industrial era. That density was not derived from direct observation, it came from proxy data…ice cores. As Jaworowski points out, ice core samples in Antarctica from two different sites and from the same depth, completely contradicted each other.
I hope you’re not infering that you do understand what is going on. My experience with you is that you sit back making short, glib comments while avoiding the deeper theory. You keep on about GHGs in the atmosphere trapping or retarding heat flow, which indicates to me that you know nothing whatsoever about thermodynamcs or quantum processes. Even Richard Lindzen, an MIT prof with 40 years experience doesn’t know fully what is going on but people like you and the mathematician Gavin Schmidt think you have it all down. He refers to his work as ‘ready for textbooks’, which is about as Orwellian as you can get.
If you’re serious about learning, you have to be prepared to take the chance of making a fool of yourself. Even the best, like a John Christy or Linus Pauling have/had little trouble laughing at their gaffes. When I make a comment, like the one I made about the 25 terawatts of heat coming continuously from the Earth’s core, geophysicists were hooting all the way to Belgium. When I contacted the Belgian to see what the humour was about, he refused to talk to me if I continued along that line of questioning.
We are dealing today with intellectual snobs and bullies who refuse to indulge in simplistic scenarios. The AGW crowd refuses to consider simple natural causes for the warming, and as Tsonis points out, why look for human causes when there are good natural causes, such as ocean processes. He was excited to find that the ocean processes like ENSO, the AMO and the PDO worked with and against each other to produce warming/cooling. People like those at realclimate spend all their time trying to intellectually dismiss such fresh observations.
SJT re Roy Spencer…”He says nothing controversial, all he is doing is agreeing with the accepted science”.
Could you be more specific? You mean accepted ‘climate science’. The thrust of the G&T paper was that climate scientists don’t understand basic physics. Is that so strange? It’s a young science and the climate model branch is based on untested principles. As you no doubt are aware, there is not a lot of inter-disciplinary consultation, for some unknown reason.
Why do engineers have to write to Roy Spencer explaining that positive feedback requires amplification? You replied once that the Sun supplies that amplification which gave me the insight that you don’t even begin to understand feedback or amplification. Why do AGW scientists like Stefan Rahmstorf get caught up in notions that a ‘balance of energies’ can replace the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. As G&T point out, ‘a balance of energies’ is not recognized in physics for summing heat. The engineer, Jeffrey Glassman, took Gavin Schmidt to task for messing up an explanation of feedback. In typical fashion, Schmidt did not reply.
Kevin Trenberth, an AGW advocate and IPCC bigwig, invited Chris Landsea, a hurricane expert, to participate in AR4. Landsea had to resign when he found out that Trenberth was participating in information sessions that claimed increased hurricane activity was due to global warming. Trenberth has no expertise in hurricane processes yet he politically got involved in a science he knows nothing about.
Climate science is rife with that nonsense. Roy Spencer is pretty measured and doesn’t get too far into controversy but is not immune from it. Richard Lindzen warned skeptics not to go out on a limb with statements about science they do not fully understand. The first thing Roy did after announcing that was msake a statement that the 2nd Law does not contradict the GHE. He missed the point entirely. The controversy over the 2nd Law is not about the GHE, it is about back-radiation.
By talking about something he did not fully understand, Roy messed up, IMHO. Now he’s defending the GHE, another gaffe in my view. I can forgive that in my heros, as you put it, because, overall, Roy is a studious, humble scientist. I don’t think he’d have difficulty admitting a mistake. It’s people like those at realclimate that bother me. Rather than examining new information objectively, they rush off to find counter-arguements.
“I hope you’re not infering that you do understand what is going on. My experience with you is that you sit back making short, glib comments while avoiding the deeper theory. You keep on about GHGs in the atmosphere trapping or retarding heat flow, which indicates to me that you know nothing whatsoever about thermodynamcs or quantum processes. Even Richard Lindzen, an MIT prof with 40 years experience doesn’t know fully what is going on but people like you and the mathematician Gavin Schmidt think you have it all down. He refers to his work as ‘ready for textbooks’, which is about as Orwellian as you can get.”
I’m not inferring it, I’m telling you I understand what is going on. It’s not that hard, but you cannot grasp it. Spencer can.
Comment from: Nick Stokes July 25th, 2009 at 11:36 am
“A point of curiosity. Is there anyone on this thread who has read the paper (NcLean et al) and is defending it?”
Yes, I’ve read it and Tamino’s comments. It’s correct that the correlation using derivatives (differences) removes a linear trend but I don’t believe there’s a problem with that. They use this approach to construct Figures 5 and 6 which to my mind show an unmistakable relationship between SOI and the temperatures. Figure 7 presents the data in the original form (ie not detrended, but with the time shift in SOI obtained from the detrended data). To me it’s obvious that the SOI related variability in temperatures is the major contribution. There seems to be a small underlying trend, positive or negative depending on which time interval you choose. Since CO2 has been increasing constantly over the whole period I can see at most a very modest contribution from CO2.If there were a major contribution from CO2 the underlying trend would be consistently positive which is not seen.
http://www.climatescience.org.nz/images/PDFs/mclean_defreitas_carter_jgr_2009.pdf
David, it’s a problem with the correlation numbers that they quote. They are supposed to show that there’s no room for a CO2 effect, but they have already excluded that. The rest is just eyeballing graphs. We could have done that without the analysis.
As I suggested above, I think that the paper has faults, but the major issue is that the totally unjustified claims being made externally, led by the authors, about what it has shown.
One major fault is the temperature data set. It’s patched together from satellite and a radiosonde reconstruction. Oddly, the patch is very close to the claimed break point. They acknowledge that the radiosonde coverage is very sparse in both time and space. In fact, they can’t even produce monthly averages – they don’t have enough readings.
There is something odd about their graphs. If you look at Fig 1 and Fig 4, the captions indicate that the temperature plots should be the same in the 1980-2008 period. But they aren’t. I suspect Fig 4 is 3-month averaged, but the text makes it no clearer. Fig 7 temperature looks quite different again. It may be just that it’s monthly,averaged but it still doesn’t look right. They don’t always make clear when they are using global and when tropical.
Nick Stoke shows in his very first post above (July 24th, 2009 at 3:54 pm) he lacks a working grasp of the scientific method:
“…they (carter, et al) don’t do anything to disprove is the proposition that GHG are responsible for a rising trend.”
Nick is confused about where the burden of proof for the AGW “proposition” lies.
It is NEVER anyone’s responsibility to “disprove” a hypothesis. It is the responsibility of those who wish to defend a hypothesis to PROVE its usefulness in every conceivably relevant situation.
Any clever jack ass with a single independently reproducible point can demolish any hypothesis, at any time, no matter how formerly useful, simply by pointing out a single example of how the hypothesis fails to explain an empirically verifiable observation. Nor is the clever jack ass even required to offer a better hypothesis to replace the one he just demolished.
AGW supporters must think the scientific method so unfair!
It’s the distinction between hard science and soft “belief” that few lay AGW supporters grasp. Nick “believes” in AGW, he doesn’t grok its temporary status as a merely working hypothesis. Professional researchers, intellectually at least, try not to “believe” in hypotheses and place their “faith” only in the method of science. If one’s allegiance to a particular hypothesis can not be shifted on a single new observation, then your not playing by the rules of hard science, but something more mystical.
A single instance of dysfunctionality falsifies a hypothesis, which then has to be modified to incorporate the new observation, if that’s possible. Carter, et al, think they have shown a conceivable situation in which the AGW hypothesis does not explain the observed phenomena and they’ve gone beyond the call of duty to suggest an alternative hypothesis to boot.
In fact, simply by showing that a natural explanation to explain warming may exist requires rational observers to invoke the principle of parsimony upon the one-off special case proposed by the AGW hypothesis. It is the AGW team’s responsibility to show that the robust anthropogenic-induced warming model is the most usefully versatile, holistic and predictive hypothesis to explain the observed climate.
Wes, your pontificating is misplaced. I do know about scientific method, I’ve been a research scientist for nearly forty years. But that’s not relevant here. It doesn’t matter whether Mac et al need to disprove a GHG hypothesis. The fact is that they say they have done that (second sentence of this post), and all I’m saying is that they have no basis for the claim.
Wes – let me explain the issue scientifically “Carter, et al, think they have shown a conceivable situation in which the AGW hypothesis does not explain the observed phenomena and they’ve gone beyond the call of duty to suggest an alternative hypothesis to boot.”
You’re an up yourself stupid dope that came down in the last shower! Best science I can muster. Wessy Woo – this paper’s pretence has been shot up in 24 hours after the denialosphere thew the rose petals. Tamino and “Only in it for the Gold” were all over it in hours. RC did a tsk tsk tsk.
Don’t be so utterly pretentious for you to lecture us on the scientific method. Indeed this whole area of climate science is obsessed with explaining observations, testing and busting hypotheses.
I for one thought the sceptics had moved up a notch getting into GRL. After having a gecko at the paper and it’s “detrending” bogosity I’m shocked. Indeed there’s a major row brewing about who the mofo reviewed this paper at JGR.
Wes if there was a paper to disassociate yourself from to preserve your future street creds – this is it
And Wessy you’ve been away sheep shagging and/or lurking poisonously – so it’s very tedious for you to parachute in here from the boulders, no soil and prickles and start a discussion when we’re now another 50km down the track from last time.
Nick, “It’s patched together from satellite and a radiosonde reconstruction”. There’s not much that can be done about this. It’s a problem with all the historic data, as discussed in detail on WUWT. But I think they present results in the best way they can: Fig 7a for radiosonde, Fig 7b,c for MSU so it’s relatively easy to see if there is a significant change. Personally, they all look much the same to me, except for the sparser data in Fig 7a.
As for eyeballing graphs, I agree, but I find it convincing that most variability is related to SOI. I would have liked to see something more on the statistics relating to Fig 7 (I agree that the r^2 values they report are only part of the story). The problem comes when you consider what to do. Many are happy to slap a straight line through all the data, but we know for sure that wetaher and climate is cyclical and definitely not linear. I would be tempted to put linear segments over 5 to 10 year intervals, but of course many would criticise that on the grounds that 5 year “trends” are meaningless. So they might have avoided a final statistical measure because whatever they do would be criticised and maybe lead to a rejection by a reviewer.
If it were my data I would have tried a model like TTA(t)=a+b*SOI(t), so that the differences becomes dTTA(t)=b*dSOI(t). The high r^2 suggests that this is reasonable. Then I would look at TTA(t)-b*SOI(t) vs time which then should show the residual variability (and trend or cycle, if any) that remains after removing the SOI influence. Not sure what the nest step would be. Some test on the residual sum of squares compared with the original.
Davidc, for surface temperature measurements, something like that was done here.
Oh, my mistake. Nick. I apologize.
However, nothing could be more fundamentally relevant to any science debate in a public forum than promoting logical thinking skills!
As a research scientist with nearly forty years of experience I’m sure you didn’t purposively obfuscate how science works.
In particular, your statement which implied that the burden of proof does NOT lie with AGW supporters, but with those who aren’t convinced the AGW hypothesis is functional to “disprove” AGW… got me all umbrageous.
As you may not be aware, inversion of the burden of proof is a common logical error which with depressing regularity makes a comeback in posts on this blog, often invoked by Luke himself, actually.
Speaking of cognitive fallacies.
😉
The RC treatment of the Thompson et al paper dealing with the removal of ENSO from the temperature data is informative; the first graph shows the customary extraordinary divergence between GISS corrected and HadCRUT corrected for the post 1998 period; HadCRUT is going down after ENSO is removed and GISS is going up; this is consistent with an earlier post by lucia;
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ipcc-falsifies-gavin.gif
Lucia’s post on the McLean et al paper is not as ferocious as Tamino’s but still pointed; however, Bill Illis’s comments, as usual, put things in perspective; the F statistic is unambiguous in establishing that over the modern temperature history ENSO is a dominating factor; the issues of oscillation, heat accumulation and real trend are unresolved. It appears McLean et al are right in spite of some aspects of their methodology.
Wes, I eschew obfuscation. You’re the culprit here. I did not imply anything about burden of proof. Mac et al claimed to have proved something – I said they didn’t. That is all.
For heavens sake you’re a mega-denialist Coho – Parker et al doing a simple analysis show you where the trend is – and GISS has an Arctic estimate for temperature.
“As you may not be aware, inversion of the burden of proof is a common logical error which with depressing regularity makes a comeback in posts on this blog, often invoked by Luke himself, actually.”
A paper is a claim in itself. That is the whole point of it.
luke; I thought I conceded some problems with McLean et al’s statistical analysis; I still think their theory has legs; and it does dovetail with your beloved Parker, Folland et al paper with its brace of EOFs; but as has been explained PCA is good for periodic trends and stationary data; it is not so good for breaks and stochastic events; David’s paper references the Parker effort in that context; the Chow test only spits out a break if the data supports one; the break[s] is a statistical preference with other trends which may be in the data stream compared and prioritised; in David’s paper the data for the 20thC sustains a break at 1978 and another at 1998; that’s just a statistical fact; that these breaks are correlated with empirically described and validated climate events and mechanisms is also beyond dispute. I can’t help it if that is difficult for AGW.
As for GISS; any attempt to defend it and its methodology must be regarded as a left turn on the road to la la land.
Nuh – the breaks might simply be where one forcing gains dominance i.e. the “the 70s break being in the 70s not the 60s as Meehl has shown” Alas you have no models – you have no real investigative instruments. I think unless the stats, obs, explicable mechanisms and models link up – frankly I’d be uncertain. Eventually the penny will drop.
All that Parker & Folland have done is a very basic analysis of patterns within the data. And we are not surprised.
Coho – why does http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610#play/all/uploads-all/0/dcxVwEfq4bM show GISS locations don’t matter – start at 4 minutes. BTW – enjoy the rest of the series !
Why have we not been told. Why has Watts failed in his duty of care to you?
“I did not imply anything about burden of proof.”
Nick, yes, you did. Although I take it you were unaware that words have the odd property of implying meaning. Fine.
You said “…they (Maclean, et al) don’t do anything to disprove the proposition that GHG are responsible for a rising trend.”
All I’m saying is that’s an invalid criticism. As if that was their paper’s intent or even their responsibility. In fact, the paper sets forward a totally separate hypothesis for the observed recent warming, which of course implies AGW is a superfluous construction. They are NOT required to disprove anything, much less even address “the proposition that GHG is responsible for the trend.” That’s a bogus comment which sets up a bogus standard for the evaluation of the proposal outlined in this paper.
———–
What this paper tries to show is that evidence exists for an explanation of the observed recent warming that does not require the extra layer of complexity that the anthropogenic hypothesis demands. The observed climate variations might well be explained by the natural climatological systems already in place for millions of years! Outrageous, I know, I know… I was gobsmacked myself. 😉
But think outside the box for a moment– the AGW hypothesis can only EVER potentially explain the warming of the last 60 or so years. The mechanisms this paper seeks to illuminate have the potential to explain vast chunks of climate proxy records and make falsifiable predictions about the distant past as well as the future.
AGW hypothesis can make only ONE prediction about the past and that is it MUST be warmer today than at any other time in the last several thousand years or longer, since CO2 is at a long term high.
Moreover, if recent T-trends aren’t dramatically shattered, AGW’s near term predictions are already well on their way to being falsified. Clearly, the potential of the Maclean, et al approach to bear more useful results well beyond the scope of AGW is at least a plausible contender to the AGW hypothesis.
The burden of proof is now where it always was in the first place, clearly in the AGW camp to prove that the last 60 years or so of climatological history is so utterly unique in the 10,000 years of the holocene that a special one-off hypothesis (which is useless to explain other circumstance such as MWP or LIA) must be invoked as the only possible explanation for modern warming.
Wes – stopped bing so infatuated with you own knowledge of the universe and read their own press release and how the denialosphere is blogging the paper – pullease don’t ask for some mythical high standards.
The burden of proof is NOT in the AGW camp at all – it’s on the proponents of any paper. Weswald Wonk’s new paradigm of science – “that denialist scum can write any drivel they like – but it’s OK as long as it’s in defence of my POV”.
BTW did you even read it?
Unless its a music or MP u-tube video I’m not going to look at any more of your video links luke; he’s such a snide little dofus; all the old stale ad homs,’ smokes, money; and NOAA’s answer to the micro-site issue; it doesn’t matter, its the trend over time at the site; hello, if micro-site contamination exists don’t they think it can worsen? Maybe the Macdonald franchise puts in 6 more air-cons or upgrades the ones there; trend over time my foot. And the NOAA project to compare pristine sites with the Watts alleged contaminated ones; so now there is no UHI effect?! I’d need to look more closely at that project.
But seriously luke, this issue of ground data, the micro issues, the time of day recording are all legitimate beefs and here is an exhaustive analysis of some of the issues based in Australia;
http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/
No thanks Coho – already done some past checking on Gust-o allegations. Another time wasting denialist. Maybe he can help McLean – hahahahahaha – they could publish together – hahahahahaha
So Coho – ya do the big average over the USA and it doesn’t matter? Someone finally did the “so what” analysis.
Anyway I’m out to bag me one of those “dee-nigh-alists” before they go extinct. After this dodgy paper incident they’ll be scarcer than the proverbial pork chop.
Like I say, you got a copy of the “”so what” analysis”?
Smack down Coho
http://theenergycollective.com/TheEnergyCollective/44216
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/141108.pdf
But if you keep viewing climate crock of denial Youtube above – that huge Nature paper shows changes in species phenology and behaviour also should be more than enough.
No doubt you’ll attempt to squirm out of it, but by now I’m not listening. Eyes have glazed over against the crock of denialism.
I wonder how Watts will react; the NODC graph comparing the best against the rest is interesting. So to is Figure 3 in the Menne paper; you really should read the Lowe analysis of time of day [TOB] effect on temperature trends at the link I gave you, but please yourself.
“I wonder how Watts will react”
With complete silence. It means his 15 minutes of fame is over.
What this paper tries to show is that evidence exists for an explanation of the observed recent warming that does not require the extra layer of complexity that the anthropogenic hypothesis demands. The observed climate variations might well be explained by the natural climatological systems already in place for millions of years! Outrageous, I know, I know… I was gobsmacked myself. 😉
an utterly false claim about the paper, as even the authors acknowledged now.
most of you guys swallowed it with line, hook and sinker.
tamino was right, you were wrong. will you be “sceptic” enough to admit your errors? jennifer?
sod; I rate Tamino as a statistician; but as a person he leaves alot to be desired; this issue of natural variability and AGW trend is far from over; David Stockwell has just done a reanalysis of the McLean data using different methods and gets some similar results; in addition David’s break paper has indisputable statistical validity and confirms that natural features like PDO can determine temperature trend; why don’t you take that paper over to your mate Tamino and let him cast his divine eye over it;
http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1650
Off you go; and take little will with you; his lack of charity towards poor old Watts is revealing and will enable him to fit right in with the ambiance at Tamino’s wallow.
If Jesus had been born 34 years earlier the 20th century would have got colder. So there!
“in addition David’s break paper has indisputable statistical validity ”
Yeah, right…..
It has no validity at all. What produced the magical and earth shattering jump in the earth energy content to produce that ‘break’ between the two declines he believes are the overall trend?
sod Why not stick to things you’re good at. Logic is not your forte. A child in kidergarten could defeat your arguements.
sod Why not stick to things you’re good at. Logic is not your forte. A child in kindergarten could defeat your arguements.
SJT “I’m not inferring it, I’m telling you I understand what is going on. It’s not that hard, but you cannot grasp it. Spencer can”.
Anyone who tried to win an arguement by baiting another, better be sure the person he is baiting does not have a better grasp of intelligence. You are either abysmally stupid or petty, take your pick. You are not capable of a mature, intelligent conversation, that’s for sure.
I took a small trip this weekend that covered about the same area as one of your climate model global divisions, roughly 250 miles square. I left the coast, which is connected to the Pacific Ocean via a channel, and traveled 100 miles due east. The temperature in Vancouver when I left was about 20 C. Just 60 miles into that trip, the Sun’s energy was becoming unbearable, and that’s at a northern latitude of 49 degrees and change. Heading north from the eastern terminus, I ventured up the famous Fraser Canyon to the terminus of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers at Lytton. Heading east from there, to a small campground on the Thompson, I encountered some of the most intense heat I have ever endured. It was far too hot, with no breeze or shade, to put up a tent. I confirmed later that the temperature was upward of 50 C in the Sun’s direct rays, over 120 F.
A mere 20 km further east, I ran into severe, windy conditions with thunderstorm activity. The northern sky was illuminated by fork lightning and that lasted from 5 pm til early in the morning. Traveling further east to get away from that weather, we reached the Shuswap Lakes, where the weather was slightly muggy but cool and bearable. A park ranger told me it had cooled off dramatically from the same kind of high I had experienced earlier. The thiunderstorm activity had followed us and could be seen encroaching on the western sky.
Try explaining those anomalies to me in climate model terms and with CO2-warming as a basis. Why should the same solar energy be capable of producing temperatures that range from 20 C to 50 C plus within a range of 150 miles? It’s the same Sun with the same direct radiation but the temperatures vary 30 C in 150 miles. Also, the climate varies from lush rain forest to arid desert, that is used by US filmmakers for western-type movies, because of the sagebrush, cactus and sand environments. Is such an extreme variation in climate due to CO2 as well?
I can explain it to you with conventional meteorology. The coast, has ocean breezes to convectively carry off heat. The interior, located in a river gorge, has no such convection, and the solar radiation produces a situtation more akin to a greenhouse than anything your GHE theories can produce based on radiative balance. In fact, there’s very little moisture to carry heat aloft in the form of water vapour. Where’s your CO2 in that equation? That’s what’s wrong with climate models, they are far too simplistic and focused purely on radiative equilibrium. In the gridded cells they use, there’s absolutely no way they can program enough accurate information into their computers to describe the reality.
Climate modelers need to get their fat butts out of their air-conditioned computer labs and experience what is actually going on in the real world. Only the most stupid and arrogant could miss the obvious, which brings me back to you. Your rhetorically based, glib arguements don’t even begin to address the basics of science, yet you claim to understand what is going on. Dream on. You have bought into a fanatical arguement based purely on bad science and consensus and you defend your position out of sheer arrogance.
You’re wasting your time trying to bait me with comments about Spencer. He has more understanding of atmospheric processes than any climate modeler and I don’t care that he is not perfect. None of us are, except you, in your mind.
“Try explaining those anomalies to me in climate model terms and with CO2-warming as a basis. ”
You don’t understand the way it works. CO2 is a forcing on the existing system, when it acts as a greenhouse gas. If I have a barrel of water that is being agitated and producing chaotic behaviour, then I light a fire under it, then I can’t predict the chaotic behaviour of the motion inside the barrel, but I can safely say that the temperature of the whole chaotic system will rise.
I want to make a comment that may not seem on topic, but it is if you look at it on an overall sense. The article is talking about natural variability involving oceanic processes.
This weekend, I experienced temperatures in a dry, arid region, of Canada, a little over 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean, and at a latitude a little over 50 degrees N. The question in my mind, was why and why here? On the coast, ot was a comfortable 20 C. When you look at the surrounding country, it is extremely arid and desert-like. That should be a clue.
There are facts we were taught in school about meteorology and all that seems to have gone out the windows with climate modeling. Richard Lindzen claims that without convective processes, the Eath’s surface would be in the 70’s C. That seems unbelievable, but my experience this weekend tells me it’s not far-fetched. Take away convective currents and the rising moisture, at a dearth in desert regions, and the surface temperatures can, and does, reach 55 C easily. That’s at 50 degrees northern latitude and it doesn’t require a stretch of the imagination to consider that the tropical Sun can heat the surface to 70C in the same conditions.
I was talking to a local about the temperature and he took me outside to look at a temperature mounted in the shade. It read 40 C exactly. He told me that locals like to hang thermometers in the direct rays of the Sun and brag about it being 55 C (120 F+) while it’s only 40 C (~104 F) in the shade.
In one of his books, either Meltdown, or The Satanic Gases, Patrick Michaels talks about a Canadian climate model that claims temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico region will exceed 45 C. Michaels claims the only way that will ever happen is if the Gulf of Mexico is drained and black-topped. It’s simple basics in meteorology like this that climate modelers don’t understand. Michaels goes on to say that temperatures in Rio, right on the equator, seldom exceed 32 C (90 F) for the simple reason that Rio is right next to the ocean, which mitigates its temperatures through convective currents and clouds.
Why do alarmists have so much trouble with this simple science? Richard Lindzen, a professor at MIT who teaches meteorology, is dismissed as old school by arrogant modelers like Gavin Schmidt, a mathematician. Both Lindzen and Spencer are trying to tell modelers they have the sign wrong in their feedbacks and that they don’t understand cloud action. A.A.Tsonis has made it clear, after studying a century of data from ENSO, the PDO and AMO, that natural ocean processes are behind warming and that there’s no need to look for human causes til the natural forces are understood. Modelers wont admit that because their funding will dry up the minute they do. Realclimate will go down in an ego-numbing agony of defeat.
I’d still like to know, what does a ” Climate Shift in Pacific Ocean” constitute?
SJT “CO2 is a forcing on the existing system, when it acts as a greenhouse gas. If I have a barrel of water that is being agitated and producing chaotic behaviour, then I light a fire under it, then I can’t predict the chaotic behaviour of the motion inside the barrel, but I can safely say that the temperature of the whole chaotic system will rise”.
Several points. ‘Forcing’ is a term coined by the IPCC, a model-biased study of the atmosphere. There is no such thing in physics as a forcing. I suspect modelers prefer terminology like ‘forcing’ because it adds an ambiguity that smoothes over a lot of questions. Refering to CO2 as a forcing means nothing to me. I have no idea what you’re on about and I don’t want to know because it’s not science to me. If you want to communicate an idea to me, try using descriptive language from physics that has meaning.
In your example, which I am not taking literally, applying heat to a process comes under the discipline of thermodynamics. Why not examine the issues involved from that well-researched science, as G&T have done, instead of describing it with a superficial language based on pure theory? I have no time for listening to someone like Gavin Schmidt expound on physics because his POV is so biased toward the peculair interpretation of physics offered by him and his cohorts.
Being able to ‘safely say’ something in climate science is usually based on consensus, a practice the IPCC have perfected. Being able to safely say the temperature will rise if heat is applied to a system is not based on consensus because the observation is verifiable and based on well-researched, established science. The consensus that CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat, raising the temperature, is not based on thermodynamics and it’s not verifiable. In fact, very little that goes on in climate modeling is verifiable because of the huge costs involved and the peculiarity of protected processes and data.
You’re right, I don’t understand the science nearly as well as I’d like, and having it explained in terms of a virtual science has little meaning to me, and is most unhelpful. When legitimate physicists try to explain the science (G&T), one of whom is actually doing work in thermodynamics, they are subjected to torrents of ad hominum abuse. One of the alarmists, Arthur Smith, rushes out a rebuttal to G&T before taking a moment to consider what is being said. His paper merely duplicates an explanation of the GHE covered by G&T and completely misses their point that CO2 is irrelevant, while failing to address that issue.
The weakness in your arguement comes from your insistence on using climate model theory and claiming that is the science. You should be able to explain the action of CO2 in the atmosphere using thermodynamics theory rather than using broad and sweeping statements from an immature science. I would not care if your thermodynamics explanation was off the mark, as long as you were participating in honest debate.
sod; I rate Tamino as a statistician; but as a person he leaves alot to be desired; this issue of natural variability and AGW trend is far from over; David Stockwell has just done a reanalysis of the McLean data using different methods and gets some similar results; in addition David’s break paper has indisputable statistical validity and confirms that natural features like PDO can determine temperature trend; why don’t you take that paper over to your mate Tamino and let him cast his divine eye over it;
http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1650
Off you go; and take little will with you; his lack of charity towards poor old Watts is revealing and will enable him to fit right in with the ambiance at Tamino’s wallow.
i have told you before:
1. do not use statistics, that you don t understand.
2. explain the physical reason for the jump.
3. use meaning ful time intervals for an analysis of climate, even if you identify a breakpoint.
sod Why not stick to things you’re good at. Logic is not your forte. A child in kidergarten could defeat your arguements.
this was the personal attack you posted, before you asked this funny question:
Try explaining those anomalies to me in climate model terms and with CO2-warming as a basis. Why should the same solar energy be capable of producing temperatures that range from 20 C to 50 C plus within a range of 150 miles? It’s the same Sun with the same direct radiation but the temperatures vary 30 C in 150 miles.
weather and climate. you have not figured out the difference yet. back to kindergarten!
Gordon – all that is to silly for words. It’s pointless debating anyone who thinks that is the reality. You clearly have never interacted with a serious climate modelling group in your life.
“Several points. ‘Forcing’ is a term coined by the IPCC, a model-biased study of the atmosphere. There is no such thing in physics as a forcing.”
I just gave you an example of a model that incorporates a forcing. I could build it quite easily.
The sun can act as a forcing. If the sun reduces or increases it’s output by a significant amount, the climate is also going to change significantly.
“The sun can act as a forcing”
You lost me here sjt, if I understand you correctly, CO2 is “forcing” that is reinforcing the heat supplied by the sun.
How or if at all , leave it aside for the moment.
But how can the sun “force” when it’s the main supplier of the heat in the first place?
‘————————————
Luke,
Do you think the Indian government is reckless and does not care about its own people, let alone the future of the people of earth?
“Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, accused the developed world of needlessly raising alarm over melting Himalayan glaciers.
He dismissed scientists’ predictions that Himalayan glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming.
“We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere,” he said. “
“But how can the sun “force” when it’s the main supplier of the heat in the first place?”
The concept of a forcing is one that involves something that changes the steady state of the climate. If the sun is not changing, it’s just supplying a steady stream of energy that will maintain the current state. When the sun changes it’s output it is acting as a forcing, it is forcing the state of the climate to change. Similarly CO2. CO2 is not ‘evil’, it is an intrinsic part of the climate and the earth’s eco systems. Add to the amount of CO2, or reduce it, and you will be forcing the climate to change.
Marcus – nope – they gotta do what’s best for them – what to do about CO2 is a difficult problem for developing countries – well any country. The Himalayan glacier issue is also somewhat complex.
However the atmosphere doesn’t care about how we feel, economic development, politics or Al Gore – it’s just gonna integrate its physics. So hope the Indians have some good science advice.
SJT “Add to the amount of CO2, or reduce it, and you will be forcing the climate to change”.
Why did we need more jargon in science? What did we have before the concept of forcing? If the Sun had increased it’s output, the result would have been a ‘warming’ of the surface and atmosphere, not a forcing.
As I tried to point out before, the term forcing comes from mathematics…from differential equation theory. Differential equations can be in a natural, steady-state condition, when no signals are applied, or they can be in a ‘forced’ condition when a signal is applied. The signal forces the equation to put out a signal (response) of a different shape. That concept has now been applied to the atmosphere as if it is a reality.
Climate modeling is about mathematics, not physics, per se. The basis of climate modeling is a set of equations that model what is thought to be reality. In that context, and that context only, the term forcing makes sense. Treating additional CO2 as an input signal to a set of equations forces the response to be different. However, that response is entirely dependent on the information put into the program by people who don’t have a great deal of expertise in physics.
What I have asked you to do is examine the phenomena outside the context of climate modeling. You should be able to explain what is going on in terms of physics theory. The first thing that becomes obvious to me, when I do that, is the extremely low level of CO2 in the atmosphere and the even more rare ACO2. It simply doesn’t make sense that such a neglible gas can affect global temperatures to a factor of 20%, as is claimed by many modelers.
The equations used in climate models, related to CO2, came from lab experiments in which the densities of CO2 were significantly higher. Those results seem to have been extrapolated to the atmosphere. G&T have claimed there is no scientific proof that CO2 at such low densities can affect atmospheric temperatures to a level of 20%, or anywhere near that. The low end claimed is something like 7%, but even that is a stretch. Lindzen claims that the effect of all GHGs summed is not even 3%.
This article reveals the source of the CO2 forcing, as you call it. Modelers were having difficulty explaining temperature anomalies in their models, and they introduced CO2 forcing as a possible reason why the models were out of whack. Today, that tweak has become alleged fact. There is no physical evidence to support CO2 forcing, only a guess.
In his rebuttal of G&T, Arthut Smith claimed CO2 forcing ‘must’ be the cause of warming because there is no other explanation. A. A. Tsonis does not agree. He asks why we are considering human causes of warming when natural causes such as oceanic systems need closer examination.
Luke “…all that is to silly for words. It’s pointless debating anyone who thinks that is the reality. You clearly have never interacted with a serious climate modelling group in your life.”
Point 1…when did you start debating? All I’ve gotten out of you so far is derisive laughter and ad homs. Whereas I enjoy entertaining you, it would be more helpful if you’d scientifically rebutt what I am trying to say.
Point 2…you’re right, I have never interacted with a serious modeling group. It’s better for me to stay away from them due to the strong temptation I might get to give each of them a Glasgow kiss (head butt).
In a normal context, I’d have nothing against climate model theory, and might find their predictions interesting. To have science turned upside down, however, and to have the world held ransom to their widely variable and outrageous predictions is another matter entirely. I have nothing against modelers per se and I can see the usefulness of the discipline. The problem I have is with the more arrogant of the species, who insist their discipline is correct while directly observed data is wrong.
Dr. Joanne Simpson worked with cloud models for years at NASA. I respect the work she did and the dedication she had for her discipline. She waited til retirement to claim that models were still too immature to be taken seriously. Even Kevin Trenberth, the AGW-based IPCC lead author, said the same thing.
Having said all that, I don’t get your point. What would I gain from interacting with them, serious or not? I can’t imagine getting anything out of Gavin Schmidt or James Hansen but arrogance, and an anger aimed at my scientific questions. Why do you suppose they take that approach? Why do people get angry over others questioning their theories?
“A. A. Tsonis does not agree. He asks why we are considering human causes of warming when natural causes such as oceanic systems need closer examination.”
No he doesn’t. Tsonis has been hugely misrepresented. If you look at Realclimate, one of the co-authors of his most recent paper gives a discussion on it at Reaclimate.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/
“Why did we need more jargon in science? What did we have before the concept of forcing? If the Sun had increased it’s output, the result would have been a ‘warming’ of the surface and atmosphere, not a forcing.”
Because they are talking about external influences on the state of a huge, chaotic system.
“THREE Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.”
Which is a lie they have cleverly created from their paper, which makes no such claim. It’s a classic bait and switch. Create a paper that claims almost nothing, then state that the paper makes claims far beyond what it actually does. Carter has lost all scientific credibility, but I don’t think he cares, this is purely for playing to the public, he has completely discarded any pretense at being a scientist.
Gordon Robertson: “Several points. ‘Forcing’ is a term coined by the IPCC, a model-biased study of the atmosphere.”
Invented by the IPCC? Gordon, take a look at John Houghton’s The Physics of Atmospheres. The concept of radiative forcing by greenhouse gases is well developed there. “This change in radiation at the top of the troposphere [due to an increase in pCO2] is known as *radiative forcing*. (pp257-60 of the 4th ed.)
Keep up the reading.
cheers.
Gordon,
I had not read your response at July 25th, 10:56 am, when I posted today. So, excuse me. I would like to reply to your response in detail, as there is just so much with which I dasagree. However, that would take us off-topic once again. The topic of this thread is the McLean et al paper, which I have not read, not the reality of the GHE. (One feature of the posting here is that it so often veers off-topic, and I may have contributed to that myself; it was Nick Stokes, immediately after me on Friday, who pulled it back on-course.)
cheers
Well Toby – proof of CO2 ? – watch the candle at 1′ 38″
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610#play/all/uploads-all/2/D6Un69RMNSw
Interesting video Luke….
There is seemed to be a lack of explanation and perspective to the demonstration
1. The amount of CO2 and atmosphere pressure in the tube isn’t disclosed , remember the CO2 in our atmosphere is a mere 0.5%. how much would 0.5% absorb?
2. I assume the tube is a vacuum. A comparative demonstration with other molecules would have given much better perspective of CO2’s “head/IR” trapping ability. I.e. H20, CH4.
What the demonstration effectively shows is that when you have an atmosphere composed of 100% CO2 at x pressure it will absorb x Thermal Energy. How does this really prove CO2’s ability to absorb IR in the real world?
SJT “SJT “Add to the amount of CO2, or reduce it, and you will be forcing the climate to change”.
This is not observed in nature but is programmed into the imaginative global climate models from an unsubstantiated “belief” that CO2 has this stupendous property.
Fill a sealed greenhouse with CO2 and it once irradiated by sunlight should then increase in termperature to that measured on Venus, and if so, what a splendid source of energy it could become.
It’s a lot like another belief in which it is believed that a holy man might be able to walk on water, or raising his staff, stop the sun in its passage over the sky.
Powerful thiing belief, isn’t it.
Dave – of course it’s not the real world. It’s just a simple but vivid demonstration of CO2 absorbing infra-red. That’s all. If it was the real world it would be FREEZING !
Experiment is from the 18 part BBC documentary “Climate Wars” – all on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aty9vFX4dU0&feature=related
Why you would think that CO2 would behave so differently in the “real world” is perplexing. Does a CO2 molecule suddenly change ? – arguments about teensy weensy 0.5% are simply silly. You make the calculation from known physics for known amounts. AND it’s only a few watts. All this has been done to death in many publications.
SJT – you’ll notice how dogs return to their vomit repeatedly. Having been only told a few 100 times – Sinkers immediately comes back to sealed glasshouses, denies the PETM, denies basic physics. But this is a “special guy with special knowledge nobody else has – knows all about abiotic oil – but doesn’t make a living finding it, knows everything works by the electric universe and climate but never demonstrates it, thinks he’s above peer review. I think that says enough ?
peterd “Invented by the IPCC? Gordon, take a look at John Houghton’s The Physics of Atmospheres. The concept of radiative forcing by greenhouse gases is well developed there”.
Houghton is co-chairman of the IPCC and he’s a climate modeler. He was in the vanguard of climate modeling and he brought it to the IPCC. Why do you think the IPCC widely quote the likes of Houghton, Santer, Hansen and even…shudder…the mathematician Gavin Schmidt? They are all climate modelers…capiche?
Radiative forcing may be a climate model term pre-dating IPCC reviews, but the IPCC is credited with officially defining it for the global warming model. Here’s a link to a pro-AGW site that should know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing
I am losing tract of where I said what but I have always made it clear that I think the term ‘forcing’ comes from differential equation theory. It was the IPCC, however, who defined the term radiative forcing as applied to our atmosphere. Houghton and the IPCC are synonymous, IMHO. he probably defined it for them.
SJT “No he doesn’t. Tsonis has been hugely misrepresented. If you look at Realclimate, one of the co-authors of his most recent paper gives a discussion on it at Reaclimate”.
I’ve seen the butt kissing by Swanson at RC. If I was Tsonis, I’d boot him off my paper. Here’s an article showing differences between Tsonis and Swanson:
http://climateresearchnews.com/2009/07/natural-climate-shifts-swanson-v-tsonis/
A quote from Tsonis:
“But if we don’t understand what is natural, I don’t think we can say much about what the humans are doing. So our interest is to understand — first the natural variability of climate — and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,”
It’s plain to see that Tsonis is the one with the intelligence and the guts to call a spade a spade. Swanson will fit right in with the sucks and alarmists at RC.
peterd “The topic of this thread is the McLean et al paper, which I have not read, not the reality of the GHE”.
It’s pretty tough to discuss any paper on the atmosphere/oceans without stepping into GHE theory. I try to be aware of the context of a thread, and respect it, but sometimes the rhetoric gets pretty thick with innuendo and I feel compelled to veer off following it.
I think part of Jennifers aim, although I can’t speak for her, is to reveal the indequacies of the AGW arguments. I’m taking that from her comments. I veered off into HIV/AIDS theory once in an attempt to illuminate the junk science it shares with the AGW theory. Cohenite correctly pointed out that doing so brings disrepute to the skeptical view of AGW because so many unenlightened nut cases are looking for any opportunity to pounce on what they see as heretical POVs. However, failing to do so leaves the shameful behavior of HIV/AIDS advocates towards skeptics in that field in the dark. I am trying to point out what I see as a sickness in science today perpetrated by pseudo-scientists bent on ramming bad paradigms down everyone else’s throats, through rhetoric, intimidation and sheer censorship.
I think it’s important to veer off if necessary, as long as one keeps an open mind as to the ramifications. It’s one thing to hijack a thread with nonsense and quite another to do so for a good reason.
Gordon, I’ve relented. 🙂 As the main topic of this thread has fizzled out, what better way to keep it alive than with irrelevancies?
(1) I’m not sure why you present Lindzen as offering some kind of “alternative” view to IPCC on convection. It is well-established that convection as well as radiation act to suppress surface temperatures. Open Goody and Walker’s “Atmospheres”, Chapter 3, and they show that the effect of convection is to reduce ground temps. by about 60 K (which seems to be about the same as the figure from Lindzen you quote: maybe it’s not his!). However, in the upper atmosphere, “…the temperature is not influenced by convection” (Goody and Walker, p.64).
(2) CO2 is not “extremely rare” (unless you use these words in a non-customary, or Humpty-Dumpty, sense)! CO2 is the second greenhouse gas, after WV. It is a “minor” GHG in the sense that the Australian Liberals are a minor political party.
Nitrogen and oxygen are “warmed” by collisions, being non-IR-active themselves, and oxygen cannot be the source of infrared radiation escaping to space, as you seem to believe.
.
(3) Not sure what any of this has to do with the nature of photons. Much physics of radiation can be established without pondering the philosophical issues to do with the nature and properties of light and photons.
Gordon: PS. I was just looking at Jeffrey T. Kiehl’s “Clouds and their effects on the climate system” in Physics Today, Nov. 1994. Kiehl wrote this: “…a simple analysis that assumes the thermal structure [of the atmosphere] is determined solely by radiative processes results in tropical temperatures too high by at least 30 K and polar temperatures too cold by 40 K. Small-scale convective motions efficiently transport heat…..” In other words, atmospheric scientists are well aware that convection is important, at least in the lower atmosphere. I would suspect convection is well accounted for in climate modeling. This suggests that the kind of argument you, following Lindzen, are posing, is a type of straw man.
Convection indeed dominates radiative processes in transferring heat;
http:/dx.doi.org/10.1080/15567030701568727
This dominance only needs to exist to the vertical level of the CEL. Amongst other fanciful notions but most importantly, AGW depends on isotropic emission at the CEL; this is problematic;
http://biocab.org/Induced_Emission.html
Here’s a tip, Cohenite, biocab has no idea of what he is talking about.
Luke,
You don’t seem to understand that the “vivid” demonstration of pure CO2 at some unspecified atmospheric pressure is not anywhere close to what happens in the “real world” I.e. the Earth’s atmosphere. This could be confusing to the mass public who doesn’t understand the difference between the closed system of a tube compared to the open system of a fluid atmosphere.
And like I said before, a comparative example would have been extremely helpful to demonstrate CO2’s effectiveness in comparison others. Ie. here’s what happens when you have “air” and 1 atmosphere, here’s water vapour at 1 atmosphere, here’s O2 (non GHG) at 1 atmosphere, here’s “air” at 1 atmosphere with CO2 ppm increasing…… Then people have a much clearer understanding of what happens.
“You don’t seem to understand that the “vivid” demonstration of pure CO2 at some unspecified atmospheric pressure is not anywhere close to what happens in the “real world” I.e. the Earth’s atmosphere. This could be confusing to the mass public who doesn’t understand the difference between the closed system of a tube compared to the open system of a fluid atmosphere.”
There is a whole publicly available database of atmospheric gases available called MODTRAN http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MODTRAN that does all that.
SJT:
The MODTRAN site you refer is simply a computer program derived from the USAF code. It is not a database at all.
So it is you who does not understand the issue.
“Verification and Validation
MODTRAN has been extensively verified and validated against FASCODE line-by-line calculations and measurement data. In a comparison of radiance codes for climate modeling (ICRCCM), MODTRAN was compared with three independent interferometer measurements of up-looking radiance and the overall agreement was excellent. MODTRAN UV radiance calculations were also compared with balloon measurements of transmitted solar energy to 40 km. Comparisons of MODTRAN and integrating sphere data for visible and near-IR integrated solar radiation have also been conducted. Detailed validation of the MODTRAN code has been performed recently using hyperspectral data from the AVIRIS visible/near IR airborne imager. ”
Try again Louis.
Cohenite, I think you need to read the climate book by Pierrehumbert, it mentions convection 77 times.
Here is a link h:\ago\shared_files\rawlingsh\ClimateVol1.pdf
Ooops, wrong link.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateVol1.pdf
SJT “Ooops, wrong link.”
The other one would probably have been better. Pierrehumbert would make a good science-fiction writer.
Tell me something, why is a geophysicist writing textbooks on climate science? All he’s doing is writing a story featuring his own opinions, for which he supplies generalities and half-truth as evidence. For example, he claims the satellite data closely follows the GISS data and that mistakes were made with satellite data, presumably by Christy and Spencer. He supplies no proof, only opinions.
Christy and Spencer were awarded medals by NASA for their analysis of the NOAA satellite data. Do you think NASA goes around awarding medals for crap analysis? Don’t think so. The work of Christy and Spencer was fine until a reason was needed to discredit their data. Now we have people like Pierrehumbert spreading that crap. He claims the UAH data is in step with the GISS data. Crap!! The highest average atmospheric temperature recorded by satellites is 0.2 C and it has leveled off and is not retreating.
IMHO, this guy is not qualified to write books on the atmosphere. He makes sweeping allegations about CO2 and the accuracy of proxy data while discounting studies by Roger Revelle, building up Tyndall, Arrenhius and Keeling. Before he died circa 1990, Revelle, a pioneer in CO2 studies, cautioned people not to jump to conclusions about CO2. However, Pierrehumbert ignores that good advice while admitting the CO2 signal is ‘hard to detect’.
No kidding!! John Christy reveals that the satellites can’t detect it at all, and G&T tells you why. THERE ISN”T ENOUGH OF IT IN THE ATMOSPHERE!! What is it Pierrehumbert and the entire realclimate crew don’t understand about that? He makes it sound as though ACO2, at 0.0016% of the atmosphere is an incredibly high density. It was them (the modelers) who put CO2 into the mix, in their models, because their models had strange readings. There was no scientific basis for presuming CO2 is behind warming, although Pierrehumbert refers to good evidence from lab studies.
Here’s a typical example of his rhetoric from page 19:
“We know that our planet journeys through the hard vacuum of outer space, clothed in a thin blanket of air – our atmosphere”.
Is this guy a professor teaching at a university? He’s a geophysicist, surely he has heard of the life work of the astronomer Akasofu? The latter revealed in his book, ‘Exploring the Secrets of the Aurora’, that the space between the Earth and the Sun is full of solar plasma. It’s not a vacuum. I know Louis Hissink gets razzed for bringing that up but it’s not his fault there are so many uniformed people around. It’s true.
From Akasofu’s book:
” In order for this particular field of science to make substantial progress, however,we had to wait for Sydney Chapman and Vincenzo Ferraro (1931) to introduce the concept of confinement of the Earth’s magnetic field in a cavity carved in the solar gas flow. Chapman and Ferraro considered the solar gas to be consisting of an equal number of positive and negative particles (plasma in present terminology) and attempted to understand the behavior of the plasma flow as it approached a dipole field. They inferred that the solar plasma flow forms a comet-like structure around the Earth, extending in the anti-solar direction and confining the Earth and its magnetic field in it.”.
This tail has now been verified by satellite. That plasma comes from the Sun and it is deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field, and here we have a geophysicist who doesn’t know about it. What else doesn’t he know? He also calls the atmosphere a thin layer. Its average mass is 5 quadrillion metric tons. Pierrehumbert over-emphasizes the effect of gigatons of CO2, half of which even he admits goes missing. Gigatons as compared to quadrillion tons are a literal spit in the ocean. ACO2 is 4% of all CO2 which is 0.04% of the atmosphere.
The first paragraph in his book is perhaps the most telling. He says:
“Inevitably, the student who wishes to get launched on significant interdisciplinary problems must begin with a somewhat hazy sketch of the relevant physics, and fill in the gaps as time goes on. It is a lifelong process”.
That’s exactly what G&T have claimed. These people do not understand basic physics. They “fill in the gaps as they go along”.
Correction to my last post. I meant the temperatures from the satellite data is NOW retreating. I said not retreating.
peterd “…atmospheric scientists are well aware that convection is important, at least in the lower atmosphere. I would suspect convection is well accounted for in climate modeling. This suggests that the kind of argument you, following Lindzen, are posing, is a type of straw man”.
No disrespect intended peter, but suspecting isn’t enough. The IPCC’s focus is almost entirely on radiative transfer. Besides, Why would you dismiss the word of someone like Lindzen, who has over 200 papers published over 40 years in studying the atmosphere. He’s not a modeler. They are the one’s with the neat little programs for explaining the atmosphere. Lindzen has done it directly. The least the modelers could do is respect the man for his expertise, and consider his concerns, but they dismiss him as ‘old school’.
It’s not simply accounting for convection in a model, it’s understanding the basics of meteorology, or it’s more modern counterpart, climate science. I am refering to degree programs in climate science, not mathematicians like Gavin Schmidt refering to himself as a climatologist. Roy Spencer, a bona fide, meteorologist, describes the predominant heat transporting systems in the atmosphere as precipitation systems. We haven’t even talked about evapouration and condensation, yet the clouds formed from that process are a major component of heat transfer.
Cloud theory is being described by Lindzen et al as a major weakness in climate models. Even Dr. Joanne Simpson, formerly an expert on cloud models at NASA, claims they are not reliable. That’s not so surprising when you have biologists like Stephen Schneider, mathematicians like Gavin Schmidt and astronomers like James Hansen, writing programs to describe the atmosphere. I have little confidence that they will get it right, and from what I have seen they are way off.
What’s wrong with looking at the 30 year record of satellite data and seeing that no appreciable warming has taken place in the atmosphere? That data is proof that the atmosphere is simply not sensitive to CO2, or at least, not nearly as sensitive as modelers think.
“Cloud theory is being described by Lindzen et al as a major weakness in climate models. Even Dr. Joanne Simpson, formerly an expert on cloud models at NASA, claims they are not reliable. That’s not so surprising when you have biologists like Stephen Schneider, mathematicians like Gavin Schmidt and astronomers like James Hansen, writing programs to describe the atmosphere. I have little confidence that they will get it right, and from what I have seen they are way off.”
The modelers themselves describe clouds as a problem, which is why they are going to start using the new generation super computers that will give them a finer grid resolution that can do more realistic clouds. Lindzen hasn’t made any great announcement on it.
peterd “…and oxygen cannot be the source of infrared radiation escaping to space, as you seem to believe”.
peter…I did not claim that. I said it was radiation from oxygen that the satellite telemetry measures. If CO2 has such a high output of IR why don’t they use that? My guess is because O2 represents nearly 21% of atmospheric gases whereas CO2 represents 0.04%.
Oxygen does radiate in the microwave band. Although typical solar radiation spectra seem to omit the microwave range, I don’t see why. What is it we use in our kitchens to make popcorn? Microwaves produce heat and it is the microwave emissions from O2 that are measured by satellites.
WHAT CO2 forcing?????? http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide.htm
SJT,
“performed recently using hyperspectral data from the AVIRIS visible/near IR airborne imager. ”
Try again Louis”
You said it was a database etc. You still do not get it, do you. Even your quote above does not support your initial statement that the site contained a database of etc.
I have not questioned MODTRAN at all, only questioning your statement that the link provided a database etc.
So where is the database of all the measurements then?
Louis, you have no idea. Stick to stuff you can understand.
“Mr. de Freitas is admitting that his paper says nothing of significance about the existence/non-existence of AGW, contra the statements in its press release.”
Oops, it seems his press release kinda sorta overstated what the research found. Typical misleading bs from a paid denier.
Using the monthly data from 1996 to 2009.
I plotted MSU against SOI using various lags .
and found a temperature lag of about 5or 6 months
behind SOI
It is claimed that the fall in temperature in 2008
was due to a La Nina and the rise in 1998 was due
to a super El Nino. These are evident in the SOI data
From these two points the relationship between
SOI and temperature can be obtained.
The effect of SOI on temperature is much greater
than the “climate scientists” at Real Climate tell us.