by Judith Curry
It’s your turn to introduce new topics for discussion.
Last week I was at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in Austin TX. A very interesting meeting, which is much more focused on the applied aspects of the science say than the AGU. I will do a post on this meeting in a week or two, when the lectures and presentations have been posted on their web site.
While in Austin, I spilled water on my laptop, which pretty much destroyed it, so I am behind on work (not to mention blogging). Hoping to catch up this weekend.
a hairdryer used soon after the spill will often fix things up. Compressed air on the keyboard (after removing it) may also help.
As usual, I read comments, first. So I broke tradition & went North looking for the joke. Heh, it was all on me.
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Have you heard the one about the grinning Cheshire Sunspots pulling a joke on all of us here in Wonderland?
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I tried the hair dryer thing. The disk wasn’t damaged, so i did recover all of my files. My techs are seeing if the laptap can be salvaged, in the meantime I am back up and running with my old laptop.
Mineral content in the water when it dries will cause malfunction. Mother board needs to be disconnected and cleaned in an ultrasonic bath.
That’s why I drink only vodka while surfing the net. Alcohol drys quickly and is less damaging laptops.
Nonsense. The water here in Austin is about 280ppm and probably less if she spilled bottled water. It’s enough to make the water slightly conductive and that has its greatest impact on Casimir Effect parts like the keyboard. There’s not enough dry salts in it to bother anything. An ultrasonic circuit board bath is a solvent designed to remove solder flux which is an aesthetic problem not functional although it will also displace any water. I highly doubt whether mineral salts found in water are dissolved by circuit board bath solvent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_cleaning
vukcevik
I’ve been around electronics manufacturing including ultrasonic circuit board cleaners for a very long time. I already told you they use a solvent designed to dissolve electronic soldering flux (which is not water soluble) and I doubt that would dissolve salt found in water. Moreover I’ve done thousands of hours of manual soldering & cleaning up with a brush soaked from a little desktop flux solvent dispenser.
What exactly did you think I needed to know from the enclopedia article on either generic ultrasonic cleaners or electronic circuit board cleaning?
You’re bluffing. If you don’t like being wrong don’t talk out of your ass about things you don’t know about.
Ultrasonic cavitation is the most efficient method to remove the conductive insoluble microscopic crystal layer formed while the laptop was dried with a hair drier.
http://www.iultrasonic.com/refurbishing-laptops-with-an-ultrasonic-cleaner.html
Dr. Curry. You might want to consider a detachable backup device. Backup, detach, put in safe place, go on trip.
I’ve been trying to get in touch with some of the leading skeptics..tugging annoyingly at their sleeves…to try to drum up some interest in conducting a survey to counter that risible 97 percent number… which was based on two questions that most anyone would agree with. Of course it would be difficult to design properly…who to survey, what to ask etc etc… and it would probably have to conducted by a neutral party, but just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done…often quite the contrary.
Asking my fellow skeptics, what do you guys think? Am I crazy? Just about every time I get into an argument with a warmist, the word “consensus” comes up. It’s their most cherished argument. Why not prove them wrong?
Like sometimes with juries, this polling needs another jurisdiction. Nature is blind and balanced. Just so.
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er, change of venue. We’re stuck with jurisdiction.
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Lots of folks getting thrown under buses there. Looks like I’m going to have to order up another fleet. This is getting expensive!
Your ghost busses, they do nothing! Your understanding of climate skepticism is a phantom of the corpus, and a nightmare of your procrustean imagination.
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There is no problem with the statement that their ‘is a consensus’.
All other things remaining equal a doubling of CO2 will cause a 1.2C rise in temperature is agreed by almost everyone. The science on that has been settled for 100 years.
What isn’t settled is what doesn’t remain equal.
harrywr2
2xCO2 (clear sky, no feedback) estimates:
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/222.htm
1. Myhre et al.
dF = 3.71
dT = 1.0°C
2. Shi
dF = 3.98
dT = 1.07°C
3. Hansen
dF = 3.97
dT = 1.07°C
Other estimates:
4. Kondratjew and Moskalenko
dT = 0.88°C
5. Lindzen
dT = 0.65°C
So it looks like ~1°C is best estimate
All the rest is computer models and hype.
Max
Perhaps you could come up with a name for people who agree to the 1C story. which actually looks like .6C to 1.2C club.
Ya know, it might take some of the sting out of the denialist charge if you just say we hold that doubling c02 lead to .6C to 1.2C of warming.
Anthony and Willis should just lead that group.
And the denialist are then folks who dont beleieve that c02 has any effect.
moshe tries to pigeonhole and label curiosity as if it were water.
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Mosh
When would that temperature increase you mention be considered as starting from? For example pre indusrial 1850? In which case would it be thought that the increase had already ocurred?
tonyb
“And the denialist are then folks who dont beleieve that c02 has any effect.”
Denialists are then folks who don’t believe in the Null Hypothesis without any thoughts about rejecting it scientifically. Only a surface warming effect of CO2 is postulated, not any effect. On the face of the ‘official’ Earth’s energy budget and from the basic heat transfer theory a cooling effect is more likely (higher atmospheric emissivity). Probably insignificant though. A warming CO2 effect is VERY unlikely, IMHO.
Mosher said, “Ya know, it might take some of the sting out of the denialist charge if you just say we hold that doubling c02 lead to .6C to 1.2C of warming.”
I doubt it. The debate really isn’t between the “denialists” and the “believers”, they are both nutz. That is like expecting the “believers” to come out with CO2equivalent will not lead to more than 3 C of warming. Their whole world revolves around the fat tail.
cap’n
Eh? Where do you get this stuff? The current best estimate for ECS to 2 x CO2 is ~3C. When you start going on about “believers” and the fat tail you sound like some sort of denialist loon. You aren’t a denialist loon, are you?
Steven Mosher: “And the denialists are then folks who don’t believe that CO2 has any effect.” That would be me. It has no effect because its climate sensitivity is exactly zero. How do I know this? You have to do some climate science to find out. First, take the greenhouse effect. Advocates of greenhouse theory insist that when you add carbon dioxide to air it will start to absorb outgoing long-wave (infrared) radiation. After all, Arrhenius told us that more than a hundred years ago. The absorbed radiation then turns to heat, warms the atmosphere, and we get global warming. What Arrhenius ignored is the fact that water vapor is also a greenhouse gas that absorbs outgoing long-wave radiation at the same time. What is it doing when carbon dioxide absorption changes? Arrhenius never told us that. But climate scientists want to know. They have figured out that if you double the amount of carbon dioxide in air global temperature goes up 1.1 degrees Celsius. That does not frighten anyone so why are we worried about future warming? Ah – it has to be that carbon dioxide has help from water vapor. Once CO2 has warmed the air it can hold more water vapor and the additional water vapor absorption this creates is added to the original warming from carbon dioxide. Their computers calculate that this “positive feedback” from water vapor can triple or raise even more the original warming from carbon dioxide alone. But to find out what is actually happening you have to be able to measure infrared absorption by gases, just what Arrhenius did. First you have to find out how much infrared is absorbed by the atmosphere. Then you add some carbon dioxide and measure it again. That difference tells you how much radiation was absorbed which you then convert into heat units and figure out how much warming was produced. Very fortunately we have a long-running experiment doing just that. It involves radiosondes NOAA has been sending up since 1948 that look down and measure outgoing long-wave (infrared) radiation that is lost to space. And in parallel with it we have been carefully checking the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. In 2010 Ferenc Miskolczi used NOAA weather balloon database of these radiosonde measurements to observe the absorption of outgoing radiation over time. And discovered that absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere had been constant and had not changed for the previous 61 years. At the same time, the amount of carbon dioxide in air increased by 21.6 percent. According to the greenhouse theory the addition of this substantial amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere should have shown up as increased absorption, but it did not: nothing happened. No absorption means no greenhouse effect, no warming, no nothing. What the greenhouse theory predicts is shown to be false by this observation. Scientific theories that make wrong predictions belong in the trash heap of history, and the greenhouse theory belongs there. Miskolczi explains why. According to him, when several greenhouse gases simultaneously absorb radiation an optimal infrared transmittance for the atmosphere is established. When the amount of one gas changes, the amounts of others change to restore this optimal transmittance. In the case of earth atmosphere the greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide and water vapor. What is happening is that when carbon dioxide is added and starts to absorb the amount of water vapor in air diminishes to compensate for the increased absorption by carbon dioxide. This is required to maintain the over-all optimal transmittance in the infrared. He calculated the value of this optimal transmittance for our atmosphere from NOAA and Tigr2 databases. It turned out to be 15 percent transmittance. In units of optical thickness it is 1.867. And it is maintained by negative water vapor feedback, the exact opposite of positive water vapor feedback that IPCC uses to calculate global warming. Doubts about their use of positive water vapor feedback have been expressed from time to time. The most serious objection is the absence of the hot spot. If you put the greenhouse theory with positive water vapor feedback into the computer and let it run it will tell you to look for a hot spot at ten kilometer height in the tropics. But radiosondes have been looking for that hot spot in vain and cannot find it. This has been glossed over but what it tells us is that positive water vapor feedback simply does not exist. Miskolczi theory goes one step beyond it, makes the feedback negative, and proves that the greenhouse effect of global warming simply does not exist. This is an empirical proof that totally contradicts what we are told about global warming. With that, the anthropogenic greenhouse theory of global warming is dead. If you now start looking at the temperature curve with this in the back of your mind you will find all sorts of things wrong with it. I will simply cite dr. Stott from the Met Office trying to explain the current lack of warming: “…variability in global temperatures is not unusual, with several periods lasting a decade or more with little or no warming since the instrumental record began.” Not unusual when carbon dioxide is supposed to be warming the air? These periods include more than half the time that has passed since the middle of the last century. I can’t understand why nobody smelled a rat. Didn’t anyone ask why there is no warming when carbon dioxide is increasing? Apparently there were some people who knew but chose to be quiet and concoct excuses for it. My favorite is that given for the no-warming fifties, sixties and seventies: “Aerosols from war production blocked out the sun.”
Arno,
Even if you don’t believe in them, please do give paragraphs a chance.
BBD
“The current best estimate for ECS to 2 x CO2 is ~3C.”
CORRECTION:
The latest best estimate for ECS, based on actual past observations rather than simply model simulations, is 1.5C to 2C (or around half of old number you cited).
It’s best to keep “up to date”, BBD, and not to “deny” new data..
Max
Arno Arrak
What you write appears to make sense based on actual physical observations.
The long-term NOAA record on tropospheric humidity, to which you refer, shows a strange correlation with global average temperature (HadCRUT3 in this case).
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3343/3606945645_3450dc4e6f_b.jpg
The long-term trend is a counter-intuitive reduction in tropospheric water vapor content (specific humidity) with warming.
But short-term “blips” in the curve shows warming with increased water vapor content (or vice-versa).
And Minschwaner + Dessler (2004) showed a short-term increase in water vapor content with warming (albeit much less than required to maintain constant relative humidity, as the IPCC models estimate).
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3347/3610454667_9ac0b7773f_b.jpg
So it appears that the observed data confirm that there is a natural “negative feedback” (or “thermostat”), which operates over extended time periods.
Max
BBD, “Eh? Where do you get this stuff? The current best estimate for ECS to 2 x CO2 is ~3C. When you start going on about “believers” and the fat tail you sound like some sort of denialist loon. You aren’t a denialist loon, are you?”
The more recent estimates are closer to 1.6 C with lower probabilities of the greater than 3 C and extremely low probabilities of greater than 4 C, for ALL forcing. CO2 is not the only forcing. Since the norm in the models was to use aerosols to “explain” the lower than expected CO2 impact, the “current” best estimate is likely on the high side. There is a lot of stuff going on right now thanks to that “pause” that doesn’t really exist. The 3C “current best estimate” is the center of a range of comfort, a strange attractor if you will. Once “believers” indicate they are willing to leave that “range of comfort”, then honest debate can restart.
manacker
A questionable study and a blog post do not constitute ‘the latest best estimate’. This is a ludicrous misrepresentation.
The Schlesigner study does use a simple model simulation. It is not a purely empirical study. You can dump this new meme of yours because it is another misrepresentation. You should perhaps read paper.
You might also wish to return to my previous comment on this subject, which provides some context for S12.
The Lewis stuff is a guest post on a contrarian blog. Every time you bring this up, pretending that it is a published result, I will remind you of its true nature and that using this stuff as a ‘reference’ only underlines how desperate you must be.
‘CORRECTION’ indeed. What a joker you are, Max.
Oh, and long live Hans von Storch!
What Arrhenius ignored is the fact that water vapor is also a greenhouse gas that absorbs outgoing long-wave radiation at the same time. What is it doing when carbon dioxide absorption changes?
But CO2 and H2O absorb at different wavelengths, so when CO2 increases more LW radiation is absorbed at the wavelengths at which CO2 absorbs and H2O carries on doing what it was doing before.
Fat Bayesian Tails they make the radiant world go round.
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Oh, boy, thanks. ‘Sceptics hold the spectre of knowledge and the sceptre of faith’.
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re; 1.2C climate sensitivity
Only if the earth’s surface were an ideal black body. Which it isn’t. Far from it.
BBD | January 12, 2013 at 2:03 pm |
“The current best estimate for ECS to 2 x CO2 is ~3C.”
Eh? Where do you get this stuff? Media reports? Computational models?
The fact is observed lower troposphere temperature trend is some 0.14°C/decade for the last 30 years (uah, rss). CO₂ trend in the same interval is roughly 0.068 doubling/decade (doubling time is ~150 years). To get anything higher than 2°C equilibrium climate sensitivity to CO₂ doubling from it requires an extremely slow climate response.
Which is not completely impossible, since observed rate of warming in the upper 700 m of oceans (the only conceivable large enough heat reservoir connected to the climate system) is ~0.03°C/decade (would take 1000 years to warm up by 3°C at this rate).
However, a slow equilibration process makes things much less threatening, not more so.
A good poll question would be to give the IPCC attribution statement and ask whether they agree with it.
lolwot
A better question would simply be to summarize the key IPCC “CAGW” claims for the future and see if the scientists agreed with ALL of the claims made.
If not, the scientist’s name is not on the list.
Here’s a quickie summary of the IPCC “CAGW” claim:
IPCC CAGW premise per AR4 WGI, WGII and WGIII:
– Human GHG emissions have caused most of global warming since 1950.
– Models calculate that (2xCO2) climate sensitivity is “high” (3.2°C)
– As a result, models project that the following changes will result to our climate by 2100 from AGW (unless human GHG emissions are curtailed):
1. Temperature increase up to 6.4°C
2. Extreme high sea levels
3. Increased heat waves
4. More heavy precipitation events, floods
5. Increased droughts
6. Increased intense tropical cyclone activity
This will lead (among other things) to:
7. Crop failures
8. Disappearing glaciers, which now provide water for millions
9. Increased salination of ground water
10. Loss of coral reefs
11. Impaired shell formation in marine organisms
12. Extinction of fish species
13. Inundation of several islands, coastal regions
14. Severe impact on rain forests
15. Spread of vector borne diseases
16. Many more deleterious changes to our environment and for our society
Also summarized as:
Most of the observed global warming since ~1950 has been caused by increases in human GHG concentrations (principally CO2), the climate sensitivity for doubling CO2 is a mean value of 3.2°C, thus AGW represents a serious potential threat to humanity and our environment, unless human GHG emissions (principally CO2) are curtailed.
That’s the IPCC CAGW premise that “scientsist” either agree with or don’t.
Max
A classic example of what distinguishes a “skeptic” from a skeptic.
Re-read what you wrote, max, and I excerpted. See if you can find the fundamental error.
See if you even understand the difference between a “skeptic” and a skeptic. I’ll give you some time. If you can’t come up with the answer, I’ll give you some time and then correct your statement. Check back later.
The problem with manacker’s premise is that it puts Lindzen in the CAGW camp. Lindzen attributes all the warming to GHGs (overestimates it in fact), and has no cooling from aerosols, and voila, low sensitivity. A more correct separation is along the lines of sensitivity than attribution.
Joshua
Your silly riddles do not interest me.
IPCC has been quite clear in outlining its CAGW premise. It’s all there in print for anyone who is interested to read in thousands of pages (as I’ve outlined).
And skeptics remind us that this premise is not supported by empirical scientific evidence, so is an uncorroborated hypothesis, scientifically speaking.
Hardly something to get one’s knickers all twisted about, right?
Max
Jim D
You are obviously confused with your assumption that Lindzen is “in the CAGW camp”.
How silly! (No matter how you try to rationalize it.)
Max
As a result, models project that the following changes will result to our climate by 2100 from AGW (unless human GHG emissions are curtailed):
The IPCC does not say this.
Hey, Short Pants, try sceptic on for size. Manchester invades.
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There’s a fine line between being “enigmatic” and just being an arse. Try and stay on the right side of that line.
mannacker –
The IPCC qualifies it’s statements on the probability that ACO2 causes most of global warming. Argue about the estimated probabilities as you will (that is something that a rational skeptic would do) but to leave out the qualifications as you characterize IPCC statements is inaccurate and sloppy.
You have done something very similar with your characterization of Muller’s perspective and with your characterization of Judith’s perspective – and when your error has been pointed out, you have failed to show accountability.
These sorts of errors and failure to be accountable are not work of a skeptic, although they are the work of a “skeptic.”
Your claim of “rational skepticism” would not pass the scrutiny of a rational skeptic.
Andrew adams
Sure, IPCC claims all those things I wrote.
I copied them directly out of IPCC reports (AR4 WGI SPM, WGII, etc.).
Examples:
– warming up to 6.4C by 2100 [AR4 WGI SPM, p.13]
– extreme high sea levels [ditto, p.8]
– increased heat waves [ditto]
etc., etc.
– loss of coral reefs [AR4 WGII]
– impaired shell formation in marine organisms [ditto]
– extinction of fish species [ditto]
etc., etc.
Read those reports, Andrew, and you will also see those claims.
Max
Joshua
Sure, IPCC “qualifies” all its claims, sometimes based on “expert judgment rather than formal attribution studies”, sometimes adding in wording to represent percentages of likelihood, sometimes with flowery statements of “scientific progress” since its last report or “improvements in understanding of processes and their simulation in models”, etc. etc.
Nowhere does IPCC claim that its claimed “projections” are 100% certain “predictions” of what is absolutely going to happen in the future. (Even if that’s how many people understand them.)
But the claims of what could happen if we do not curtail GHG emissions, which I have listed as an outline of IPCC’s overall CAGW premise, have all come out of various parts of the AR4 report.
That’s an outline of CAGW, as defined by IPCC.
Either you buy in to it or you don’t.
As a rational skeptic, I don’t until someone shows me the empirical evidence (Feynman) to support the above CAGW premise.
Max
manacker, you saw that I don’t put Lindzen in the CAGW camp, but you did by defining it in terms of attribution. Better to define it by sensitivity because that puts Lindzen (and his follower, Monckton) back in the non-CAGW camp.
You said that the IPCC claims those things will happen. The IPCC does not say this. For example a temperature rise of 6.4C is the most extreme of a number of different scenarios.
pokerguy
The 97% (consensus) number is a baseless claim.
% of who?
agree to what?
have they gone on record stating their agreement?
US Senator Inhofe has put together a list of “scientists”, who have gone on record stating that they did NOT support the IPCC CAGW premise.
Eli Rabett once published this list, and it has since been modified to remove names that were not involved in climate science or a related field and add new names of scientists who have recently gone on record.
Currently the list has 327 names on it.
IF the 97% is correct, there would have to be a list of 10,573 qualified individuals who have all gone on record that they support the IPCC CAGW position in full.
So this is obviously a BS number.
I would seriously doubt that the REAL %-age is more than around 75% at best = 983 individuals (and shrinking day-by-day, it appears!)
Max
Where’s Inhofe’s list so I can audit it? Ie look for something wrong with it. I am just looking to discredit it by finding one person on it who shouldn’t be.
Thanks in advance for providing the link.
Please, someone; tell me that’s a sock.
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Google inhofe dissenting scientists for this list at Inhofe’s own site, and some links to opinions on it. To qualify for the list, I think all he needs is a quote that opposes the IPCC view. He found 700 quotes globally so far, and is still looking for more.
‘Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.” http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
The view is quite mainstream these days – and I have discussed this just yesterday with you Jim. But it was enough to get me on the Inhofe list when published in American Thinker in 2007 – http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/enso_variation_and_global_warm.html
It was also enough to get me on every silly skeptics list on the interweb. I often ask space cadets what they think will happen to the politics should it not warm for another decade or three. Don’t get me wrong – it seems unsustainable to emit 4, 8, 16, 32% of natural CO2 as economies grow this century. However, the ‘progressive’ agenda for managing this seems more about managing it by reducing economic growth than by persuing rational and pragmatic policy. Taxes and caps rather than technology and social policy.
‘The old climate framework failed because it would have imposed substantial costs associated with climate mitigation policies on developed nations today in exchange for climate benefits far off in the future — benefits whose attributes, magnitude, timing, and distribution are not knowable with certainty. Since they risked slowing economic growth in many emerging economies, efforts to extend the Kyoto-style UNFCCC framework to developing nations predictably deadlocked as well.
The new framework now emerging will succeed to the degree to which it prioritizes agreements that promise near-term economic, geopolitical, and environmental benefits to political economies around the world, while simultaneously reducing climate forcings, developing clean and affordable energy technologies, and improving societal resilience to climate impacts. This new approach recognizes that continually deadlocked international negotiations and failed domestic policy proposals bring no climate benefit at all. It accepts that only sustained effort to build momentum through politically feasible forms of action will lead to accelerated decarbonization’. http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/climate_pragmatism_innovation
Conservation farming is one of the most rational responses – building soil carbon, conserving water and environments, increasing agricultural productivity by the 70% required by 2050 and sequestering vast amounts of carbon. Perversely – this doesn’t seem sufficient to make this a cause for progressives.
Indeed Robert Ellison is on Inhofe’s list of sceintists, along with Wojick, Willis E., and possibly others who have posted here. JC hasn’t said anything to make the cut yet, apparently.
My point is not that I am on the list – Jim. I find that amusing in a WTF kind of way. The point is that I was and am right about large scale ocean and atmospheric circulation. It is not the list that counts but the science.
And – btw – the focus of the tribal politics rather than on forging substantive approaches to the problem is the problem in a nutshell and why there has been such glacial progress. There is one progressive solution Jim? Anything else is heresy?
Indeed I often wonder what progressives will do and think as the world stubornly refuses to warm for another decade or three. Kool-ade territory. The world will certainly move on. Unfortunate as I say because the risk tranforms from modest warming to abrupt and non-linear change.
The unintended fruits of the faux certainty of the cult of AGW space cadets is that progress will be thwarted for another generation at least. No one is going to trust or believe them.
Try here
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/denier-vs-skeptic/denier-myths-debunked/not-sparta-inhofe-and-the-400/
here
http://650list.blogspot.com/
and of course here
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/12/makin-list-checkin-it-twice-here-is.html
Kim, that’s a sock.
Seen zot sock since?
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Pokerguy,
Many of the responses to your question are about climate sensitivity.
From my perspective, we don’t know what climate sensitivity is and we are unlikely to reduce the uncertainty in our understanding any time soon. therefore we are wasting an enormous amount of time, funding and research capacity on this issue. Instead we should be moving on to other issues that would help us make better and more robust policy decisions.
I suggest, the four most important inputs we need for conducting analyses to inform policy are:
1. Climate sensitivity (global temperature increase per doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration)
2. Damage function (net benefit or damage per degree of warming)
3. Decarbonisation rate function (rate the world could decarbonise with the selected policy)
4. Probability the chosen solution will achieve the objectives
Most of the climate science research is focused on climate sensitivity . There is little focus on improving the damage function (it is very poorly understood), even less on the decarbonisation rate function, and none (that I am aware of) on the “Probability the chosen solution will achieve the objectives”. The chosen solution being the policies, example of which are:
1. ‘No controls’ – adaptation but no policies to mitigate global GHG emissions. This is the baseline policy against which the other policies are compared. .
2. Legally binding international agreement(s) to global GHG emissions reductions (which may include targets and time tables, carbon pricing, regulations, penalties for breeches, transfer of money from rich to poor, taxation);
3. ‘Free Market’ policies – No legally binding international agreement. Each country acts in its own best interest. Global emissions reductions are achieved by removing the impediments that are preventing the world from having low emissions energy cheaper than fossil fuel energy. Developed countries develop the technologies and sell them to developing countries in commercial transactions. The process would be facilitated by freer trade and removal of the restrictive regulations that are thwarting the development of better technologies.
Hello Peter, Mark Harrigan here.
I’m a little unclear on how nhis tread works and if we can manage a discussion on it without getting lost but I’m willing to try.
A quick skim of your post above seems a good place to start. Since if we are going to have a productive debate/discussion it is important to established the parameters/basis first.
It might also be useful to establish on what we mutually agree and disagree – and I am prepared to be quite wide raanging in that discussion as I think if we can establish points of agreement (I’m sure there will be some) that would be useful. I’m going to copy your post into a separate document so I can mull over it and get back to you.
Peter Lang
Your outline of topics to be debated is logical.
The most important point, of course, is the (2xCO2) equilibrium climate sensitivity.
Recent papers, all based on physical observations of some sort rather than simply model simulations, have shown that ECS is likely to be no more than half the previously assumed, model-derived range. Some studies based on TOA satellite observations even arrive at ECS values that are less than one-third of the previously estimated mean value of around 3C.
These are Spencer + Braswell (2007), Lindzen + Choi (2009/2011), Gillett et al. (2011), Schlesinger et al. (2012), Björnbom et al. (2013), plus the yet-unpublished Lewis analysis.
If these more recent estimates cannot be refuted, we have a new ball game.
It would then be extremely unlikely that there could be a real potential threat to humanity or our environment from added human CO2 (within the range constrained by fossil fuel availability), so all the other points of debate would essentially become redundant.
So I believe this is the key point of debate, which needs resolution before we get into a lot of “what if” discussions, don’t you?
Max
Hi Mark Harrigan,
First we need a posting procedure because the nesting goes to the third level and you cannot reply to a comment at the third level. We could move to the bottom of the thread, but I suggest it will be best to just continue at the third level here. That means, we will both be posting replies to my comment of January 12, 2013 at 5:07 pm (the same one you you responded to).
That might be an enormous task. From my perspective there is no point discussing climate sensitivity or any of the science that is aimed at estimating climate sensitivity. That rules out 90% of the science.
What’s left?
2. ‘Damage function’.
Perhaps later, after we’ve reached agreement or whatever on that we could get into the ‘decarbonisation rate function’, policy options (I mean broad categories of policy options) and the probability that the chosen policy can be implemented as necessary and maintained for a century and beyond.
You mentioned elsewhere:
Could we start the discussion with you posting a comment with perhaps an outline of the evidence you intend to expand on as the discussion develops?
Manacker,
Thank you for your comment. I come at this from a different perspective that what you are saying. My perspective is that there is a political issue and it is not going to go ways by us telling people there is no problem. I want to get to doing a proper decision analysis, eventually, but it is very complicated. So that is a way off. In the meantime, I see the issue as follows:
1. If climate sensitivity is low there is no major issue.
2. If climate sensitivity is high and damage function is low there is no major issue.
3. If climate sensitivity is high and damage function is high but the world can decarbonise fast enough with the right policies and without damaging economic growth, there is no major issue.
Therefore, if there is a viable ‘No Regrets’ policy and it could work in the real world, then there is a robust policy available that solves all the requirements.
I believe there is such a policy option. I am trying to get people to consider this seriously.
Peter Lang
OK.
Agree with your logic.
Max
Peter, I hope this is the right place to reply – I also hope you might read http://www2.lse.ac.uk/CATS/publications/papersPDFs/86_SmithStern_Uncertainty_2011.pdf before responding.
As I mentioned on TC I’ve been busy elsewhere so this is just an initial foray.
First – a couple of principles. Because they reveal my ideological motivations (which we all have)
I agree with your point on TC that however much we might be concerned about fossil fuel emissions (and the other health costs burden they impose even without the GHG issue) we should not lose sight of the fact that they provided enormous increases in human wealth and wellbeing over the last century. That the downsides have been a social cost (whereas profits have been privatised) is a political issue that clouds the debate.
Whilst I am sympathetic to those who want to reduce energy consumption via efficiencies etc – and that unfettered access to limitless energy might inspire profligacy – I would point out that it is also part of human nature to desire to better one’s own lot and the lot of one’s children. I would also argue to the “greens” who think somehow we can magically reduce energy consumption globally that “energy = freedom”. If you look at cultures (e.g. nomadic or peasant village level) that have no excess energy available they have no freedom to invent, to create, to educate, to advance their culture – all their human endeavour is absorbed with the business of survival (see episode 2 of Bronowski’s “Ascent of Man” for an excellent illustration of this). I am therefore in favour of any rational policy options that increase the available energy to humanity that does not come at a cost to the environment that it cannot bear (in other words that there are minimal or no damaging externalities as there are with fossil fuels).
So yes, as you have gathered I am supporter of nuclear power (about which I think we agree). Although more broadly I would say that deploying the (most suitable) technology according to its true advantages (in the context of the proposed application) is the smart approach – rather than focusing on a single narrow solution. Which means any mix of policy options will depend on many (local) factors.
Now – to the issue
You said (to Manacker I think? – by the way how do get the italics? html code?)
“I see the issue as follows:
1. If climate sensitivity is low there is no major issue.
2. If climate sensitivity is high and damage function is low there is no major issue.
3. If climate sensitivity is high and damage function is high but the world can decarbonise fast enough with the right policies and without damaging economic growth, there is no major issue.
Therefore, if there is a viable ‘No Regrets’ policy and it could work in the real world, then there is a robust policy available that solves all the requirements.
I believe there is such a policy option. I am trying to get people to consider this seriously.”
Let’s start with that logic because I think the framework is very sound, but incomplete. And I think we have to consider the damage function (“df”) together with climate sensitivity (“cs”) because , in mathematical terms, df ~f(cs). In other words the damage function is a function that is dependent to some degree on climate senility.
So, I would rewrite your logic (slightly) as follows
1) Unless we can be reasonably certain (>95%?) that climate sensitivity is not high then there is a major issue
2) Unless we can also be reasonably certain that even under high climate sensitivities the damage function is low (>95%?) then there is a major issue
3) If there is a non negligible risk of high climate sensitivity and a high damage function and current policies being pursued (BAU – increasing emissions) ignore this then there is a major issue
4) If proposed policies to reduce emissions via renewables have a non negligible risk of being significantly more costly than existing energy sources and/or a non-legible risk of either dramatically reducing available energy or not displacing sufficient fossil fuels (assuming a non-negligible risk of high climate sensitivity and damage function) then there is a major issue.
5) If the alternative(s) to the “renewables alone” policy response face significant opposition (whether for genuine reasons, ignorance, or motivated ideological reasoning) then we must seek ways to overcome this through evidence and persuasion
How’s that?
Now -to deal with Climate sensitivity first (because if we cannot we can’t really progress our dialogue). Can we agree that we mean the standard -“temperature increase associated with a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels” – or around 500ppm GHGs +/- 50?
I hope we can agree that this is the major area of uncertainty in the science. But all arguments that climate senility is low can equally be countered by arguments that it could just as well be high. No one actually knows with certainty. But we can say that the risk that it is high is non-negligible.
We can also say (I know you follow the IEA and they are pretty clear about this) that unless there IS a suitable policy response GHG levels may go higher than the 500ppm mark
I can post numerous links to papers to establish this but my point is to establish that the risk of, say, a 4 degree warming sometime in the next 40-50 years (if nothing is done) cannot be ruled out with anything like more than 95% certainty (In saying that I totally accept it is possible it may be half that or less – but that is not my point).
Is this a reasonable basis to start talking?
Ouch! Damn that spell checker! I’ve no idea a what senile climate might be – sorry I meant sensitivity :)
Well, senility is the changes with time, and sensitivity marks the changes after time.
Mark and Peter have a very nice framework here.
======================
Mark Harrigan,
A few house keeping issues first:
First, the formatting for quote, italic and bold, are:
• at the start of the section to format put a “” after.
• At the end of the section to format put “” after.
Examples codes to put between these symbols are: “blockquote”, “i” “b” to format quote, italic, bold, etc.
Second point: did you sign up to the thread so you get notification when new comments are posted?
Thirdly, I agree with your “principles”, as I understand them. My ideological motivations are similar to what you’ve written here. However, I’d add some of my own. I don’t believe centralised power, excessive regulation, excessive bureaucratic control (like the EU for example and what I believe the UN would like to become), high taxing regimes, etc. give the world the best rate of improvement for human well-being. I do believe the profit motive is good and should be strongly supported. The profit motive is what makes the world wealthier (by which I mean societie’s wealth as a whole as in infrastructure, health, education, governance, etc.) and a better place. I believe light but appropriate regulation allows and encourages invention and more regulation stifles it. I believe globalisation and big companies are good. They do far more good for humanity than bad. So, on all these things I think the ideological beliefs of the Greens and the self-claimed ‘Progressives’ are dear wrong. I think they just don’t understand the benefits, or they are incapable of properly weighing the benefits vs the downsides. I also see GHG emissions as just one of the many issues and risks facing humanity, and by no means the most important or highest risk. (See World Economic Forum “Global Risks 2012”). I believe climate change is the doomsayers’ ideological issue of the time. In the past there were others such as desertification, DDT, mad cow disease, and many others. I also am confident we will deal with GHG emission appropriately as time progresses. The most important thing we need – to address climate change and virtually all other issues facing humanity – is the cheapest possible energy. Therefore, if we want low GHG emissions energy it needs to be cheaper than fossil fuel energy. That is possible, IMO. But we have been preventing it happening for 50 years because of irrational policies. In short, I see climate change and GHG emissions as one of many issues and we will deal with it. Therefore, I do not support the doomsaying and scaremongering, such as claims of catastrophic AGW, etc.
What I really want is a totally objective policy options analysis.
For now, let’s focus on my item 2 from the top post in this sub thread “2. Damage function (net benefit or damage per degree of warming)”
You said on TC you believe the damage function is high. What do you mean by high and why do you say it is high.
By the way, I am using Nordhaus’s meaning of ‘Damage Function’: http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf .. (pp 50-52, 73, 114-115, and especially, Table 7-2, p130 … and more)
I am using Nordhaus as a primary reference for my policy options analysis. Some of my reasons for this are:
1. He seems about as objective as they come in this field of science.
2. The information weI need for policy options analysis is well presented and explained all in one place (so it is consistent)
3. It deals with net-cost benefit which is what is needed for policy analysis
4. He provides his models in Excel so dummies like me can attempt to understand them.
5. He explains how his models are calibrated: http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Accom_Notes_100507.pdf Note particularly Section “VII. Lab notes for Impacts and Damage Function” p24 which says:
By the way, although I use his figures, I do not necessarily agree with all his conclusions. Just getting that clear up front :)
Regarding your logic versus mine, I am separating climate sensitivity from damage function and dealing with them as two separate functions as Nordhaus has done (see p130 here: http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf )
The uncertainty of Climate sensitivity is high and has hardly changed in 20 years. The argument is incessant and going nowhere. Those who are interested in climate science discuss nothing else (than climate sensitivity and all the inputs, evidence, etc.) It is bla bla bla. We need to find another route. That issue is going nowhere. I am suggesting we pursue a different route. Let those who want to talk about climate sensitivity, temperatures, trends and drowning polar bears do so. It’s of no help whatsoever at this stage, IMO. It is also dominated by belief and ideology. There is no sign this is going to change. So, if you want to make progress on achievable, practicable policy, and you want to get support from conservatives for policies, we need to find another way to get there.
Now I’ll go away and read the paper you linked.
Mark Harrigan,
I had a quick skim on the paper you linked about philosophy. That was not what I understood we are intending to discuss. I said you had posted evidence of high damage function. I was hoping you were going to summarise that here. Your statement that initiated this discussion was:
Can you summarise your evidence? What are the major components and how are they valued.
Correction: my last comment should have said:
“You said you had posted evidence of high damage function.”
I’m digesting your last reply whilst I am also assembling the various data I have posted in other places. I am also trying to establish what common ground we have before ripping into the debate – I hope you will be patient because, alas, I also have a bit of “real” work on at the moment.
Yes I did sign up for notifications.
Very happy to work from Nordhaus as I agree his work is good (albeit conservative in that many regard his work as taking the low end of possible downsides – but I agree it’s the most authoritative and clear basis out there). I will review his work and look at his definitions again – it’s a large paper that I have -The link you provided is I think a an earlier draft? http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/dice_mss_072407_all.pdf
Re the ideology question – I think words like “excessive” or “light” with respect to regulation miss the point. All markets and systems require regulation. Whilst “quantity” of regulation matters (too many regulations and systems become unworkable) I think the more important question is how prescriptive versus proscriptive regulations are and how this is applied. I prefer regulatory systems that are only prescriptive with respect to outcomes (e.g. defining what safety standards or emission standards must be achieved) and then are proscriptive with respect to means (some ways of doing things may be unacceptable). As far as possible they should NOT prescribe HOW things should be done – although sometimes for harmonisation across different domains a degree of this unavoidable. It is when those administering the regulations allow process to triumph over outcomes that problems arise.
On the climate sensitivity issue – I agree I don’t want to get into a debate about what it is – since no-one really knows. However because the damage function is dependent upon it I simply wish to establish that is reasonable to state that there is a non-negligible risk it may be sufficiently high to be an issue.
That point is actually crucial to the data and arguments about damage function that I wish to examine and it is WHY I linked to the Stern/Smith paper.
Please DO read it carefully. While it appears in the “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society” it is not a philosophy paper per se. It talks about how matters of uncertainty and the impacts (damage function) from the climate science might be used to inform science policy. It is a “policy wonk” document written by an economist (Stern) and a highly respected mathematical modeler (Smith).
Smith understand better than most the real strengths AND weaknesses of climate models of prediction.
Judith Curry herself has summarised it very well here
http://judithcurry.com/2011/11/16/smith-and-stern-on-uncertainty-in-science-and-its-role-in-climate-policy/
The key point for me is on page 3 which I quote
” The fact that uncertainties are large cannot be taken to imply that the risks are small, or that policy-makers can act as if the risks were small.”
They make the point that we can make good predictions about global climate (meaning reasonable estimates with uncertainties about what global AVERAGE temperatures will be associated with increasing levels of GHGs) but cannot make accurate forecasts about exact impacts will be at a scale at which humans must act.
But the science and the models CAN say that there are significant risks with the impact of these global changes at a local level – risks that may well exceed any reasonable capacity to ADAPT to them.
Hence they make a very clear case that we MUST, as a policy option, adopt sensible mitigation strategies (they point out that it is both too late and too costly to have 100% mitigation and hence a combination of mitigation and adaptation is inevitable) – which I think nicely dovetails with Nordhaus?
Mr. Mark Harrigan, do you have any thoughts about our FED or SEC?
I prefer regulatory systems that are only prescriptive with respect to outcomes (e.g. defining what safety standards or emission standards must be achieved) and then are proscriptive with respect to means (some ways of doing things may be unacceptable).
it looks more & more, I say we might need immediate help here.
Mark Harrigan,
Thank you for your reply. Take your time. No rush. Considered comments are much better than half baked comments – that applies to everyone else but not to me :)
Here are a few quick responses (half baked?).
Equally, many also say the figures he uses are exaggerated on the high side, not by him but by the sources he gets them from, such as the inputs to IPCC AR4 (which were heavily influenced by environmental NGOs). He has used what is in AR4, so I don’t see it is reasonable to argue that he is using ‘low end’ figures.
The link I provided is to an exact copy of his published book “A Question of Balance”.
http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf .
They are two entirely separate issues. Climate sensitivity could be high and damage function low. That is, even with relatively high climate sensitivity, the damages could be small. I am proposing we deal separately with the damage function. For example, what is the cost of damages for 1C, 2C, 3C, 4C average global temp increase? And what are the major contributors to the damage cost – e.g. sea level rise.
Regarding the Stern/Smith paper, I may get to it later, but before we get diverted, I urge that we stay focused, as a first step, on the evidence you said you have that shows that the damage function is high.
Hi Peter,
I understand you wish to jump into it. But if this dialogue is to be productive (meaning hopefully we both increase our understanding of the issues and maybe provide some insight to others) then I would prefer to hasten slowly.
To me the Stern/Smith paper is critical because it establishes a logical basis for proceeding.
The conclusion that it draws – which I agree with and is essential to my argument – is that one “b” need only show that there is a non-negligible risk that the damage function is high to require that policy action be forthcoming “b”
This doesn’t mean I am suggesting that “any and all” measures are justified. While I don’t think economic measures are the “only” ones (they are typically suspended in war time for example) economics still matters. There will be some measures that simply make no sense since they potentially cost far more to implement than the damage they offset – a point well made by Nordhaus when he states (p23)
“i” The efficient climate-change policy would be relatively inexpensive and have a substantial impact on long-run climate change. The net present-value global benefit of the optimal policy is $3.4 trillion relative to no controls. This total involves $2.2 trillion of abatement costs and $5.2 trillion of reduced climatic damages. Note that even after the optimal policy has been taken, there will still be substantial residual damages from climate change, which we estimate to be $17 trillion. The reason that more of the climate damages are not eliminated is that the additional abatement will cost more than the additional reduction in damages.”i”
I understand this is based on limiting the increase to 2.4 degrees against a projected 3.1 degrees in his model.
I am going through the accommodation notes you linked to which I hadn’t seen before to digest his points on Damage Function
I am not aware of any specific breakdown of the damage function as you propose but I understand where you are coming from.
To keep it simple let’s focus on what damage there has been to date that we can attribute to the roughly 0.8 degree temperature increase so far and then what 4 degrees might look like.
By the way – I always find the “temperature” to be a symptomatic measure. What matters with increased levels of GHGs is the increased heat retained by the planet and the impact this has on the planetary ocean/atmosphere climate system. Atmospheric temperature increases are just one outcome. Melting ice (especially land based), oceanic expansion and a more dynamic climate system that contains more moisture are also very important. Of course average temperature matters (especially for sensitive agriculture) but it is what it does to extremes that has the biggest impact.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_17/shifting.gif
When I have looked at and considered damage function I have considered the following (with the following references)
(1) Sea level rise and its impact on normal sea levels, surge levels associated with extreme tides and weather events and the contamination of fresh water aquifers and potential for reduction/damage to coastal agriculture (especially in low lying river deltas)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090310104742.htm
“The impacts of sea level rise – even in the lower ranges of the current predictions – looks to be severe. Approximately ten percent of the world’s population – 600 million people – live in low lying areas in danger of being flooded. A previously released study led by John Church, shows that even a modest sea level rise of 50 centimeters will result in a major increase in the number of coastal flooding events.”
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_impacts_sea_level.html
(2) Extreme weather events associated with increased energy in the climate system
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/10/18/1101766108.abstract
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=insurance-ranks-2010-worst-for-climate-disasters
http://www.munichre.com/en/media_relations/press_releases/2010/2010_09_27_press_release.aspx
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/graph0.jpg
(this last graph makes it clear that it is not simply increases in extent of human exposure that matters since non-climate events have not increased over the period)
and
(3) The disruption to agricultural practices (and hence food production) due to changing climate patterns from the norm
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-threatens-second-dust-bowl
By the way the wine industry is an interesting bell weather here
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02434.x/abstract;jsessionid=8678A18042D2D26FEFF3D0FCF16EB3A9.d01t02
Of course some may argue, rightly, that some areas will benefit agriculturally, which is true. But the consensus is that the net impact is negative and regardless the cost of transition is an issue (it’s not that easy to switch infrastructure that is geared around these things) plus some people will suffer especially in poorer areas where the ability to adapt is more limited
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-will-climate-change-impact-world-food-supplies
and (4) to a lesser extent – human health impacts
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-impact-on-human-health-overlooked
What has happened to date, taking a broader view with estimates of the future risks is listed here
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-SPM_FINAL.pdf
However your challenge to consider this further has broadened my reading and this work I found http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2648893/
takes this further and talks about:
1) Risk to Unique and Threatened Systems.
2) Risk of Extreme Weather Events.
3) Distribution of Impacts.
4) Aggregate Damages.
5) Risks of Large-Scale Discontinuities.
Summarised neatly in this graphic http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2648893/figure/F1/
I’m not aware of any authoritative work that tries to exactly quantify these matters.
But I think, taken together, they provided reasonable evidence that there is a non-negligible risk that the impacts of warming much in excess of 2 degrees is a problem. Remember – I don’t think it is necessary to prove conclusively the damage function is high (which is impossible anyway) – only to show reasonable evidence that this a non-negligible probability it may be.
The question, of course, is what is the most sensible economic policy response to deal with it?
I do not think any of the 100% renewables advocates have the slightest idea of the magnitude of the task required nor the price of failure. Which is why nuclear – freed of the ridiculous cost constraints in the west imposed by FUD – seems to me to be a largely “no regrets” (to use your words) response. Renewables can play a role – as they are – but I sincerely doubt they can do the heavy lifting. There is little doubt nuclear can.
By the way this paper concludes that unless we reverse the growing emissions trend in the coming decade
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n8/full/nclimate1258.html
Then our chances of keeping any rise below 2 degrees is very low. I know of only one technology with a snowballs chance in hell that with wide deployment could achieve that
I’ll now take some more time reviewing Nordhaus and digging around to see what other more quantitative projections I can find.
Damn – I have clearly not understood your html formatting instructions sorry. Is there anywhere on the site that explains? I am used to using standard html coding
Yes, Mark, please focus, because you handwaved @ 8:17. A warmer world supports more total life and more diversity of life.
Now, a damage function in a cooling world? Katie bar the door.
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Mark Harrigan | January 23, 2013 at 10:09 am |
Maybe this will provide some help:
http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/html-allowed-in-comments-1/
and
http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/html-allowed-in-comments-2/
(And yeah it is painful without preview though such capabilities apparently do exist via plugins — never tried.)
HTH
Mark Harrigan,
Thank you for the links and quotes on the damage estimates. I’ll come back later today or tomorrow, read them and comment (I am out for much of this afternoon). I have read some (perhaps most of them previously).
In the meantime, I want to respond again to your comment suggesting a different approach than I am suggesting. I understand you want to talk about philosophy, climate sensitivity, climate science, temperatures, trends, and apply value judgements, etc. I don’t. Not now. I repeat again my reluctance to get sidetracked into what will be a long, frustrating discussion that will go nowhere. I’ll explain why I think we need to keep a narrow focus on the Damage Function in this and a second comment.
I want to talk about policy options analysis in a structured way. For that we need to apply cost benefit analysis for optimum policy and robust analysis for a robust response. There are threads on those subjects elsewhere on Climate Etc.
IMO, Nordhaus provides a good basis and good starting inputs for cost-benefit analysis and for selecting optimal policy, but not robust policy. I like that he has provided figures for many carbon price options and explained them and also provides a model in Excel we can play with (later).
However, he has assumed compliance cost is negligible and I expect it is huge: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578 He also has not assumed that his academic assumptions on which his analyses are based can be implemented in the real world and can be maintained and operate for a century or beyond. (I summarise his assumptions here: http://skepticalscience.com//news.php?f=nordhaus-sets-the-record-straight-climate-mitigation-saves-money#82373 ) Twenty years of failed climate conferences shows those assumptions are deeply flawed.
As I said in my first comment, there are four key inputs to the cost benefit analyses. The one that causes the greatest uncertainty in the net cost benefit is the Damage Function, not climate sensitivity (See Table 7-2, p 130 here: http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf )
Your original comment sais you believe the damage function is high. That is the point I want to focus on. We can’t argue about everything in IPOCC AR4 or AR% or climate science here. Nor can we discuss philosophy here. It will go nowhere and boor me to sobs.
I’ll make my point another way. If you want to talk about philosophy and those sorts of issues, I’ll give you some reading for you to get across. I’ll post it is a separate comment. It will show you the futility of such a discussion. It is just a distraction from addressing the issues that are relevant to policy options analysis.
Mark Harrigan,
If you want to talk about philosophy of science, then what I want to talk about is the corruption of science, corruption of peer review, corruption of major science journal editors, corruption of the peak scientific bodies and science academies. I’d suggest these references to get you started:
A Montford “The Hockey Stick Illusion: the Corruption of Science”
Re: Nicholas Stern
http://judithcurry.com/2012/09/12/the-costs-of-tackling-or-not-tackling-anthropogenic-global-warming
http://gwpf.w3digital.com/content/uploads/2012/09/Lilley-Stern_Rebuttal3.pdf
http://www.thegwpf.org/peter-lilley-nick-stern/
Re: The Royal Society. Here is the first of a several articles which explain how the Royal Society was infiltrated by climate scientist activists so it became corrupted and politicised by partisan agendas.
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/apocalyptic-enthusiasm-and-the-royal-society/
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/the-corruption-of-the-royal-society-in-the-climate-emergency/
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/madrid-1995-was-this-the-tipping-point-in-the-corruption-of-climate-science/
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/madrid-1995-and-the-quest-for-the-mirror-in-the-sky/
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/madrid-1995-and-the-quest-for-the-mirror-in-the-sky-part-ii/
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/madrid-1995-the-last-day-of-climate-science/
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/madrid-1995-the-last-day-of-climate-science-part-ii/
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/enter-the-economists-the-price-of-life-and-how-the-ipcc-only-just-survived-the-other-chapter-controversy/
I’d also ask you to read about the corruption of climate science in Australia. Here is an excellent example:
https://theconversation.edu.au/the-false-the-confused-and-the-mendacious-how-the-media-gets-it-wrong-on-climate-change-1558
Have a look at the signatories to this list of 13 extremist doomsayer propaganda articles. It’s the whose-who of Australia’s climate scientists.
I hope you will read and digest all these, and lots more I can provide on the corruption of science. But if you don’t, how can expect me to read papers that support your view of what’s important about the philosophy of science?
Hi Peter,
With respect it is you that are broadening the discussion. Perhaps based on a misunderstanding of what the Stern/Smith paper is about?
My sole reason for pointing you at the Stern/Smith paper was to draw attention to the statement on page 3
The fact that uncertainties are large cannot be taken to imply that the risks are small, or that policy-makers can act as if the risks were small.
In other words that One need only show that there is a non-negligible risk that the damage function is high to require that suitable policy action be forthcoming .
You keep calling the paper a philosophy paper. As I have said repeatedly it isn’t. It’s about how science, particularly the models of climate science, should best be used to inform policy, given that they ARE highly uncertain – especially at a regional level. It is published in Philosophical Transactions A of the Royal Society which, despite it’s name which must have mislead you is devoted to a specific area of the mathematical, physical and engineering sciences. – not to philosophy of science. The name refers to the historical use of “Natural Philosophy” to refer to science back in the days when Isaac Newton first published some of his treatises on light in it.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/misc/about.xhtml
If you do not accept the conclusion I refer to above from the paper- just say so. But please say why not. I do support this conclusion as I have already explained and it is an important basis of the case I am making.
The list of references you provide critiquing Stern’s economic review are irrelevant. I have not referenced his economic calculations. And you cannot render a conclusion of one of the authors of the paper above invalid by reference to a separate (invalid) conclusion on a different topic.
Should I think that all of the GWPF conclusions are utter BS because Plimer (a person who has been shown to have said the most ridiculous false things about climate science) is one of the referenced people? http://www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=91
Of course not – all such papers and dissertations should stand on their own merits.
I am not familiar with the details of Lilley’s critique of Stern’s economic analysis but I am aware of the short comings of the Stern review – which is why I have not referred to it. A quick look at the executive summary of the GWPF Lilley rebuttal of Stern seems sound. I wouldn’t use the Stern Review as a basis for what action is economically justified.
Regarding your links suggesting “corruption” of the Royal Society and “corruption” of science. I’ll read them. But I am highly skeptical of all claims that rest on some sort of conspiracy ideation about the “corruption of science”. It’s an awfully big claim and it’s a claim frequently made by those who wish to reject the conclusions of climate science and I have never seen it substantiated.
I’m away for the weekend so I will print some out and read them while I am away. Perhaps they will show some shortcomings, large or small?
The whole bunk about the Hockey Stick controversy has been debunked more times than I’ve had hot dinners http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy . If people wilfully refuse to understand that the so called MWP was NOT a global phenomenon but a regional one and that upper latitude tree proxies started to diverge from other proxies recently and so are no longer reliable I can’t help them. In any event it’s irrelevant to our discussion.
I will have to deal with your other response when I get back. have a good weekend :)
Mark Harrigan
@ January 23, 2013 at 10:06 am
Comments on your references follow:
1. Hansen charts. Nothing about damage function there.
2. ScieneDaily: Talks about the rate of sea level rise and projections to 2100. but nothing about the damage function. Draft AR5 says (roughly from memory) 0.55 m to 0.95 m. that is one projection from models. Other projections not favoured by IPCC give different figures. Garnaut used 1.1 m as the basis for advising on the Australian CO2 Tax. But, whatever, this reference provides no useful info on the damage function. So what that “600 million people live in low lying areas in danger of flooding”? What is the consequence of that. Nordhaus (2008), Figure 7-5, p145, shows that 1% of the world’s population lives and 1% world output occurs below a 1 m elevation. Anthoff et. al. (2010) (Figures 10) http://www.springerlink.com/content/851112j434t26502/fulltext.pdf show that the global damage cost of sea level rise is about $0.2 trillion for 0.5 m rise and $1 trillion for 1 m sea level rise by 2100. That is trivial compared with world GDP growth to 2100.
3. CSIRO, Sea Level Impacts. Nothing in that about quantifying the damage function. By the way, as an aside, CSIRO, Climate Institute and others grossly misled Ross Garnaut, the Treasury and The Multi-Party Climate Change Committee about the state of knowledge on impacts. They misled Parliament. I don’t know where the blame begins, but there is a lot on this. It all has to come out one day. Garnaut based his advice to Parliament on a 1.1. m sea level rise. Treasury have stated that CO2 concentrations will increase to 1500 ppm by 2100 and temperatures by 7 C by 2100 so we must implement a CO2 tax and ETS. That’s the sort of nonsense being put out by the departments and advisers we place our trust in when we have ‘Progressive’ governments.
4. Scientific American – “Insurance company …”. Insurance companies are hearing the same scaremongering and doomsaying that everyone else is listening too. And they also see an excuse to raise premiums. Even IPCC has recently made it clear that even they cannot attribute severe weather events to GHG emissions or concentrations.
5. Munich RE (2010 “Two months to Cancun climate summit / Large number of weather extremes as strong indication of climate change” Rubbish. That’s politics and scaremongering. It’s just scaremongering. Extreme weather events have not been attributed to GHG emissions or concentrations or global average temperature change Once again there is nothing here to help to reduce the uncertainty in the Damage Function.
That’s enough to understand what you are relying on. All these references I’ve looked at so far contain nothing that helps to reduce the uncertainty in the Damage Function. Furthermore, I still don’t know what you mean by “the damage function is high”.
Mark Harrigan and Peter Lang
Pardon me for cutting in, but one statement made by Mark Harrigan needs more analysis.
The GWPF premise that a substantial threat from AGW is not negligible is purely conjectural.
It results from the IPCC reports, culminating in AR4.
Counter-arguments to these (for example, by Ian Plimer) are written off by Mark:
To which specific “ridiculous false things” are you referring, Mark? Can you be a bit more specific?
One can point to several examples of “ridiculous false things about climate science” in the IPCC reports. I’ll be a “bit more specific” by citing some examples:
http://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/ipcc
Of course, there were also the “ridiculous false” forecasts of 0.2C per decade warming for this century, which have fallen totally flat.
So should we “write off” the IPCC reports in their entirety because of these “ridiculous false things about climate science” in these reports?
If so, one can forget about the GWPF conclusions, which are based on IPCC.
Max
Masrk Harrigan
You write:
Huh?
There are many independent studies from all over the world, using different paleo-climate methodologies, which all point to a MWP that was slightly warmer than today. I can cite links, if you are truly interested.
Then there is historical data from all over the civilized world at the time (crop records, sea charts, etc.) showing that temperatures were warmer.
In addition, there is actual physical evidence, such as carbon-dated remains of old trees recovered under receding glaciers high above the present tree line or medieval farm buildings buried in the Greenland permafrost, etc.
Sure, just like today, there may be some parts of the world that are cooling rather than warming, but these were (and are) the exception that “proves the rule”.
If you “willfully refuse to understand” all the data out there confirming a global MWP, that is your problem.
But the data are there. All you have to do is look.
Max
Mark Harrigan,
I have been without a computer for a few days, so just catching up.
I’ve just seen your comment @ January 25, 2013 at 7:05 am. Unfortunately, the comment I posted @ January 23, 2013 at 6:37 pm was held in moderation and posted after your comment (I actually posted my second comment only a few minutes after the 7:05 AM comment, even though it is time-stamped 6:37 PM.) My two comments were intended to have been read together. I suspect you have probably misunderstood the point I was trying to make in the two comments. Hopefully we can rectify that and get back to the issue we set out to discuss in the first place – i.e. the Damage Function.
My purpose was to show you why trying to broaden the debate will get us nowhere. I notice by your comment and Manacker’s response that the discussion has gone off the rails as I knew it would and as I warned you repeatedly it would if we tried to broaden the discussion to beyond the topic of the ‘damage function’. You stated The Damage Function is “high” and said you have evidence to prove it is high (whatever “high” means in this context). You haven’t provided evidence to support your statement. The links you provided do not address the damage function. Your comments suggest to me you may understand what the damage function is. So I gave you the reference to the Nordhaus book and specifically gave some page references and pointed you to Table 7-2 (p130).
However, it seems you don’t want to talk about the Damage Function but want to broaden the scope of the discussion. It seems you want to talk about your interests, which in short can be rolled up to a discussion about climate sensitivity and the underpinning evidence, not the damage function. My two comments were intended to show you the futility of broadening the discussion beyond the ‘Damage Function” as a first step. Later I was hoping we could agree common ground on the Damage Function then move to discuss “decarbonisation rate”, then to “Policy Options Analysis”.
If we try to broaden the scope of the debate, to restating the believers’ beliefs and the rational sceptics rebuttals of those beliefs we can’t get anywhere. That stuff has been debated for at least 20 years and is ongoing.
One further point: It is clear from the material you’ve quoted you are basing your opinions on having read one side of the debate only. I get the impression you have not really understood, not take the time to try to understand, why the warmists are having trouble getting their message accepted sufficiently to influence policy. I’d suggest it is your turn to open your mind, especially if you want to understand why rational sceptics are cautions about what warmists are telling us and the policies they want to implement.
[By the way, I do recognise the distributions are asymmetrical distributions, as does Nordhaus as he makes clear. He also includes and deals with the risk of catastrophic consequences in the book and in other papers, as do many other researchers.]
Matt Harrigan,
Perhaps if I reply to your statement (quoted below), we can put this aside for now and get onto the key issue we set out to discuss.
There is a great deal in this statement to argue about. I don’t want to go into that now. I want to focus on your statement that “the damage function is high”. We are being continually distracted from addressing the statement that we set out to address. Just to give you some insight into some of the arguments we’d need to have about your statement, here are some. [I am writing this not because I want to get distracted to keep arguing about al the sidetracks we could take, but to try to explain why we cannot argue about all the relevant issues at once, so let’s start on what we set out to discuss.]
1. The key question is what is the “suitable policy action”? That is what I am trying to get to? But we need to get there in steps. It is now clear to me that you will need to read Nordhaus “A Question of Balance” right through, because I get the impression you are not very familiar with this nor what is needed to inform rational policy analysis.
2. You said “ non-negligible risk that the damage function is high”. I presume you meant to say “non-negligible probability that the damage impact is high”. Risk is ‘probability x consequence’; so your statement doesn’t makes sense to me. You can’t just deal with the tail events to the exclusion of all others. The damage function includes all of it.
3. Your statement applies to all risks, not just climate risks. There is a non-negligible risk of nuclear war, of escape of some biological toxin, of pandemic, of bolide impact, of systemic financial systems failure, of toxic pollution and many other risks. What are you recommending we should do about these other risks? How much of your time and effort have you put into identifying, analysing and evaluating all identified risks? Where is the balance in your risk analysis?
4. We must also make allowance to handle risk that we have not yet identified.
5. To argue that just because a risk has been identified means that we must act to prevent it no matter what its probability and consequences compared with other risks, is not rational. We cannot spend all our wealth on one risk, just because it is the one that is the focus of attention at the moment. Therefore, we need rational and objective analysis of policy options. Nordhaus provides an example of how to do so, and I’ve explained why I am using his analysis as a starting point.
6. Your point relates to many issues such as: What is appropriate, optimal anlaysis, cost-benefit analysis, robust analysis, all of the above? The Nordhaus approach is optimal and cost-benefit analysis. That is what I am pursuing at the moment.
It is the lack of proper, objective, rational and balanced evaluation of risks and consequences and appropriate policies that separates the doomsayers from the rationalists. That is why I am urging we go step by step.
We’ve now posted 17 comments between us and haven’t yet addressed the original issue, i.e. your statement that “the damage function is high”. Hopefully, we can now turn to that. Or, if you do not have evidence to support your statement, just say so and, hopefully, if you are willing we can move on to the next issue to deal with.
“Asking my fellow skeptics, what do you guys think? Am I crazy? Just about every time I get into an argument with a warmist, the word “consensus” comes up. It’s their most cherished argument. Why not prove them wrong?”
I looked replies to your question, and the best seemed to be, the one given by manacker
| January 12, 2013 at 12:12 pm | :
“A better question would simply be to summarize the key IPCC “CAGW” claims for the future and see if the scientists agreed with ALL of the claims made.”
But I make questions simpler.
Such as:
Have read the reports given by IPCC ?
Do you agree that IPCC has approached the issue
in a proper scientific manner?
Do you agree with it’s recommendations?
What would there better consequences for the world in general if
these recommendations followed?
What would be harmful consequences if these recommendations
were not followed?
Is there anything you are aware of regarding the IPCC that needs improvement?
I’m a simple guy. Some might even say dumb. Just ask my high school algebra teacher. That said, what sane skeptic would not like a statistically valid survey to point to, to rebut…bottom line… the widespread canard that expert opinion virtually all comes down on the CAGW side?
Wasn’t the petition by scientists with thirty thousand signatures on it enough for you ?
After all, the 97% was just 75 people.
The authors of that 97% debacle discarded the other thousand or so replies. Wot, didn’t they like those replies then ?!
No contest. It’s clear that the majority (~31,000) of scientists don’t believe in CAGW, versus 75 who do + (Mosher ? & Gates ?).
Kim, yes. would have to be done by a neutral party if that’s what your driving at.. Who that would be, and would this even be possible are open questions. Also, would the results hold any sway? Dunno. Like I said, not a very bright guy. But again, to beat a by now pretty dead horse just one more time, why not try? At the very least, the results would be interesting.
Plenty bright enough to contemporaneously explicate an ancient question: Who judges the judges? I’m gonna trust in the traditional methods, Nature and the March of Time.
=============
Don’t know how old you are Kim, but hopefully you’ll be around to remember you said that in 10 or 20 years.
I often think this too. And not just about dear Kim. For all that ‘sceptics’ tend to be elderly white males of libertarian leaning, hopefully a few will hang on long enough to see where their rhetoric and political bias has led them. It would be a fitting end.
Saving humanity by having no humanity!
I thought it was Capt. Pike?
http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2013/01/11/scientist-compares-hawking-to-darth-vader-calls-him-a-brain-in-a-vat/
He was not a shot-caller either.
BBD said:
“…hopefully a few will hang on long enough to see where their rhetoric and political bias has led them.”
_____
This can be said for all of us. But in general, the more their belief has been guided by political and philosophical bias, the less likely they will be to admit that their viewpoint was wrong as their entire identity is wrapped up in their viewpoint. Even in the face of unmistakable climate disruption, many will simply write it off as “natural”, never wanting to admit they were wrong, for to admit it would be akin to admitting that their entire identity as a person is “wrong”. Too much to ask true-believers (and true un-believers) to do.
Dear Kim,
A little bored with blah blah pontificating about sceptics? It is just another a progressive delusional meme. The reality is that students are classifying courses such as environmental science as ‘doom courses’ and avoiding them. As an environmental scientist it seems unfortunate if the best and brighest go into other fields.
He seems to use abuse and insults as a core modus operandi. Then seems to develop a wounded innocent umbrage when I respond in kind. Is this a lack of self awareness, deliberate bad faith, insanity? I don’t care.
I will be around, God willing, for a few decades more. Looking forward to seeing global temperatures not increase for a decade or three more. Meanwhile the space cadet rationalisations fly thick and fast.
Cheers
Robert I Ellison says:
Elsewhere I say:
And Robert replies:
Which brings us to this:
blah blah – if I thought for a moment that that there was any sincerity or bonhomie in you at all some different approach might be forthcoming. Other than that – it all just seems to be game playing. Playing with words for the sake of delusional tribal point scoring.
You have got to love the logic–e.g., it’s the flu season and this time they really got it right, unlike with shots in previous seasons which didn’t work–so, apparently it really, really works but this season didn’t really work because the flu has already reached epic proportions but what could the numbers have acutally been without those 12 of 30 million doses having been administered and since the flu season started a month early is it now too late to take the shot or did the shot jump start the flu season and if you don’t take the shot and do get the flu how do yoy know it is the same flu that the shot might have prevented and how can we prevent people from jumping to conclusions that the shot gave them the flue when they get the shot and then get the flu?
Well, Judy gave several of my metaphors the flue over where climate policy is being seriously decided.
===================
Fluers ujite!
The quiet announcement by the UK Met. Office on Christmas Eve, on their web site, that the results of Smith et al, Science, August 2007 were wrong, raises an interesting point with respect to model validation. The Smith et al report, goes into considerbale detail as to how the hindcasting of the data leads to a model that can predict the future. More than half the report is taken up with establishing how this hindcast process validates their model. Finally on page 798, at the top of the final column, we find the following “Having established the predictive skill of DePreSYS, we issued the first GCM forecast for Global Ts for the coming decade (Fig 4)”.
In other words, Smith et al claim that by hindcasting data, they had successfully produced a fully validated model, that can predict the future. However, the Met. Office has now clearly stated that the results of Smith et al are wrong. I have read a lot of comments on the subject, but I have not seen anyone who has made this point.
By declaring that the results of Smith et al are wrong, the Met Office is clearly stating that it is impossible to validate models by hindcasting data. Many of us knew this already, but it is nice to see it confirmed. Maybe this ought to be a good thread for our hostess to start, as a follow up to those we have had in the past on model validation.
Jim, the Smith et al paper was about predicting more modes of natural variability, not so much about predicting longer term temperature. Incomplete predictions of natural variability are different from incomplete predictions of the longer term impact of a radiative forcing unless you can show that the mode of natural variability that is causing the earth to be cooler than the model is related to an unknown negative feedback, I suppose.
For those of you following the Sudden Stratospheric warming (SSW) event currently in process over the NH, read on:
The Arctic Vortex is of course currently very disrupted and unlikely to reform to it’s previous winter level. This disrupted vortex has had the effect to spill two major lobes of cold air down on both sides of the NH. All of this relates of course the sudden stratospheric warming event that took place in late December and early January. Here’s a very nice animation of this bubble of warm air coming up into the stratosphere from lower latitudes and heating the entire NH stratosphere in rather rapid and dramatic fashion:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.shtml
Play this several times to get a feel for the warm bubble rising up from the lower and lower latitude atmosphere to spread across the polar stratosphere. Most interesting from the location of this bubble, was that it began in in lower latitudes over approximately 70 degrees east longitude and around 20 north latitude (approximately over India). At the time this “bubble” (vertically directed Rossby wave) began over India around December 20th, that region was seeing a warm spell, but was also the area of focus for the MJO. The warm southerly winds and energy from the MJO were advecting energy up north toward the Himalayas. That created the rise to this advection. That vertically directed Rossby wave (the “bubble” that rose into the stratosphere, continued North, fracturing the Arctic vortex and spilling cold air down over lower latitudes in the troposphere. In this rather remarkable set of teleconnected events, we see how a warm tropospheric event (the MJO) combined with the proper terrain (the Himalayas), can take a warm tropospheric event, turn it into a warm stratospheric event, with the net result that the Arctic vortex is shattered and lower latitudes are subsequently cooled.
Thanks for the update. Have you ever compared the water vapor loop with stratosphere? That would make an interesting animation I would think.
I have seen some presentations relating water vapor/MJO to SSW’s but not actually looked at it in much detail myself. Of course the MJO is tightly correlated with convective activity which is associated with bringing water vapor to higher levels of the atmosphere.
In the days prior to the big SSW event in 2009, the MJO (aka “Pineapple express”) was bringing lots of moisture and energy from the subtropical Pacific up toward the Pacific NW. In that case, this energy and moisture hit the Canadian Rockies in British Columbia, which created the vertically directed Rossby wave or “bubble” that rose into the stratosphere and fractured the Arctic vortex in 2009. Same general process, two different mountain ranges.
R. Gates, It would be interesting. With all that energy released there should be a lot. Also Tsonis et al, mentioned the possibility that there was a Mongolian component in the NAO which could make it a tripole. There should be a major change in precipitation patterns with a AMO shift and with the hot Arabian and India waters, it could be spectacular.
Interesting speculations captdallas. Of more immediate concern will be the effect that the warmer Arctic will have on the 2013 summer sea ice extent. The fracturing of the Arctic vortex and generally warmer temps over the Arctic that are a result will be interesting to follow this spring into summer, especially after 2012’s record low extent, area, volume etc. I had somewhat anticipated the sea ice to recover a bit this year, much like 2008 did after 2007. Now this is still possible of course as we have many months of growth left. But this years SSW event with the fracturing of the vortex “opens the refrigerator door” of the arctic once more, like it did in 2012, and will reduce overall ice thickness across the Arctic. It will be a most interesting melt season to follow this year…
R. Gates, “Of more immediate concern will be the effect that the warmer Arctic will have on the 2013 summer sea ice extent.” That would depend in a large part on the AO. If the ice doesn’t stack up on some coast where it is thicker and less likely to drift south, we will just keep having more of the same. If it is more of the same, we should have a new minimum in a few years and keep blowing the polar vortex and depleting ozone. Sooner or later something will change and Murphy’s Law states it will happen when you are most confident it won’t :)
Of course captndallas, it is here that our viewpoints differ. It is not just the natural fluctuations of the NAO or AMO that have caused the Arctic to warm (though these natural fluctuations may enhance a longer-term forcing). We are seeing more energy being advected to the Arctic and more energy remaining in the Arctic through positive feedbacks. Some long-term external forcing is causing this shift in Arctic climate patterns, above and beyond natural variability. You of course know what I feel that long-term forcing most likely is.
R.Gates, ” We are seeing more energy being advected to the Arctic and more energy remaining in the Arctic through positive feedbacks. Some long-term external forcing is causing this shift in Arctic climate patterns, above and beyond natural variability.”
You have noted that when the polar vortex breaks down that the higher latitudes warm as the lower latitudes cool. That is a typical out of phase condition that makes the “global average temperature” less than desirable. With ~10^22 Joules of energy loss with the larger SSW events that is a lot of accumulated energy being released. CO2 maybe amplifying the events somewhat, but CO2 is pretty obviously not containing the events, which is a problem for :”ideal” radiant forcing. Like the video you linked showing how convection changes with temperature, the bigger bubbles or lava lamp blobs, should not be unexpected. With the North Atlantic waters likely being warmer than anytime in the past 400 to 600 years and less ice cover to contain the energy, the net should be negative or cooling in the longer term.
To me it looks like CO2 doesn’t add any weight to the lid.
R. Gates
Thank you for this.
A dramatic spike of temperatures in the stratosphere over the North Pole can be seen in this chart:
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/html_e/pole10_n.html
And this is a great snapshot of the resultant Total wave EP flux we’ve seen over the NH:
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/html_e/ep_12z_nh.html
And finally, the change in zonal winds (look at the far right on the graph) as the Polar Vortex is shattered:
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/html_e/heit_u_nh.html
Very interesting…
Looks like the lid is rattling. If we had a better scale for SSW intensity to relate to hemispheric warming/cooling, we could compare it with surface temperature impact and internal longer term pseudo cycles. If the AMO is shifting this could be fairly normal or it could be man made. Since the AMO is due to shift, I wouldn’t place too many bets on CO2 just yet.
Captndallas said:
“Since the AMO is due to shift, I wouldn’t place too many bets on CO2 just yet.”
____
Not a betting man…anymore. But, yep, the AMO is “due to shift” eventually, but what about the underlying long-term upward trend? What the heck is causing that? Could the long-term accumulation of GHG’s in the atmosphere affect the underlying long-term trend in the AMO?
http://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/key_figures/index_amo.png
And considering the fact that one of the key area of the accumulation of ocean heat content globally has been the N. Atlantic basin:
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/h22-a0-700m1-3.dat
All this raises a whole host of very interesting questions, eh?
Gatesy,
Your figure seems more SST anomalies than AMO. Compare here.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n2/full/ncomms1186.html
Or elsewhere. Trust doesn’t come into it. We were taught to compare and contrast sources. Error is still possible of course.
R. Gates, okay is AMO show and tell :)
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-zMmfqTp4pnA/UPHjJ–Pk7I/AAAAAAAAGgs/eVZ1UcaetrQ/s789/kaplan%2520amo%2520raw.png
That is the Kaplan raw 0 to 70N Atlantic. A continuing trend from 1856, the classic Psuedo oscillation.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-DzjcvM5RR3A/UOGscyiFXuI/AAAAAAAAGW4/lP1Gis1izuM/s817/iceland%2520Tmin%252011yma.png
Iceland Tmin from BEST. Notice how it stalled around 0 C degrees. Is there an Anthropogenic impact? I am sure there is. Where would ice sheet grow? Oops, that’s right! Man discovered fire a long time ago.
I could break out the CO2 ppmv versus North Atlantic deep and surface ocean temperatures to show that CO2 continued to increase while temperature stabilized, https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-vqnDnnPA7wo/UMkkYRVtfSI/AAAAAAAAGB0/oiwhW12N1Bo/s912/time%2520lags%2520and%2520responses%2520with%2520lea.png
But with all that noise, who can say what caused what?
I will stick with CO2 roughly 25%, Natural variability around 50% and land use 25%. :)
Did I ever give you the link to the Toggweilder and Bjornsson Drake Passage Paper?
Robert,
From the link you shared:
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n2/fig_tab/ncomms1186_F4.html
It seems, for the past 8,000 years, a very gradual downward trend of the AMO (if the proxy data is to believed), but then, about the time of end of the LIA, we see an upward trend start. Unfortunately, that’s about the same time the humans began to start to alter the atmospheric levels of GHG’s with the dawn of the industrial revolution. Very cloudy for
attribution purposes, further complicated by studies such as this:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7393/full/nature10946.html
captndallas said:
“I will stick with CO2 roughly 25%, Natural variability around 50% and land use 25%. :)”
_____
I wouldn’t take a strong stance against these percentages, but you must admit that they are a moving target. The mix 25/50/25 would not be the same in the year 1000 BP, 500 BP, 2013, and 2500 AD, as humans continue to alter land, sea, and air so rapidly.
R. Gates, “I wouldn’t take a strong stance against these percentages, but you must admit that they are a moving target. The mix 25/50/25 would not be the same in the year 1000 BP, 500 BP, 2013, and 2500 AD, as humans continue to alter land, sea, and air so rapidly.”
Of course, but a moving target is easiest to hit near the changes. So I am more confident in that mix since around 1960ish because the land and sea alteration is near a peak it, makes it easier to estimate. Remember, both land use and CO2 equiv. would amplify natural variability. It is an interesting puzzle.
How do you factor aerosols into a 25/50/25 breakdown? I would go with 130% CO2+GHGs, 30% solar, -60% aerosols, for example. Even this only accounts for atmospheric warming. Adding in ocean warming, the CO2 has even more responsibility as a percentage. This also makes more sense in terms of forcing where CO2 accounts for 90% of the net forcing change, with other GHGs and aerosols more or less canceling and the sun accounting for about 10%. This is more relevant to climate change as it accounts for the ocean warming too.
Good question Jim D. Aerosols are a tricky thing (as we all know). Though I wouldn’t take a “strong” stance against captn’s 25/50/25 stance, I would take less of a strong stance against this mix in 1970, but now, 40 years later, (with continued accumulations of GHG’s) I think this mix has been shifting more to 50/25/25 or so, with aerosols, natural and anthropogenic, sometimes cancelling out.
JimD, “This also makes more sense in terms of forcing where CO2 accounts for 90% of the net forcing change, with other GHGs and aerosols more or less canceling and the sun accounting for about 10%”
The recent observations tend to indicate that aerosol forcing is over estimated. Solar was also originally over-estimated and until the gang gets on the same page, will likely continue to be confusing. To get the natural portion, since the underlying trend is consistent from the start of the AMO and the ocean response to atmospheric forcing is slow, roughly 0.4 to 0.5 C for the rise from 1960 would likely not be CO2 equiv. That would put CO2 with land use and amplification if the range of 50%. Since most of the measured warming is over land, a rough 50/50 split is about as good an estimate as I can come up with.
I didn’t state a serious margin of error, since this is just a blog, but since I don’t think that “average global mean temperature” means squat until the SST versus surface air temperature situation is resolved, you could say 50% margin of error for each depending on what data set strikes your fancy. I am trying to stick with absolute temperature which if you notice, 21.1 C for the North Atlantic is a tad higher than the 16 to 17 C tossed around and just happens to agree with AQUA, would change the CO2equiv. impact since the “surface” is a lot warmer than originally estimated. It should be closer to 17.5 C than 14 C (in agreement with Stephens et al. 2012). With that surface temperature CO2 should have roughly 0.8 C +/-0.2 C impact per doubling :) The rest is just noise.
Gatesy,
I was merely pointing out that the UCAR graph was mislabelled. It is SST anomalies rather than the AMO.
‘Understanding the internal ocean variability and its influence on climate is imperative for society. A key aspect concerns the enigmatic Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), a feature defined by a 60- to 90-year variability in North Atlantic sea-surface temperatures. The nature and origin of the AMO is uncertain, and it remains unknown whether it represents a persistent periodic driver in the climate system, or merely a transient feature. Here, we show that distinct, ~55- to 70-year oscillations characterized the North Atlantic ocean-atmosphere variability over the past 8,000 years. We test and reject the hypothesis that this climate oscillation was directly forced by periodic changes in solar activity. We therefore conjecture that a quasi-persistent ~55- to 70-year AMO, linked to internal ocean-atmosphere variability, existed during large parts of the Holocene. Our analyses further suggest that the coupling from the AMO to regional climate conditions was modulated by orbitally induced shifts in large-scale ocean-atmosphere circulation.’
More correctly the AMO is a better considered as a network node on the underlying globally dynamic climate system – http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/guest-post-atlantic-multidecadal-oscillation-and-northern-hemisphere%E2%80%99s-climate-variability-by-marcia-glaze-wyatt-sergey-kravtsov-and-anastasios-a-tsonis/ – interactions between the nodes being defined by what Wyatt et al call a ‘stadium wave’. A single dynamic climate system with identifiable patterns of standing waves in the field of global ocean and atmospheric circulation.
Dissaggregating natural and anthrpogenic influences on the system in the way you are suggesting is impossible. There are many factors that influence the evolution of the climate state – there are multiple strange attractors in an effectively infinite phase space. Understanding requires new concepts and a new language. At this stage we can probably speak most cogently in generalities. Hence I put your carbon/AMO speculation in the basket of miscategorisation of the system.
capt.d., aerosols are tricky. You have to remember this is a long-term attribution and the large aerosol increase post-war was not reversed, but more recent studies don’t include that increase in recent temperature changes. Aerosol changes haven’t done so much recently as they did back then in the global dimming days, but indications are that some of this flat trend is due to an increase again.
JimD, “Aerosol changes haven’t done so much recently as they did back then in the global dimming days, but indications are that some of this flat trend is due to an increase again.”
Yep, that is why I tried to qualify my estimate from 1960. Prior to 1960 the data just isn’t up to the task and CO2 wasn’t strong enough to be useful. As I have said before, CO2 is about the only thing we really have a handle on. Also Solar originally was over estimated due to older reconstructions. It may have a larger impact, but that impact will require some amplifying mechanism or a lower than estimated CO2 equivalent impact.
In any case, the only even close to reliable “surface” for an energy balance is the average ocean temperature of ~4C (334.5 Wm-2 effective energy) which is close to the global Tmin and the DWLR estimates +/- 10 or so Wm-2. There is so much outdated data and inconsistent data used, that you can’t “trust” much of anything more than a few years old. It really is a mess Jim.
Great chart showing the “trigger” for the NH SSW event that began in late December. Here is a chart showing the upper tropospheric wind anomaly for the past 30 days. Note the high pressure system directly over India caused an anti-cyclonic circulation of southerly winds coming in over to the west of India at the 150 mb level:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/150wnd_30b.fnl.gif
These warm southerly winds, hit the Himalayas, and are then vertically directed, creating a vertically directed “bubble” or vertically directed Rossby wave that hits the tropopause over the Himalayas. Reference back to this animation to see this bubble then migrating upward into the stratosphere:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.shtml
This bubble of energy is then spread further upward in to the stratosphere and continues north, until we see the resultant SSW event over the entire NH polar region.
The first known SSW was observed on 27 January 1952. That is just the first OBSERVED – these things are not new. More than likely they have been happening for centuries or millennia. This is just another warmist-alarmist red herring. When are you guys going to get honest?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_stratospheric_warming
Do the gompertz and exponential curves in graphs 5 6 7 represent predictions or are they the expression of the shifting mean thus making 2011-12 years of reverting to the mean, making 2500km3 an altogether too likely probability this year or even 3000km3 for august? doesn’t leave much for september does it.
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/piomas
What is most interesting about the dynamics of an ice-free Arctic is what it will mean for the accelerated accumulation of energy in the total Earth system. With late spring/early summer NH snow cover declining and declining Arctic sea ice, we are going to see energy accumulate faster in the Earth system. The disruptions this will bring to the climate system should be quite interesting to follow…
Hi Gates
Arctic with low winter ice extent, would mean more stable temperatures in the North and North West Europe. Reason for this is that the Icelandic Low pressure system would be for a greater part of the year to North of Iceland, now mainly in the summer months. The IL in the winter provides ‘blocking’ for the polar jet stream turning from longitudinal to meridianal flow.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MidSummer-MidWinter.htm
BTW Have you looked at Kamchatka in last few weeks
Sheveluch and Tolbachik firing simultaneously
And SSW
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/10mb9065.gif
Anything in Pacific that would justify such fast take off ?
Vuk,
Interesting about the volcanoes, but as the 10-hPa temp anomalies clearly showed:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.shtml
This bubble of hot air clearly came up over the Himalayas and was related to the high pressure over India at the time and the anti-cyclonic winds that were driving energy up to the HImalayas, directing it vertically and thereby creating a vertically directed Rossby wave that pushed through the tropopause and into the stratosphere, and then propagated over the north pole to create the SSW event. The animation above clearly shows this. It is really quite amazing to see it so clearly.
Gates
I think you may have won this one.
However, may not be a complete story. I take a regular look at the jet stream. In mid December indeed a hole appeared over Himalayas, not known for warm air (hm, .. rising from Indian Ocean), but at the same time JS was giving wide berth to Kamchatka.
http://virga.sfsu.edu/pub/jetstream/jetstream_norhem/1212/12121500_jetstream_norhem.gif
Reviewing the JS again, day by day and looking at your animation, I wonder if there is possibility that the volcanic eruptions creates a puncture in the tropopause, triggering whole process. Volcanic eruptions (going back to 1970s) in Kamchatka and the SSW events may be purely coincidental, or on the other hand eruptions may be an essential trigger for whole sequence. If so it could explain lack of SSW events in the Antarctica.
In the final analysis it is the behaviour of the jet stream which is of fundamental importance to the NW Quarter-sphere, and that is most likely ‘controlled’ by the Icelandic Low pressure system.
Looking at lower altitude at 50 hPa I think Kamchatka has an important role to play.
Take a good look at 22-23 December, whole process appears to be initiated above the volcanic area.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp50anim.shtml
lolwot
Up-thread you asked me for “Inhofe’s list” of CAGW skeptics.
The list I saw was posted by Eli Rabett on his blog and had over 400 names on it, as I recall.
That list has been modified to remove some names that had no connection to climate science or its impacts, and some names were added, so the list now has 321 names on it.
The names are:
List of AGW skeptics on the Inhofe list that meet the definition of “qualified” (extracted from Eli Rabett list)
1. Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov
2. Dr. Steve Ackerman
3. Alexandre Aguiar
4. Göran Ahlgren,
5. Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia
6. Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu
7. David Aldrich
8. J.R. Alexander
9. Dr. Claude Allegre
10. Chris Allen
11. Bjarne Andresen
12. Dr. August H. Auer
13. Donald G. Baker
14. Dr. Sallie Baliunas
15. Dr. Timothy F. Ball
16. Douglas W. Barr
17. James R. Barrante
18. Romuald Bartnik
19. Colin Barton
20. Vladimir Bashkirtsev
21. Joe Bastardi
22. Dr. Franco Battaglia
23. Richard Becherer
24. Paul G. Becker
25. Dr. David Bellamy
26. Justin Berk
27. Andre Bernier
28. Sally Bernier
29. Dr. Edwin X. Berry
30. Dr. M. I. Bhat
31. Dr. Edward F. Blick
32. Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen
33. Daniel Botkin
34. Dr. Ahmed Boucenna
35. Dr. Antonio Brambati
36. Dr. Simon Brassell
37. William D. Braswell
38. Bob Breck
39. Dr. Paal Breeke
40. Dr. William M. Briggs
41. Dr. David Bromwich
42. Dr. Stephen C. Brown
43. Dr. Reid Bryson (deceased)
44. Dr. Mark Lawrence Campbell
45. Dr. Rudy Candler
46. Alan Carlin
47. Dan Carruthers
48. Dr. Robert.M. Carter
49. Dr. Phil Chapman
50. Dr. Christopher L. Castro
51. Dr. Arthur V. Chadwick
52. Dr. George V. Chilingar
53. Tom Chisholm
54. Dr. John Christy
55. Dr. Petr Chylek
56. Dr. Ian D. Clark
57. Dr. Michael Coffman
58. Dr. Roger W. Cohen
59. John Coleman
60. Joseph Conklin
61. Dr. Paul Copper
62. Piers Corbyn
63. Cornelia Codreanova
64. Allan Cortese
65. Dr. William R. Cotton
66. Dr. Richard S. Courtney
67. Dr. Uberto Crescenti
68. Dr. Susan Crockford
69. Walter Cunningham.
70. Grant Dade
71. Joseph D’Aleo
72. Dr. Robert E. Davis
73. Luc Debontridder
74. Dr. Willem de Lange
75. Dr. James DeMe
76. James E Dent
77. Dr. Delgado Domingos
78. Dr. Art V. Douglas
79. Dr. David Douglass
80. Dr. Geoff Duffy
81. Dr. Silvia Duhau
82. Dr. Robert W. Durrenberger.
83. Dr. Freeman Dyson
84. Dr. Don J. Easterbrook
85. Dr. Ole Henrik Ellestad
86. Dr. Hugh W. Ellsaesser
87. Gary England
88. Hans Erren
89. Dr. Chris Essex
90. Bill Evans
91. Dr. Cal Evans
92. Dr. David Evans
93. Dr. John T. Everett
94. Dr. Sören Floderus
95. Dr. Neil Frank
96. Dr. Patrick Frank
97. Dr. Stewart Franks
98. Dr. Oliver W. Frauenfeld
99. Dr. Chris de Freitas.
100. Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen
101. Ivan Frolov
102. Dr. Gordon Fulks
103. Dr. Serge Galam
104. Dr. R. W. Gauldie
105. Dr. David Gee
106. Dr. Katya Georgieva
107. Dr. Lee C. Gerhard
108. Dr. Ivar Giaever
109. Dr. Robert Giegengack
110. Dick Goddard
111. Dr. Indur M. Goklany
112. Dr. Fred Goldberg
113. Stanley B. Goldenberg
114. Dr. Mel Goldstein
115. Sergei Golubchikov
116. Dr. Wayne Goodfellow
117. Dr. Laurence I. Gould
118. Brian van de Graaff
119. Thomas B. Gray
120. Dr. Vincent Gray
121. Dr. William Gray
122. Dr. Kenneth Green
123. Eugenio Hackbart
124. Dr. Keith D. Hage
125. Jeff Halblaub
126. Dr.Charles B. Hammons
127. Dr. Will Happer
128. Dr. Hermann Harde
129. Dr. Howard Hayden
130. Ross Hays
131. Wilco Hazeleger
132. Dr. James A. Heimbach, Jr.
133. Dr. Ben Herman
134. Dr. Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera.
135. Dr. Martin Hertzberg
136. David Holland
137. Art Horn
138. Dr. Martin Hovland
139. Douglas V. Hoyt
140. Warwick Hughes
141. Dr. Ole Humlum
142. Craig D. Idso
143. Dr. Sherwood B. Idso
144. Dr. Olafur Ingolfsson
145. Larry Irons
146. Dr. Kiminori Itoh
147. Yury Izrael
148. Terri Jackson
149. Dr. Albert F. Jacobs
150. Craig James
151. Dr. Hans Jelbring
152. Mark Johnson
153. Terrell Johnson
154. Bill Kappel
155. Dr. Olavi Kärner
156. Dr. Madhav Khandekar
157. Dr. Leonid F. Khilyuk
158. William Kininmonth
159. Paul Knight
160. Dr. James P. Koermer
161. Dr. Kirill Ya. Kondratyev
162. Dr. Jasper Kirkby
163. Dr. Gerhard Kramm
164. Gary Kubat
165. Dr. George Kukla
166. Dr. Leif Kullman
167. Dr. Takeda Kunihiko
168. Dr. A.T.J. de Laat
169. Dr. Peter Landesman
170. Dr. Theodor Landscheidt (deceased)
171. Dr. Christopher W. Landsea
172. Dr. Willem de Lange
173. Dr. Rune Berg-Edland Larsen
174. Dr. Douglas Leahey
175. Dr. David R. Legates
176. Dr. Jay Lehr.
177. Dr. C. (Kees) le Pair
178. Dr. Marcel Leroux
179. Edward Liebsch
180. Dr. Richard S. Lindzen
181. Dr. Peter Link
182. Dr. William Lindqvist
183. Dr. Philip Lloyd
184. Dr. Craig Loehle
185. Dr. A.J. Tom van Loon
186. Dr. Horst-Joachim Lüdecke
187. Dr. Anthony R. Lupo
188. Dr. Howard Maccabee
189. Dr. Richard Mackey
190. Dr. Horst Malberg
191. Dr. Björn Malmgren
192. Rob Marciano
193. Dr. Augusto Mangini
194. Dr. Galina Mashnich
195. Dr. Francis Massen
196. Dr. Henri Masson
197. Dr. John Maunder
198. Dr. Alister McFarquhar
199. Peter McGurk
200. Bill Meck
201. Dr. Fred Michel
202. Dr. Patrick J. Michaels
203. Dr. Daniel W. Miles
204. Dr. Ferenc Mark Miskolczi
205. Dr. Asmunn Moene
206. H. Michael Mogil
207. Dr./Cdr. M. R. Morgan
208. Dr. Dick Morgan
209. Dr. Nils-Axel Morner
210. Dr. Lubos Motl
211. Dr. Tad Murty
212. Dr. Nasif Nahle
213. Robert Neff
214. Dr. John Nicol
215. Mark Nolan
216. Gary Novak
217. David Nowell
218. Dr. James J. O’Brien
219. Dr. Peter Oliver
220. Dr. Cliff Ollier
221. Jim Ott
222. Dr. Nathan Paldor
223. Morgan Palmer
224. Dr. Garth W. Paltridge
225. Dr. R. Timothy Patterson
226. James A. Peden
227. Dr. Al Pekarek
228. Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr.
229. Dr. Ian Plimer
230. Dr. Roger Pocklington
231. Dr. Oleg M. Pokrovsky
232. Daniel Joseph Pounder
233. Dr. Brian Pratt
234. Dr. Harry N.A. Priem
235. Dr. Andreas Prokoph
236. Dr. Tom Quirk
237. Dr. VK Raina
238. Dr. Denis G. Rancourt
239. Dr. Oleg Raspopov
240. Bernie Rayno
241. Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
242. William E. Reifsnyder
243. Dr. Paul Reiter
244. Erich Roeckner
245. Dr. R.G. Roper
246. Dr. Curt Rose
247. Arthur T. “Terry” Safford III
248. Rob Scagel
249. Mark Scirto
250. Bruce Schwoegler
251. Dr. Tom V. Segalstad
252. Dr. Vladimir Shaidurov
253. Dr. Milap Chand Sharma
254. Dr. Gary D. Sharp
255. Dr. Nir Shaviv
256. Dr. Glen Shaw
257. Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen
258. Dr. Joanne Simpson
259. Dr. S. Fred Singer
260. Dr. Frans W. Sluijter
261. Dr. Vaclav Smil
262. Hajo Smit
263. Dr. G LeBlanc Smith
264. Dr. Joe Sobel
265. Dr. Jan-Erik Solheim
266. Dr. Willie Soon
267. Dr. Oleg Sorochtin
268. James Spann
269. Dr. Roy W. Spencer
270. Karl Spring
271. Dr. Walter Starck
272. Bill Steffen
273. Herb Stevens
274. H. Leighton Steward
275. Dr. Hans von Storch (deceased)
276. Dr. Arlin Super
277. Dr. Philip Stott
278. Henrik Svensmark
279. Dr. Edward (Ted) R. Swart
280. Dr. Gordon Swaters
281. Dr. Elwynn Taylor
282. George Taylor
283. Dr. Peter Taylor
284. Dr. Hendrik Tennekes
285. Tim Thornton
286. J. E. Tilsley
287. Dr. Frank Tipler
288. Dr. Edward M. Tomlinson
289. Dr. Eduardo Tonni
290. Göran Tullberg
291. Dr. Anton Uriarte
292. Dr. Brian Gregory Valentine
293. Dr. Gerrit J. van der Lingen
294. Dr. Bas van Geel
295. Dr. G. Cornelis van Kooten
296. Dr. Jan Veizer
297. Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera
298. Dr. Michael G. Vershovsky
299. Dr. Chris Walcek
300. Dr. Gösta Walin
301. Dr. Fred Ward
302. Anthony Watts
303. Dr. Charles L. Wax
304. Dan Webster
305. Dr. Edward J. Wegman
306. Dr. Carl Otto Weiss
307. Dr. Bruce West
308. Dr. Forese-Carlo Wezel
309. Chuck Wiese
310. Kevin Williams
311. Dr. Richard C. Willson
312. Dr. Ian Wilson
313. Dr. Boris Winterhalter
314. Dr. David E. Wojick
315. Dr. George T. Wolff
316. Dr. Rafael Wust
317. Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller
318. Dr. Miklós Zágoni,
319. Dr. Antonio Zichichi
320. Stan Zlochen
321. Dr. Jeff Zweerink
Whew!
OK. Since 97% of the meteorologists and scientists in a climate related field are supposedly in AGREEMENT with the IPCC CAGW claim, please provide me with a list of these 10,379 “qualified individuals”
Thanks in advance.
Max
Interesting. I suspect that at least a few individuals would be surprised to find themselves on this list, e.g. Steve Ackerman, David Bromwich, Hans von Storch (deceased!)
Joanne Simpson (deceased).
‘German climate scientist Dr. Hans von Storch, the Director of Institute for Coastal Research of the GKSS Research Centre, a professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg who focuses on climate diagnostics and statistical climatology, and has published 11 books. Storch believes human are influencing climate change, but feels the fear factor has been dramatically overplayed. “We should spend more time talking about adjusting to the inevitable and not about reducing CO2 emissions. We have to take away people’s fear of climate change,” Storch told the German publication Der Spiegel on March 16, 2007. Storch dismissed fears of mass deaths from future heat waves caused by global warming. “Such claims are completely idiotic and dubious. What they did was to simply perform an extrapolation based on the mortality rate during the exceptionally hot 2003 summer, which took everyone by surprise and for which we were therefore completely unprepared. But if higher summer temperatures become the norm in the future, people will adjust,” he explained. (LINK) Storch noted the limitations of science. “We climate researchers can only offer possible scenarios. In other words, things could end up being completely different. But there are undoubtedly parts of the world that will benefit on balance from climate change. Those areas tend to be in the north, where it has been cold and uncomfortable in the past. But it’s considered practically heretical to even raise such issues,” he said.’
‘David Bromwich, professor of professor of atmospheric sciences in the Department of Geography, and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, reported on this work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at San Francisco.
“It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now,” he said. “Part of the reason is that there is a lot of variability there. It’s very hard in these polar latitudes to demonstrate a global warming signal. This is in marked contrast to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that is one of the most rapidly warming parts of the Earth.”
Bromwich says that the problem rises from several complications. The continent is vast, as large as the United States and Mexico combined. Only a small amount of detailed data is available – there are perhaps only 100 weather stations on that continent compared to the thousands spread across the U.S. and Europe . And the records that we have only date back a half-century.
“The best we can say right now is that the climate models are somewhat inconsistent with the evidence that we have for the last 50 years from continental Antarctica .
“We’re looking for a small signal that represents the impact of human activity and it is hard to find it at the moment,” he said.’
I can’t find Ackerman at all in the report. But the point is not the list but the detail that questions the faux certainty and apocalyptic narratives that characterise the issue.
Bromwich was also part of the recent study that found rapid warming in Antarctica, so his view needs updating.
Judith
I’m sure that Hans von Storch was added to Inhofe’s list while he still lived. As were the two or three others that have since passed away.
The list supposedly includes individuals who have stated publicly that they are not in agreement with one or more of the conclusions or projections in the IPCC reports.
Some have signed letters to the UN or other bodies.
You probably noticed that your name is not on the list.
I personally do not hold much of lists like this, but the claim was made up-thread that 97% of qualified individuals supported the IPCC “consensus”, and this list just points out that this claim is absurd.
Max
manacker
Perhaps HvS is not dead?
Jim,
The difficulty is in disentangling natural from anthropogenic influences. This is still the case wherever on the globe. The mere fact of warming is not all that central to this larger question.
Indeed, von Storch is still alive as far as I can see.
As our host indicated (!)
Somebody with plenty of time on their hands should check how many of these appear in Anderegg’s list of about 3000 most cited climate scientists.
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/climate_authors_table.html
Anderegg figured about 10:1 in favor of the convinced position in that list, just by what they signed up to. The papers themselves would put a higher fraction in the convinced category, and this is where the Anderegg/Schneider PNAS study got its 97%.
OK, they have done that cross-check there already. Looks like Inhofe’s 2008 list has about 160 of these 3000 (5%).
Jim D
“Anderegg figured about 10:1 in favor of the convinced position in that list, just by what they signed up to”
Convinced of WHAT?
Any idea?
Max
Several of the people on Anderegg’s list (including Callender and Lamb) are deceased.
And, unless Anderegg put his list together a long time ago, they were already dead when he put them on the list.
This does not mean that their work or opinions on CAGW are not still valid, does it?
Max
Er, Max… HvS isn’t dead. You rather missed our host’s raised eyebrow here ;-)
Anderegg defined convinced as convinced by the evidence for anthropogenic climate change. I agree it should not matter if they are dead now, as long as they published and expressed their opinion in some way. However, I only bring this list up to show that 160 of Inhofe’s list can be counted as climate scientists, but there is a much larger number besides them, twenty for every one.
BBD
Got it.
HvS is alive and well.
Max
Jim D
All told, Inhofe’s revised list has 321 names.
At the purported 97% supporting CAGW, that means somewhere there must be a list of 10,379 qualified individuals , who have publicly stated that they support all points of IPCC’s CAGW premise.
Do you have access to this list?
Max
Judith: I was wondering if any of the attempts to link any aspect of Hurricane Sandy to climate change have any scientific legitimacy? One hypothesis suggested with reduced Arctic sea ice affected the AO and thereby the low that redirected Sandy into New Jersey. Were there any presentations on this subject at the recent AGU meeting?
The AGW convinced very often (when it suits them) forget that the AGW started roughly in the mid 20th century. Anything else is simply physically implausible. I think this is not controversial at all, except when the convinced get into this state of cognitive dissonance.
So the AMO (and other ‘modes of variability’ and climatic patterns) – it’s just a SST(A) of the North Atlantic and de-trending it to remove the AGW signal (which didn’t start before 1960s) is fooling oneself.
http://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/key_figures/index_amo.png
Why not de-trend the global temperature indices and call it GMO (global multi-decadal oscillation)?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/plot/hadsst2gl
Jim D
Anderegg list, which you cited, had 3,023 total names.
You apparently missed statement at bottom of list:
Non-AR4 nonsigners: 1322 (44%) Skeptic statement: 496 (16%)
So there were really only 66% of those on the list that signed for IPCC’s CAGW premise as stated in AR4 (not 97%).
And 16% of those on the list even signed skeptic statements.
So the “97% myth” is falsified by the very data you cited.
(It always sounded a bit “too good to be true” to me, Jim.)
Max
Typo
So there were really only
66%56% of those on the list that signed for IPCC’s CAGW premise as stated in AR4 (not 97%).Jim D
So, in light of the actual data, let’s modify that 97% claim to:
A majority of the scientists (between 50 and 60%) have stated that they support the IPCC CAGW premise as outlined in AR4.
That’s a statement that makes sense.
OK with you?
(Then we can lay this “dead dog” to rest.)
Max
So you only counted people who either authored AR4 or sign a pro-AGW petition as pro-AGW. What should be done is to look at the publications to determine what group the scientists fall into, not just petitions. This is how Anderegg came to their 97%, and this was from a sub-set of the top 908 publishing climate scientists (they said the cut-off number of publications didn’t matter). The list I linked to is not just climate scientists, but other people who have published (e.g. particle physicist, Lubos Motl and economist Ross McKitrick), so it has to be narrowed down to people who know the science first.
Jim D
We have a list of 321 qualified individuals, who have gone on record that they do not agree with some or all of IPCC’s CAGW premise, as outlined in AR4.
We have another list of 3023 qualified individuals. Of this list 496 (16%) have been openly skeptical of this premise, another 1322 (44%) did not endorse or criticize the premise, leaving 1205 (40%) who have gone on record that they do agree with all of IPCC’s CAGW premise, as outlined in AR4.
From this I do NOT conclude that “97% of qualified individuals endorse the IPCC CAGW premise as outlined in AR4”.
So that statement is NOT substantiated by the data, which I have before me.
The percentage is considerably less than 97%.
I do not want to get into a p***ing contest with you on whether the %-age is 55%, 60%, 75% or whatever. I will concede that it is “more than half, but significantly less than 97%”.
Good enough?
Max
It depends where you put the bar for “qualified”. It turns out with a higher bar the tendency is towards 97%.
Jim D
Now it’s the “bar” that you are questioning?
Get serious.
The list of individuals who have openly stated that they do not support CAGW per AR4 includes climatologists, meteorologists, physicists, and others, who are knowledgeable in effects and impacts of climate change.
To wildly assume that those who “signed on” to CAGW per AR4 are “more highly qualified” to have a valid opinion than the others is simply unsubstantiated arm-waving.
The data you cited shows that those openly supporting CAGW per AR4 are significantly less than the claimed 97% of total – probably somewhere between 55% and 75%.
Still a majority, Jim, but not an overwhelming one.
I don’t usually get involved in the “head counting” game – unless someone comes up with a totally ludicrous claim like the 97% posit that someone (I forget who) made up-thread and you seemed to support..
But let’s let this “dead dog” lie.
Max
R. Gates and JimD,
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-My-1dAju9n0/UPKsxkWpGMI/AAAAAAAAGiU/R215BWdegoI/s867/kaplan%2520amo%2520raw%25205%2520year%2520difference%2520in%2520extremes.png
Since we were discussing attribution and the AMO, that is a different look at the Kapland AMO/North Atlantic SST. It is the difference in 5 year extremes. If you consider the uncertainty in the data, there is no significant difference between the pre-1950 and post 1950 range of extremes. There is an underlying trend that started circa 1900 that would likely be related to land use and/or natural variability, but you would need to use some pretty creative statistics to show a direct CO2 link to the whole data period. You could cherry pick 1960 to present, neglect that underlying trend and come up with some CO2 value with some unrealistic confidence level, but there is more noise than signal IMHO.
BTW, Since the data is likely nonstationary and non-linear, there is some interest I have noticed in this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%E2%80%93Huang_transform
It should be a better way to tease out the underlying trends, which are likely non-linear, which could help better estimate the CO2 amplification of natural variability and land use.
Captdallas,
Going forward, this conclusion from the paper previously cited studying 8000 years of the AMO seems the key takeaway:
” A return from a warm to a cold AMO phase could temporarily mask the effects of anthropogenic global warming, and thus lead to possible underestimation of future warming if the variability of the AMO is not taken into account.”
Was the AMO (better would be GMO like I said) ‘causing’ any of the late 20th century warming (the so-called AGW)?
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n2/images/ncomms1186-f1.jpg
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/human-and-natural-influences.gif
Warmists are showing a lot if interest in the natural oscillations lately.
True, but that works both ways, not considering the AMO would lead to an over-estimation with a different start date. The 1960s look like a great point to do some over estimating :)
That is really the problem, what should be the baseline?
The AMO is also just one part of the puzzle, the Toggweilder and Bjornsson paper indicates that the ACC and Antarctic convergence zone (Drake Passage) can have a 4 C abrupt impact on global climate. It does control at least half of the North Atlantic conveyor and likely has pseudo-cycles greater than 120 years. T&B’s conclusions are in pretty stark contrast to some, in my opinion ill advised, claims that natural internal variability, “cannot cause a significant degree of climate change”. http://sam.ucsd.edu/sio219/toggweiler_bjornsson.pdf
So if T and B are right, the natural noise can be +/- a full degree with longer than instrumental period pseudo-cyclic patterns. That brings you full circle to SOC and non-equilibrium thermo.
Capt, the Null Hypothesis is:
All the variability in the global temperature indices is natural (barring local anthropogenic warming, UHI…). So it’s global multidecadal oscillation (GMO) plus whatever variability at larger timescales (the secular trends and oscillations). The postulated CO2 effect is not observable so far and the correlation between solar activity and global climatic factors continues. The scene is set for rapid cooling.
Edim, “The scene is set for rapid cooling.”
I don’t know. Past rapid cooling involved glacial expansion. Who is donating the land for that expansion?
Edim said:
“The scene is set for rapid cooling.”
——-
We experience rapid cooling every night here in Colorado. To be relevant to climate discussions you need to state the length, severity, and forcing agent behind of your “rapid cooling” “scene”.
The globe is cooling, folks; for how long, even kim doesn’t know. The concantenation of cooling phases of the oceanic oscillations argues for two to three decades of cooling. If the Cheshire Cat Sunspots presage earthly cooling, by an as yet unknown mechanism, we may cool for a century or more.
=================
kim, unless you are a teenager, the world has been warming in your memory, but some seem to have forgotten the warming part.
Kim said:
“The globe is cooling, folks; for how long, even kim doesn’t know.”
____
There is no part of the Earth system called “the globe” as far as I know, as the real Earth system is made up of various different spheres such as troposphere, stratosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere.
The only globe I know about was the one that sat on my 1st Grade teacher’s desk which she used to teach us about geography. Perhaps that is what Kim is suggesting is cooling. Did someone leave that window open in my 1st Grade teacher’s class?
AGW homework never ends…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9798648/Wind-farm-company-targets-children-to-drum-up-support-for-more-turbines.html
for the kids.
R. Gates
You don’t have to go back to your 1st grade teacher to find the “globe” (that kim correctly says is cooling)..
If you look, you’ll find it in the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” record.
Did you see it?
Good.
Max
kim
Our host may look askance at such certainty ;-)
Not to mention the use of the word ‘cooling’. I do love ‘concatenation’ though. A splendid word and one that I would use more frequently if only I could spell it.
manacker
Strong claims based on very short periods are meaningless. Surely you know this? I know I have mentioned this to you before. Doubtless others have too.
Max (and Kim),
The use of the word “globe” in referring to the climate is non-specific and not scientific. You can speak of lower troposphere, mid-troposphere, upper troposphere, SST’s, Ocean down to 300, 700, 2000, etc. meters, stratosphere, NH, SH, cryosphere, etc.,but none of these in and of themselves is the “globe”, and the summation of them, taken in total as the Earth system (if that is what you want to call the “globe”) shows no cooling to soon be upon us. Quite the opposite in fact, as the longer-term trend shows continual accumulation of heat in the Earth system taken as a total “globe”.
Also Max,
Sea surface temperature anomaly is a poor metric for ocean heat content as it often reflects energy that is leaving the ocean rather than being stored in it.
Yes, I agree with Gates. The globe, defined as 3-dimensional, is actually warming because its energy is the heat content, and the ocean heat content dominates that budget. The “globe” is warming.
BBD and R. Gates
I did not see that kim had written that the current cooling has been a long-term event.
Have you?
It is exactly what it is. (And kim does not know how long it will last – nor do you or I or IPCC, for that matter.)
It is a 12 to 15-year “pause” in global (sorry Gates) warming as measured by the various indices of “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface (and tropospheric) temperature anomaly”.
It is exactly the global temperature record that IPCC has used in its reports to discuss the observed past global warming, which it has attributed principally to human GHG emissions.
So let’s not “move the goalposts” and start talking about a red herring, for which we have no real record prior to ARGO in 2003 and which has shown first net cooling and (after some corrections to the ARGO data) very slight net warming since then.
Max
Jim D
See my post above to BBD and Gates re the concept of “global” warming.
IPCC has used the HadCRUT3 record as a measure of “global” warming, which it has attributed principally to human GHG emissions since ~1950. Several thousand pages of reports discuss the effect and impacts of this “global” warming on our climate and our environment.
That’s the goalpost, Jim.
Now to ocean heat content (a new topic)
We have no real record of OHC prior to ARGO in 2003.
The ARGO data first showed net cooling to 2008 (Willis’ “speed bump”); the ARGO data were then “corrected” to show very slight warming
The temperature changes we are talking about here are in hundredths of a degree C, so hardly something that can even be measured and certainly nothing to get excited about.
Fuggidaboudit, Jim, it’s a red herring.
Max
manacker, I won’t quibble about what kim meant by globe, but it might be good to use ocean heat content going forwards as Pielke suggested because that says what the energy balance is doing, far from a red herring. Surface temperature is interesting because we live there, and perhaps land temperature even more so.
Jim D
You suggest to use OHC as a measure of “global warming” rather than the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface (or tropospheric) temperature anomaly” record, which has been used in all previous IPCC reports as the measure.
Fair enough. Roger Pielke Sr. also agrees this measure should be included in the mix.
But don’t think I don’t see exactly where you are coming from.
As long as the “global air temperature” index was going up, it was an excellent indicator of AGW, right?
And wonderful forecasts could be made of terrifying warming to be expected, based on a model-derived 2xCO2 temperature impact on the “global air temperature” at “equilibrium”.
Now that this indicator no longer shows warming, we need a new indicator, right? (Otherwise folks start talking about “missing heat” and questioning the whole AGW concept.)
So, viola! Let’s use OHC as the new indicator. After all, the heat content of the ocean is several orders of magnitude greater than that of the atmosphere.
Problem is, we have no meaningful OHC data prior to ARGO in 2003.
From 2003 to 2008 ARGO showed (egad!) a slightly cooling ocean (Josh Willis’ “speed bump”).
These data have since been “corrected”, so that now we see an essentially flat or very slight warming trend in the ocean (measured in thousandths of a degree C).
But it’s much harder to get folks excited about an ocean that is warming by a few thousandths of a degree C that it is about an atmosphere that is warming by several hundredths of a degree C -extrapolated to several degrees C in the future by the magic wizardry of climate models.
But, OK, I’ll go along with your idea.
Starting 2003 (assuming we can agree what ARGO is really telling us), let’s use OHC as the primary indicator of “global warming”.
Once we have 30 years or so of ARGO data let’s see if we really have significant “global warming” or not.
If we do, and if it appears to be accelerating, let’s look at what we can and should do about it.
This would be somewhere around 2035.
Agreed?
Ma
.
“We experience rapid cooling every night here in Colorado. To be relevant to climate discussions you need to state the length, severity, and forcing agent behind of your “rapid cooling” “scene”.”
Warmist (Gates?), roughly a flat 30-year linear trend by 2020, by 2025 clearly negative. After that it depends if the solar cycle speeds up or not (SC 25) – I think a grand minimum is pretty likely and that means another LIA, more or less. Forcing currently unknown, except that it seems to have solar/orbital origin – fertile ground for science.
Abstract
Our analysis also leads to a relatively low and tightly-constrained estimate of Transient Climate Response of 1.3–1.8°C, and relatively low projections of 21st-century warming under the Representative Concentration Pathways. Repeating our attribution analysis with a second model (CNRM-CM5) gives consistent results, albeit with somewhat larger uncertainties.
Improved constraints on 21st-century warming derived using 160 years of temperature observations
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL050226/abstract
Thanks as the low climate sensitivity papers are coming out in droves now
Girma
You cite the Gillett et al. study, which concludes:
CAGW dogma aficionados will chastise you for talking about (2xCO2) “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (the holy number) in the same breath with the Gillett et al. findings on (2xCO2) “transient CO2 temperature response”.
The difference (of course) is the heat that is hidden “in the pipeline”, waiting for “equilibrium” to be released.
But IPCC makes it easy to convert one into the other.
In its AR4 report IPCC [WGI SPM, p.13] tells us that 0.6°C±0.3°C are “in the pipeline”.
So this would make the (2xCO2) ECS = 1.6°C to 2.7°C (or a bit more than half the value assumed by IPCC of 3.2°C±0.7°C.
But wait!
This also means that the energy still “hidden in the pipeline” has been estimated too high by IPCC, and should probably be around half of the value estimated by the models in AR4, let’s say 0.3°C±0.15°C.
With this corrected “pipeline” value, we end up with a (2xCO2) ECS of 1.85°C±0.4°C or 1.45°C to 2.25°C
This is about half of IPCC’s previously model-predicted value in AR4 and very close to the ranges calculated in 2012 based on the actual record by Schlesinger et al. and Lewis.
The good thing about this, Girma, is that we now have three recent studies (all based on the actual temperature record, rather than just model simulations), which confirm a much lower ECS than was previously estimated.
This means that the “C” has effectively been removed from IPCC’s “CAGW” premise, and the world can stop worrying about this hobgoblin and move on to another.
Max
Some of you may be interested in the summary report from the recent workshop on the connection between Solar Variability and Climate:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13519
You can download the report for free if you register with the NAP at the link above. One of the more interesting presentations at the workshop was given by Isaac Held. In his panel discussion remarks he made the following (I think excellent) comments/suggestions:
1) there is a spatially coherent picture of past climate emerging from the
proxy-based studies;
2) there should be a broad-based study of the available proxy data to look at the amplitude and phase of the deduced solar flux variation;
3) trying in historical studies to separate the effects of changes in TSI from the effects of volcanoes and greenhouse gases in historical studies is fraught with difficulty, and the community needs to be very careful in understanding the error budget associated with this process
4) modeling studies are needed of the stratospheric response, the ozone
response to the solar cycle, and how those responses penetrate into the troposphere.
Many great presentations at the workshop. Reading the full summary report is well worth the time.
If this workshop has been discussed previously here at Climate etc., my apologies.
Gates
Take a good look at 22-23 December, the SSW process appears to be initiated above the Kamchatka volcanic area.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp50anim.shtml
Vuk,
You won’t give up on that volcanic origin for SSW’s will you? I can conclusively tell you that it was over the Himalaya’s that there was a huge vertically directed Rossby wave that broke on the tropopause, pushing into
the stratosphere and then moving vertically and advecting toward the pole. This video clearly shows this origin over the Himalayan region:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.shtml
If you a bit look earlier in the 50 hPa video you’ll see the warming start over southern Asia (Himalayan area) and then migrate over your volcanic region from the west.
I have some other vertical momentum charts I’ll share in the near future that show the exact area of the Himalayan region where the vertically directed Rossby wave broke on the tropopause and funneled and compressed the air into the stratosphere as the trigger to the SSW.
Hi Gates
I have slowed down the animation so you can see exactly what did happen.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSW2012-13.htm
You are very welcome to help explain in the above animation.
Of course you a scientist and have to follow what is generally accepted to be correct. I do not, but if proven wrong I do accept it as shown by this post earlier this morning:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/01/12/open-thread-weekend-6/#comment-285365
Gates, thanks sincerely for the tip.
“Issues in Climate Science Underlying Sun/Climate Research
Isaac M. Held, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
[…]
The ocean heat uptake and later slow release back to the atmosphere are the factors responsible for the difference between the transient response of the climate to radiative forcing as compared to the equilibrium climate (some 40-70 percent of the adjustment is achieved on a timescale on the order of 4 years, whereas equilibration takes centuries). […] 11-year solar cycle. On stratosphere-troposphere coupling, there is recent observational evidence that in the Southern Hemisphere the surface westerlies (and the storm track) have shifted poleward by a few degrees due possibly to the ozone hole over the South Pole in the stratosphere.
Held summarized work on this issue, focusing on a potential mechanism that employs the fact that cooling in the polar stratosphere associated with the loss of ozone increases the horizontal temperature gradient near the tropopause. Strengthening the horizontal temperature gradient alters in turn the fluxes of angular momentum by midlatitude eddies. The angular momentum budget of the troposphere controls the surface westerlies. This mechanism could work with […] solar warming of the lower stratosphere through ultraviolet absorption by ozone.”
They’re moving towards clearer quantitative seeing. What a relief!
Semi-Annual Westerlies & Ozone:
http://i48.tinypic.com/349fbs2.png
http://i45.tinypic.com/bfxn4.png
http://i49.tinypic.com/2jg5tvr.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/image10.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/vaughn1.png
As I’ve said all along, the semi-annual-solar-westerly-wind observations are crystal clear & rock solid. The mainstream is waking up to this reality. This is a phenomenally welcome breath of fresh air.
I again tip my hat to the authors of the landmark paper that ushered in this new era of solar-terrestrial-circulatory enlightenment:
Le Mouël, J.-L.; Blanter, E.; Shnirman, M.; & Courtillot, V. (2010). Solar forcing of the semi-annual variation of length-of-day. Geophysical Research Letters 37, L15307. doi:10.1029/2010GL043185.
I admit it will be difficult to forgive those of you who were so rude to these luminaries. Shameful disgrace. The most towering landmark in the history of solar-terrestrial-climate relations was published and the level of ignorance towards this paper was truly — and I admit even disturbingly — staggering. It shook my faith in humanity to the core watching the cold, rude, ignorant reception. It was insufferable.
Some of you may recall Nastrom & Belmont (1980) and Venne, Nastrom, & Belmont (1983). This is a lesson about universal laws (large numbers & conservation of angular momentum). The 2010 paper is anchored by nothing short of universal laws whereas the 1980 & 1983 papers by design could not be so well-constrained.
The next step for brave souls willing & able to quantitatively see through fog and lead:
Multidecadal Equilibration:
http://i46.tinypic.com/303ipeo.png
http://i50.tinypic.com/2v2ywzb.png
http://i40.tinypic.com/16a368w.png
http://i49.tinypic.com/wwdwy8.png
That’s literally how the solar-semi-annual circulatory helix twists. It’s an equator-pole heat & water pump meridional vs. zonal frequency disturbance doppler effect on equilibration. Maybe people need to see an example using data from a warehouse with cold floors, gas heaters near the ceilings, and fans with adjustable angles (meridional vs. zonal analogy). The angling of the fans has a remarkable effect on the heat content of the cold floor. One of the challenges in these discussions is that we all have different backgrounds. What’s clear to one person ends up being clear as mud to another.
The recent regime shift in the arctic is noticeable as a jump on the 303ipeo graph. I’m now looking into phase shifts in annual timescale lunisolar modulations ( http://i50.tinypic.com/11he49z.png ) of circulatory geometry. One theory I’ve heard (through academic back-channels) is that the phase shifts may be related to northern hemisphere glacier melt that has pulsed water mass equatorward. I have not assessed this theory empirically, but I pass it along since I know some of you might find it of interest that the phase shift is not yet understood. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before we hear a formal mainstream announcement about what’s actually relatively easy to detect quantitatively. Bear in mind that all throughout the 1980s & 1990s it was suspected that the envelope of the annual variations might be related to the solar cycle (e.g. see Lambeck & Hopgood (1982); Zhennian (1990)). It has only just become clear that the pattern is of lunisolar (not solar) origin, so this is brand new territory even for top earth rotation experts. I’ve not yet seen a single publication explicitly addressing the pattern. FYI: The phase shift commenced ~1998.
Some facts about carbon dioxide and global warming.
The amoumt of heat that a gas (or any solid or liquid) can absorb for a 1.0C rise in temperature is called specific heat or heat capacity. Here are some figures for atnospheric gases:
Nitrogen (70% of atmosphere) 29.12
Oxygen (20% of atmosphere) 29.37
Carbon dioxide (less than 1% ) 36.62
These are molar heat capacities at the standard temperature of 25 degrees C.. You can see from this table that the atmosphere’s heat capacity is dominated by nitrogen and oxygen because of quantity. Yet CO2 is the culprit. Why?. Because CO2 has vibration modes at critical temperatures, not 25C, but higher and lower. These vibration modes can absorb heat energy like a sponge absorbs water, but only over a narrow bandwidth. Classical thermodynamics does not deal well with these vibration modes, but quantum thermodynamics can and does and should be used by scientists to construct models and explain AGW. One thing we learn is that CO2 can just as easily lose heat as squeezing a sponge loses water and that is most likely what happened in 1940 which the IPCC ignored.
What you call quantum thermodynamics is actually in radiative transfer models, and radiative transfer models are a component of climate models, so they account for this.
How do we know what is in the radiative transfer models? The IPCC never provide such detail, lack of such transparency is a part of the problem. Even the quantum experts have trouble in understanding molecules with more than two atoms. CO2 has three. And we have to distinguish between computational models and theoretical. It turns out that vibrational resonances are very sharp (like high Q in electronic circuits) consequently in digital computation you have to use tiny iterations to accuratally model them, so they only absorb or release the theoretical bandwidth. But remember that digital modellers are alteady pushing spatial resolution standards, so they will be cutting corners even with the world’s fastest computers. Also remember that the proportion of isotopes of each element alters vibration frequncies and complicates the computations.
A. Biggs, they have line-by-line models that they can verify against measured spectra, but you are correct that these would be too expensive to run in a climate model. They therefore represent the absorption effects by dividing the spectrum into ten or so bands, which are derived by look-up tables from the line-by-line models. The lines are not perfectly sharp due to collisions that cause pressure broadening. This also has to be accounted for.
“Some facts about carbon dioxide and global warming.
The amoumt of heat that a gas (or any solid or liquid) can absorb for a 1.0C rise in temperature is called specific heat or heat capacity. Here are some figures for atnospheric gases:
Nitrogen (70% of atmosphere) 29.12
Oxygen (20% of atmosphere) 29.37
Carbon dioxide (less than 1% ) 36.62
These are molar heat capacities at the standard temperature of 25 degrees C.. You can see from this table that the atmosphere’s heat capacity is dominated by nitrogen and oxygen because of quantity. Yet CO2 is the culprit. Why?. Because CO2 has vibration modes at critical temperatures, not 25C, but higher and lower. These vibration modes can absorb heat energy like a sponge absorbs water, but only over a narrow bandwidth.”
According to this theory, all the CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere is adding about 5 C to average global temperature. Or that CO2 adding less than 20% of 33 C which suppose due to Greenhouse Effect.
[It may be a silly idea, because it’s pretty obvious the Earth’s ocean is actually mostly responsible for retaining and transfer global heat.]
And CO2 is regarded as important, according this theory, because the
major greenhouse gas [H20] is said to not being the causal factor, as it follows or responsive rising temperatures, whereas believer of the theory
think CO2 forces the temperature to increase.
{more idiocy not supported by evidence]
So the importance of CO2 has greenhouse gas is because it is called a forcing element. One say CO2 is suppose to be wearing the pants, and whereas H2O [vapor] has the larger greenhouse effect, H20 is not always
at work. Or lefties doctrine, H2O is the “unclean masses” which is directed by the elites. So the masses [H2O vapor] does nearly all the work, but they
wouldn’t do this work without the ever present elites [CO2].
Or the idea is that without CO2, the passive H20 vapor would simply disappear and Earth would end up a planet frozen solid.
A interesting part of the model of greenhouse effect is it starts with idea
that one view Earth as similar to a blackbody. And a blackbody is imagining
there is “something” that absorbs all the energy of sunlight, and conducts the heat of this sunlight in a perfect fashion throughout the entire body called the blackbody. It common for people to forget about this ability
of this theorized blackbody to be perfect conductor of heat, but it’s critical aspect of the blackbody. Gold or copper are a pretty good conductor of heat, as are most metals [gold and copper are the best metals], but diamond is actually best known conductor of heat. And the conducting ability of a blackbody is better than diamond. The third magical aspect of the blackbody is it’s a perfect emitter of heat [or what called blackbody heat- or the ideal planck curve of radiation of a material at any given temperature].
Because of this mental construct, called a blackbody, the result of the sunlight heating a spherical blackbody is that this sphere radiates at some constant temperature uniformly over the entire surface of the sphere.
And this uniform temperature at Earth distance is suppose to be 5.3 C.
So the starting point of the model is a perfection- one could say a godlike
perfection. Then like the Fall of Man, they start to mess with this perfection- the whole reason this perfection was made was to mess with this perfection. That is method to get the answers, it is the foundation of the house [or church].
Now, one could ask, why are this using foundation to build model. One could say it’s because they are geniuses. Which may or may not true, but
I think the main reason is because they lacked data- they couldn’t build satellites, they probably didn’t even know if satellites could ever be built and launched into Earth’s orbit. So they had to make do with the stuff they
had. Of course they also didn’t supercomputers [not that they seem to helping much in present time].
So the blackbody was an approximation designed to make complex problem
simpler. And the story of a blackbody [and it’s only teach aid] explains the general idea the the further one gets from a heat source [the sun] the lower
the temperature from the sun will be. So you take the heat of the sun surface, you expand the spherical area to size of Earth orbit, and that is the maximum amount heat one can get from the Sun- or that is the sun’s temperature at this distance.
Anyhow, I had a purpose to this post. That was to ask the question, how does one convert uniform temperature into average temperature.
In other words with the blackbody model one gets an uniform temperature. And things like clouds and/or albedo are pasted on to the blackbody, but at some point we get from a uniform temperature, to place where we are calling it a average temperature [which is certainly not the same thing].
So when and how does this conversion occur?
gbaikie, “So when and how does this conversion occur?” It doesn’t. Since the lowest temperature ever recorded on the surface of the Earth is about -89C degrees, that would be the lowest isothermal temperature that would that could be considered a black body surface. That temperature happens to have an equivalent energy of roughly 67Wm-2. That is about as close as you get to a pure radiant “shell” or surface on Earth. The closer you get to the surface the more complex the estimated “shells” become.
This is a pretty good post on the complexity.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2013/01/greenhouse-effect-doesnt-contradict-any.html?m=1
“This is a pretty good post on the complexity.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2013/01/greenhouse-effect-doesnt-contradict-any.html?m=1”
As far I got, it’s interesting. [I didn’t check the Spencer reference].
And got to this point [and had something I disagreed with]:
“Entropy still increases, in agreement with the second law of thermodynamics, despite the preserved increased temperature difference. The usual misconception seems to assume that the thermal exchange has to lead to the equal temperatures everywhere (higher entropy) – and this thermal exchange becomes stronger when we add the infrared absorption etc. However, in reality, significant temperature differences may be created with a tiny flow of energy per second as long as the energy loss is even smaller i.e. as long as you insulate the surface well enough which is what the greenhouse effect does.”
My problem is the word, surface.
Yes I know the whole radiant thing is about greenhouse gases keeping the skin surface from getting cooler. That is the theory, anyhow.
BUT what we measure is air temperature. Global average land temperature is the temperature of air 1.5 meter from the surface and in the shade. Now people call this air surface, the surface.
Hence my using the the term “skin surface” to refer to the ground [to avoid confusion].
So what we are measuring to tenths of degrees is the air surface temperature. And my question or my point is what insulates the air surface.
Or let’s ask a different question. Say take a chuck of air [starting 1 meter off the ground and going up to 101 meter above the ground- what is insulating this chunk of air?
It might be reasonable if one has still air [not windy, lacking much in terms of downdrafts or thermal convectional updrafts] to assume
it doesn’t need to be insulated- as still air is very good insulation.
Now, much excitement is made about greenhouse gas. But there no comparison of a potent greenhouse gas and sheet of plywood.
By which I mean, one can talk comparing gases in terms their effectiveness, and say methane is a potent greenhouse gas. But methane doesn’t absorb and emit [or inhibit] IR radiation as well as 1/4 inch plywood does. Instead of plywood you also talk about sand or dirt- as much better than any greenhouse gas, imaginable. If one confining oneself to radiant processes only.
So crawl under an unheated house, and you have all the greenhouse affect in terms radiant properties. Or dig a few inches below the surface of dirt or sand and you will find a constant temperature, little affected by warm days or cool nites.
Now dirt, sand, or plywood are generally better at conducting heat as any type atmosphere air. Atmospheric gas are pretty at transfer heat via convection. But we aren’t talking about conduction and convection-
we are instead obsessing over radiant properties. But one thing about conducting heat or convection of gases, you need difference in temperature to get a flow of heat. So air temperature at same temperature of skin surface temperature, lacks a significant amount heat flow of conduction or convection.
And related, one can heat a room, and without mixing the air [blowing air and fans] one can get cool air near floor and warm air at the ceiling- the room air doesn’t necessarily keep the floor warm.
So outside, when the suns goes down the temperature measured is the air temperature. And it’s insulated from skin surface and the air above it. Now if the air were to get cool enough then it’s possible it ground was warmer, it could warm the air above. though this condition commonly occurs when sun come out and warms the skin surface.
So the greenhouse gas may or may not warm the skin surface at nite- it wouldn’t matter much even if it did or did not. Instead what needs to be kept from cooling is the air between 1 meter and 100 meters above ground- because that is what is considered Earth’s temperature.
So how can greenhouse gases insulate the already insulated?
And finally how can a weak amount of IR radiation warm the gases of air.
Sunlight warms the surface, but sunlight does not directly warm the gases of the atmosphere. Why does a powerful laser not warm gas much, but a diffused IR radiation somehow warms gas?
gbaikie, The greenhouse gases would just add to the existing insulation. Depending on how much insulation they already provided, the addition would increase that in basically a ln curve for energy and nearly linear for temperature, that pesky T^4 relationship and small changes deal. If there were no density change and real “surfaces” then for concentric “shells” the relationship would be roughly Ts*(n+1)^-.25, where n is the layer or “shell”. Since there is density and mass in between the “shells” there has to be advection or energy flow parallel to the “shells”. The greater the mass and easier the mass can advect, the less the radiant transfer would fit the ideal conditions. So what Motl is saying is that there is always advective energy transfer that reduces the efficiency of the ideal radiant transfer model.
If you did have concentric isothermal “shells” that limited advection and convection, then it would be close to the radiant transfer models. Since the less than perfect “surface” is separates a liquid and gas environment, there are actually two greenhouse effects that have to be considered. That adds some fun to the puzzle.
To simplify, since the deep oceans are pretty stable and can be approximated as a radiant surface at 4 C and 335 Wm-2, that is approximately the impact of the original “insulation”. Adding 3.7Wm-2 worth of insulation would increase the deep oceans to ~340Wm-2 or about 1C degree.
You can think of it like if you build a greenhouse over a large pool, whatever the average pool temperature is, will be the temperature of the greenhouse. How long it takes the temperature to change would depend on how much water is in the pool.
I don’t have much to say about 4- 6 or rest post. So checked the link
and it starts with this:
“green•house ef•fect
Noun
The trapping of the sun’s warmth in a planet’s lower atmosphere due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet’s surface”
I don’t see how it’s important one way or the other, but is it true.
Does the Earth’s atmosphere have greater transparency to visible light as compared to infrared radiation.
It seems to make this comparsion one need equally intense sources of light which are visible and infrared. Here:
“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG8c-6a3TT0
Night Owl Night Vision
full moon
A lightweight at 340gms and just over 17cm long, Flir First Mate MS fits easily into the palm of your hand and can spot a small vessel in pitch blackness at almost 900m and a person at 320m. Other First Mate MS models can spot a vessel at 1.23km distance – no illumination, no moonlight, in most weathers. Galileo would have been pleased.
First Mate MS provides go-anywhere thermal imaging for clear vision in total darkness and through smoke and light fog. Since it’s not permanently mounted to your vessel, as they are completely portable and battery powered they can be transferred between vessels – and even used around the home when your boat is not in use.
http://www.sail-world.com/USA/Flirs-First-MateMS-Thermal-Imaging-Camera-helps-sailors-see-in-dark/91283
“Another drawback of thermal imagers is that they require
costly germanium or silicon lenses and cannot see through
plain glass. While a soldier can see through a window into a
building with a SWIR camera, he cannot with a thermal camera.
By the same token, a soldier can drive a HUMVEE at night by
looking through the windshield with a helmet mounted SWIR
camera inside the vehicle. A thermal camera must be mounted
outside the vehicle because it can not see through glass.”
http://www.sensorsinc.com/downloads/article_Adv.Imging_305.pdf
http://www.nightvisioncn.com/sdp/625512/4/cp-3235904/0/Thermal_Imagers_Basis.html
Finally found thermal image of the Moon:
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/Fc0xOku-nLM/?resourceId=0_06_02_99
A bit after halfway and at 1.58 min
The moon is good image to compared because it emitts infrared and reflects visible
light and the infrared is as intense as the reflected light.
So, I believe this proves that there is not a significant difference between transparency of atmosphere between visible and infrared.
But normal glass is not transparent enough to see through with thermal infrared sensors.
gbaikie, Thermal imaging devices have bandwidths that use the notches in the atmosphere. If they used just the CO2 or H2O spectrum, they wouldn’t be very effective.
This link has some thermal photos of CO2 escaping while pouring champagne.
http://www.flir.com/cs/emea/en/view/?id=41703
They had to fine tune the filter to match the CO2 peak wavelength, but they can thermal image the CO2. The glass in the photos blocked the IR, just like you mention, but the CO2 flowing out of the glass is visible to the specially filtered camera. So CO2 is a space blanket with a lot of holes in it, but a doubling of CO2 will produce roughly 3.7 to 4.1 Wm-2 of additional “insulation” effect at some altitude where CO2 isn’t competing with H2O for bandwidth. Like the Motl post says, it doesn’t matter how the heat was accumulated, CO2, Water Vapor and the rest of the atmosphere regulate the rate of heat loss.
The real question should be how effective CO2 would be at containing the energy. The “effective” radiant layer for all of the atmosphere is roughly 200 Wm-2 which is roughly -30 C. Minus 30 C is not a uniform atmospheric temperature and it is low enough that there is advection above and below that layer plus convection through that layer. All that reduces the probability of the CO2 impact being felt “uniformly” at the “surface”, presumably where people live, and since that “effective” radiant layer(ERL) is at the “surface” at night and in winter in some regions, additional CO2 will actually restrict some heat flow horizontally near the “surface” if it impacts that ERL. Since CO2 doesn’t add any significant mass to the atmosphere, the “lid” on the pot will tend to rattle instead of uniformly retaining energy.
All that can get pretty complicated, so the 4C deep ocean temperature which got there through all of the atmospheric effects, makes a pretty good reference layer if you don’t want to deal with some seriously wicked math that appears to be unsolvable to any useful degree of accuracy.
I should say that Spencer sort of agrees, that it does not matter:
As said this below his quoted definition:
“Actually, the greenhouse effect would still operate even if the atmosphere absorbed just as much solar as it does infrared. When even Google gets the definition so wrong, how can mere mortals be expected to understand it?”
Good question. But if everyone believes yet can’t explain it- what does that say?
So point one:
“1) The greenhouse effect does not necessarily require solar heating. If the climate system was heated by intense geothermal energy rather than the sun, the greenhouse effect would still operate.”
Fine. But I would add you don’t need greenhouse gases either.
Next:
“2) Temperatures in the climate system are the result of energy fluxes gained versus lost. An equilibrium temperature is reached only after the rate of energy absorbed by a layer (of atmosphere, soil, or water) equals the rate of energy loss. This is contrary to the common misconception that energy input alone determines temperature.”
Yes. And most people don’t get this.
“3) The greenhouse effect does not violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Just because the greenhouse effect (passively) makes the surface of the Earth warmer than if only (active) solar heating was operating does not violate the 2nd Law, any more than insulating your house more can raise its interior temperature in the winter, given the same energy input for heating. Very high temperatures in a system can be created with relatively small energy fluxes into that system *if* the rate of energy loss can be reduced (see #2, above). Again, energy input into a system does not alone determine what the temperature in the system will be.”
I might agree, but some earth energy budgets offered, do violate 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
I think there two points about this. One is about what exactly is insulating the atmosphere. I agree that clouds do a good job at insulating.
The other has do amount energy radiated.
By which I mean the atmospheric lacking moon does not cool at as fast a rate as some seem to imagine.
“4) The rate of IR absorption by an atmospheric layer almost never equals the rate of IR emission. ….. Don’t know what this means.
” IR emission is very dependent upon the temperature of that layer, approximately increasing as the 4th power of the temperature. ”
ok, so. As a gas will radiant it’s temperature- as does all matter.
“But IR absorption is much less dependent on the temperature of the layer.”
Yeah, I would say it has little to do with it. Expect in extreme examples not related to conditions found in Earth’s atmosphere.
“So, for example, if you irradiated a very cold layer of air with intense IR radiation, that layer would warm until the rate of IR emission equaled the rate of absorption.”
Ok. Sure. Would require very intense IR.
But you going to actually going be able to warm the gas. You could light it up so all the molecules are glowing, but it’s not warmer because you made it glow.
“But in the real atmosphere, other kinds of energy fluxes are involved, too, and so in general IR emission and absorption for a layer are almost never equal.”
Ok. I agree generally. But I still don’t get what first sentence is trying to convey.
Oh second thought, I guess do, when look at again, not sure of the why of the point.
It’s interesting though because I was reading about thermal imagers and they don’t work well in the morning and dusk {I didn’t explanation of why]. I wonder if this “point” explains this degradation of these imagers. One getting more “noise” or “snow” with IR signal.
“5) Each layer of the atmosphere does not emit as much IR upward as it does downward.”
Ok I don’t get this.
” There are people who try to attach some sort of cosmic significance to their claim that the atmosphere supposedly emits as much IR energy upward as it does downward, which is only approximately true for thin atmospheric layers. ”
Well I am guessing am not one of these people.
I am person who thinks IR is being diffuse all over the place.
“But the claim is false. Ground-based, upward-viewing IR radiometers measure much stronger levels of downward atmospheric emission than do space-based, downward-viewing radiometers of upward atmospheric emission. ”
Maybe cause they are closer?
Satellites are flying at hundreds of miles up. Obviously you must be allowing for this. But are allowing enough for it?
“The reason is mostly related to the tropospheric temperature lapse rate. If the atmosphere was isothermal (vertically uniform in temperature) then upward and downward emission would be the same. ”
Hmm. well we know atmosphere is not uniform is temperature. But heat is different matter.
Others might talk about the different potential energy of gas molecules related to elevation- they would express more energy at lower elevation [or become hotter].
But I will take a pass on it for moment.
“But it’s not. Even if you restrict the analysis to very thin atmospheric layers, the upward emission will be slightly less than the downward emission, because it originates from an average altitude which is slightly higher, and thus colder (except in the stratosphere). (As an interesting aside, many models actually do make the approximation that their individual layers emit as much IR radiation upward as downward, yet they still successfully create an atmospheric temperature profile which is realistic).”
I will agree. But don’t see how it matters [much] either way.
But hmm. he saying layers of air radiate less energy as they get higher. I am interested in quantities of energy of any layer air which radiates. That it gets less [if including all possible factors- is “interesting” [as I have no clue why] but I am more interested amount energy a layer emits [as compared the energy which have passed thru from lower layers].
“6) The tropospheric temperature lapse rate would not exist without the greenhouse effect. While it is true that convective overturning of the atmosphere leads to the observed lapse rate, that convection itself would not exist without the greenhouse effect constantly destabilizing the lapse rate through warming the lower atmosphere and cooling the upper atmosphere. ”
I will keep this shorter.
I disagree.
gbaikie, BTW, all of the internal heat transfer which will impact the efficiency of radiant forcing appears to be completely underestimated.
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/rgl/HiresSST/NHSH.png
Nick Stokes did that comparison of the HADCRUT3 NH, SH and Tropics. That is the “surface” dancing around.
“gbaikie, Thermal imaging devices have bandwidths that use the notches in the atmosphere. If they used just the CO2 or H2O spectrum, they wouldn’t be very effective.
This link has some thermal photos of CO2 escaping while pouring champagne.
http://www.flir.com/cs/emea/en/view/?id=41703
The camera they used has these specs:
0.9 – 1.7 µm (0.4 – 1.7 µm optional)
and said:
“The CO2 absorptions observable by thermal cameras are quite weak because this gas molecule has only a strong
absorption peak in the detector bandwidth at 4.245 μm. So we needed to look at that specific bandwidth.”
To do that the group used an external band-pass filter.
“The camera operates at a bandwidth of 3 to 5 μm.
“Near-infrared: 0.75-1.4 µm
Short-wavelength infrared: 1.4-3 µm
Mid-wavelength infrared: 3-8 µm
Notes about Mid-wavelength infrared:
“In guided missile technology the 3-5 µm portion of this band is the atmospheric window in which the homing heads of passive IR ‘heat seeking’ missiles are designed to work, homing on to the Infrared signature of the target aircraft, typically the jet engine exhaust plume”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared
So the camera they linked was near infrared camera. They said they
were using Mid-wavelength infrared. I am a little confused.
But I thought was weird a thermal camera could see through glass,
so I checked.
As for champagne, I prefer beer:)
….So CO2 is a space blanket with a lot of holes in it, but a doubling of CO2 will produce roughly 3.7 to 4.1 Wm-2 of additional “insulation” effect at some altitude where CO2 isn’t competing with H2O for bandwidth. Like the Motl post says, it doesn’t matter how the heat was accumulated, CO2, Water Vapor and the rest of the atmosphere regulate the rate of heat loss. ”
Well with about 4 mm worth solid/liquid Co2, it’s not one of those thin cheap space mylar blankets, but thicker one and with many holes:)
But generally, the kiddies should have no fear of Earth becoming Venus.
“All that can get pretty complicated, so the 4C deep ocean temperature which got there through all of the atmospheric effects, makes a pretty good reference layer if you don’t want to deal with some seriously wicked math that appears to be unsolvable to any useful degree of accuracy.”
I hope that someone doing this “seriously wicked math” is well paid- or at least, really likes doing it.
captDallas
Lower ocean temperature is 3C not 4C.
3.9C is average temperature top to bottom.
I’ve yet to hear a warmist explain the global ocean average temperature in a coherent manner.
Have I mentioned recently that a blackbody with a temperature of 3.9C has a radiant emittance of 334W/m2. The sun delivers an average of 340W/m2 at the top of the atmosphere.
Coincidence? Probably not.
David, “Lower ocean temperature is 3C not 4C.” Yeah, ~2.6 to 3 C, but I am considering the rough “average” ocean. Using 4C +/- 1 for a “surface” that is more stable and more uniform is just a short cut or “cheat” to establish a frame of reference.
That FOR also just happens to be in the uncertainty range of the “DWLR”, makes sense as far as ultra long term equilibrium with a power source that provides about 340 Wm-2, and actually works in both radiant transfer and plain vanilla moist air thermodynamics. I know I really should make it more complicated but KISS was the first thing I learned in Thermo 101 :)
The reason we’ve lost 20 years of change action is absolutely clear to anyone who can think rationally and logically.
It’s because ‘Progressives’ have been insisting on totally irrational policy responses. The policies the ‘Progressives’ demand have no chance of working the real world.
‘The ‘Progressives’ have been blocking progress for not just 20 years, but for 50 years.
That is what’s been preventing progress on reducing global GHG emissions.
Recall that nuclear power was clearly offered to the Australian voters at the 1993 and 2007 elections, but was rejected by the Australian electorate after strong anti-nuclear scaremongering campaigns run by the Labor Government.
If the Coalition had won the 1993 Federal election and if nuclear power had been adopted and implemented at the rate potentially achievable (I recognise this is a big IF), Australia could have had 1 GW by 2003, 10 GW by 2013 and 20 GW by 2023. That could have reduced Australia’s GHG emissions from electricity generation by 50% by now and 90% by 2023.
To achieve that would have required less public funding than the $30 billion of subsidies this government has already committed to for renewable energy and so called climate change mitigation policies. And these policies have achieved next to nothing in 20 years. Wind power now provides 3% and solar 0.2% of Australia’s electricity and negligible emissions abatement.
The policies being pursued are illogical and irrational.
This is an example of what progress could have been achieved by now but was blocked by the ‘Progressives’. Unfortunately, they have not yet seen the light and continue to push for the same types of irrational policies.
Quick, someone prepare a grant request to study the impact of globalclimatewarmingchange on comet C/2012 S1.
We have to submit fast, it’ll be past by the end of December.
We could call it Adverse Impacts of Anthropogenic Carbon Emissions on Comet C/2012 S1 and Potential Mitigation Strategies.
It’s gotta be worth at least a couple hundred thou at least.
My new article has been published now …
The 21st Century New Paradigm Shift in Climate Change Science
Principia Scientific is a publisher now, eh?
What’s it impact factor? [wink wink nudge nudge]
Yer a barrel of laughs, Cotton.
Jim D.
Thanks for the reply. Yes, the look-up table is a method I’ve used myself and it works well. But I suspect it implies that 10% of the total IR power is absorbed by the CO2 molecule (or the eqivalent in photons) in that excitation mode . Normally one photon removes one electron and replaces it with equivalent energy, so this could be more than the CO2 molecules could absorb. More importantly, it is assuming what the model was set up to provide.
Isotopes of carbon and oxygen will have differemt vibration frequencies. Are these accounted for?
In still air in adiabatic conditions any region of the atmosphere has a propensity towards isentropic conditions such that molecules move retaining PE+KE=constant in free path motion between impacts. This means there must be a thermal gradient, not formed by convection but by diffusion. Convection can form it, but is not essential. Venus temperatures can only be explained by diffusion which has ensured isothermal conditions in horizontal planes right around the globe, but temperature gradients in vertical planes. The gravity induced gradient in the troposphere is then reduced by up to about a third due to intra-atmospheric radiation from warm to cool layers above.
There never can be no radiation absorbed or emitted by any atmosphere. Even hypothetical pure nitrogen and oxygen atmospheres would absorb and re-emit some UV and visible radiation, this being the source of heat for such atmospheres at all altitudes. The heat then diffuses where necessary to “perfect” the gradient in calm adiabatic conditions. Obviously weather conditions cause variations, but these are just like waves on the top of the ocean – everything settles down to the required level in calm conditions.
I have summarised all this in a new article just published on Principia Scientific International entitled “The 21st Century New Paradigm in Climate Change Science” which should be able to be found on Google soon. You can of course just go to the PSI Home page and use the link top left.
It’s all there, and you should find answers to all the above questions that several have asked. The key issue is to consider the atmosphere as it is, and the effect of variations, such as additional water vapour causing more intra-atmospheric transfer of heat from warm to cool layers, thus reducing the thermal gradient and hence the surface temperature.
There’s also my paper on “Planetary Surface Temperatures. A Discussion of Alternative Mechanisms” which provides cited papers, experiments etc in support of this.
I’ll be in hospital tomorrow, so won’t be answering questions for a while. As I said, you should find all you want to know about what we all at PSI are now talking about in this new paradigm shift, whereby radiation reduces the thermal gradient, whilst oxygen and nitrogen play the main role supporting the surface temperatures.
And that’s the way it has to be, because nothing else keeps within all the laws of physics and explains all observations (even on other planets) as does this hypothesis.
From what I’ve read lately, we are currently in (or just ended) a Grand Solar Maximum, the top 10 to 15% of the Sun’s variable output. Not only that, but it is supposed to be an unusually strong Grand Solar Maximum. I’m reading that we’ll be entering a Grand Solar Minimum next. Is that true? What is the difference in Solar insolation (or its equivalent, if I’m asking for the wrong data) between a Grand Solar Maximum and a Grand Solar Minimum?
References
A History of Solar Activity over Millennia
Ilya G. Usoskin
http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2008-3/
http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2008-3/download/lrsp-2008-3Color.pdf
It’s full of interesting information:
“• The sun spends about 70% of its time at moderate magnetic activity levels, about 15 – 20% of its time in a grand minimum and about 10 – 15% in a grand maximum. Modern solar activity corresponds to a grand maximum.”
“• The modern level of solar activity (after the 1940s) is very high, corresponding to a grand maximum. Grand maxima are also rare and irregularly occurring events, though the exact rate of their occurrence is still a subject of debates.”
http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/open?pubNo=lrsp-2008-3&page=articlesu16.html
“A quantitative analysis is only possible using proxy data, especially cosmogenic isotope records. Using a physics-based analysis of solar-activity series reconstructed from 10Be data from polar (Greenland and Antarctica) archives, Usoskin et al. (2003c, 2004) stated that the modern maximum is unique in the last millennium. Then, using a similar analysis of the 14C calibrated series, Solanki et al. (2004) found that the modern activity burst is not unique, but a very rare event, with the previous burst occurring about 8 millennia ago. An update (Usoskin et al., 2006a) of this result, using a more precise paleo-magnetic reconstruction by Korte and Constable (2005) since 5000 BC, suggests that an increase of solar activity comparable with the modern episode might have taken place around 2000 BC, i.e., around 4 millennia ago. The result by Solanki et al. (2004) has been disputed by Muscheler et al. (2005) who claimed that equally high (or even higher) solar-activity bursts occurred several times during the last millennium, circa 1200 AD, 1600 AD and at the end of the 19th century. We note that the latter claimed peak (ca. 1860) is not confirmed by direct solar or geomagnetic data. However, as argued by Solanki et al. (2005), the level of solar activity reconstructed by Muscheler et al. (2005) was overestimated because of an erroneous normalization to the data of ground-based ionization chambers (see also McCracken and Beer, 2007). This indicates that the definition of grand maxima is less robust than grand minima and is sensitive to other parameters such as geomagnetic field data or overall normalization.”
http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/open?pubNo=lrsp-2008-3&page=articlesu16.html
“The past 90 years have been known as a “grand solar maximum” because the cycles have been unusually strong. (See chart below.) But all good things come to an end and so it seems inevitable that this grand maximum won’t last forever — or else it would hardly be grand, right? The question is when will the grand maximum end? The answer, it turns out, may be right now with the current solar cycle 24 (in the jargon of solar scientists, it is the 24th cycle since 1749 when solar cycles began to be recorded).
Hopefully this is readable. Did it on my phone
Thank you,
Chris Shaker
Sorry lost the rest of the article that followed that last paragraph, and the source URL
“A Wicked Solar Minimum
The first signs that things might be changing came with the transition from cycle 23 to 24 in 2008/09. (Officially, cycle 23 ended December 2008 while cycle 24 began on January 2008. I know that doesn’t seem possible, but cycles typically overlap for about a year or so — if you had to undergo a magnetic pole reversal you’d understand.) During any transition from one cycle to the next, solar activity is depressed. But this most recent transition was a doozie. Sunspot numbers scraped along at or near zero for close to two years — 2008 had 266 spot-free days and 2009 had 260.
In 2010 solar cycle 24 finally got going — but with more of a whimper than a roar and it’s been a pretty paltry cycle since. The solar cycles of recent history have typically peaked with an averaged annual sunspot number ranging from about 120 to 150. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which has the largest estimate), the maximum sunspot number for cycle 24 is predicted to peak at a number of only about 90 sometime in May 2013.
What That May Portend
Last week Matt Owens of the University of Reading in England and colleagues published a paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that adds fuel to the fire, or lack of fire, with two bold predictions:
Cycle 24 will be even weaker than previously predicted with the maximum sunspot number peaking at only 65-75 in mid- or late 2012.
The weakness of cycle 24 may not be an isolated event but the harbinger of a new regime of very low solar activity. How low? Pretty low. The authors state that “parameters during the current solar cycle … are following trajectories consistent with a rapid descent into Maunder minimum conditions (within about 40 years).” The Maunder Minimum, you will recall, occurred in the 17th and early 18th centuries when records indicate a virtual absence of any sunspots over a period of 70 years.”
http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/solarcycle24/
Chris Shaker
Thx, that is a good article by Chameides
Current and the near future low solar activity was ‘calculated’ by M. Vukcevic as long ago as 2003
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN.htm
at the time when NASA’s top experts were predicting that the SC24 would be the strongest ever. NASA claimed at the time that such extrapolation is nonsense.
I thought the article revealed a total lack of knowledge of the suspected mechanism explaining the correlation between sunspots and climate.
The author makes the very common mistake of using sunspots as proxy for a small variation in TSI (Total Solar Irradience). This explains only commensurately small variations in earth temperature and justifies the statement saying it is unlikely to negate so-called AGW.
Sunspots are also a proxy for solar magnetic field. The solar magnetic more or less shields the earth from very high energy charged particles produced by extra-solar sources such as supernovae. There’s a constant rain of them onto the solar system that doesn’t tend to vary much except over either very brief (nearby explosion) or very long (sol drifting relative to spiral arms of the galaxy).
The sun’s magnetic field throttles how many of these particles hit the earth’s atmosphere or are deflected away. These particles are suspected of producing nucleation sites for water condensation high in atmosphere and thus changing the nature and/or number of high altitude clouds which then reflect more less sunlight.
The sun’s magnetic field throttles how many of these particles hit the earth’s atmosphere or are deflected away.
Svensmark’s hypothesis has yet to be proven, but it is a strong possibility that the Earth’s magnetic field makes critical contribution too:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EarthNV.htm
Throttling of galactic cosmic rays by solar magnetic field is about as hard a fact as one finds in science. CLOUD experiment latest update:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD
Teleconnection confirmed. Magnitude needs quantifying at this point.
We’ve looked at CLOUDs from both sides now… etc.. don’t make me break out Joni Mitchell again.
What is the biology doing? I heard an interesting BBC Discovery programme about the ‘Anthropocene’ in which a presenter proposed that future geologists will be able to see traces of the Haber process in the rocks. We have doubled nitrogen fixation since the beginning of the 20th century.
There must be some effect on the biology of the Earth, especially the oceans. What happens if one fertilises an otherwise sterile ocean with ammonia/nitrates? What happens to C fixation?
JF
Not too simple. Too unclear. All it takes is one extra word “average” to make it clear. It’s still simple. Not neccessarily too simple. Sir Occam, who invented the razor blade or something, prefers simple.
The fact that the average temperature of the ocean is almost precisely that of a spherical black body at the same distance from the sun is illuminating (pun intended). It lends support to Miskolczi’s saturated greenhouse. What energy is lost by non-zero albedo (gray body) is precisely balanced by the greenhouse effect.
Kirchoff’s Law of Thermal Radiation states that emittance equals absorption across all frequencies. I.e. a body in equilibrium cannot radiate more or less energy than it receives.
I therefore posit that over the long term the global ocean’s average temperature cannot exceed that of a perfect black body illuminated by 340W/m2 and NOTHING can change that except a rise in power delivered by the sun. Given we’re at the maximum average temperature right now for measured output from the sun this tends to support Miskolczi’s Saturated Greenhouse hypothesis.
It also explains the curious phenomenon of the rapid rise in temperature at the beginning of interglacial periods. The curious part is that temperature shoots up like a rocket as positive feedback of white ice turning to black water proceeds then temperature suddenly stops rising like it hit a brick ceiling. It happens every time and the ceiling is precisely the same temperature each time. I posit that the ceiling is reached when most of the surface ice is gone and the greenhouse effect is saturated again by water vapor.
David Springer | January 14, 2013 at 9:17 am |
captDallas
Lower ocean temperature is 3C not 4C.
3.9C is average temperature top to bottom.
I’ve yet to hear a warmist explain the global ocean average temperature in a coherent manner.
Have I mentioned recently that a blackbody with a temperature of 3.9C has a radiant emittance of 334W/m2. The sun delivers an average of 340W/m2 at the top of the atmosphere.
Coincidence? Probably not.
captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2 | January 14, 2013 at 9:27 am |
David, “Lower ocean temperature is 3C not 4C.” Yeah, ~2.6 to 3 C, but I am considering the rough “average” ocean. Using 4C +/- 1 for a “surface” that is more stable and more uniform is just a short cut or “cheat” to establish a frame of reference.
That FOR also just happens to be in the uncertainty range of the “DWLR”, makes sense as far as ultra long term equilibrium with a power source that provides about 340 Wm-2, and actually works in both radiant transfer and plain vanilla moist air thermodynamics. I know I really should make it more complicated but KISS was the first thing I learned in Thermo 101 :)
Above is in reply to captdallas.
david, “I therefore posit that over the long term the global ocean’s average temperature cannot exceed that of a perfect black body illuminated by 340W/m2 and NOTHING can change that except a rise in power delivered by the sun. ”
Actually it can reach the peak energy applied, though RMS would be a more realistic limit, average should always be used with caution. Just like trickle charging a battery. The oceans though don’t cover the whole surface, so, drum roll please, 70% of RMS is likely the limit. Is it a coincident that albedo and ocean surface are related?
It is fun to watch the “experts” though.
Because the earth is unevenly illuminated and is not an ideal black body parts of the ocean may certainly exceed 4C. The tropical ocean mixed layer can reach a theoretical 35C which is radiance of 511W/m2 (half a day at ~1000W/m2 falling at the equator) . The actual max observed temperature of open ocean is 30C. The maximum mean annual temperature recorded on land evah is 34.5C in an equatorial desert demonstrating it can’t reach a higher average temperature than a blackbody either. Theoretical maximum daytime high would be for about 1000W/m2 peak noontime power which is a few degrees below 100C. No has observed anything close to that. The record is 57C because nothing on the earth’s surface has the instant response time of an ideal black body. Sand doesn’t evaporate and shed latent energy which is why it can reach a higher temperature than ocean surface.
If you think the maximum observed temperatures above are not constrained in the manner I described I’m all ears as to what you think establishes the real world limits.
Whatever happened to Webby? Did he take the CA oil shale into account when trying to define when peak fossil fuel would hit? I suppose not.
Peak anything is an economic discussion not a geologic discussion. How much fossil fuel exists is fairly irrelevant. Peak anything occurs when the price of the substitute is lower then the price of the original good.
5 years ago nobody predicted the large shift from coal to natural gas in the US.
How do you make a world have the most Greenhouse Effect?
The simplest way to make world have more greenhouse effect than Earth,
would be a world entirely covered by ocean.
Does anyone dispute this?
But is a way to have world have more greenhouse effect than a world
cover by oceans?
Or if one had world covered with 70% ocean, is there a way to have greenhouse equal [or more] than world completed covered with ocean?
Why? 70% of a perfect blackbody works for me :)
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/01/tale-of-two-greenhouse-part-deux.html
Capt’nDallas
I got lost with the introduction of freezing water:
“Sunlight is absorb at depths of over 100 meters in small amounts, water has a decreasing density as it freezes causing an insulating layer to form at the surface, since the oceans are saline, there is a temperature inversion below that insulating layer that further restricts the rate of heat loss”
Sunlight absorbed at depth I got, temperature inversion is dependent upon the surface freezing to form an insulating barrier, not?
The atmospheric inversion, is that the stratosphere? Your multiple spheres model?
Inquiring minds….
“Why? 70% of a perfect blackbody works for me :)
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/01/tale-of-two-greenhouse-part-deux.html ”
Hmm, i tend to agree.
The answer of my question what would involve the best greenhouse is the mythical blackbody [though I can’t say it was exam question which I had the answer- I was merely asking a question].
And it could be seen as strange to start the greenhouse effect theory with the perfect “greenhouse effect” and add to it “the other greenhouse effect”.
Or a uniform 5 C planetary temperature is a “better greenhouse effect” than a 5 C averaged temperature.
Now, is the ocean a perfect blackbody? Or perhaps “better” than than theorized blackbody? [Better meaning warmer for us fuzzies.]
Better also in other ways. Can ocean water be more forgiving to life
in this rather harsh universe [mostly a dark place with small areas of
near blazing violent stars that can melt/vaporize little fuzzies].
Does presence of enough water extend the habitable zones?
But being ever inquisitive, is there something better than just water [and some salt].
If one interested roasting one could point to Venus as swell way to get hot, but does Venus work at Earth distance? Or is it’s so special mainly because it’s close to the Sun.
Does CO2 “fail” as a gas furnace if it is further from the Sun?
Does Mars show you this failure?
RiH008, “Sunlight absorbed at depth I got, temperature inversion is dependent upon the surface freezing to form an insulating barrier, not?”
When salt water freezes the temperature is depressed, about 1.9 C for average ocean salinity. That -1.9 C water is the most dense so it sinks. Since ice is formed above, the sinking water flow is very laminar, minimal mixing. The very bottom of the ocean is about 2.5 C versus around 4 C average for the bulk and around 21C average for the thin surface layer.
The atmospheric inversion is due to ozone and UV light interaction and starts at the tropopause which is around -60C on average but can go down to less that -100 C, so it is less than desirable reference layer, except for telescope jockeys that don’t have to worry about things actually working.
And yeah, the multi-layer model is a static model. I am trying to fine tune the model so it compares better to a radiant transfer model since everyone is hung up on black bodies and gray bodies. If would be nice if the data was more accurate, but such is life.
gbaikie, “Now, is the ocean a perfect blackbody? Or perhaps “better” than than theorized blackbody? [Better meaning warmer for us fuzzies.]”
A perfect black body only means that it can emit uniformly. Because of the way radiant physics started, a hole in a furnace or wall was used to limit the energy into whatever apparatus they were using. So a “radiant disc” is the basis for all the calculations. To “create” an ideal black body, the radiant disc was use to heat the inside of a spherical shell. The shell had to be the right thickness for the radiation. As a result, a perfect black body would have virtually no heat capacity but unlimited heat. The thermal mass of the oceans provide close enough to unlimited heat to be a fairly good approximation of a black body. Unfortunately or fortunately, the Earth has 70% of its surface that is roughly a black body.
So to have a habitable planet with a stable temperature requires lots of thermal mass both for the “black body” and the atmospheric shells.
RiHo08 | January 14, 2013 at 8:34 pm |
“I got lost with the introduction of freezing water:”
You and me both.
David, ““I got lost with the introduction of freezing water:”
You and me both.”
No, I got lost. I think it is more readable now.
“David Springer | January 14, 2013 at 11:57 pm |
RiHo08 | January 14, 2013 at 8:34 pm |
“I got lost with the introduction of freezing water:”
You and me both.”
” If the oceans were perfectly well mixed, based on the current best estimates, the temperature would be 4 C degrees. If the oceans completely covered the planet, then the average surface temperature of Earth would be 4 C degrees, for some time period. How long doesn’t matter for this example.”
Let try this. Our oceans average temperature is 3-4 C.
Suppose one had ocean covering entire planet and the ocean were mixed so the starting point is the surface and bottom of oceans from equator to the poles were, 3-4 C.
What is the immediate effect?
It seems to me the immediate effect is the lack of clouds forming and a tropics which become in the near term a lot colder than our tropics.
And you aren’t going to get much clouds until such time as the surface oceans have warmed up.
Also the air temperature will drop considerable in tropics- it would around same temperature as ocean.
For there to be clouds the ocean surface needs to warm and then with warmer surface one gets warmer air.
And it should kept in mind that you have not change the heat of the ocean- you have instead mixed the warm surface water with colder deeper water.
So mix the ocean of the world, the surface temperature drops to 4 C,
and within few days, the air above the water cool.
And you lowered Earth average temperature by a considerable amount.
Instead of average temperature of about 26 C in the tropics it’s 4 C in the tropics. Which results in a lower average global temperature- it should be around 0 C. And no clouds.
And in time period of less than Month, it should not change by very much.
Even as long as year of time it may only increase a degree or two.
The question how long does it take to warm up.
And whenever gets back to “normal conditions” one probably going have added more energy in the ocean.
There no way that one is going to make the ocean cooler or lose heat,
though one certainly lowers the air temperature in very quick fashion.
The question is how heat would this add to the ocean?
And obviously, the atmosphere isn’t going to warm the ocean- it’s the other way around.
Some people imagine one could increase the greenhouse of Mars by
adding vast amount of greenhouse gases. I disagree. I also disagree with whole idea of terraforming Mars. Because I think Mars is good the way it is, and cause it’s a lot effort- it’s an unnecessary burden upon people.
And finally I don’t think greenhouse gases work as advertized.
But if you wanted to increase the greenhouse effect on Mars, I think the best way is to add water. And it could make economic sense.
One idea is covering Mars in solar ponds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_pond
The solar ponds in the Atacama Desert are not a government program
instead they are very old mining operation.
But if you want to affect global temperature, one would need a lot of these solar ponds- a world covered with these green spots all over the surface.
I am not believer in massively central planned projects- I believe humans
self organize better than ants- but it can be fun to pretend it’s a huge massively central planned project. To figure out the logistical aspects of it.
So how much water is needed? What is needed is pools meter or less deep. And that they will cover 1/4 of the surface area of Mars.
And surface area of Mars is? wiki.answers: 144,798,500.
36 million square kilometer. And square km 1 meter deep: 1 million tons.
So 36 trillion tonnes of water. It’s roughly assumed there is trillions of tonnes of recoverable water on Mars. Whether there more then 36 trillion tonnes is not known. Probably is, but if not or perhaps because it’s cheaper, one could export much more than 36 trillion tonnes from other parts of solar system [shipping from Earth would be too expensive- but there other sources of water]. The 36 trillion number indicates there isn’t enough easily available on Mars surface [that is known about].
Now, how much water is currently in Mars atmosphere?
Total mass of atmosphere: ~2.5 x 10^16 kg
and 210 ppm being water.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html
So, roughly, 2.5 x 10^16 kg times 2.1 x10^-4
So 5.25 x 10^12 kg. Or 5.25 x 10^9 tonnes.
So around 5 billion tonnes. So if you lost another 5 billion tonnes
of water to atmosphere you would have 520 ppm of H20 in the
atmosphere. Which is insignificant loss [and may approach a saturation point] in comparison to 36 trillion tonnes.
Of course you could cover the pools, but if on such massive scale
it’s not really needed. [not that I recommend a massive project, it
may be that it begins with covered solar pools and “evolve” to point
of not needing to do this- economics of the situation would dictates what is done.]
So if we pool dotting Mars and there were open pools, they could be ringed with frost from evaporation of pools. Would it be warm enough for frost to not form at nite [one has rain/dew instead of frost].
On Earth the max temperature of water in solar pools seems to be near 80 C [despite claims of high temperature possible]. If you had a sealed
solar pond on Mars, would it’s max possible temperature be?
This would depend upon the amount of solar energy per square of area.
On Earth this max is around 1000 watts per square meter. And on Mars
in said to be around 600 watts per square meter. It also been reported
that skin surface temperatures on Mars reach about 70 to 80 F [21 to 26 C].
The solar ponds on Earth are typically around 70 C with the surface water at around 30 C. So heat gradient of 40 C. And this heat gradient
is controllable by amount salt in the water.
Water at 20 C on Mars will boil due to the lack of atmospheric pressure,
water close to freezing does not boil. So it’s conceivable that on has a open solar pool on Mars with surface temperature of 1 to 5 C and a maximum water temperature of around 25 C.
Perhaps one have “lid” of frozen water with temperatures at 25 C near the bottom of solar pond.
Uh oh, new temperature proxy from E. Europe kinda looks like a hocky stick:
http://phys.org/news/2013-01-tree-sampling-cold-eastern-europe.html
How will the “skeptics” deny this?
Not much of a ‘MWP’ is there? The proxy evidence generally suggests several brief regional warming episodes around the NH over a period of ~400y and that the term Mediaeval Warm Period was an unfortunate misnomer.
BBD
Naw. The MWP peaked in the 900s according to most sources.
And there are independent studies from all over the world using different paleo climate methods, which all conclude that the MWP was slightly warmer than today.
There are historical records from the civilized world at the time confirming a period that was warmer than today, followed by a period that was colder.
There is even physical evidence, for example from carbon-dated remains of trees recovered under receding alpine glaciers at altitudes above today’s tree line, etc.
Check ’em out, BBD – and forget about the “shtick” (and it’s “spaghetti clones”). That’s “voodoo science” (a Pachauri expression, he apparently knows something about).
Max
No there aren’t.
No it didn’t. References please.
Hey folks, the cited curve we seem to be getting all excited about shows “Annually resolved variations of May-June temperature between 1040 and 2011 AD, based on 545 samples of living trees and historical timbers (Larix decidua Mill.) from the Slovakian Tatra Mountains in the northwestern Carpathian arc.” Credit: Ulf Büntgen
“May-June temperature?”
Start date “1040” (well after MWP peak)?
“Slovakian Tatra Mountains?”
Well, IF (the BIG word) you believe that tree rings give a temperature proxy (without “hiding a decline”), then this tells you what could have happened in May-June in a part of what is now Slovakia from the end of the MWP to today.
Certainly interesting.
File it together with all the many other independent studies from all over the world using various paleo-climate techniques, which all show a MWP that was slightly warmer than today.
Max
Repeat incorrect information. References supporting claim that ‘MWP’ peaked ~900CE please.
It doesn’t show an ‘MWP’ warmer than today. It very clearly shows the reverse. Why do you make such blatantly false statements?
BBD
You are keeping up your track record of making false claims with your last post, where you question my statement that 1040 was well after the peak MWP temperatures.
For a study confirming that the peak temperatures in the MWP occurred well before 1040 see Loehle (2007)
http://d1467362.i110.quadrahosting.com.au/pdf/2000%20yr%20non-treering%20temps.pdf
This study shows that the warmest half-century was the period 857 to 906.
Max
Loehle is junk, Max. Read all about it. And when we take the junk away, there is nothing else left. Remember, your claim was this:
This claim is false. Disagree? Reference it. And Max, carpet-bombing me with cut’n’paste from CO2 Science will *not* suffice. I want to see clear evidence that you have read the studies you reference, and that they support your claim that there was a global, synchronous MWP warmer than the present.
If you cannot back your claim up, I expect you to concede that it is false and withdraw it. Something I have never once seen you do despite repeatedly being shown to be mistaken.
This itself is a false claim. Substantiate it with quotes or withdraw it.
“How will the “skeptics” deny this?”
Perhaps the same mistakes were made.
The graph indicates very cold period around the decades of 1800
and very steep long rise after this.
I wonder if this reflect actual temperature, what caused such dramatic cooling?
Data *denial* without even bothering to read the study. R.Gates has his answer. I’m sure he is as unsurprised as I am.
BBD said:
“I’m sure he is as unsurprised as I am.”
____
It is a study in human psychology with rather predictable patterns which were well documented by Hoffer in “The True Believer”:
http://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915
That cannot be right, Dalton colder than Maunder? The graph looks wrong, cooling in the first half of the 20th century? How long is that decade, 40 years?
Smarter folks will see that the reconstruction is spatially and seasonally constrained. You can compare it to other studies of scandinavia, the alps and a couple other places to see that speaking generally about the climate of this time is misleading
Bottom line. anybody who argues that “it” was warmer or colder during this period should un fool themselves about the limits of our understanding.
A very reasonable perspective, but as long as the data were all constrained in the same manner, you can find a meaningful pattern, however the bands of uncertainty must be clearly stated.
yes, you can compare it and it’s all wrong, it doesn’t agree with other proxies at all, which is not that bad at all. The problem is when simpleminded people like warmist take it as evidence with high certainty, if it agrees with their theory.
That graph doesn’t pass the smell test, is it upside down? ;)
Nothing to deny there warmist, it’s an obvious case of confirmation bias (from you), trying to make the late 20th century warming exceptional and unprecedented, which it’s clearly NOT!
So where’s *your* references for the claim that there was a global, synchronous MWP warmer that the present? Manacker couldn’t back up this claim. I’d be interested to see you fail too.
STRAWMAN! No wonder warmists believe in such pseudo-science.
Why is this a strawman? I’m don’t understand your reasoning.
And why am I on moderation? Surely there are more appropriate candidates for suppression here?
Anyway, let’s note that Edim too has now failed to substantiate the claim that the MWP was synchronous, global and warmer than the present. Perhaps he will not make this claim in future.
I see that manacker has vanished rather than admit that this claim is wrong. He should now of course withdraw it. That is how civilised debate is conducted. Manacker assumes the moral high ground on the matter of debating etiquette, so it behoves him to walk the walk.
I await the retraction, as I also await the retraction of his statement that I habitually make false claims.
Earth Ocean and Venus “Ocean”
In ideal conditions, sunlight passes through ocean water and the strength
of sunlight diminishes as travel down the the ocean depth.
There region of ocean called Aphotic zone:
“The aphotic zone (aphotic from Greek prefix ἀ- + φῶς “without light”) is the portion of a lake or ocean where there is little or no sunlight. It is formally defined as the depths beyond which less than 1% of sunlight penetrates. ”
And:
“Depending on how the zone is defined, the aphotic zone of the ocean begins between depths of roughly 200 m (660 ft) or 1,000 m (3,300 ft), and extends to the ocean floor. Temperatures can range from roughly 0 °C (32 °F) to 6 °C (43 °F).”
So 1% of 1000 watts per square is 10 watts.
The surface of Venus is similar to the beginning of the Aphotic zone- in that little sunlight reaches the surface. But it’s only similar. What would be some differences between Earth ocean bottom at 200 meters and Venus surface,
other then the very obvious difference in temperature?
In terms of visible light, at this Earth ocean depth the light would be almost entirely blue, and at Venus surface apparently one has white light [all visible light].
And in terms Sunlight’s intensity most energy is not in the visible portion, but rather in the infrared portion- less than half is in the visible portion:
“….at the Earth’s surface. Sunlight’s composition at ground level, per square meter, with the sun at the zenith, is about 527 watts of infrared radiation, 445 watts of visible light, and 32 watts of ultraviolet radiation. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight
Due varying conditions, it seems likely that the intensity of sunlight at Venus
surface during daylight hours, may vary from 1 watt to 100 watts per square
meter. Or in terms of percentage, Venus has about 2700 watts per square meter at the top of the atmosphere, so ranging from less than 1% to perhaps as much as 4% of this sunlight reaching the surface. The kind of sunlight reaching Venus surface [amount of UV, Visible, IR] is unknown.
In terms pressure 200 meter under water is 20 atm. And Venus has 92 atm of pressure.
In terms sheer mass, Venus has four times more atoms between it’s surface and the sunlight. Or the Venus is more transparent than the Earth ocean- say, at least 2 to 3 times more transparent. [The earth ocean could more pure [lacking particles/droplets that could scatter/block sunlight] and other unknown factors. Or said differently, Earth ocean at Venus distance, may have aphotic zone starting at 400 meter or greater, and Venus at Earth distance could have surface in complete darkness- due to difference is intensity of sunlight. But probably safe to say that even with stronger Venus distance sun,
one is mostly going to have blue light at 200 meters of ocean depth.]
So Venus atmosphere is quite transparent, but less than 90% of sunlight reaches it’s surface in a direct beam of sunlight, and per it’s definition
1 percent or less of sunlight reaches the aphotic zone in a direct beam of light. Btw, both has enough sunlight for plants to use.
In both instances the sunlight is being “blocked” in some manner and as result there not enough energy from the sunlight to do much work- at surface 200 meters under the ocean or on surface of Venus.
The question is how does one model where this energy of sunlight “goes” [if not reflected at the skin surface- is all or high percentage
of the energy converted into heat].
And can you assume liquid or gas can use the same model?
[I would say that although both are transparent, liquid is different than gas.
{That the gas molecules in an atmosphere is not accelerated by photons [radiant energy] and gas is heated only when their molecular velocity is increased.}]
The only reason a planet is warm is because it stores heat.
And only reason a surface of planet is warm is because the surface
stores heat. This is also referred as heat capacity.
Heating up water so it evaporate is a way to store heat, but
other than that, greenhouse gases do not store or trap heat.
To trap the energy of sunlight one convert the radiant energy
into some other type of energy- such as thermal heat.
Lasers are kind of storing radiant energy, but what they really
about is focusing/aligning radiant energy. There is no technology
able to store radiant energy for hours. Catching sunlight in a bottle
is not possible, nor a practical path to take. Instead one capture
the energy sunlight by converting this energy into thermal heat or
converting into electricity [PV panels] or converting into chemical
energy- green plants do this.
One can drill a hole into the surface on Earth, Moon, or Mars and a
mile below the surface, the rock will be warm. It is not warm
because of sunlight, but it kept warm by heat generated from the
planet. Or one say the mile rock above it prevents heat from leaving.
But a mile beneath the top of the ocean on earth is directly related to
the energy from sunlight. And/or it’s much cooler than mile beneath Mars, Earth, or the Moon’s land surface. And without the energy of sunlight
the water mile beneath the ocean surface would be much cooler, whereas
mile under land wouldn’t be affect much if the was no sunlight.
So could say a mile of rock insulates much better than a mile of water.
“Magma (molten rock from Earth’s mantle) rises to within a few miles of the surface in Yellowstone.”
http://www.secretyellowstone.com/historical-cultural-scientific/geology
“The earth’s interior is warmer than its surface causing heat flow outward to the surface. The flow of heat in geyser basins is hundreds of times greater than normal heat flows. If the total conductive heat flow of major hydrothermal basins is averaged over the 965 sq. miles of the Yellowstone Caldera, we find flow levels that are 60 times greater than mean global rates.”
http://www.yellowstonenationalpark.com/calderas.htm
So, other than geysers and hot springs, when Yellowstone one isn’t aware that one standing couple miles above vast plume lava. Replace the rock with water, and magma would cool. Water doesn’t insulate as well as rock.
But with sunlight, water is warmed more than rock. And though water may not insulate or trap heat as well as rock, it does insulate and trap heat. Because water is transparent, the energy sunlight can pass thru the surface, whereas with rock the sunlight heated surface must conduct the heat beneath it’s surface [and it doesn’t conduct heat well- as I said it’s a good insulator heat]. So in nanoseconds hundreds of watts per square energy of sunlight can travel tens of meters thru water.
With rock one could talk about the average air temperature warming meters beneath the surface and at some depth the average air temperature, meets the rock warmed from internal heat of the earth.
With the Earth ocean you don’t have the same thing. An average air temperature doesn’t warm the ocean, sunlight warms the ocean.
If ocean instead of being thousand of meters deep, was 10′ deep, what difference would this make? Sunlight pass thru the water and heat up the sea floor 10′ below the surface. One could say the ocean may be warmer, but temperature probably limited to about 35 C at the surface,
one could imagine some kind solar pond effect, so perhaps the water is as warm as say 60 C a foot or so beneath the surface.
But that’s about it. Whereas Earth’s ocean store far more energy- you get a 100 meter of water at average temperature of 20 C.
Say we only concerned about a heat content above 0 C.
So little over 3 meter column at 60 C compared to 100 meters at
20 C.
A cubic cm 4 joules times 60 is 240. Times 3 is 720
4 joules times 20 is 80. Times 100 is 800.
Hmm. Closer than I thought.
But there is another 100 meter at about 10 C.
Plus there is thousands of meters above 3 C.
But let’s not forget I gave solar pond type advantage to shallower
water- which I don’t think unreasonable or unrealistic [just it shouldn’t be forgotten]. But I would say rule of thumb, 100+ meter deep ocean “out performs” a solar pond. And 200+ meter deep ocean does 50% better.
Of course with fresh water pond, the heat from bottom rises to surface and is cooled by evaporation- fresh water can’t get much warmer than 35 C.
And I think generally the fact that deep water [any cubic meter chunk of it] isn’t warmed very much during one day is advantage in terms how well an ocean insulates or retains heat- having water down to say 100 meters being uniformly warmed lessen heat transported to surface [and allows more a slow conduction of heat downward]. And the mixing due waves helps slow the heat traveling upwards.
So I see as a race, speed light transport energy beneath the surface and conduction and convection brings to surface.
And fact that there little warming during entire day of sunlight in part of this large volume of water, is a feature, rather than a bug. Or if more the sunlight heated below the surface rather than the ocean skin temperature, the ocean would gain more energy.
Or covering the ocean black plastic would not help warm ocean except it could reduce evaporation.
Hmm, wiki answers agrees [sort of]:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_color_of_solar_blanket_is_most_effective_at_heating_a_pool
Knowing the difference.
I think imagining Earth is a blackbody has few problems, but
I think starting from a point of uniformity is useful and the uniformity
I think which should used is a planetary body covered with a ocean.
70% of the Earth surface is ocean- it’s the most common surface on
Earth.
A Greenhouse Effect concerns delaying or “trapping” of the heat which generated from the energy of the Sun. The Greenhouse Theory is about greenhouse gas acting sort of like a greenhouse traps heat. Is said to be analogous rather than exactly true. It’s suppose to be an easy way to explain it. But it’s confusing, because the effect caused by a greenhouse is to stop heat from escaping by blocking convection of atmospheric gases.
The Greenhouse Theory involves the idea that greenhouse gases prevent infrared radiant energy from leaving the earth’s surface. And common misconception is the the glass of a greenhouse is blocking infrared lights explain the warm air in a greenhouse [or parked car
during the day with windows rolled up is this same greenhouse effect].
To see this confusion, just google: “glass of a greenhouse blocking infrared light”.
So the Greenhouse Theory will be explained as certain gases [mostly H2O and CO2] acting like a blanket or like the glass of greenhouse. And that this Greenhouse Effect is due to greenhouse gases “trapping” radiant energy and is solely responsible for the Greenhouse Effect which adds 33 C in average global temperature.
The warming of 33 C is based upon a blackbody body model. The blackbody model gives Earth uniform temperature of -18 C and the greenhouse affect adds 33 C that gives us your current measured average global temperature.
A blackbody MUST give a uniform temperature. And an average global temperature is NOT an uniform temperature- instead it’s averaging the daytime highs and lows and seasonal variation. So just in simple
math one can’t add an average temperature to a uniform temperature.
So on that basis alone, one can say there is a problem with starting with idealize blackbody or greybody [which is variant of blackbody].
God has not proclaimed that we must start with idealize blackbody, and since Earth is mostly covered with water, instead of blackbody we can choose use a planetary body covered with ocean as the starting point
of the model.
A advantage of a blackbody model is one doesn’t need to be concerned
about spin or axis angle of a planet. And with model using with planet covered with water the spin and axis angle is not a large factor- it can be mostly ignored. The deeper the ocean the less of factor it is.
Earth if not the higher elevation of land masses [if was more perfect sphere] has so much ocean that if it covered entire planet it would
be 2440 meter deep:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/HelenLi.shtml.
So round number and say the planet is completely covered with 3000 meters of water.
Plus we have same atmosphere of Earth: 5.1 x 10^18 kg
Major: 78.08% Nitrogen, 20.95% Oxygen
Minor: (ppm): Argon (Ar) – 9340; Carbon Dioxide (CO2) – 380
Neon (Ne) – 18.18; Helium (He) – 5.24; CH4 – 1.7
Krypton (Kr) – 1.14; Hydrogen (H2) – 0.55
Numbers do not add up to exactly 100% due to roundoff and uncertainty. Water is highly variable, typically makes up about 1%
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/earthfact.html
Plus we going to start with an uniform temperature of 5 C.
Defined to mean the entire average ocean temperature 5 C and surface average air temperature from poles to equator being 5 C.
So everywhere is 5 C. And it’s average temperature is 5 C.
And no clouds in the sky.
So the question we want answered is does Earth average temperature
increase or decrease. And how long does it take to warm or cool before get to point where it at the “normal” average temperature. Or does it ever get point average temperature is not varying greater than, say .2 C?
And once that is answered what happens when add in land masses- and does make much different where and how much land masses are added.
And try to provide some kind of answers in next post.
The answer according to Greenhouse theory, is quite simple,
the the planet will warm and within some time period [decades or a few centuries or whatever] one will get an average global air temperature of 15 C.
So tropics having average temperature somewhere around 25 C and Temperate and polar region having some average cooler temperature.
And in such a model of ocean covered world, it’s doubtful any ice caps could form in open water and perhaps not even polar ice forming- though perhaps some polar ice forming in the winter.
And the reason for this warming would will be said to be due to the CO2 in atmosphere- as greenhouse adds about 5 C to average temperature. And greenhouse gas H2O adds another twenty something C to average temperature. [With starting temperature of 5 C uniform temperature already halfway towards this average temperature].
It is my opinion that believer of the theory Greenhouse Theory only regard warmer temperatures as possible from greenhouse gases and/or changes albedo.
For example Earth’s Bond albedo is currently 0.306 . So if it was instead 0.305, earth would warmed slightly and if 0.307, it would cooled slightly.
If CO2 were to double 390 times 2 being 780 ppm, than instead the CO2 warming by around 5 C, warming by CO2 would by about 6 C, but the additional warming caused by increasing CO2 levels would result in higher global levels of H2O gases [water vapor], and so causes
additional greenhouse warming.
Or if other global greenhouse gas levels such as Methane were to be increased, the increased warming also increasing the amount H2O gas in the atmosphere.
So if both global Methane and CO2 levels were to double, the warming caused by the increases in these greenhouse gases would increase the air temperature significantly and allow more water vapor in the atmosphere.
But other than increases in global greenhouse gas levels and/or changes in albedo, there is no other recognized means of warming.
Not included in the theory [not part of 33 C of warming caused by greenhouse effect] are other factors which are routinely considered by believer [and non believer] of the theory of greenhouse effect, which can be considered to cause warming. Such as these five:
1] Changes in energy of solar output reaching Earth [considered a factor but regarded a small and essential insignificant factor].
2]Milankovitch cycles: “There is strong evidence that the Milankovitch cycles affect the occurrence of glacial and interglacial periods within an ice age. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Variations_in_Earth.27s_orbit_.28Milankovitch_cycles.29
3] Over time heat is added to oceans. And or heat of ocean being
transported into cooler region [Gulf Stream].
4] variation in global cloud coverage- from causes outside the internal
earth system.
5] Shapes and locations of land mass. E.g. the location of Antarctic at South pole due to tectonic movement and/or mountain formation such as the Himalayas created by collision of tectonic plates.
All these are considered to have some effect upon global temperatures,
particularly paleotemperatures but my point is they are NOT considered as part of the 33 C warming caused by greenhouse effect.
Or one has blackbody temperature at earth distance with suppose cause uniform global temperature of 5.3 C. Then one has reduction of the 5.3 C cause by reflection of sunlight [Earth’s albedo]
which bring the average uniform temperature down to -17 to -18 C
which greenhouse effect is suppose to add 33 C. Thereby resulting
in average temperature of 15 C. And the 33 C add is solely comprised
of somewhat uncertain warming effect from various greenhouse gas which are expected to total 33 C in warming.
So as I said it is only considered, that only greenhouse gases and earth’s albedo are the elements in involved in determining earth’s average temperature. And the 5 factors mentioned above are not included.
There is stated with certainty of 5.3 C from a blackbody without including albedo, and with albedo added quite bit of certainty about -17 to 18 C. And a certainty about 33 C of warming added greenhouse gases- but
not precise number for any of the component greenhouse gas- other than they must all total 33 C
And would say such certainty has little sanity connected to it.
It’s cargo cult stuff.
In addition to simply being wrong.
Next, I will try to focus on:
That greenhouse effect does not increase the maximum surface temperature. It does make the skin surface hotter.
Greenhouse gas or any atmosphere is not needed to increase
the average surface temperature. Or said differently greenhouse gases are not needed to increase the average temperature above predicted blackbody temperature- Earth being an uniform temperature of 5.3 C
BBD Wrote on January 15, 2013 at 3:01 pm |
> So where’s *your* references for the claim that there was a global,
> synchronous MWP warmer that the present? Manacker couldn’t back up
> this claim. I’d be interested to see you fail too.
I’d sure like to see your proof that it was not.
We have many studies claiming as warm as today or warmer than today from various continents around the globe. Google Scholar finds many of them via a simple search for ‘MWP warmer than today’
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=MWP+warmer+than+today&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C38
Here are some examples from the first page of hits:
This was the very first hit
Coherent High- and Low-Latitude Climate Variability During the Holocene Warm Period
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/288/5474/2198.short
Full paper here:
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/Coherent.pdf
They are talking about West Africa here, it appears:
“At Hole 658C, the LIA cooling is also
represented by two distinct 3° to 4°C cooling
events between ;1300 and 1900 A.D.; the
earlier Medieval Warm Period (MWP), between
;400 and 1000 A.D., was only marginally
warmer than present (Fig. 4).”
This was the second hit
Environmental change in eastern Greenland during the last 1300 years: evidence from foraminifera and lithofacies in Nansen Fjord, 68°N
http://hol.sagepub.com/content/6/2/179.short
“The evidence suggests that the climate in the region of Nansen Fjord was warmer and more stable than today during a ‘Medieval Warm Period’ between c. AD 730 to 1100. Variable climatic conditions with frequent intervals of severe cold characterize a ‘Little Ice Age’ type interval from c. AD 1630 to 1900. An earlier cold interval culminated c. AD 1370. The record is similar to the 1000-yr-long Icelandic sea-ice record and, to a lesser extent, to the central Greenland Crete ice-core record.”
The fifth hit shows that many Geologists realize that the climate was warmer than it is today during the MWP
Global Warming: A Geological Perspective
http://www.azgs.az.gov/arizona_geology/archived_issues/Winter_1999.pdf
As for evidence of temperatures as warm as today, or warmer than today, I’ll include some highlights in my next post, including evidence from the Woods Hole Institute sediment cores.
Chris Shaker
I earlier found these papers by Googling ‘Evidence of the Medieval Warm Period’ at Google Scholar. There are a ton more papers showing proof that the MWP affected diverse parts of the globe
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Evidence+of+the+Medieval+Warm+Period&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0%2C38&as_ylo=&as_vis=0
Widespread Warmth in the Northern Hemisphere during the MWP
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/26/science/tree-rings-show-a-period-of-widespread-warming-in-medieval-age.html
Evidence that the MWP affected other regions of the planet: “Evidence for a ‘Medieval Warm Period’ in a 1,100 year tree-ring reconstruction of past austral summer temperatures in New Zealand”, by Edward R. Cook Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY, USA, Jonathan G. Palmer Palaeocology Centre, Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, Rosanne D. D’Arrigo Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY, USA, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 29, NO. 14, 1667, 10.1029/2001GL014580, 2002
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/CookPalmer.pdf
Regarding claims that the MWP did not apply to North America, A 3,000-year record from 52 of the world’s oldest trees shows that California’s western Sierra Nevada was “droughty and often fiery” from 800 to 1300, the University of Arizona said today. Scientists reconstructed the 3,000-year history of fire by dating fire scars on ancient giant sequoia trees, Sequoiadendron giganteum, in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park.”…”During the Medieval Warm Period extensive fires burned through parts of the Giant Forest at intervals of about 3 to 10 years, he said. Any individual tree was probably in a fire about every 10 to 15 years.”…”Increasingly, researchers all over the world are using charcoal to reconstruct fire histories, Swetnam said. Many scientists are analyzing the global record of charcoal to study relationships between climate, fire and the resulting addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.”…“The scientists found the years from 800 to 1300, known as the Medieval Warm Period, had the most frequent fires in the 3,000 years studied. Other research has found that the period from 800 to 1300 was warm and dry,” the university said.
“What’s not so well known about the Medieval Warm Period is how warm it was in the western U.S.,” Swetnam said. “This is one line of evidence that it was very fiery on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada–and there’s a very strong relationship between drought and fire.”
Droughts are typically both warm and dry, he added.”
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2010/03/18/sequoias_endured_500_years_fire_and_drought/
This is the paper that they are talking about in National Geographic
http://nps01.origin.cdn.level3.net/seki/naturescience/upload/swetnam%20etal%202010_Multi-Millennial%20Fire%20History%20of%20the%20Giant%20Forest,%20Sequoia%20National%20Park,%20California,%20USA-final.pdf
You can find similar information at Google Scholar via this search
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Multi-Millennial+Fire+History+of+the+Giant+Forest%2C+Sequoia+National+Park%2C+California%2C+USA%2C%E2%80%9D&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C38&as_sdtp=on
There is a ton of data on reconstructed temperatures around the world from the Medieval Warm Period at the Woods Hole web page. Go there and search for ‘Medieval Warm Period’
http://www.whoi.edu/search.do?q=Medieval+Warm+Period&g=ext&search=Search&type=search
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Examines 2,000 years of sediment records for temperature reconstruction
“A new 2,000-year-long reconstruction of sea surface temperatures (SST) from the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) suggests that temperatures in the region may have been as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as they are today.”
“Water temperature during the late Medieval Warm Period, between about A.D. 1000 to 1250, was within error of modern annual sea surface temperatures. (Oppo, Rosenthal, Linsley; 2009)”
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=59106&ct=162
Found another interesting page about sediment record analysis at Woods Hole, covering the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=3842
“Events warmer than today occurred about 500 and 1,000 years ago, during the Medieval Warm Period, and it was even warmer than that prior to about 2,500 years ago.”
“Because the Sargasso Sea has a rather uniform temperature and salinity distribution near the surface, it seems that these events must have had widespread climatic significance. The Sargasso Sea data indicate that the Medieval Warm Period may have actually been two events separated by 500 years, perhaps explaining why its timing and extent have been so controversial. Second, it is evident that the climate system has been warming for a few hundred years, and that it warmed even more from 1,700 years ago to 1,000 years ago.”
This graph of the Sargasso Sea Surface Temperature, reconstructed from sediment cores, shows what they are talking about
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewImage.do?id=8722&aid=3842
Paper offering high resolution temperature proxy data from an Alaskan lake over the past 6,000 yrs, derived from midge analysis on the sediments. Shows temperatures there were higher in the past 3,000 yrs than today
“Although the Moose Lake TJuly record displays an increasing trend over the past 150 years, the TJuly values in several warm intervals of the past 6000 years were comparable to or exceeded early 20th-century values. For example, the TJuly values during the MCA were generally higher than the early 20th-century values (Fig. 4C). ”
http://www.life.illinois.edu/hu/publications/Clegg_et_al_2010.pdf
Evidence for the existence of the medieval warm period in China
“Abstract
The collected documentary records of the cultivation of citrus trees andBoehmeria nivea (a perennial herb) have been used to produce distribution maps of these plants for the eighth, twelfth and thirteenth centuries A.D. The northern boundary of citrus andBoehmeria nivea cultivation in the thirteenth century lay to the north of the modern distribution. During the last 1000 years, the thirteenth-century boundary was the northernmost. This indicates that this was the warmest time in that period. On the basis of knowledge of the climatic conditions required for planting these species, it can be estimated that the annual mean temperature in south Henan Province in the thirteenth century was 0.9–1.0°C higher than at present. A new set of data for the latest snowfall date in Hangzhou from A.D. 1131 to 1264 indicates that this cannot be considered a cold period, as previously believed.”
http://www.springerlink.com/content/gh98230822m7g01l/
Greenland recently incurred record high temperatures and ice loss by melting, adding to concerns that anthropogenic warming is impacting the Greenland ice sheet and in turn accelerating global sea-level rise. Yet, it remains imprecisely known for Greenland how much warming is caused by increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases versus natural variability. To address this need, we reconstruct Greenland surface snow temperature variability over the past 4000 years at the GISP2 site (near the Summit of the Greenland ice sheet; hereafter referred to as Greenland temperature) with a new method that utilises argon and nitrogen isotopic ratios from occluded air bubbles. The estimated average Greenland snow temperature over the past 4000 years was −30.7°C with a standard deviation of 1.0°C and exhibited a long-term decrease of roughly 1.5°C, which is consistent with earlier studies. The current decadal average surface temperature (2001–2010) at the GISP2 site is −29.9°C. The record indicates that warmer temperatures were the norm in the earlier part of the past 4000 years, including century-long intervals nearly 1°C warmer than the present decade (2001–2010). Therefore, we conclude that the current decadal mean temperature in Greenland has not exceeded the envelope of natural variability over the past 4000 years, a period that seems to include part of the Holocene Thermal Maximum. Notwithstanding this conclusion, climate models project that if anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions continue, the Greenland temperature would exceed the natural variability of the past 4000 years sometime before the year 2100.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL049444.shtml
Graph of Solar Irradiance Shows Greater Solar Forcing during MWP than now!
http://www.biocab.org/Comparison_TT-CO2-Solar_Irradiance.jpg
This graph of Sunspots also shows more Sunspots during the MWP than now!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspots_11000_years.svg
Ocean Surface Temperatures Were Warmer Than Today
http://home.badc.rl.ac.uk/mjuckes/mitrie_files/docs/mitrie_sediment_marine.pdf
“The warming of the middle of the twentieth century is not extraordinary. The warming at the end of the first and beginning of the second millennia (“Medieval Warm Period”) was longer in time and closer in amplitude.””
This paper was sent to Keith Briffa Wed, 9 Dec 1998
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=4726
Variation of early summer and annual temperature in east Taymir and Putoran (Siberia) over the last two millennia inferred from tree rings
“Regional tree ring chronology with extension 2209 years (from 212 B.C. till 1996 A.D.) was built for east Taymir and Putoran according to wood of living trees, well-preserved remains of dead trees, and subfossil wood from alluvial bank deposits by the cross-dating method. In addition, the “floating” tree ring width chronology for the period of Holocene optimum (3300–2600 B.C.) was built with extention 685 years and supported by several radiocarbon dates. High values of synchrony and correlation of individual tree ring series show a prevailing effect of one external factor on radial tree growth change in the studied region of the Siberian subarctic. It was established that the main factors of growth variability are the early summer and annual temperature, which explain up to 70% of tree growth rate variability. Cyclic components stable for two millennia were revealed at analysis of the tree ring chronology: double secular (∼180 years), secular (78–90 years), and intrasecular (44, 28, 11, and 6.7–6.9 years) variations. Models for reconstruction of the early summer and annual air temperature were obtained according to tree ring variability. Temperature dynamics in the eastern part of Taymir for the last two millenia agree well with temperature variations in the Northern Hemisphere obtained according to other indirect sources. The warming of the middle of the twentieth century is not extraordinary. The warming at the end of the first and beginning of the second millennia (“Medieval Warm Period”) was longer in time and closer in amplitude.”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2000/1999JD901059.shtml
You can read the whole text of the paper via the Climategate emails
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=5379
It looks like a lot of geological evidence indicates that it was warmer than today, but the IPCC and NOA rely on Dr. Mann’s temperature reconstruction from tree rings to describe it
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html
Dr. James Hansen’s former colleague at NASA, Dr. Roy Spencer, who is now also retired from NASA, is also a skeptic of AGW
He says that most of the warming we have seen is natural. He also understands the Medieval Warm Period, and shows a graph of the last 2,000 years of climate temperature on his website. It clearly shows the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today. From tree ring temperature proxies
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-background-articles/2000-years-of-global-temperatures/
This ikaite record qualitatively supports that both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/22/more-evidence-the-medieval-warm-period-was-global/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X12000659
Previous studies showing Antarctica was as warm during the MWP
Hall, B.L., Koffman, T. and Denton, G.H. 2010. Reduced ice extent on the western Antarctic Peninsula at 700-907 cal. yr B.P. Geology 38: 635-638.
Khim, B-K., Yoon, H.I., Kang, C.Y. and Bahk, J.J. 2002. Unstable climate oscillations during the Late Holocene in the Eastern Bransfield Basin, Antarctic Peninsula. Quaternary Research 58: 234-245.
South America’s Medieval Warm Period
“The Chilean, German, and U.S. scientists report their work revealed two distinct climatic conditions: “a relatively dry/warm period before 900 cal yr BP (higher runoff and average SST 1°C warmer than present day) and a wet/cold period after 750 cal yr BP (higher runoff and average SST 1°C colder than present day),” which they associated with the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, respectively.”
http://www.climatewiki.org/index.php/South_America's_Medieval_Warm_Period
Africa’s Medieval Warm Period
“With respect to the MWP, they state it was “marginally warmer than present.””
http://www.climatewiki.org/index.php/Africa%27s_Medieval_Warm_Period
Found another interesting paper showing the MWP in tree rings in NZ as well
“… In so doing, periods of unusual warmth of the 12th and 13th centuries emerged that were
interpreted as a SH expression of NH Medieval Warm Period (MWP). … The two warm ‘MWP’ epochs,
and even a long-term cooling suggestive of the NH Little Ice Age, are apparent. …”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.1071/abstract
Evidence of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age in Chile
http://www.kaltesonne.de/?p=6004
Translated into English here
http://notrickszone.com/2012/10/13/medieval-warm-period-was-not-just-a-local-phenomenon-study-also-finds-it-in-south-america/
Just found another, older temperature reconstruction (via Google Scholar search for “YAMAL reconstruction”. Also shows that the MWP was very warm where these trees lived in Northern Sweden
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-007-0358-2?LI=true#page-1
Evidence was warmer during MWP in China than now
“Past environmental changes based on diatom relative abundances have been inferred from the maar Lake Erlongwan in northeast China. The limnology of Lake Erlongwan is affected by the strongly seasonal regional climate. The composition of diatom assemblages, in turn, responds to changes in the seasonal duration of ice cover in winter, water-column turnover in spring and autumn, and thermal stratification in summer. Statistical analysis of the sedimentary diatom assemblages reveals three significant stratigraphic zones over the past 1000 yr. The highest abundance of the planktonic species Discostella species occurs between AD 1050 and 1400 and suggests an annual ice-free period of long duration and well-developed summer stratification of the water column. This planktonic diatom peak between ca. AD 1150 and 1200 suggests that this period was the warmest over the past 1000 yr. The interval between AD 1400 and 1800 is marked by a decline in planktonic diatoms and suggests shorter duration of the ice-free season, weaker water stratification and possibly generally cold conditions. After AD 1800 relative abundances of planktonic diatoms, including Puncticulata praetermissaand Asterionella formosa, increase again, which indicates lengthening of the duration of the annual ice-free period and a stronger overturn of the water column. All these data imply that the pattern of the seasons is different between the MWP and the 20th century.”
A new paper published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology reconstructs temperatures in Patagonia, Chile over the past 1,600 years and finds temperatures were warmer during the Medieval Warming Period in comparison to the 20th century. The authors find “warmer temperatures [than 20th century mean] from AD 600 to AD 1150 and colder temperatures from AD 1200 to AD 1450.” The paper also notes climate was much more variable and extreme in the past, stating, “From AD 1450 to AD 1700 our reconstruction shows a period with stronger variability and on average higher values than the 20th century mean.” The paper adds to the published work of over 1,000 scientists demonstrating that the MWP was as warm or warmer than the present, and also shows climate was more variable and extreme prior to the 20th century.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018212006517
Chris Shaker
Evidence that the MWP affected New Zealand:
“Evidence for a ‘Medieval Warm Period’ in a 1,100 year tree-ring reconstruction of past austral summer temperatures in New Zealand”, by Edward R. Cook Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY, USA, Jonathan G. Palmer Palaeocology Centre, Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, Rosanne D. D’Arrigo Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY, USA, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 29, NO. 14, 1667, 10.1029/2001GL014580, 2002
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/CookPalmer.pdf
Chris Shaker
Widespread Warmth in the Northern Hemisphere during the MWP
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/26/science/tree-rings-show-a-period-of-widespread-warming-in-medieval-age.html
A 3,000-year record from 52 of the world’s oldest trees shows that California’s western Sierra Nevada was “droughty and often fiery” from 800 to 1300, the University of Arizona said today. Scientists reconstructed the 3,000-year history of fire by dating fire scars on ancient giant sequoia trees, Sequoiadendron giganteum, in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park.”…”During the Medieval Warm Period extensive fires burned through parts of the Giant Forest at intervals of about 3 to 10 years, he said. Any individual tree was probably in a fire about every 10 to 15 years.”…”Increasingly, researchers all over the world are using charcoal to reconstruct fire histories, Swetnam said. Many scientists are analyzing the global record of charcoal to study relationships between climate, fire and the resulting addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.”…“The scientists found the years from 800 to 1300, known as the Medieval Warm Period, had the most frequent fires in the 3,000 years studied. Other research has found that the period from 800 to 1300 was warm and dry,” the university said.
“What’s not so well known about the Medieval Warm Period is how warm it was in the western U.S.,” Swetnam said. “This is one line of evidence that it was very fiery on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada–and there’s a very strong relationship between drought and fire.”
Droughts are typically both warm and dry, he added.”
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2010/03/18/sequoias_endured_500_years_fire_and_drought/
This is the paper that they are talking about in National Geographic
http://nps01.origin.cdn.level3.net/seki/naturescience/upload/swetnam%20etal%202010_Multi-Millennial%20Fire%20History%20of%20the%20Giant%20Forest,%20Sequoia%20National%20Park,%20California,%20USA-final.pdf
You can find similar information at Google Scholar via this search
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Multi-Millennial+Fire+History+of+the+Giant+Forest%2C+Sequoia+National+Park%2C+California%2C+USA%2C%E2%80%9D&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C38&as_sdtp=on
Chris Shaker
There is a ton of data on reconstructed temperatures around the world from the Medieval Warm Period at the Woods Hole web page. Go there and search for ‘Medieval Warm Period’. They claim widespread significance
http://www.whoi.edu/search.do?q=Medieval+Warm+Period&g=ext&search=Search&type=search
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Examines 2,000 years of sediment records for temperature reconstruction
“A new 2,000-year-long reconstruction of sea surface temperatures (SST) from the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) suggests that temperatures in the region may have been as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as they are today.”
“Water temperature during the late Medieval Warm Period, between about A.D. 1000 to 1250, was within error of modern annual sea surface temperatures. (Oppo, Rosenthal, Linsley; 2009)”
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=59106&ct=162
Found another interesting page about sediment record analysis at Woods Hole, covering the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=3842
“Events warmer than today occurred about 500 and 1,000 years ago, during the Medieval Warm Period, and it was even warmer than that prior to about 2,500 years ago.”
“Because the Sargasso Sea has a rather uniform temperature and salinity distribution near the surface, it seems that these events must have had widespread climatic significance. The Sargasso Sea data indicate that the Medieval Warm Period may have actually been two events separated by 500 years, perhaps explaining why its timing and extent have been so controversial. Second, it is evident that the climate system has been warming for a few hundred years, and that it warmed even more from 1,700 years ago to 1,000 years ago.”
This graph of the Sargasso Sea Surface Temperature, reconstructed from sediment cores, shows what they are talking about
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewImage.do?id=8722&aid=3842
Chris Shaker
Chris Shaker
Thanks for the summary of information provided by CO2 Science. What we have here is a collection of studies showing that regional climate *at different times* may have approached or equalled or slightly surpassed mid-late C20th values.
What I asked for was references that demonstrated that there was a synchronous, global MWP warmer than the present. I’m still waiting for references supporting that claim.
Synchronous and Global is not necessary to show that claims made on Dr. Mann’s RealClimate.org appear to be incorrect.
They say:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/medieval-warm-period-mwp/
“Medieval Warm Period (“MWP”)
Filed under:
Glossary
— group @ 28 November 2004
Period of relative warmth in some regions of the Northern Hemisphere in comparison with the subsequent several centuries. Also referred to as the Medieval Warm Epoch (MWE). As with the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA), no well-defined precise date range exists. The dates A.D. 900–1300 cover most ranges generally used in the literature. Origin is difficult to track down, but it is believed to have been first used in the 1960s (probably by Lamb in 1965). As with the LIA, the attribution of the term at regional scales is complicated by significant regional variations in temperature changes, and the utility of the term in describing regional climate changes in past centuries has been questioned in the literature. As with the LIA, numerous myths can still be found in the literature with regard to the details of this climate period. These include the citation of the cultivation of vines in Medieval England, and the settlement of Iceland and southwestern Greenland about 1000 years ago, as evidence of unusual warmth at this time. As noted by Jones and Mann (2004) [Jones, P.D., Mann, M.E., Climate Over Past Millennia, Reviews of Geophysics, 42, RG2002, doi: 10.1029/2003RG000143, 2004], arguments that such evidence supports anomalous global warmth during this time period is based on faulty logic and/or misinterpretations of the available evidence.”
They also say
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/werent-temperatures-warmer-during-the-medieval-warm-period-than-they-are-today/
“Weren’t temperatures warmer than today during the “Medieval Warm Period”?
Filed under:
Climate Science
FAQ
Paleoclimate
— mike @ 8 December 2004 – (Français)
This is one of a number of popular myths regarding temperature variations in past centuries. At hemispheric or global scales, surface temperatures are believed to have followed the “Hockey Stick” pattern, characterized by a long-term cooling trend from the so-called “Medieval Warm Period” (broadly speaking, the 10th-mid 14th centuries) through the “Little Ice Age” (broadly speaking, the mid 15th-19th centuries), followed by a rapid warming during the 20th century that culminates in anomalous late 20th century warmth. The late 20th century warmth, at hemispheric or global scales, appears, from a number of recent peer-reviewed studies, to exceed the peak warmth of the “Medieval Warm Period”. Claims that global average temperatures during Medieval times were warmer than present-day are based on a number of false premises that a) confuse past evidence of drought/precipitation with temperature evidence, b) fail to disinguish regional from global-scale temperature variations, and c) use the entire “20th century” to describe “modern” conditions , fail to differentiate between relatively cool early 20th century conditions and the anomalously warm late 20th century conditions.”
I’d be curious to see proof that these statements are correct, given evidence of warmer climate around the same time period from other Continents.
Chris Shaker
Recent Past Temperatures warmer than today in Alaska
Paper offering high resolution temperature proxy data from an Alaskan lake over the past 6,000 yrs, derived from midge analysis on the sediments. Shows temperatures there were higher in the past 3,000 yrs than today
“Although the Moose Lake TJuly record displays an increasing trend over the past 150 years, the TJuly values in several warm intervals of the past 6000 years were comparable to or exceeded early 20th-century values. For example, the TJuly values during the MCA were generally higher than the early 20th-century values (Fig. 4C). ”
http://www.life.illinois.edu/hu/publications/Clegg_et_al_2010.pdf
Chris Shaker
cjshaker
Keywords: synchronous and global as distinct from asynchronous and regional . These are very important distinctions which you (and others here) appear to be missing.
Everyone understands what you mean by synchronous and global. It’s your bull-headed way of refusing to admit that there is evidence for a very warm period or periods and that it was not just restricted to N. Europe. Whether it was a lot warmer than today or slightly cooler, no one knows for sure. Just as today, not every region had exactly the same increase in temperature at exactly the same time. It becomes more and more obvious by the day that this is an immature field and that decades of data is still needed before we can say anything at all about the future of the climate. It may never be possible to do what the modeler’s have attempted to do for the last 30 years, but I’m sure the models will improve in time. I hope that you are not too disappointed when you finally have to admit (to yourself at least) that all the modeling and predictions of catastrophe have been premature.
Ocean Surface Temperatures Were Warmer Than Today
See figure 2 on page 4, “Marine Sediment Proxy Records: Sea Surface Temperatures for Past 2000 Years
Shows Sea Surface temperatures lower now than during much of the past 2000 years, ie – sea surface temperatures in the Carribean, in the Sargasso Sea, and in the Western Equitorial Pacific have been warmer than today during a good part of the past 2,000 years?
http://home.badc.rl.ac.uk/mjuckes/mitrie_files/docs/mitrie_sediment_marine.pdf
Chris Shaker
Sorry about the misspellings in my post about Ocean Surface Temperatures.
I’ve got many more sources, showing temperatures as warm or warmer than today in China, part of Russia, etc. Let me know if you want more examples.
I’ve probably posted too much to the list already tonight, and I’m getting brain dead now
Chris Shaker
Thanks for the wonderful counterpoint to BBD’s arrogance.
============
Please indicate how any of this wonderful counterpoint to my alleged arrogance actually demonstrates that there was a synchronous and global MWP which was warmer than the present (manacker’s original and incorrect claim).
Bddd: i look forward to your proof that these various bits of evidence showing warmth greater than today in multiple continents mean as little as you assume
It seems to me that we have found enough evidence to throw out Dr Mann’s claims about the MWP?
Chris Shaker
Let’s try again.
Keywords: synchronous and global as distinct from asynchronous and regional . These are very important distinctions which you (and others here) appear to be missing.
What I asked for was references that demonstrated that there was a synchronous, global MWP warmer than the present. I’m still waiting for references supporting that claim.
Wait, what? synobal and glonchronous? I don’t understand. I’m just a dim-witted denier.
That danged inconvenient Medieval Warming Period …It jest
doggone won’t lie down …Bad Dog!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/22/mike-manns-secret-meeting-on-the-medieval-warm-period/
Be nice, it’s a rescue dog.
======
Down boy!
BBD go bye-bye? Wood-a-must-a…
BBD got bored with waiting for people to wake up to the fact that they were posting links to studies showing regional, asynchronous warming episodes over a period of several centuries. BBD knows (because he bothers to check these things) that there is no evidence at all for a single, unified, ‘Mediaeval Warm Period’ during which global average temperature was higher than today. (Technical note about SH proxies: investigate timing. Investigate the phenomenon known as ‘interhemispheric seesaw’, which is not limited to deglacial phases. Understand that, as with regional hemispheric warming episodes, this represents a redistribution of energy within the climate system, *not* a net increase (aka ‘global warming’.
Finally, please strive to recollect that I am asking for evidence of a synchronous global warming which raised average *global* temperature above average GAT today – as manacker and others often claim, but *never demonstrate*).
By all means join the evidence hunt. Although be careful. CJShaker went to the Heartland Institute and CO2 Science, but was confused by the misrepresentations he found there, as we see above.
Witness confirmation bias in action.
Happy hunting.
BBD, what planet do you come from?
If you have nothing to say, then say nothing.
BBD, we are all pleased, to understand that you are a willing to keep your word too.
To: BBD
You must remember to keep in mind the ‘Prime Directive’, at all times .
May you; live long & prosper.
Star Fleet
Nic Lewis and Jonathan Jones have tried to explain how a uniform prior (such as uniform probability 0-18.5 deg Celsius, 9.25 deg mean !) have “created” high sensitivities and fat tails:
See comments at
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/1/12/lewis-on-schmidt-on-climate-sensitivity.html?lastPage=true&postSubmitted=true
Jonathan Jones
“Suppose one has a model, the details of which are specified by some parameters. The purpose of Bayesian analysis is to find a probability distribution for these parameters given (1) some data which allows these parameters to be partially determined, and (2) some prior views about this probability distribution. In essence the new (“posterior”) probability distribution given the data is the old (“prior”) probability distribution multiplied by the probability of observing the data for each set of parameter values in the distribution and then renormalised so that the probability distribution sums to one (this renormalisation is achieved by the term in the denominator in Bayes’ theorem, but if you are evaluating the whole distribution rather than a single term it can be simpler just to renormalise).
So the posterior probability distribution depends on both the data and the prior. For simplicity one can distinguish three broad cases:
(1) There is lots of high quality data available. In this case the the data term will overwhelm any plausible prior, and it hardly matters what we do.
(2) The data is poor but we have significant prior knowledge about the probability distribution. In this case we can set up a prior reflecting this prior knowledge and Bayes’ theorem allows us to update our distribution as data trickles in. (This is the case discussed in detail in The theory that would not die.)
(3) The data is poor and we have little prior knowledge about the probability distribution. This is the worrying case that makes people panic. Because the data is poor the choice of prior matters, but there seems to be little basis for choosing this prior. Subjectivists retreat into the dictum that probability is about states of belief, not about the world, and so claim this is not a problem. Objectivists argue that there is an objective way of picking an uninformative prior, and that this is the objectively right thing to do.
The naively obvious way to pick an uninformative prior is to assign equal prior probability to all possibilities, using the principle of indifference. This works reasonably well for discrete probability distributions (where the parameters take one of a finite number of values) but becomes problematic for continuous probability distributions. [An aside: this problem can not be sidestepped by the popular modern practice of discretising the continuous probability distribution, as the problem simply reappears as the question of how you discretise it.] There are two broad classes of problem that arise from this approach.
Firstly while some continuous variables can vary only within a fine range (e.g., for a biased coin the probability of throwing a head can vary arbitrarily but must be bounded between zero and one inclusive) many continuous variables can take values from an infinite range. In this case we cannot assign equal probability to all values as the total probability would then of necessity be infinite. Such priors are known as improper priors because they cannot be normalised, although in practice one can often get away with using them as the posterior probability can be well behaved even when the prior is not. A quick and dirty solution is just to truncate the prior at some large value which you know the data is going to effectively rule out; if the truncation point is chosen far enough out then the exact choice is irrelevant.
Secondly, and more seriously, the application of the principle of indifference to continuous variables is notoriously difficult, as it is possible to parameterise the problem in several different ways and a prior which is uniform in one parameterisation will not be uniform in another. (See the Bertrand paradox for a classic example of this.) Thus a uniform prior cannot be uninformative as it includes prior information about the preferred parameterisation.
Jeffreys attempted to solve this by arguing for priors which were invariant under certain variable transformations, leading to the Jeffreys prior. There is very considerable debate concerning to what extent this solves the problem. The main alternative approach, due to Jaynes, is to use the Principle of Maximum Entropy to derive a prior. But at this point I am getting out of my depth and hope that Nic will take over!”
Nic Lewis
“I am fully comitted until Friday, so I have only been able to quickly read your explanations, which seem excellent, and will just respond very briefly.
Jaynes maximum entropy method is generally thought to succeed in the discrete case, but his attempts to extend it to the continuous case (even if discretised, as you say) were not successful. However, the Jeffreys’ prior does seem to in general solve the problem in the continuous case, dealing properly with non-linear data-parameter relationships and usually matching frequentist (classical) probability confidence intervals, where only a single parameter is being estimated (and, I think, for joint estimation of all parameters being estimated).
The difficult problem arises where multiple parameters are being estimated, data-parameter relationships are non-linear, and one is seeking separate (marginal) posterior estimates for individual parameters (or subsets of the parameter list). Here, Jeffreys’ original prior can go badly wrong. In some such cases a noninfomative prior can be found using group relationships and measure theory – the so called ‘right Haar measure’ prior, and that provides objective inference. In other cases, the reference prior approach developed by Bernardo and Berger is usually thought best, as it minimises the information provided by the prior (at least asymptotically).
Not a simple subject by any means! And properly understood by hardly any climate scientists, sadly
Yes, and here the insidiousness. Was the misuse of Bayes deliberate or ignorant? Anon, there was a muffled scream from Japan.
=============
This is a good article just appeared on ‘Online Opinion’:
The greatest human impact of all
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14588&page=0
It shows how wrong are our priorities in focusing on CO2 emissions rather than on pollution by toxic chemicals. It contains lots of facts and figures and is well written (IMO).
Conversely, Peter, I read an article some years ago by a leading US cancer epidemiologist who expressed concern that environmental cancers, a miniscule portion of the whole – 0.4%? less? – got vast amounts of attention and financing (as well as reams of regulation) when almost all cancer deaths are from 4 or 5 cancers, to which research funding would be far better directed. I’ve often felt that Cribb’s concerns on various topics were exaggerated. (Though I have had correspondence with him on issues where we shared views.) There are many better things to focus on than reducing CO2, but toxic chemicals may not be near the top of the list.
(My first and last word on this topic.)
Faustino,
Yes. I agree. I may have overstated in saying it is a good article. It grabbed my attention because I feel we are placing much too much attention on CO2 and GHG emissions compared with other problems. It seems we get all excited about one issue until everyone is sick of it and then we go onto something else. Now it’s climate change, before that it was global warming, before that it was lead in petrol, ozone, DDT, desertification, Y2K, nuclear holocaust, etc.
I suspect we should be more concerned about chemical pollution than GHG emissions, and certainly much more concerned about chemical pollution than about nuclear waste.
Alright Mr. BBD, please tell me how you prove anything global about the past. As far as I can see, we have no proxies for GLOBAL temperature.
It looks to me like you can claim any fool thing denying the MWP and RWP…
Chris Shaker
Looking in Google Scholar for ‘global temperature proxy’ seems to mostly find papers written or co-written by Dr. Michael Mann, or Dr. James Hansen? You want to point me at such work done by other researchers who are not MWP deniers?
Chris Shaker
Searching for ‘Was the medieval warm period global’ finds lots of interesting papers, for and against the MWP as a global phenomenon.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Was+the+medieval+warm+period+global%3F&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=1%2C38
This paper argues that the MWP was global
Paleoclimate: Was the medieval warm period global?
WS Broecker – Science, 2001
http://mensch.org/5223_2007/archive/Science2001Broecker.pdf
Searching Google Scholar for ‘global temperature history’ finds interesting papers, too
cjshaker
Please read the words written and desist from creating straw men. The words were ‘global’ AND ‘synchronous‘. Without both, we are talking about energy redistribution, not net energy gain in the entire climate system (aka ‘global warming’). Please see my response to Tom above. My response to kim on the Hansen thread is also relevant.
Manacker’s original incorrect claim was that global average temperatures during the soi-disant MWP were warmer than the present. Neither he, nor you, has provided a single shred of evidence supporting this popular but incorrect sceptic claim. Sometimes we have to bow to the weight of evidence and abandon cherished but mistaken beliefs.
This is the last time I will be repeating these important distinctions. Please do me the courtesy of reading the words written.
You should take a tour of the whole Island of Skepticism.
=================
Over on the still standing thread BBD’s trying to get rid of the Little Ice Age before the Little Ice Age gets rid of him.
==============
Can you – just for once – think instead of all this inane chirruping. Frankly it comes across as nothing more than irritating trolling of the thread. I can see why you are widely banned.
I thought that if I ever had a rock group, I’d call it the “Should-be Band.” But I’d never put the estimable kim, one of the wittiest of posters, in the banned category. Rock on, kim.
Another paper arguing that the MWP was Global
Glacial geological evidence for the medieval warm period
“It is hypothesised that the Medieval Warm Period was preceded and followed by periods of moraine deposition associated with glacier expansion. Improvements in the methodology of radiocarbon calibration make it possible to convert radiocarbon ages to calendar dates with greater precision than was previously possible. Dating of organic material closely associated with moraines in many montane regions has reached the point where it is possible to survey available information concerning the timing of the medieval warm period. The results suggest that it was a global event occurring between about 900 and 1250 A.D., possibly interrupted by a minor readvance of ice between about 1050 and 1150 A.D.”
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01092411?LI=true
Download full paper here
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/enviropol/EnviroPhilo/Glacial.pdf
Stop carpet-bombing the thread with cut and pastes of studies you haven’t bothered to read.
Global AND synchronous.
I’ve always asserted that global average temperature claims prior to 1979 are unreliable because we had no means of measuring everywhere on the earth at once.
I’m glad you now agree with me. This is great progress for you!
So we throw out the hockey stick before 1979. We throw out the first 100 years of the precious instrument record from 1880 to 1980.
Because, of course, as you mentioned, it could just be redistribution.
In fact I predict you’ll go beyond this and disavow the satellite record as well because, as you’ll say in defense, as your superiors are saying already about the pause, the heat can be going into the ocean. So only data from ARGO beginning in 2005 is global. And then you can later disavow that if need be because ARGO doesn’t dive below the average depth of the ocean and it cannot go where there’s ice on the surface.
That about cover it?
Pretty funny. Please explain to me exactly how my posting links to papers that claim that the MWP was global is creating a ‘straw man’ argument…
I forgot to say that while this paper argues that the MWP was global, it also appears to be taking a swing at one of Dr. Mann’s papers
Paleoclimate: Was the medieval warm period global?
WS Broecker – Science, 2001
http://mensch.org/5223_2007/archive/Science2001Broecker.pdf
Chris Shaker
If you had read and understood Grove & Switsur, you would have noted this sentence from the conclusion:
This is exactly what I have been saying. Regional, asynchronous climate variability is simply energy moving around within the climate system. It is not a net change in the amount of energy in the climate system. It is neither global warming nor global cooling.
You *need* to stop wittering and have a think.
Well, the late 20th century warming (the so-called AGW) was not uniform either. A significant fraction of the stations shows cooling, then there’s the nh/sh difference. There’s so far no difference that the late 20th century warming is any different than the 1000s of earlier similar warmings (and coolings).
Warmists are the real climate change deniers, they have always been and the climate change denial is the critical component of the AGW hypothesis. Once it cannot be denied anymore, the AGW is gone.
There’s so far no EVIDENCE that…
BBD,
What would be energy that’s moving around within the climate system and influential on the scale of decades?
Sufficient amounts of stored energy exist only in oceans, atmosphere alone can do that only over short periods up to a few years. The oceans can move equally well energy between various depths affecting the global temperatures in the same direction almost everywhere rather than lead to opposite changes in different regions. Your speculation rests on very weak ground. It’s too unlikely to be valid to serve as a significant argument in discussing MWP. Although it’s possible, It’s power is not much stronger than that of an impossible scenario.
My interpretation of not uniform is that the warming was not of equal strength everywhere rather than that it didn’t occur simultaneously.
Trying to argue that history proves that a warming like the one of last 50 years is impossible and futile. That’s not the way to determine what has been going on and what is to be expected.
What we can conclude from history is that there’s a strong positive feedback over the temperature range of transition from glacial to interglacial, but there seems to be a stop of that near the present temperatures. Otherwise we would surely have seen evidence of stronger and more recent cases of higher temperatures and a less stable interglacial. This way of thinking has led myself to give rather little value on the paleoclimatic evidence in determining the climate sensitivity that we are presently looking for.
Based on the reasoning supported by the paloeclimatic history It’s likely that the sensitivity is non-linear and that it gets less with increasing temperatures. It’s, however, quite possible that the location of this nonlinear effect is affected significantly by the amount of CO2 available. Thus we cannot conclude much about the climate sensitivity from this argument, but for me it’s evidence that a catastrophic tipping-point is highly unlikely. This is the most important message of paleoclimatology to me.
All the above interpretation of the evidence is intuitive and not directly supported by any specific research that I know about. Even so I feel that the argument is quite strong.
Pekka
It’s not ‘my speculation’. Might I suggest some additional reading?
BBD:
This sounds to me like a speculative assertion. Please provide the evidence and/or the argument from physical first principles that this is the case.
oneuniverse
Okay, think about the extreme case, which is antiphased hemispheric warm/cool climate. Warm NH, cool SH or vice versa. But the two can reverse with no net increase or decrease in the total amount of energy in the climate system.
At a more discrete regional level, you might have a warm N. Atlantic (positive NAO) but a cool tropical Pacific (persistent La Nina). This might result in warm N European conditions but would not warm the entire climate system. This came up in further (!) discussion of possible causes of the MWP on the Hansen thread here.
BBD:
To back up your assertion, you need to show that they will, not that they can.
Why should the climate system be unable to experience net changes in energy during periods when climate variability is regional and asynchronous ? That’s a major (and IMO improbable) claim.
As an example, let’s say asynchronous regional climate change causes an extended period of aridity, causing a region to become a desert with high albedo. Why should the resulting increase in reflected SWR be balanced by a change in radiative flux elsewhere ? (Why should “energy moving around within the climate system” not be able to result in processes effecting a net change in flux at TOA ?)
Do you have any references or formal arguments to support your claim?
oneuniverse
Apologies for the slow reply.
First, this is an impossible question: how can we say what the effects of a hypothetical regional desertification might be on, say, low marine cloud formation or rainfall elsewhere? Then there’s the area of desertification, which would have to be very large to influence albedo significantly.
Of course asynchronous and regional climate change will have some effect on the global climate. But arguably a muted one, as is hypothesised for the MWP where a NH warming (positive NAO) is offset by cool conditions in the tropical Pacific (persistent La Nina mode of ENSO).
This discussion grew from the claim that ‘the MWP was warmer than the present’. This claim is invariably supported by pointing to evidence of regional warming which in some cases equalled or surpassed modern conditions in that region. Where it breaks down is the extrapolation from regional to global while at the same time ignoring the fact that the regional warm peaks were for the most part asynchronous.
BBD:
BBD:
BBD, thank you for the reply (and sorry also for the delay as well).
Is your second statement, quoted above, above meant as a retraction of the first?
Or are you saying that during periods of asynchronous, regional climate change, the global climate can change, but not the energy content of the climate system? (For example, please check fig. 3A of Mann et al. 2009 shows a cooling almost global in extent for the transition into the LIA. Are you saying there was no change in energy content for this event?)
No, it is a minor modification, nothing more. The essential point remains unaltered: asynchronous, regional climate changes cannot be extrapolated into ‘the MWP was warmer than the present’.
The evidence for a more globalised and somewhat more synchronous LIA is stronger that for the MWP.
I repeat: those claiming that the MWP was warmer than the present have gone far, far beyond what the evidence supports.
Stop making false accusations. I have the papers on my computer, open, and I’ve read them. I provided the links so that you can read them, too.
So far, you’re following the standard Climate Alarmists Argument Sequence:
o Throw out an accusation of ‘straw man’ arguments
o Throw out an accusation of ‘carpet bombing’ or ‘link bombing’
o Lie, claiming that I have not read the papers
Can’t wait to see what is next
Chris Shaker
– You haven’t read G&S
– You have carpet bombed this thread
– You are indulging in straw man argument by ignoring the words global AND synchronous
I’m bored with this.
“I’m bored with this.”
Who cares what you are bored with you are clearly the absolutely most closed minsed and inflammatory person in ‘climate land’
You are correct, I had not read all of G&S. I read part of it before. I’m reading it now. They put forth a lot of work into attempting to correlate warming in various parts of the world with high precision. I wonder how their technique would deal with the modern Continent of Antarctica, most of which is actually cooling, while part of it warms?
You claim that posting papers which claim that the MWP was global is a ‘straw man’ argument, because they are not global and synchronous. It appears that I am supposed to evaluate them according to your criteria before I post them? Is that what you are claiming? What paper do you claim DOES meet those requirements?
Chris Shaker
Chris
All I am trying to do is draw your attention to the standard mistake made by many when it comes to characterising the ‘MWP’ and ‘LIA’. In truth, the evidence for either being global AND synchronous is absent. Regional but asynchronous periods of warming and cooling characterise both the ‘MWP’ and the ‘LIA’. Neither can be described as global warming or cooling periods.
For example, let’s go to one of your references, Broecker (2001). Here, Broecker confirms what I wrote some way upthread about the hemispheric seesaw and the *redistribution* of energy within the climate system. Redistribution of energy does not cause a net change in *average* global temperature:
Antiphased hemispheric oscillation. The very opposite of global and synchronous.
I’m sorry there has been the inevitable friction during this exchange, but I hope that you can see now what I am driving at.
BBD,
You are far too selective. If you pick a short passage from a paper, you must pick it properly from the conclusions. Broecker’s conclusions are closer to opposite to yours than in line with them.
Pekka
You are being disputatious. Broeker’s conclusions are extremely tentative and do not contradict what he references and what I say. Global but not synchronous. Please don’t continue our dispute about your unsubstantiated ad hominem against Hansen by proxy. It’s as irritating as it is unnecessary.
BBD,
You can notice that I formulated my comment carefully avoiding too strong claims. I think that it’s valid as formulated.
You like to justify your comments by scientific literature. That’s fine, in principle, but not as fine in practice, because it’s possible to cherry pick support for almost any claim from valid scientific papers. Therefore being able to present a supporting quote is of essentially zero value.
As long as one is not close to the expert level in a particular field of science it’s commonly impossible to use properly papers presenting original work. Such papers are, unfortunately, often misleading to non-experts. There are some systematic biases in the way papers are written and only experts have the knowledge to eliminate that bias. For this reason I search always for reviews trying to find reviews written by several authors who do not collaborate too closely, or at least written by a person who is not too deeply involved in the papers discussed.
IPCC reports are often reasonably good but they contain their weaker chapters.
One more separate point on your earlier comment. You write as if Antarctica would be representative of the Southern hemisphere. You can, however, read from Broecker that the MWP is according to him observed on all continents (he may perhaps mean all but Antarctica).
Pekka
Isn’t the very point here that the sceptics make a very strong claim? They argue that the MWP was warmer than the present. A claim for which there is no supporting evidence. All I have attempted to do is point this out. Inevitably, this resulted in the (invariable) carpet bombing with references detailing *regional* warming (or cooling).
The reasoned response to this is to emphasis that there is no solid evidence for a synchronous and global warming or cooling (MWP/LIA). Everything points to asynchronous regional variability with only muted effects on GAT.
My understanding is that strong claims about global warmth during the MWP being equal to or greater than the present are not supported by any evidence. That’s how this exchange got started, and that’s how it will conclude.
That there is no evidence is a very strong claim and surely false.
“That’s how this exchange got started, and that’s how it will conclude.”
Too abrupt. I should have continued:
That’s how this exchange got started, and that’s how it will conclude, unless we have evidence that demonstrates otherwise.
David Wojick
Rather than troll, why not provide the magic mystery evidence?
BBD: Chris’s citations are sufficient to show that there is evidence. You are confusing your judgement about the weight of evidence with the lack of the existence of evidence. If there were no evidence the issue would not exist. The evidence may not be conclusive but that does not make it nonexistent.
BBD,
The problem is that arguing against erroneous skeptic claims cannot be done successfully at the same level the claims are presented. Claims based correctly on science are often more complex and involve understanding the uncertainties and caveats rather well. Making too simple arguments starting from the valid science may mean that the arguments by themselves are not any better that the skeptic ones that they contradict. Doing that too eagerly leads to arguments with obvious failings.
In climate science uncertainties are complex. There’s a lot of scientific information and that’s supported by innumerable empirical observations, but the whole remains difficult to judge due to the complexity of the uncertainties and the sparsity of the empirical evidence (it’s not a contradiction that there’s a lot of data but it’s sparse).
We know that Judith emphasizes the uncertainties, often in a way that agree on fully but sometimes in ways that I don’t agree with. We would not have this controversy, if the situation were not as complex as it is. When two persons have differing views on a complex issue like this, it’s not possible to prove to the other that own views are correct. There’s so much left that can be answered only through subjective judgment rather than faultless logic.
When you try to do something that’s not realistically possible you end up presenting arguments that can be attacked for valid reasons.
Pekka to BBD:
Having read the article, I agree with Pekka.
BBD: The nature of evidence is part of my field (epistemic and inductive logic). Look at it this way. If a single station shows warming over the last century, and some have, that is evidence of global warming. If a station shows cooling, and some have, that is evidence of global cooling. So we have both. We also have evidence that these records might not be correct. Plus we have various ways of analyzing and combining these records, as well as reasons to doubt these ways. And so on. The concept of evidence is very broad. It is basically anything that a reasonable person might consider. It is very different from the weight of evidence which is what the climate debate is really all about.
So claiming that your opponent has no evidence in the middle of a scientific debate is almost certainly wrong.
“Grudge match”? Hey BBD, you’re the one with a kill list .
Some quotes from Broeker, although better to read the article :
..
David Wojick
No, you have evidence of local warming.
No, you have evidence of local cooling.
There is no point in continuing further with this. You have already destroyed your own argument.
oneuniverse
Please just read the thread instead of jumping in (as Pekka did) and making a mess of your argument. You, like just about everybody else here, have managed to ignore what I have been saying *from the outset*. Which is not that the MWP was not global, it is that it was not global and synchronous.
Let me repeat what Broecker *also* said:
Global, but not synchronous. As in fact most of the proxy evidence suggests – when it is read carefully.
BBD, I provided two quotes from the article, and suggested that the article itself be read. Do you disagree that Broeker wrote those two quotations?
You wrote “In truth, the evidence for either [the MWP or LIA] being global AND synchronous is absent.”
Your “either/AND” construction above is confusing – can you clarify please.
I do think the two passages I quoted more closely follow Broeker’s article than your quotes and commentary on it.
re: either/AND
Oops, please ignore that q. – what you wrote makes perfect sense, I was in too much of a hurry to catch a train (and reply to comments first) to read carefully – sorry.
BBD, got a second…
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V15/N43/C2.php
made in China, so we know it’s true.
BBD, if all station evidence is local then what do you count as evidence of global warming? We have no global measurements and no global phenomena.
You are dwelling in your own private language where of course whatever you say is true, but also meaningless.
I’ve read “Evidence for a ‘Medieval Warm Period’ in a 1,100 year tree-ring
reconstruction of past austral summer temperatures in New Zealand”, by Edward R. Cook, Jonathan G. Palmer, and Rosanne D. D’Arrigo before. They say,
“The occurrence of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP)
in the Southern Hemisphere is uncertain because of the
paucity of well-dated, high-resolution paleo-temperature
records covering the past 1,000 years. We describe a new
tree-ring reconstruction of Austral summer temperatures
from the South Island of New Zealand, covering the past
1,100 years. This record is the longest yet produced for
New Zealand and shows clear evidence for persistent
above-average temperatures within the interval commonly
assigned to the MWP. Comparisons with selected
temperature proxies from the Northern and Southern
Hemispheres confirm that the MWP was highly variable
in time and space. Regardless, the New Zealand temperature
reconstruction supports the global occurrence of the
MWP.” …
They provide pointers to other papers arguing that the MWP was global:
“Regardless, Grove and Switsur [1994]
argued for a global MWP based on glaciological evidence
from both hemispheres. Broecker [2001] likewise argued for
a global MWP, even while admitting that the case ‘‘remains
inconclusive’’ because of insufficient data. Since, as Bradley
[2001] points out, ‘‘the absence of evidence does not
necessarily mean evidence of absence’’, more effort is
needed to determine the true global nature of the MWP.”
It sounds like we have very little data on the southern hemisphere:
“[4] One of the principal difficulties in determining the
global extent of the MWP is the relative paucity of welldated,
high-resolution paleoclimatic time series that cover
From their conclusion
“[15] The identification of a MWP sensu lato in New
Zealand adds an important new datum to the debate concerning
its large-scale occurrence and supports Broecker’s
[2001] argument that it was indeed global. The Oroko
Swamp reconstruction may also prove valuable in determining
the phasing between hemispheres of important global
climate epochs like the MWP and LIA. This information
may help determine the degree to which ocean circulation
dynamics and seesawing of deep water production between
the Atlantic and Southern Oceans [Broecker et al., 1999;
Seidov et al., 2001] have contributed to the timing and
development of the MWP and LIA between the hemispheres”
some or all of the MWP (i.e., those that extend back to at
least A.D. 1200). For example, Jones et al. [1998] used only
seven such series, Mann et al. [1999] twelve, Briffa [2000]
eight, Crowley and Lowery [2000] fifteen, and Esper et al.
[2002] ten in their studies of past temperature variability
covering the past 1,000 years. Most of these records are
based on annual tree-ring chronologies from sites located in
the NH extra-tropics. In the Southern Hemisphere (SH),
only three tree-ring reconstructions of past temperature have
been used to characterize temperature variability and change
over the past millennium. These records are from Argentina
[Villalba, 1990], Chile [Lara and Villalba, 1993], and
“Similar to the NH, this SH expression of the MWP is not homogeneous in time. Rather, it is composed of two periods of generally above-average
warmth, A.D. 1137–1177 and 1210–1260, that are punctuated by years of below-average temperatures and a middle period that is near average. Overall, this translates to a MWP that was probably 0.3–0.5C warmer than the overall 20th century average at Hokitika and, for the A.D. 1210–
1260 period, comparable to the warming that has occurred since 1950.
Tasmania [Cook et al., 2000].”
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/CookPalmer.pdf
Once again, you are conflating regional with global and ignoring the spatial asynchronicity which, when averaged, results in little or no change in global average temperature.
The supposed warming of the last century was also not synchronous, with many stations showing cooling. We are talking about weak statistics not globaly uniform phenomena.
cjshaker
Interesting info.
There are several other independent studies from all over the world (SH + NH), using different paleo-climate methodologies, all pointing to a MWP that was a bit warmer than today.
IPCC had not yet gotten the word on all this when it published AR4 (and maybe was still “believing” in the hockey stick), but I hope they remove that “warmest in 1300 years” claim in AR5. It just makes them look silly.
Max
Mr BBD: Yes, of course, there is also a redistribution of energy with the atmosphere. I don’t remember what the time lag is supposed to be between the hemispheres. It seems that the Arctic and the Antarctic oscillate, while one warms, the other cools.
The natural forcings seem to be very complex. So many cycles in play, solar variation, orbital mechanics, cosmic rays, clouds, etc.
I seem to have screwed up my editing of the post about Cook and Palmer. Time to go to bed.
Chris Shaker
Chris
It depends on what is happening. Under orbitally forced deglaciation, freshwater flux at high NH latitude inhibits deep water formation and halts the AMOC. This ‘switches off’ the NH ‘heat sink’ and the NH cools. Since the poleward transport of energy in the NH is severely inhibited, the SH warms, as it must (Shakun et al. 2012).
A more gentle version of this phenomenon may be responsible for some of the antiphased hemispheric variation during the Holocene interglacial.
C20th climate change is interesting. Both NH and SH are warming. The SH at a slightly lower rate, but very definitely warming.
You are presenting conjectures as facts. For that matter the mean values of the surface statistical models you cite are not “very definately” true. In normal statistics the mean value is unlikely to be true. If you take the 49% confidence interval centered on the mean the true value is more likely outside than inside. But these models are weaker than normal statistics, being merely area averaged approximation methods. So claiming the mean is the true value is unsupportable. This is probably the greatest single fallacy in AGW, taking the statistical mean to be a true fact.
There is some offset in the warming and cooling that is seen in the Arctic and Antarctic ice core data, but the major warm periods and the major cold periods were not opposite. The North has more land and the South has more water. Changes happen in one and the oceans carry it to the other with some lag. When oceans are warm it snows more and when oceans are cold it snows less. This happens in the North and in the South.
There has been little change in global average temperature today, too. How well could we pick that out using our temperature proxies if we were looking back at it from 1,000 years into the future?
Chris Shaker
I have been deleting a lot of comments on this thread. normally i let anything go on open thread. But messages that have NO content other than to insult another commenter will be deleted.
+1,000,000 Thank you very much indeed.
Beth Cooper,
Epitaph to the ephemeral comment :O)
BBD: Said: “This record suggests that conditions in Antarctica underwent an antiphased oscillation during the Medieval Warm Period-Little Ice Age period.
Antiphased hemispheric oscillation. The very opposite of global and synchronous.”
As far as I can tell, this antiphased oscillation between the Arctic and the Antarctic is still going on, and has been going on for a long time. It appears that process continues whether or not the globe is cooling or is heating?
I do appreciate having learned why some discount the many clues showing MWP evidence found scattered around the globe.
Chris Shaker
Chris
Both the NH and SH are warming.
mwgrant on 18/01/13 briefly @ 9.33am … the ephemeral … it never
lasts :+(
Beth.
WUWT is a never-ending source of amusement.
In a rather strangely 3rd person narrative posted in reference to himself, J. Scott Armstrong amusingly tells the tale of his offer of a bet with Gore:
Heh. A 10-year bet about a “long-term” trend.
A bit of an enigma, that Armstrong.
Oh, and btw – as a testimony to open-minded debate at the home of a leader in the “skeptic” community, apparently pointing out the glaringly illogical concept of a “long-term trend” in a 10-year period is too offensive to pass moderation.
Same ol’ same ol’.
Particularly since Gore declined the bet, so this is his own fantasy bet with Gore.
The climate change part of the second inaugural address by President Obama today. Four years ago, climate was not mentioned.
“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.”
Was interesting to see this article about Dr. Jan Esper’s paper suggesting that the Roman Warm Period was warmer than Dr. Mann thinks
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22040-tree-rings-suggest-roman-world-was-warmer-than-thought.html
“Jan Esper of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, thinks that at least some of those tree rings actually show something else: a long-term cooling trend that lasted right up until the Industrial Revolution. The trend came about because of reduced solar heating caused by changes to the Earth’s orbit known as Milankovitch wobbles, says Esper. His results suggest the Roman world was 0.6 °C warmer than previously thought – enough to make grape vines in northern England a possibility.
Esper and his colleagues say that warmer summers do not necessarily make tree rings wider – but they often make them denser. He studied the density of tree rings in hundreds of northern Scandinavian trees and found that they showed evidence of a gradual cooling trend that began around 2000 years ago.”
Chris Shaker
Chris
Northern Scandinavia is a *region*, and a (small) region of the high-latitude NH is not a proxy for *global* temperature.
That said, peak summer insolation under orbital forcing was about 10ka, and the NH has cooled (regionally and asynchronously) from ~6ka to the present.
While this is fascinating, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the effects of CO2 forcing on modern climate.
Thought the criticism of how we read tree rings was interesting
Chris Shaker
Tom – re the US SEC and FED. I’ll dash off a quick reply here as I want to keep the thread between myself and Peter Lang “clean”.
A few caveats. I am an Australian PhD level physicist with experience in R&D, manufacturing and IT – not an economist – though I have run small businesses (<30 million turnover). I am NOT an economist.
I am not familiar with the US details so any comment I make is as an ill-informed unqualified outsider. But, here's my two cents worth
1) I think the Madoff case showed the SEC did not understand the system they were/are regulating. Somone showed the SEC that the regularity of the returns Madoff was making were statistically impossible – their variation was too "uniform" to be genuine. No-one at the SEC understood what they were being told and ignored the warming because Madoff was complying with all the legal requirements. So – lesson 1 – and this applies to safety regulators for power generation as well (I think this is very well understood in the regulation of aircraft safety) – the regulators need to understand what they are regulating – not simply be good at administering the legality of the regulations. So I suppose I should add that as an important requirement for effective regulation as well
2) The RBA in Australia (our equivalent of the FED) has a regulatory role but it seems to me to be much smaller than the FED. It is more about the overall financial system than individual instiutional regulation http://www.rba.gov.au/about-rba/our-role.html
In australia the predential regulatory role of the banking system is handled by a separate body APRA – see page 3 here for a description of what the various regulatory bodies do (our ASIC is like your SEC)
http://www.abl.com.au/ablattach/Australia.pdf
I think it is problematic to have a player (which the FED is) so closely linked to its regulatory function?
We also have a 4th body – the ACCC – which is much more about anti-competitive market practices – I'm unsure who is responsible for that in the USA.
Some have argued that it was more effective regulation that helped protect Australia from the worst of the GFC? Maybe – I think it played a role but was probably due to lots of other factors
Hope that answers your question? I'm sure someone with real expertise could do a whole lot better and shoot large holes in some of my response though.
Nice point, Mark, and I’ll take the hint and stay off your thread above with Peter. It’s better unadulterated anyway.
=============
Thank you, Mark. Australians sound like they are actually able to do more, with less. The U.S., should take your country’s example to heart. We would be much better off today if we had.
(Reply to Jim Cripwell’s comment on the “Macroweather, not climate, is what you expect” post)
Jim:
You’ve already admitted that if there are other, non-CO2 forcings, with uncertainties in their estimates, one can’t conclude (using your informal analysis) that there’s no CO2 effect :
(A comment of yours on the Goldilocks thread)
Since we know that there do exist non-CO2 forcings (such as variations in cloud cover, surface albedo, and atmospheric aerosols), why do you persist in using a line of reasoning that you yourself admit is inapplicable?
Correction : “no CO2 effect” in my first paragraph should be “likely no CO2 effect”
You seem to be trying to correlate two completely different and unrelated things. It is conceivable that there is a CO2 signal that is being completely masked by some unknown natural effect. I cannot claim that this is impossible. If you want to assume that this condition exists, then I agree completely that my deduction that climate sensiitivity is indistinguishable from zero is wrong.
If you want to discuss the likelihood that the CO2 signal is being exactly countered by some unknown natural forcing, be my guest. Just dont expect me to enter into the discussion.
You’re the one who’s claiming that “the climate sensitivity for CO2 added to the atmosphere form current levels, has been proven to be indistinguishable from zero, by observed data.”.
How can the data have ‘proven’ it when there are large uncertainties in the magnitudes of non-CO2 forcings and their effect on the measured observables?
As far as I can tell, you’ve made a couple of assumptions, both speculative, which we discussed in ‘Goldilocks’ thread. It would be best if you state these assumptions when making your claim, to avoid misleading others.
I give up.
oneuniverse
You are beating a dead horse.
As a rational skeptic of the hypothesis that increasing atmospheric CO2 will lead to an increase in global temperature, Jim Cripwell has been very clear in his statement that there is no empirical scientific evidence (Feynman) which corroborates this hypothesis. Until it is corroborated by such evidence, it remains an uncorroborated hypothesis.
You keep dancing around this issue with discussions of other forcings, etc., but have, so far not cited the evidence Jim is requesting.
I conclude that this is not because you are unwilling to do so, but because this empirical scientific evidence does not (yet) exist.
Max
Since I haven’t made a claim that increasing atmospheric CO2 will lead to an increase in global temperature (although I’ve explained why I think it’s plausible that it might), I’m not sure why you and Jim are looking to me to provide evidence to support the claim.
Jim, one the other hand, has made this claim: “the climate sensitivity for CO2 added to the atmosphere form current levels, has been proven to be indistinguishable from zero, by observed data.”.
This would be big news if true – I’m highly skeptical of his claim, and it’s reasonable to ask him for the data and quantitative analysis ie. the details of the proof, which he hasn’t provided.
oneuniverse | January 22, 2013 at 7:03 pm |
Jim, one the other hand, has made this claim: “the climate sensitivity for CO2 added to the atmosphere form current levels, has been proven to be indistinguishable from zero, by observed data.”.
This would be big news if true – I’m highly skeptical of his claim, and it’s reasonable to ask him for the data and quantitative analysis ie. the details of the proof, which he hasn’t provided.
If it had been observed we’d certainly have been told about by the AGW/CAGW crowd..
..that really would be big news, and we who think this is junk science wouldn’t keep having to ask for empirical evidence of the claims.
It has been shown in countless studies that Carbon Dioxide follows temperatures, by around 800 years. 800 years. It does nothing for 800 years while temperatures rise dramatically at the beginning of interglacials, it continues rising when temps plummet dramatically at the end of interglacials. What more do you need to show that CO2 cannot be driving temperature changes? What meaning do you attach to the word “plausible”?
The AGW claim is to a positive, we have been brow beaten by this claim and it has adversely affected the standard of living for the middle and lower income people, the majority, it is not for us to prove a negative, I don’t have to prove God doesn’t exist.., but for those claiming AGW exists to prove it exists. Simple.
However, since you’ve asked, here is an example of no anthropogenic CO2 signal observed: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/21/noaa-sotc-claim-that-2012-was-warmest-la-nina-year-is-wrong/
“INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE EL NIÑO AND LA NIÑA AND THEIR LONG-TERM EFFECTS ON GLOBAL SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES?
Why should you be interested? NOAA also conveniently overlooked the fact that their own datasets indicate El Niño and La Niña events, not manmade greenhouse gases, are responsible for the warming of global sea surface temperature anomalies over the past 30 years and the warming of ocean heat content in the tropics since 1955. I’ve searched sea surface temperature records and ocean heat content data for more than 4 years (more than 3 years for the ocean heat content data), and I can find no evidence of an anthropogenic greenhouse gas signal. That is, the warming of the global oceans has been caused by Mother Nature, not anthropogenic greenhouse gases.” Bob Tisdale
“Since we know that there do exist non-CO2 forcings (such as variations in cloud cover, surface albedo, and atmospheric aerosols), why do you persist in using a line of reasoning that you yourself admit is inapplicable?”
oneuniverse, yes the net forcing is unknown at any time point and that’s the Jim’s point. The CO2 signal is indistinguishable from zero. Of course the consensus explanation is that the net forcing is known, like this:
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/human-and-natural-influences.gif
The AGW hypothesis is a perfect example of cargo cult science. The Null Hypothesis is NO POSTULATED EFFECT, whatever it is. It’s to be rejected or not and so far it’s not even close. The Null stays very strong and it’s even getting stronger. Time is on Null’s side.
Edim, please re-read the second quote (or the linked passage). Jim is agreeing that if there are other, non CO2 forcings of uncertain magnitude and effect (a condition that holds in the real world), we can’t rule out a non-zero effect, and we can’t rule out a zero-effect.
A non-zero effect cannot be ruled out, I agree. However, 1000s of other non-zero effects cannot be ruled out either and nobody worries about them. The AGW has been hyped and that’s the main reason so many people worry about it.
IMO, a zero-effect is much more likely, for many reasons. Much more likely than a non-zero effect.
Yes, the Null appears to be showing and using its claws and teeth now.
Brian H
Scientifically, the “null” effect is very likely, as Edim writes.
The big problem with a “null” effect is that the potential taxpayer-funded climate change bonanza would pop like a bubble and end up being “null”.
In addition to the politicians that see the power potentially gained from the revenues resulting from possible carbon taxation, there are many individual investors, insurance giants, industrial corporations, scientific organizations and environmental lobby groups that are all lined up at the trough – so there would be a “heap of hurt” if the anticipated flow of billions suddenly turns to “null”.
So the political “null” effect will most likely lag the scientific one by a few years.
But I am convinced it will come.
Max
Re comments on MWP, there’s a paper by earth science professor
Zunli Lu re MWP as a global phenomenon:
http://www.globalwarming.org/2012/03/23/antarctica-new-evidence-medieval-warm-period-and-little-ice-age-were-global/
“This is a hotly debated question, because it is harder to make the case that the warmth of recent decades is “unusual,” ”extraordinary,” or “unprecedented” and therefore something to stress about if global climate oscillates naturally between warming and cooling periods.”
I wonder about this idea of “oscillates naturally”.
I think it’s all about “oscillates naturally” but don’t believe it’s random or without particular identifiable causes, rather than thinking it aimlessly wanders into MWP and wanders into Little Ice Age.
The way I look at it, is that MWP is somewhere around “normal” for interglacial period, and there is something that causes a number of cooler periods, with the LIA being the latest and one of greatest cooling periods of this interglacial period.
[And also there something causing a very small and long trend [10,000 year] cooling trend.]
So I think something caused the LIA.
And possible factors could be, unusual solar activity, unusual volcanic activity [I mainly thinking quite large eruption events- the known ones, and possible unknown ones], and include possibility of Pope’s Climate Theory:
http://popesclimatetheory.com/
And tend think it’s mostly one main causal factor. One of the three, or 4th factor. And 2 or more factors could add to the cooling effect- plus one has a random wandering or “oscillates naturally”- which could in addition be amplified by the one factor.
And if one factor, tend to think it’s the unusual solar activity- or something unknown [ at least to me].
Peter Lang is very keen to discuss damage function – the net benefit or damage per degree of warming. There are 59 references to damage function in this thread, but not a lot of development of the concept.
I personally feel it is premature to deal with the economics of climate change at this stage, since it is more logical to progress from
1 ECS which gives us an idea of what kind of temperature changes we can expect
2 An assessment of whether the climatic changes we are observing in real time are just freak events or
part of significant statistical trends.
3 If the answer to (2) is positive, the question of attribution of current weather events to AGW
4 Assessments of what kind of weather changes we can expect at 1, 2, 3 and 4 degrees Celsius of warming
5 estimates of the economic damage these degrees of warming will cause to world GDP
6 Comparison of damage in 5 above to the cost of avoiding and defending against such damage.
So in my view we are about 5 steps away from being ready to consider economic matters, but I have given way to temptation.
Peter refers to Nordhaus who shows a graph on p51 showing the relation in his computer model (and I emphasise that Nordhaus is using a model. Some sceptics apply a blanket ban on use of models in climatology. Just saying.)
His graph shows 1% damage to global GDP at 2C warming, and 2% damage at 2.5C warming, as shown by his 2007 model.
That does not seem too severe, and Nordhaus has been cited by Monckton and others as saying that the cost of climate mitigation work outweighs its benefits. However, Nordhaus himself says he has been misinterpreted by the sceptics.
It is worth reading the whole essay, but the main point is in Section 6, where he says:
“The authors (i.e. a number of sceptics who have cited his work in support of their position) cite the “benefit-to-cost ratio” to support their argument. Elementary cost-benefit and business economics teach that this is an incorrect criterion for selecting investments or policies. The appropriate criterion for decisions in this context is net benefits (that is, the difference between, and not the ratio of, benefits and costs).”
He goes on to say ” the authors summarize my results incorrectly. My research shows that there are indeed substantial net benefits from acting now rather than waiting fifty years. ”
Going back now to the Damage Function graph, the key point in allocating costs to future events is in the Social Discount Rate, which includes an applied Pure Time Preference rate – the relative valuation placed on a good at an earlier date compared with its valuation at a later date.
Stern used a low PTP rate of 0.1%, whereas Nordhaus uses a 3% rate.
At 3%, the cost of environmental damage happening 25 years later is approximately halved, compared to the cost if it occurred today. Nordhaus gets smaller costs than Stern, but even so, he finds that there are “substantial net benefits from acting now rather than waiting fifty years. ”
It is in setting the social discount rate that the economics of dealing with climate change is totally and inevitably dependent on major value judgments. If our grandchildren live in a more hostile, less supportive environment than ourselves as a result of choices that we make today in how we meet our energy needs, does it matter to us? How much does it matter? Does it make a difference if we have no grandchildren? Should it make a difference? Should we respond to all the inevitable uncertainties by adopting the Precautionary Principle? Is it really the end of the world if we set about decarbonising the economy now, or might that not be rather a good thing, irrespective of any impact it will have on climate change?
docrichard
I’d agree with you that before getting into any discussion of cost/benefit analyses of various mitigation schemes, one should look at
a) whether there is a problem at all in the first place and (if yes)
b) whether or not there are specific actions we can take to perceptibly change our planet’s future climate.
Premise a) is wide open, with latest observation-based estimates of 2xCO2 climate sensitivity and estimated constraints on total C availability in remaining fossil fuels pointing to the conclusion that there is no potential problem (earlier discussions).
Premise b) is also wide open. So far, no actionable proposals have been made, which would result in any appreciable change of our future climate; these all have one thing in common: they are all extremely costly (at latest ECS estimate roughly $4 trillion invested today per 0.1 degree C theoretically averted by 2100)..
Peter Lang does not attempt to resolve the uncertainties in a) and b), but rather proposes a “no regrets” solution to CO2 emissions from future coal-fired power plants by building only new nuclear power generation plants in the future to cover anticipated growing electrical power demand and to replace old coal plants that have reached the end of their economically useful life and are ready to be decommissioned.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with Peter’s approach, but I do recognize that it still faces some political hurdles today, largely as a result of past fear-mongering campaigns against nuclear power by some of the same groups that are now fear-mongering about CAGW.
But I’d agree with you generally that we need to resolve point a) first – and it is clear to me that you and I are still far apart on that one.
Max
docrichard,
You brought the the matter up (using a different term but same issue). I am just trying to get you focus on numbers rather than your beliefs and gut feel.
Does that mean you are happy to keep arguing about climate sensitivity for another 20 years or more before we are in a position to discuss mitigation policies?
We’ve been arguing about climate sensitivity for well over 20 years. The most likely value and the range quoted by the orthodoxy (e.g. IPCC) has changed little in that time. The uncertainty o=in our estimates of climate sensitivity is huge and there is no sign it will be reduced much in the near future.
We cannot discuss mitigation policies rationally without doing the economic analyses and the cost benefit analyses. Anyone that thinks politicians should impose huge costs on their country with no idea of the costs and benefits and based purely on the beliefs of true believers in catastrophe should not be take seriously.
The economic analyses, such as Nordhaus has done, should be used to guide where research money should be spent so it can have the most benefit for informing rational policy.
The discussion on climate sensitivity is going nowhere. Time to move on. We need to understand the damage function, the decarbonisation rate function, and the probability that a global agreement can be reached, implemented and maintained for 100 years.
In short: give up arguing about climate sensitivity; its going nowhere fast (but does seem to be coming down, slowly. Where will that trend end? Who knows; who cares right now; it is unimportant in deciding on what, if any policies should be implemented).
Docrichard,
I can see from the remainder of your first comment you really don’t know much about the subject. You’ve lifted a couple of quotes from Nordhaus (2008) ‘A Question of Balance’ and his NY Review of Books debate with the sixteen scientists. But clearly, you don’t understand any of it. I’d suggest you need to read the Nordhaus’s book, carefully and with an intention to understand it. I’d also urge you to read the calibration of it http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Accom_Notes_100507.pdf
Importantly, while I think Nordhaus work with the DICE and RICE models has been and still is a very valuable contribution to the policy debate, that does no mean I agree with all the conclusions he draws. I explain why in a short comment on SkepticalScience here (this addresses some of your points): http://skepticalscience.com//news.php?f=nordhaus-sets-the-record-straight-climate-mitigation-saves-money#82373.
docrichard and Peter Lang
While we’re solving the world’s problems:
A rough estimate of how much CO2 could be averted by implementing Peter’s “no regrets” plan to install nuclear power plants for ALL new electrical power demand plus to replace all old coal-fired plants that are ready for decommissioning, would show that around 80 ppmv could realistically be averted by 2100.
Without this plan, CO2 level by 2100 would be around 640 ppmv, based both on mid-range “business as usual” AR4 IPCC estimates and UN population growth estimates with a 30% increase in per capita fossil fuel use by 2100.
So we would have 560 ppmv instead of 640 ppmv by 2100 and would theoretically have averted around 0.3C warming by 2100.
And this plan “costs” us nothing, since nuclear is fully competitive with coal in most locations today.
This sounds like a “win-win” deal, even if AGW is no threat at all, since real air pollution from coal generation cannot be 100% eliminated.
Whaddaya think?
Max
Max,
As long as it is a win-win deal, I am all for it.
I don’t know the basis of your calcs of 80 ppmv avoided. I came at it a different way. I calculate a free market policy, where the impediments to low cost nuclear are removed, would avoid 13 Gt CO2 per year in 2050.
13Gt in 2050 is the same as Nordhaus projects the Optimal carbon price policy would achieve. (Nordhaus (2008), Table 5-6, p100 http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf. Average years 2045 and 2055, subtract from 250 year delay policy to get the emissions avoided by the Optimal policy, change from C to CO2, change from per decade to per year. Then tell me if I’ve made an error :)
I should have added the freer market policy where the impediments to low cost nuclear are removed, would have many other benefits as well, thus making it a true no regrets policy:
– avoid more than 1 million fatalities per year globally from pollution from coal fired power stations
– avoid black carbon emissions from coal fired power stations
– avoid the need for building massive and costly rail and gas pipeline infrastructure in developing countries and emerging economies.
– reduce transmission line lengths (nuclear can be build near the demand centres, coal plants must be near the coal mine or they need long transmission lines)
– reduce the amount of oil used in transporting coal and gas by a factor of 20,000 now and by a factor of 2 million when breeder reactors become commercially viable (probably after 2030 or 2040).
Max,
Regarding your estimate of 80 ppmv CO2 concentration avoided by 2100, the Nordhaus Optimal carbon price policy projection is in the same ball park (actually 99 ppm). Nordhaus Optimal carbon price policy projects a reduction of 27 ppm in 2050 and 99 ppm in 2100 compared with ‘No Controls’ (i.e. ‘Delay 250 years’) (see: Nordhaus (2008) http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf, Table 5-7, p103:
CO2 concentrations in 2050 and 2100 for the ‘Delay 250 years’ and ‘Optimal carbon price’ policy’
– Delay 250 years = 507.9; 685.9
– Optimal C price = 480.9; 586.5
– Difference = 27; 99.4
I am suggesting the ‘freer market’ policies, in which the developed world, and particularly the USA, removes the impediments that are preventing the world from having low cost nuclear power, could achieve the same global GHG emissions reductions as the ‘Optimal carbon price’ policy.
Peter Lang
Using your estimate of 13 GtCO2/year reduction by 2050 and extrapolating this to 2100 at the exponential rate of increase with and without this reduction, I come up with a cumulative reduction from 640 ppmv CO2 by 2100 to around 580 ppmv, and a theoretical net reduction in global warming by 2100 of 0.2C (1.1C-0.9C), using the latest estimates of 2xCO2 ECS of 1.5C.
My estimate of the net reduction was slightly higher = from 640 ppmv to 560 ppmv by 2100, with a theoretical net reduction of warming of 0.3C (1.1C-0.8C) by 2100.
If we use the old higher AR4 value of 3.2C for 2xCO2 ECS the theoretical net reduction in warming by 2100 from the “nuclear option” would be 0.4C and 0.6C (from 2.2C to 1.8C or 1.6C), respectively for the two estimates.
So it’s not a lot, but (at least theoretically) a step in the right direction (if one is concerned about AGW).
Max
Max,
Max,
Just to clarify, I was’t attempting to be picky about your numbers, I was just interested to see how close your figures are to the ‘Orthodoxy’s’ own estimates. (Nordhaus’s figures are calibrated against the Orthodoxy’s estimates’). Although you have written your figures many times, I had not previously compared them to see how close they are to those from the Orthodoxy’s models. Now I know your figures are reasonably similar. This is useful to know since your figures are based on simple projections of changes over the past century or so.
Manacker, tempting though it is to go off on the tangent of the financial and carbon cost of nuclear power, I would rather stay focused on the matter of damage function, out of respect to Peter Lang’s oft expressed desire to discuss it.
If you or anyone else wants to read up on the question of nuclear power price, try here: http://www.nonukes.org.uk/
Atomkraft, Ja Danke.
===============
docrichard,
If you or anyone else wants to read up on the question of nuclear power price, try here: http://www.nonukes.org.uk/
Should I take it that your link is a fair indication of the sort of junk you read and that your opinions are based on? I am getting that impression (belief in CAGW and anti nuke are mostly the same people – gullible, easily persuaded by scaremongering).
If you want to demonstrate I have misjudged you, you’ll need to demonstrate that you understand Nordhaus (2008) well enough to be able to debate it. If you want to offer alternatives, they need to be better (all encompassing, consistent methodology for all policy options, accessible to people like me, etc.) than what Nordhaus has done and you need to be able to explain why. At the moment, you clearly know next to nothing about the subject. You have some study to do. There’s no point in us debating the damage function any more until you have done some background reading.
docrichard
There have been other studies showing similar results, but this study shows that nuclear is competitive with coal in most locations (without a carbon tax).
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html
Max
PS Cost competitiveness of nuclear vs. coal is the basis for Peter Lang’s “win-win” proposal of installing nuclear plants for essentially all new electrical power generation plus replacement of old coal plants, which are ready for decommissioning. (Note that this is different from the Hansen et al. proposal to shut down all existing coal-fired plants by 2030 and replace them with new nuclear plants, which is a waste of money and NOT “win-win”.)
Max,
My assumptions about cost competitive nuclear are:
1. US President (this one or next one) will redirect Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to change its regulatory function so it acts more like the regulators of passenger aircraft – i.e. its focus is on costs and safety, where safety is a cost item, not the only item. For nuclear to be able to do what it could potentially do, we need to remove the emphasis from the current ridiculous demands of near-infinite safety to focus on cost of electricity. (Currently, NRC takes 5 to 10 years to get a design through their approvals process and they can handle only about three at a time over that period. The NRC is n massive thrombosis in the arteries of progress).
2. Once vendors are able to get their designs approved and can start manufacturing small, modular, factory build nuclear power plants (about the size of gas turbine plants), the cost of nuclear will come down.
3. I started with the projected costs of the mPower plant http://www.uxc.com/smr/Library/Design%20Specific/mPower/Presentations/2012%20-%20Reactor%20Design%20Overview.pdf and applied assumptions about the rate of cost reduction per doubling of capacity and the rate capacity could double in replacing coal fired generation as it becomes economic to do so.
[Repost to correct formatting]
docrichard,
Should I take it that your link is a fair indication of the sort of junk you read and that your opinions are based on? I am getting that impression (belief in CAGW and anti nuke are mostly the same people – gullible, easily persuaded by scaremongering).
If you want to demonstrate I have misjudged you, you’ll need to demonstrate that you understand Nordhaus (2008) well enough to be able to debate it. If you want to offer alternatives, they need to be better (all encompassing, consistent methodology for all policy options, accessible to people like me, etc.) than what Nordhaus has done and you need to be able to explain why. At the moment, you clearly know next to nothing about the subject. You have some study to do. There’s no point in us debating the damage function any more until you have done some background reading.
Peter Lang
I looked quickly at the “nuke” link posted by docrichard, but then realized it was not a valid cost comparison of nuclear versus coal but simply an anti-nuke propaganda blurb.
So I gave him a link to a real study.
Hope this helps.
Max
Max,
See my replies to your comments above. I replied at the wrong level so you may not have been notified
Peter Lang
Your attack is extraordinary in the way it avoids engaging with the points I made. If Notdhaus himself says he has been misrepresented, is that point of interest, or is it to be set aside on the grounds that it has been “cut and pasted”? It is highly significant, and something that any scholar should take seriously.
Similarly, my point that Nordhaus uses a computer model is also significant in debate. I do not know what your position on models is, but the line being put out by lukewarmers in the climate sensitivity debate is that only work that is 100% model-free can be accepted. This position allows them to claim that climate sensitivity is low.
Therefore, either you accept models as a valid instrument in approaching the inherent complexities of climate science, in which case you have to engage with the possibility of high ECS, or you reject all models, in which case, you have to reject Nordhaus’ work. There is a third possibility, that you reject some models and reject others, but here you would have to show why you are not simply rejecting those whose results do not match your belief systems.
I did not pretend to have read Nordhaus. I do understand full well however that projection of future costs is very much predicated on the Discount Rate that is set, and that DR is very much based on a value judgment. It’s is a simple fact that exists outside of Nordhaus’ work.
I am not hopeful that you will actually engage with these points – with Nordhaus’ claim that he has been misrepresented, with the question about which models you will and will not accept, and that discount rate and therefore your Damage Function is based on a value judgment.
Which is a pity. There is a huge divergence between our world-views, but I believe that humanity shares an essential unity, and that rational discourse is a means to find that unity. Of course we will not agree, but at least we can find what ground assumptions cause us to disagree. To do this, we have to engage with the content of each others points, not just dismiss the totality of the other’s position as wholly invalid.
doc richard,
You haven’t engaged with the issue about the damage function. That is the issue.
You clearly don”t have much of a clue about the subject. Everything else is a diversion.
No point discussing discount rates and your other diversions at this stage because I am convinced you don’t understand any of the background and are unwilling to learn or listen. A total waste of time.
If you want me to engage with you, you’ll address the points I made in the previous comments. If you don’t there is no point me running after all your diversionary tactics.
doc, I haven’t yet read the debate, but was struck by your comment that: ” I believe that humanity shares an essential unity, and that rational discourse is a means to find that unity.” I see no evidence of the former, and given that the differences between people are driven by the conditioning of their so-called sub-conscious minds, I can’t accept the latter. I hope that your scientific and economic arguments have a sounder basis.
I see the divide between Muslim and Christian, Shia and Sunni, Catholic and Protestant and I see what it leads to. I believe that we share an essential humanity that transcends these false divisions. I see also a division building up between those who believe that our GHGs will damage our climate and those that believe they will not. I believe that rational discourse OUGHT to be able to settle this matter. However, you may well be right – not just because of subconscious influences, but also because of ideological preconceptions.
You may well be right. In which case I am wasting my time here.
Docrichard,
[my bold]
This statement is loaded with statements of your beliefs and value judgments. It is dripping with your ideological beliefs. Your belief in CAGW is a value judgement and an ideological belief. It is not based on rational analysis.
The question I asked and you have avoided addressing and obfuscated is about the damage function. Instead of addressing this you tried to divert to talk about climate sensitivity and then about discount rates. Both are diversions from discussing the damage function. You also introduced a host of other diversions, such as “Nordhaus said he’d been misrepresented“. Everyone has been misrepresented at some stage and often arguments start with making such a statement. You using such a statement as an excuse to avoid avoid addressing the damage function is obfuscation.
To preempt any other such distractions, diversion, obfuscation, here is a list of some of the other uncertain variables involved in doing the economic analyses of the costs and benefits of GHG mitigation policies:
1. Climate sensitivity
2. Damage function
3. Population growth rate
4. GDP growth rate
5. Atmospheric function in carbon cycle
6. Total resources of Fossil fuels
7. Decarbonisation rate function
8. Price of backstop technology
9. Discount rate
You made a comment about impacts of climate change so I asked you about the damage function, not anything else. You are avoiding answering it.
I have now discounted you as having anything objective or rational to say. Your response to Faustino reveals you form your opinions on the basis of ideological beliefs and value judgements. In other words, from a rational perspective, they are valueless opinions and beliefs.
Imagine….
====
Lang’s a nuclear cheerleader. There’s no reasoning with him. Nuclear power is so safe we should build schools around the sites, playgrounds atop the cooling ponds, and use the cooled waste for garden mulch. And that’s only the Chinese start shipping portable nukes using thorium that never need refueling or maintenance and are so small and safe we’ll have nuclear powered school buses the way we have nuclear powered submarines. So rejoice! Salvation is at hand. A world of plenty is at hand brought to you by the magic of safe, clean nuclear fission.
If you don’t agree you’re worth arguing with. Now if you don’t mind I’m going to hang out my “Gone nuclear fishin'” and head out to the lake. Pray that I don’t get sucked into the gate at the dam where the hydroelectric generation is done. That hydro generation is some dangerous evil stuff and I can’t wait until they can ditch it for a nuke.
docrichard
Imo you are wrongly summarizing people’s positions on the use of models in climate science. It is NOT that any analysis needs to free from the use of models. It is that if a model is going to be used, the model in question should need to be shown as being reasonably accurately in providing forecasts that have matched observed conditions. Any analysis using a model should identify the specific characteristics that the model is being used to forecast and the demonstrated accuracy of the model in forecasting that characteristic over different time periods.
Rob, that seems reasonable, but my experience was in discussion with Bishop hill, who simply ruled anything touched by models as out of order.
Peter Lang will no doubt be able to inform you whether Nordhaus’ model complies with your specifications.
Thanks for making a reasonable point. I’m off out of here now.
Bye.
doc richard,
The discussion is about the damage function. It is an input to the economic analyses which are the basis for policy options analysis.
What is the damage function, what is the uncertainty, how do you know, what is the basis for your figures? That is what the discussion is about. It is not about models or climate sensitivity or any of the other variables that are inputs to the economic analyses.
Manacker
Just one simple point: do you think that nuclear power station operators should be obliged to take out full and comprehensive third party liability insurance? Or not?
docrichard
I have no opinion one way or the other regarding your specific question on third party liability insurance requirement for nuclear operators.
I assume you are referring to either the problem of nuclear waste disposal or of disasters, such as the one at Fukushima.
I’d address this question to Peter Lang, who knows more about the specifics of nuclear power generation than I do.
Now as far as “externalities” are concerned, I’d say that the biggest problem here is HOW, by WHOM and on WHAT BASIS these are quantified.
When these are based on subjective assessments, especially by groups or individuals that “have an axe to grind”, I’d say they are next to worthless, and standard economic evaluation criteria and methodologies should be used instead to compare alternates.
Max
docrichard,
This is a diversion. The discussion is about the climate damage function. I and several other knowledgeable commenters have addressed this and other issues related to nuclear power on the recent Mark Lynas thread. Search for my comments here: http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/germanys-energiewende-the-story-so-far/
Also if docrichard wants to get informed about nuclear in an easy to read way, he could spend some time on BraveNewClimate posts and comments:
http://bravenewclimate.com/
Peter and Manacker,
I thought it better to say adieu formally, rather than simply going quiet.
I find participating on this site an unpleasant experience, and I am not going to do it any more. The language you generally use is on the borderline of insulting, and I find no engagement in debate, as shown in the reply above.
As I said to Faustino, I used to believe that communication should be possible between both sides of this debate, but now, sadly, I am not so sure.
docrichard,
You were not prepared to debate the topic – damage function, whish is what you came here to debate. You continually obfuscated. It is a common practice by those more interested in propagating their beliefs than in genuine debate. I recognise it quickly now and respond appropriately as I did to you. You obfuscated from the start.
Peter and manacker
In the energy market, do you agree that the externalities of each modality should be included in the price as far as reasonably possible, or not?
Docrichard.
This is a diversion. It is a standard anti-nuke talking point. If you want to discuss this, I suggest you join the discussion elsewhere, e.g. http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/germanys-energiewende-the-story-so-far/ where people of your persuasion have had their questions dealt with but, like all anti-nuke zealots, don’t acknowledge them.
The short answer is both external benefits and external costs should be included to the extent it is practical and beneficial to do so and is done objectively across all sectors of the economy in a totally impartial way. Nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity and the least cost way to generate low emissions CO2 electricity. Start there and everything below is covered.
Your comments demonstrate you are just another anti-nuke and CAGW activist. A waste of time.
Docrichard,
Wrong!. You understanding is so lacking there is no point until you get up to speed.
I suggest you start by reading the subthread (about 20 commments) starting here: http://judithcurry.com/2013/01/12/open-thread-weekend-6/#comment-285236 , then read and understand Nordhaus. If you’re not prepared to do that there is no basis for discussion.
Amazing climate relationships:
1) There is a roughly linear relationship between sun spot count and global mean surface temperature as shown:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/compress:12/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:1008/normalise
2) There is a nearly perfect linear relationship between Global mean surface temperature and CO2 concentration as shown:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/from:1958/compress:12/normalise/plot/esrl-co2/compress:12/to:1981/normalise
These results show the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is due to the increase in solar activity.
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