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What is the reality of arctic ice this year?
There are some unconfirmed reports it is the second largest in midern times
Warmest November on record. Not sure what the state of the Arctic at the moment is though.
Try http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenew. My interpretation is that Arctic sea ice has turned the corned, and is recovering. Bob Droege thinks that the indications are that Arctic sea ice is still decreasing, with little change. There are all sorts of web pages that give the data reported on a daily basis. You will find some of them on WUWT, sea ice page.
The plot of Arctic temps shows nothing to see here …
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/graphics/tlt/plots/rss_ts_channel_tlt_northern%20polar_land_and_sea_v03_3.png
More alarmism from LOLWot.
According to NASA satellite data, November was the 9th warmest since 1979, and according to NOAA, it was the 16th warmest since 1979. Nice try Lolwot.
After the big arctic sea ice decline in 2007, so-called skeptics could scarcely contain themselves in declaring the “recovery” in 2008 and 2009. This is a case of mistaking the short-term for the long-term. AGW is a long-term effect with the slow accumulation of more energy in the system. 2012 blew 2007’s low put of the water, and here we go again with the “recovery” and “turning the corner” nonsensical talk. The long-term decline continues and the Earth’s climate system continues to accumulate energy and will continue to do so as long as GH gases continue with there climb upward. Basic physics and the accurate long-term perspective will tell you that this Anthropocene has a long way to run.
The Bering Strait finally froze over about two weeks ago. This site pretty much has everything:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
“The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.”
Washington Post, November 2, 1922
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/ArcticTC1880-2010NCEP.png
Ocean temperatures have not changes much. Arctic Sea Ice melts and freezes based on ocean temperatures. Arctic Sea Ice will bounce around, up and down, from year to year, with some years more open and other years less open, while the increased snowfall causes enough ice volume to force the ice to advance again. This warm period with open Arctic will be similar in length to the Roman and Medieval warm periods.
Look at past data for ten thousand years.
http://popesclimatetheory.com/page11.html
Warm, Cold, Warm, Cold, Warm, Cold, etc.
NASA satellite data show November 2013 to be the warmest. GISS data also show it to have been warm. However, HADCRUT4 does not.
Look for the common factor in the US data, government paying for data to be ‘changed’. HADCRUT4 is under the observation of 1000s of pairs of sceptical eyes and those scientists are aiming to keep their jobs when the Great Global Warming Fraud ends, very soon now that the World is demonstrably cooling to the common man.
The UK’s recent storms are exactly what is expected from warm tropical air interacting over short distances, hence the extreme jet stream, and US origin depressions deepening with the warm, humid N. Atlantic air. As for the Arctic, that mixing has led to a temporary halt in its cooling, soon to steepen.
A Merry 1950s weather Christmas to all.
HadCrut4
1 – 2000.83 – .604
2 – 2013.83 – .596
3 – 2004.83 – .594
I’ve read it’s ranked #3, but on wft it’s narrowly the 2nd.
Warm tropical air interacting with cooling Arctic air, just like the 1950s.
In 1956 my family moved to a Welsh military establishment in wild December storms. The anemometer failed at 132 mph. We are seeing a repeat of this weather now as the Arctic freezes once more, a 50 to 70year cycle.
As for CO2-AGW, forget it; the planet self-controls by a massive PID system of which ocean heat content is the I part……
Us engineers know these things whereas physicists are out for the beautiful equation and get nonsense, and meteorologists do’t understand radiative physics and confuse a Radiative Field with an energy flux! Expect continued cooling for 30 years.
“Look for the common factor in the US data, government paying for data to be ‘changed’. HADCRUT4 is under the observation of 1000s of pairs of sceptical eyes”
-AlexM demonstrating motivated reasoning.
If HadCRUT showed warmer no doubt AlexM would be reasoning that it was because of climategate. Instead he falls behind the climategate dataset just because it’s lower (although he won’t admit that)
As for CO2-AGW, forget it; the planet self-controls by a massive PID system of which ocean heat content is the I part……
Surely you’re joking. PID control is the engineering counterpart of the Holy Bible. Half the population can’t imagine how else the world arrived at where we are today, and half the engineers tasked with building an optimal controller can’t imagine any other way of doing it.
Belief in the ocean as the I part of PID control is like belief in a CPU heatsink without a fan. That will protect your CPU for a few minutes, after that God has to step in to keep it alive and well.
Wrong again, Vaughn.
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/corporate/patents/6233146.pdf
I was on the patent committee when this was submitted. There were many like it. What you do to get away from a fan, which is noisy and consumes a lot of power in a laptop, is spread the heat out across a very large area. We did this through heat pipes like the one here which uses passive evaporation and condensation in a hermetically sealed pipe to move heat faster than metal alone. Next we go to great lengths to match CPU clock speed to the tasks being put upon it to minimize heat generation and also save battery power. Me knowing this and you not is part of the reason why Dell is still making history and Sun is a forgetten chapter in history. Merry Christmas.
Right now from IJIS or JAXA, the sea ice extent is third lowest and less than 200K sq. kilometers from the record.
But every year it goes through the narrows twice.
You are cherry picking, Bob. Global sea ice extent is dead nuts average for 1979 – present.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
It seems the Antarctic summer is pretty dang cold this year. Given CO2 is well mixed we need to take into account all sea ice not just the Arctic, right?
You are right David, maybe they are different.
However, the question I was answering was in respect to the Arctic sea ice.
The pole where the sun shines on the ice when it is at minimum.
Ice cools when it melts.
I went to desmogblog, and searched for Curry, and got lots of results. Then I searched for Darriulat, and got nothing. It would seem that Prof. Darriulat’s academic credentials are so excellent, that desmogblog cannot find anything to criticise him for. So, we must conclude that his testimony to the UK Parliamentary Committee on the AR5 are valid and above reproach.
Darriulat (bacpierre) is new to the climate scene; give desmog etc a little time to catch up :)
I have long wondered why we have isolated analysis of sea ice of the two poles. The long term trend of the combined sea ice has remained consistent.
That observation should lead to a study of global trends.
Also, currently there have been reports that the arctic has a much higher number of storms, that is more winds, more break up of ice, than previously expected. Living in Minnesota, variations in storms and dates of lake ice freeze and melt are just a given.
I have often thought of the worlds two main fluid motions being made up of large, slow moving,large momentum ocean gears and light momentum, faster atmospheric gears, all interconnected in a myriad but grand number of ways in which ripples of energy eventually reverberate. however slowly and weakly, throughout the system.
In short, I think the science community should take some time to first look at the whole and then break it down into the parts as opposed to trying first to isolate a single part.,
“Warmest November on record.”
Heh! You wish!
Only if you use NOAA, a dataset that even NASA admits appears to be seriously flawed due to the presence of a massive and totally unbelievable hot spot covering most of Northern Asia.
More credible datasets such as UAH show it as 9th, and RSS 16th.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/19/claim-november-2013-is-the-warmest-ever-but-will-the-real-november-2013-temperature-please-stand-up/
UAH shows the last four years was the warmest 4 year period on record.
Which also means the trend continues of each decade being warmer than the last.
NASA GISS shows November was the warmest on record too.
Only HadCRUT doesn’t, and as we know it was recently found that HadCRUT4 underestimated the warming in the Arctic.
It must be pure coincidence that the warmists seemingly unanimously, choose to believe what’s likely a flawed dataset, but truthfully who cares? The lack of warming marches on, while the climate models, more Wizard of Oz than Oracle at Delphi, increasingly show themselves to be profoundly unequal to the task…
It’s the climate models, stupid.
UAH shows more 21st Century warming than either GISS or NOAA. On a month-to-month basis, they all often disagree. And they all end up at about the same place.
It’s said that UAH is very sensitive to La Nina and El Nino. With respect to those two regimes, the 21st Century has been dominated by La Nina. That would indicate it should be running very cold. It’s likely not running cold because these are among the warmest La Nina events in the record. GISS and NOAA probably are more sensitive ENSO neutral. There again, 21st Century ENSO neutrals, by majority La Nina leaning, have been warm.
Kimooling is getting its clock cleaned.
catweazle666 | December 24, 2013 at 11:28 am |
A Tale of Two Santa’s
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/12/merry-christpiomas.html#more
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSpIl_LjrmE&list=PLscD9cUio5jLRik-A1nXc8x3e_JxX-3CA
Have you done any analyses to qualify or quantify how “credible” datasets are? What methods have you used in your assessment? Are they statistical? Teleological? Formulaic? Efficient? Material? Logical?
Have you kept records of the work you did to establish your confidence in UAH and RSS?
Have you worked out exactly what role biblical numbers employed by Christy and Spencer in intermediate processing of UAH figures played, and on what rational bases they made these decisions?
Because as it stands, I see no more reason to find UAH or RSS on their own “more credible” than either of the two links I’ve offered.
However, Cowtan & Way (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract) have done the necessary work to adapt satellite data to climate in a credible manner.. Which I’d put side-by-side with Neven’s work as more credible than the pentateuch-based approach of UAH unvalidated, or the promises of Santa — who still owes me a pony.
The bulk of the evidence shows that notwithstanding sub-decadal variation, overall AGW and extreme events directly attributable to human caused Forcings continue and rise on a climate scale. It doesn’t take computer models to verify this, and for all the billions of dollars spent to date and efforts of all the counter-science agitprop reactionaries, these facts are not obscured nor is cause to act made less sharply felt.
Dr. Curry has not answered any questions yet about the very obvious changes in cyclone activity, and has joined with the clique of hurricane obfuscationists to keep choosing to focus on where the data is least relevant, rather than to address period doubling of the frequency of medicanes ever fifteen years, the broadening of the area of the creche of tropical cyclones in the two largest oceans with again a doubling every fifteen years, the increase in mean path length of hurricanes and cyclones with a coincident doubling in the mean square root of hurricane path length, the increase in eccentricity of tropical cyclone path, with a shift in the fractal dimension of the typical path, again every fifteen years.
Is it that the mathematics of Chaos Theory is beyond hurricane specialists, or that they just don’t want to see?
Maybe Santer Claus will drop a clue down their chimney for Christmas this year.
@ Bart R | December 24, 2013 at 12:45 pm |
“catweazle666 | December 24, 2013 at 11:28 am |
A Tale of Two Santa’s”
Thanks for more FUD and spin, Bart. Merry Christmas!
HadCrut4 – Least squares trend line; slope = 0.00852868 per year
GISS – Least squares trend line; slope = 0.00986027 per year
UAH – Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0113951 per year
RSS – Least squares trend line; slope = -0.00415612 per year
RSS is not measuring the same thing. Whatever it is that they are measuring, it likely is not global. If it’s not global, it’s about as useless CET.
Here you are Bart – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/blue_horse.jpg.html?sort=3&o=137 – his name is Shibboleth.
The energy content of the planet can only be understood in terms of data.
Here’s one – http://lasp.colorado.edu/data/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/images/tim_level3_tsi_24hour_640x480.png – showing that we are at the peak of the 11 year solar cycle. Which will decline over the course of the decade.
Daisy was awake at 1.30am with the sniffles – now she wont wake up and I can’t open my pressies. Damn.
Hey BartR
If I were you I’d wait for different year to link hurricanes and global warming.
Hurricane season ends, slowest since 1966
More at link above.
David Springer | December 25, 2013 at 12:13 pm |
You mean, 2013 is a hurricane Black Swan, an extreme outlier heralding a sudden new phase as a system deteriorates?
Ever see a car fishtail?
More power than traction, the tail swings wildly one way then the other. From a standing start, just a bit showy. At full speed, the start of a break-up rollover.
Stop pointing distractedly at the stuff you don’t understand and don’t know how to interpret, and look at the simpler cases. Mediterranean hurricane events used to be one every fifteen years, as far as history can say. Then a half century ago, that rate doubled. At the end of the fifteen year period, it doubled again. The past thirteen years have seen seven medicanes, and two years left in the fifteen year period. If the fifteen years after that see a medicane a year, that period doubling pattern proves the region is spiraling into chaos. Don’t take comfort from Black Swans.
Didier Sornette warns here of confusing black swans and dragon-kings – a cardinal error and one of many from Bart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_eFjLZqXt8
Let’s see what the IPCC has to say.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_eFjLZqXt8
Not much obviously.
I do have one complaint Judith…
You done taken Christ outta Christmas!
Merry Christmas
Joe
CO2 rise this year looks to be above 2ppm, possibly as much as 2.5ppm. Inline then with CO2 rise accelerating.
Murray Salby suggests this is a sign that global warming is accelerating.
“Murray Salby suggests this is a sign that global warming is accelerating.”
Yeah, that must be why there hasn’t been any for a full Santer and climbing.
Oh, I’m sorry, it’s hiding where we haven’t got any means of measuring it isn’t it?
The ocean is indeed gaining gaining heat catweazle. This is shown by independent lines of evidence: both by argo buoys and continuing sea level rise.
It’s both exciting science and also quite alarming. You can read more about this here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/12/the-global-temperature-jigsaw/
I have a fantastic perpetual motion machine you may be interested in buying too.
It’s plateauing just like the temperature lolwot. 2010s will be lower than 2000s, under 2 ppm/year in average.
2010s are already averaging about 2.3ppm year
The teens will be hotter than the oughts, and ACO2 growth per year will hone in averaging 2.5 plus. It’s unavoidable. Temperature, absent even a hint of El Nino, is going up at a rate of .7C per decade.
They have no explanation for why other than to close their eyes and cover up their ears. According to their notions, it should be going down like crazy; instead, it going up.
Dessite an array of butt kicking natural obstacles:
1. napping sun
2. a sun with a spotless record
3. La Nina dominance
4. no sign of El Nino
5. colder than hell PDO
LMAO.
Catweazle, don’t fall back on the old ploy of invoking the Santer Clause!
Merry Christmas from Oz. It’s wizard here!
BREAKING NEWS
!!! Judith Curry sustains wonderful weblog !!!
Legions of Curry fans sing her praises
Admirer says: “Contributes powerfully to *MORE* discourse”
It’s a pleasure to be among the many who say: “Thank you for hard work and committed openness in sustaining the wonderful forum that is Climate Etc for another year, Judith Curry!”
Oh heck… these Christmas-color “smilies” are *tough* !
Thank you again, Judith Curry!
The Green and Red is a nice touch!
The diarrhea pink not so much!!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Fan and all the other denizens.
The pink is more malox than diarrhea I’d say, but “A” for effort….
Happy Holidays to the indefatigable climate warrior known as Fan :-)
The artic is looking just fine http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/satellite/index.uk.php
Listened to the interview. excellent! Should be part of the school curriculum UK,
Looks like the Arctic is currently running hot. It’s conditions like this that have led to the sharp decline in sea ice in recent decades.
Running hot? My buds in Iqaluit, tell me the temp has been running on the cold side of normal for most of the fall/early winter. I’ll tell them that Lolwot figure they are in a heat wave. I’m sure they be excited as all get out.
If they went further North they would encounter a heat wave according to DMI
When cold rushes out of the arctic, warm rushes in.
She runs hot for you, lolwot? Merry Christmas.
Storm Disruption Across The UK
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25498335
not snowstorms mind, not a drop of snow in sight. December running about 2C warmer than normal so far.
Surely 2.01°C more than normal lolwot, showing what happens when this all-important threshold is breached.
Here’s what Richard Lindzen said in his submission to the House of Commons SciTech committee published last week:
How God might help us in such a predicament, where the privileged are up to such tricks, might have to be counter-intuitive. Helpless baby in obscure, occupied country, that kind of thing. Happy Christmas all.
How dare us for wanting clean cities not clogged up with carbon pollution!
Richard Lindzen should go over to China and remind them not to bother dealing with their smog problem!
We all agree on cleaner air lolwot – including in the billion or more homes without electricity where burning wood produces terrible infant mortality. What we also need for next year is to clear the air in the climate debate, so that such slights of mind, confusing the uncontroversial with what is being done to blight such households, purportedly in the name of enhanced greenhouse theory, areas where Lindzen has spent much of his life pointing to the dire implications. That’s where and why divine help is needed. The blessings are for you too.
I don’t live in a city because of pollution – not to mention that smaller populations allow for real communities to evolve.
But the situation in Port Moresby for instance is much worse than Brisbane – for instance – despite the much smaller population. It is a function of relative affluence in many ways rather than merely fossil fuel use. Economic growth is the key to improving many things – and technological innovation will solve the problem entirely.
What we need is for developing countries to lead the way in the transition from fossil carbon energy to a sustainable energy future.
Developed nations delaying the development of sustainable energy tech forces the developing world to invest in ever more in dirty carbon sources like coal that have no future.
I’m in an argumentative, yet humble mood lolwot so let me first correct something I myself wrote. It isn’t a billion homes without electricity of course – in 2008 the IEA estimated that 1.5 billion or 22% of the world’s population were without this blessing we take for granted and projected that total reducing to 1.3 billion by 2030. What is the average size of household for these people? A very interesting question that I don’t have the answer to but a billion homes was clearly way too much. My apologies.
What you’ve done here is to say what these 1.4-1.5 billion people, and those policy makers who have a duty of care for them, need to do, and you haven’t even mentioned that there are gross tradeoffs involved in terms of their health and longevity. What do you think they themselves would say if offered a clear choice between the cheapest possible electricity through a coal-fired power station in their area and much more expensive options?
But what you’ve also done is distract from Lindzen’s passionate critique of the climate status quo among the privileged elite. So here’s the whole paragraph:
It’s the focus changing all the time but always leading to the same message that those outside the elite are a blight on the planet that is wholly inconsistent with the story of Christmas. The massacre of the infants is part of that story for a reason: it’s what elites do when their power is challenged. We need that realism about the dark side in 2014 so that the light shines all the more brightly.
Iolwot
Don’t worry the uk often has very mild winters. The myth of snowy Christmases came from charles dickens who was born during an exceptionally cold period but then experienced numerous mild winters.
I wrote about his life and climate times in this seasonal piece here
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/bah-humbug/
Tonyb
Almost exactly two years ago, I had the good fortune to do a paper-reading tour that took me to Singapore, Xiamen and then Chengdu. Going to China had always been high on my bucket list. Chengdu was especially wonderful, since my host there was a former grad student who knew me well enough to know that I wanted the full Anthony Bourdain foodie treatment. And did we eat!…But that’s a story for another time.
Have you seen those western documentaries with shivering workers in unheated Chinese factories? Well guess what? The great majority of Chengdu is unheated–apartments, restaurants, you name it. Most everyone in Chengdu freezes their butt off during the winter months. Even the university I spoke at… the seminar room was entirely unheated. A german I was there with had to bow out because he caught a chill. So it’s not just those poor factory workers who freeze while at work. Everyone’s freezing together, pretty much everywhere in Chengdu, for those couple of winter months. I met a woman who told me her hands were permanently damaged from her years of writing, typing, etc at the cold universities. I thought of Bob Cratchet.
When you consider this (and I’m sure other things like it) you realize that however polluted China is today due to slaking its thirst for energy, it still has a lot of ground to cover in this regard. And it leaves me a bit astonished.
Tony, thanks. I’m a big fan of Charles Dickens.
You wrote: “The air itself,” wrote a French colonel, “was thick with tiny icicles which sparkled in the sun but cut one’s face drawing blood.” Another Frenchman recalled that “it frequently happened that the ice would seal my eyelids shut.”
Heck, Tony, that’s nothing. Back on the farm I remember winters so cold I had to run backwards while peeing just to keep the stream from freezing back up to my willie. Our Jersey cow, Bossie, turned into an ice cream machine. Birds froze in flight, crashed to the ground, and broke into little pieces.
As lolwot points out and China illustrates an economy based on coal is not sustainable and therefore we must move to cleaner alternative energy sources as rapidly as possible. This is true irrespective of the effects of CO2 emissions on climate change.
Actually, Lolwot, I’ve just had telephoned on-the-spot reports of sleet from Tynemouth, on the North Sea. That implies snow on the Northumberland hills.
Tony, we usually had White Christmases on Tyneside. Often first snow in November, and surprisingly often, it snowed on Christmas Eve after a no-snow period.
Lolwot and Joseph, there is no reasonable prospect for at least some decades of the fuel needs of poor countries being met by non-fossil fuel sources. If you promote that alternative, show us how it would come about.
Joseph, bad news for you. The sun is not sustainable either.
Max_OK | December 24, 2013 at 3:15 pm |
“Back on the farm I remember winters so cold I had to run backwards while peeing just to keep the stream from freezing back up to my willie.”
Sure it wasn’t because the chickens thought you were offering them mealworm?
“Back on the farm I remember winters so cold I had to run backwards while peeing just to keep the stream from freezing back up to my willie.”
Who says science is dead?
Andrew
Real risk of a Maunder minimum ‘Little Ice Age’ says leading scientist, 28 October 2013, by Paul Hudson (BBC):
Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.
He found 24 different occasions in the last 10,000 years when the sun was in exactly the same state as it is now – and the present decline is faster than any of those 24.
Based on his findings he’s raised the risk of a new Maunder minimum from less than 10% just a few years ago to 25-30%.
Climate scientists don’t think we’re heading for another “Little Ice Age”
From time to time, we’re told by parts of the media that earth is headed for another ‘little ice age’. Today was the turn of The Daily Express, in an article urging us to “get ready” for erratic and extreme weather in the UK.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/10/no,-climate-scientists-don%E2%80%99t-think-we%E2%80%99re-heading-for-another-little-ice-age/
Lookwood: “The likely reduction in the warming by 2100 [if a maunder minimum occurs] is found to be between 0.06 and 0.1 [degrees Celsius], a very small fraction of the projected anthropogenic warming.”
Mike Lockwood should know better. Very little is known about the feedbacks – other than that an amplification factor is involved.
Since irradiance variations are apparently minimal, changes in the Earth’s climate that seem to be associated with changes in the level of solar activity—the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice age for example – would then seem to be due to terrestrial responses to more subtle changes in the Sun’s spectrum of radiative output. This leads naturally to a linkage with terrestrial reflectance, the second component of the net sunlight, as the carrier of the terrestrial amplification of the Sun’s varying output. Much progress has also been made in determining this difficult to measure, and not-so-well-known quantity. We review our understanding of these two closely linked, fundamental drivers of climate. http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/literature/Goode_Palle_2007_JASTP.pdf
Lockwood does know better. He’s an expert. He hardly gives his opinion on the matter lightly. Recent studies have found that volcanoes, not the Sun are the primary cause of the little ice age.
… volcanoes leading to an ice age lasting 300 years? Lockwood certainly does not believe that.
0.1 deg C? Heh.
… erasing perhaps all global warming since 1950.
Lockwood is another one of those climate scientists that understands the importance of statistical (data-based) climate models. Consider the paper M. Lockwood, “Solar influence on global and regional climates,” Surveys in geophysics, vol. 33, no. 3–4, pp. 503–534, 2012.
This chart from that paper superimposed with the CSALT model.
http://imageshack.com/a/img855/1641/nms.gif
It’s not that difficult, skeptics. You can do it to!
The de Vries solar cycle is currently at its “maximum,” explaining why temperatures have risen since 1870, but leveled off after 1998. However, this means that as solar activity starts to decrease, global temperatures will follow.
“Through [the de Vries solar cycle’s] influence the temperature will decrease until 2100 to a value like the one of the last ‘Little Ice Age’ 1870,” the scientists wrote.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/05/report-scientists-predict-a-century-of-global-cooling/#ixzz2oQECThvc
Wagathons
” erasing all global warming since 1950″
Cet is a very useful leading temperature proxy for the Nothern Hemisphere
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
As you say , back to the 1950’s….
Tonyb
… with cooling lasting through to the end of the century?
They do all of the wild predictions of what causes temperature ups and downs without considering what Albedo contributes.
Ice Extent is less in a warm period.
Ice Extent is more in a cold period.
They believe this is a result.
They are wrong, the ice extent is a cause.
Tony,
It’s totally ridiculous to use a proxy when much more complete data is available. If there’s a difference it proves only that the proxy was bad.
Yes, why use CET when a temperature series such as GISS is available?
Really Pekka?
After reviewing evidence in both the latest global data (HadCRUT4) and the longest instrumental record, Central England Temperature, a revised picture is emerging that gives a consistent attribution for each multidecadal
episode of warming and cooling in recent history, and suggests that the anthropogenic global warming trends might have been overestimated by a factor of two in the second half of the 20th century. A recurrent multidecadal oscillation is found to extend to the preindustrial era in the 353-y Central England Temperature and is likely an internal variability related to the A
tlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), possibly caused by the thermohaline circulation variability. The perspective of a long record helps in quantifying the contribution from internal variability, especially one with a period so long that it is often confused with secular trends in shorter records. Solar contribu-
tion is found to be minimal for the second half of the 20th century and less than 10% for the first half. The underlying net anthropogenic warming rate in the industrial era is found to have been steady since 1910 at 0.07 –
0.08 °C/decade, with superimposed AMO related ups and downs that included the early 20th century warming, the cooling of the 1960s and 1970s, the accelerated warming of the 1980s and 1990s, and the recent slowing of the warming rates. Quantitatively, the recurrent multidecadal internal variability, often underestimated in attribution studies, accounts for 40% of the observed recent 50-y warming trend. http://depts.washington.edu/amath/research/articles/Tung/journals/Tung_and_Zhou_2013_PNAS.pdf
One of the more interesting papers form 2013.
I’d regard the explicit warming rate as a highball estimate – but the usefulness of a long instrument record in the CET is obvious.
Yea – it’s pressy time.
Looking at the longer history CET tells something extra, but when we compare years with an extensive coverage of the Northern hemisphere (need not be complete, only very extensive in comparison to CET), any observed difference tells only on the limitations of CET as a proxy for the wider area.
Lockwood is looking at ice core data over the last 10,000 years and comes to the conclusion that warming and cooling is related to solar activity.
Pekka and web
Sorry, I didn’t realise that GISS went back to 1659. Could you provide a link to it? No, of course you can’t , which is why a data set such as CET that goes back a further 220 years is useful. None the least as it illustrates that giss from 1850 is merely a staging post and not the starting post for rising temperatures.
Tonyb
… that overall have been falling over the last 10,000 years.
Tony,
My comment was prompted by your reference to 1950s.
Perhaps I didn’t understand what you meant by that.
Waggy is scaring the crap out of me.
The meanderin’ mini took on 280 ppm. Not the the same this time.
In the words of Kristen Byrnes, Ponder the Maunder.
@tonyb: which is why a data set such as CET that goes back a further 220 years is useful.
Tony, if regional data for a mere 0.1% of the planet is useless, how much more useless (less useful?) is your regional data for 0.01% of the planet?
Vaughan
There are numerous scientists from Hubert lamb to Phil jones and organisations frm de bilt to the met office who see a good correlation. It is because of our geographical position with all the attendant weather influences that as an island we receive.
I saw scientists from the met office a few weeks ago and they are providing tacit support for my writing of an article to be submitted for peer review along the lines of ” is cet indicatve of historic northern hemisphere temperatures?”
Tonyb
Vaughan Pratt, “Tony, if regional data for a mere 0.1% of the planet is useless, how much more useless (less useful?) is your regional data for 0.01% of the planet?”
What is “useless” appears to be subject to confirmation bias. Best and CET both indicate that there is much more going on that CO2. Plus prior to the 1950s data is increasing biased toward the “civilized” northern hemisphere and “old world” scientific revolution. You end up with an instrumental Ambrosia, the ultimate fruit salad, trying to create a “Global” record when the utility of “global” anomaly is not all that impressive. Climate science is like starting off on the wrong path and then going down hill from there.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/12/impact-of-asymmetry-on-forcing.html
There is a lot more interesting stuff going on that the GHE is poorly equipped to explain.
Vaughan Pratt | December 25, 2013 at 6:38 am |
“Tony, if regional data for a mere 0.1% of the planet is useless, how much more useless (less useful?) is your regional data for 0.01% of the planet?”
Hey Vaughn, speaking of useless, how are you coming along with your attempt to reproduce Wood’s experiment?
http://boole.stanford.edu/WoodExpt/
Maybe you should try putting a pane of glass above both boxes like Wood did in order to equalize the effect of the glass absorbing near infrared from the sun and rock salt not absorbing it. This is why you got a higher temperature at the top of the box with the glass pane – the glass is absorbing near infrared and heating the glass which then heats the air at the top of the box. The reason you got almost no difference in temperature between the two boxes at their bottom is because the greenhouse effect doesn’t do jack diddly squat. Mix the air in the boxes to prove it.
We know you won’t do it because you never had any intention of proving Wood was right you only wanted to prove him wrong and failed miserably at it. We got your number.
Pekka Pirilä | December 24, 2013 at 3:30 pm |
Tony,
It’s totally ridiculous to use a proxy when much more complete data is available. If there’s a difference it proves only that the proxy was bad.
WebHubTelescope (@whut) | December 24, 2013 at 3:59 pm |
Yes, why use CET when a temperature series such as GISS is available?
———————————————————————-
Everyone even modestly well informed in this debate knows that CET is the longest running instrumental temperature series in the world besting any other by about 200 years. What that means is there’s no need to fold, spindle, mutilate, and homogenize it to get a consistent record and there’s no need to resort to tree rings and crap like that to determine temperature before 1850. As well, everyone who opens their yap in this debate should also realize that because of England being surrounded by the Altlantic ocean it is an excellent proxy for global average temperature owing to the fact that the ocean’s thermal inertia isn’t easily moved by the vagaries of weather. A million warmist climate boffing clowns and sycophants will blithely use air bubbles trapped in Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets as a proxy for global average temperature before the instrument era but then balk at using CET? Non sequitur. You boys can’t have your cake and eat it too.
And as always, write that down.
Pekka Pirilä | December 24, 2013 at 4:07 pm |
Looking at the longer history CET tells something extra, but when we compare years with an extensive coverage of the Northern hemisphere (need not be complete, only very extensive in comparison to CET), any observed difference tells only on the limitations of CET as a proxy for the wider area.
—————————————————————————
BS. What it tells you is that instrument record composed of thousands of temperature stations, land-only NH-only, have been adjusted, corrected, and homogenized into an expected result. There’s simply too much room for biased decisions in data processing when stitching all those station records together into one result. CET is far more trustworthy. Write that down.
Gulf Coast Refiners Entering A Golden Age
Dec. 23, 2013 6:12 PM ET | 9 comments | Includes: BNO, HFC, MPC, OIL, SCO, USO, VLO, XOM
By David Foulke
The evolution of new horizontal drilling and fracking techniques has revolutionized production of oil in the U.S.
(click to enlarge)
The huge volume of light sweet production coming out of the shales, such as the mammoth Bakken, have widened the spreads between domestically produced crude (WTI or LLS) and international crude (Brent). The graph below depicts several dynamics at work.
(click to enlarge)
There are several things going on in this graph which charts US domestic prices (both WTI and LLS) against international crude prices (Brent). Both domestic indexes, the WTI and the LLS, both currently trade at ~$10 per barrel discount to Brent, representing international prices. Note that the LLS, which previously traded near parity with Brent (and at times a steep premium to WTI) now trades at a discount to Brent. This comparatively recent development is being driven by increasing supply of light sweet crude from the shales. This huge volumes of crude from shale production have also curtailed oil imports:
The above graph shows overall crude imports. What it doesn’t show is that most of the decrease is due to reductions in light sweet imports which have essentially ceased in the gulf coast. If there are huge volumes of light sweet crude coming from the Bakken and elsewhere, why would you need to import any?
Here is where things really get interesting …
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1913941-gulf-coast-refiners-entering-a-golden-age
Depleting our oil and gas reserves rather than buying from foreigners seems like a good long-range plan for making our descendants dependent on foreigners. Oh well, what have future generations of Americans ever done for us ?
You are thinking like a socialist Max_OK. Committing a crime called “planning”.
We don’t need no planning. We should assume that whatever is good for short-term profit must inevitably produce the best outcome and take that as a matter of faith.
Max_OK
I think we should mostly burn foreign oil first and save our fossil fuel until later.
That could give us more time to get the politics and science right before we do stupid stuff that will hurt more than help.
lolwot said:
“We don’t need no planning. We should assume that whatever is good for short-term profit must inevitably produce the best outcome and take that as a matter of faith.”
_____
OK, but just for me. Otherwise, i agree with what Herman Alexander Pope said.
So guys, how exactly would an owner of a natural resource choose to extract it, temporally speaking, in order to maximize the present discounted value of that resource? Show your work.
There is no solid answer to your question because you must make assumptions in order to address it. If you assume there will be no alternative economically and efficaciously equivalent source of energy in the future, and you further assume that production of this energy source will decline in some yet-to-be-defined period; then energy extraction should be deferred. But those assumptions might not pan out for you.
If you wait and some other source of energy is developed, say uranium and thorium nuclear reactors large and small, then the decision to wait will be mighty costly.
So, IMO, produce it now as fast as is economically feasible.
Jim, actually I meant the question for the guys who are convinced they know exactly what an owner will do.
But for those who want to play the game, imagine the owner has an expected price sequence for all future dates. Characterize the optimal extraction policy in terms of this expected future price sequence.
NW – I think you may be looking for a net present value calculation, but I’m not totally sure.
NW, “But for those who want to play the game, imagine the owner has an expected price sequence for all future dates. Characterize the optimal extraction policy in terms of this expected future price sequence.”
There are a few ways to approach that, but with a loose cannon like the EPA, as fast as possible is the only answer. Regulator uncertainty is one expensive SOB.
If you like your reliable electric grid you can keep your reliable electric grid. Period.
================
NW – past performance is no guarantee of future performance of course but how have people done who owned mineral rights to fossil fuel and sold them early done compared to those who held onto the right and sold later?
Lots of ideas and questions. Yes Cap, Sovereign risk is an SOB, and especially so these days. To clarify a little bit, I’m really thinking of the behavior of major, you might say ultimate, owners of the rights, who always sit atop much more carbon than they supply at any given time. Perhaps some of that sitting occurs simply because they can’t extract it and ship to market any faster than they already are, but my guess is much of the sitting is determined very carefully, looking at futures markets to get information about likely price paths into the future, and (of course) also considering the degree to which those futures prices fluctuate (an element of both risk and opportunity in the future). And of course sovereign risk to the extent it is present. And many other things. We’re in a period where a lot more capacity is being brought on line here and probably the entire futures price process has been adjusting downward because of that–at least for deliveries in North America. The major owners will be rejuggling their expected extraction and sales paths because of that.
All I meant to suggest with my question is that the profit-maximizing strategy of an extractor/marketer/shipper is complex and that “short-term profit maximization” is so undescriptive of what a big oil company does that it’s probably a pretty worthless idea.
@
NW | December 25, 2013 at 1:21 pm |
“All I meant to suggest with my question is that the profit-maximizing strategy of an extractor/marketer/shipper is complex and that “short-term profit maximization” is so undescriptive of what a big oil company does that it’s probably a pretty worthless idea.”
Not disagreeing with your overall point at all. But I was working in the oil field in the 80s. When it was looking like the price of oil was going to come back down during that period, one company ramped up production to the point that the equipment was overwhelmed. The oil was literally swirling in the storage tank due to the high flow and the lid to the tank would be blown back with force, slamming against the tank when the latch was sprung. They wanted us to treat the oil, meaning to drop out the entrained water, in the oil in the tank before it went to the LACT unit to be metered. (Water has to be below a certain percentage to be saleable.) A crazy time in the oil field.
But should North Western Europe be heading for a new “little ice age”, there could be far reaching political implications – not least because global temperatures may fall enough, albeit temporarily, to eliminate much of the warming which has occurred since the 1950s. (Ibid.)
Judith Lean recommends the use of statistical (data-based) climate models:
http://imageshack.com/a/img811/1236/cqjd.jpg
These models are able to generate excellent agreement with the global temperature time series :
http://imageshack.com/a/img607/3292/52m.gif
That is CSALT, which is a home-brew. Can’t wait to see what the climate scientists have in store for the new year. Fun stuff, not boring.
Judith Lean uses a linear scaling method to account for temperature variability due to significant factors. ENSO, volcanoes, greehouse gases and solar variability.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/LeanandRind20102_zpsa090fb72.png.html?sort=3&o=15
It can clearly be seen that the ‘projection’ diverges from reality on even a short period. The projection in fact looks nothing like the recent history. One of the issues is that there seem to be secular changes in cloud radiative forcing in the relevant period.
e.g. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=48
Another problem is in forecasting ENSO (and indeed the relevant Pacific state) over any period of interest. Statistically the current cool Pacific state seems likely to last for another 10 to 30 years.
A third problem is in predicting future solar states and relating those to obscure amplification mechanisms in the Earth system – as briefly discussed above. The Palle paper linked above is worth reading.
A fourth problem is the impossibility of predicting future volcanoes.
So while I found it an interesting method some years ago – I am afraid the shortfalls in data availability were apparent even then.
Models such as CSALT generate excellent agreement with the global temperature time series :
http://imageshack.com/a/img607/3292/52m.gif
Take a look at the intricate nature of the time series, filtered only to remove the seasonal noise. Even if this was only a heuristic, based on some arbitrary waveforms, it would be useful. But since the model is only based on known forcing factors, it has incredible explanatory power.
I use my own 3 parameter model:
https://sites.google.com/site/climateadj/cmip5-tas-emulation
Give me a couple of more parameters for ENSO and I can probably produce an R^2 similar to CSALT. Most exponential decay type models can.
Merry Christmas everyone!
AJ,
Give it a try! It will tell you that TCR is about 2C. Or is that not what you want to hear?
BTW, this is a comparison where both model and data was given a 2 year exponential smoother:
http://imageshack.com/a/img811/1350/9h6.gif
AJ said:
Can you get something that good?
Webby,
“Give it a try! It will tell you that TCR is about 2C. Or is that not what you want to hear?”
I get about the same thing. A little more if the doubling is over ~200 years.
“Can you get something that good?”
Maybe… My residuals look pretty much like ENSO, but I could be wrong. More parameters make for both a better fit and a better chance of spurious results.
What happens to the coefficient on ln(co2) when you add another (roughly) monotone-increasing time series to the right-hand-side? How about a quadratic in time?
This isn’t economics so why would I want to do that?
On Planet Web, the strictly mathematical properties and strictly mathematical foibles of OLS applied to nonexperimental data don’t apply. These properties and foibles have nothing to do with economics per se, Web, so you’re just making stuff up to scare the children.
I wouldn’t listen to an economist when it comes to physics.
You simply can’t stand the fact that free energy is composable to first-order
and that variational principles can be used to decompose the thermodynamics into its constituent parts:
http://contextearth.com/2013/11/21/variational-principles-in-thermodynamics/
Physics is fun, not boring, and should never scare children.
James Annan: “There’s so little interesting stuff going on in climate science these days.”
JC comments: My reaction at the close of 2013 is that the climate change topic is seeming a bit boring
“I am a physicist, and you are a not(physicist), so I don’t have to listen to you.” Swell. Very persuasive. As for what I can’t stand, it’s OLS gone wild.
Okey Dokey, so that even a physicist can get it.
Suppose I run this simplified version of your regression with your data:
($) Temp = B*L6[ln(co2)] + u, where u is a mean zero random error.
When I do that, I get these results:
Root MSE = 0.15, R-Square = 0.760
the estimate of B, B-hat = 3.14, and
the standard error of B-hat, se(B-hat) = 0.044.
Now suppose that model ($) is correctly specified (it contains everything it should–nothing has been left out) and suppose we take 3.14 to be the true value of Beta (rather than just an estimate). Also suppose we’re willing to let a normal variate w with zero mean and standard deviation 0.15 (the RMSE) stand in for the mean zero
error u. Then this is the DGP (data-generating process):
($DGP) = Temp = 3.14*L6[ln(co2)] + w, where w ~ N(0,0.15).
Taking your 1601 observations of L6[ln(co2)], I create 10,000 simulated samples–each with 1601 observations–by employing this DGP. Then I run the following regression on all 10,000 of those samples, and collect from them the estimates B-hat:
($+time,time^2) Temp = B*L6[ln(co2)] + T1*time + T2*time^2 + u.
That is, I add time and its square to the model ($). They are not part of the true DGP in the simulated samples, by construction. So, what is the consequence of
adding the quadratic in time? Does it bias the estimates of B? Here is the distribution of B-hat recovered from the 10,000 regressions ($+time,time^2):
mean of B-hat = 3.1349 (True B in DGP = 3.14)
centiles B-hat
99%……. 4.05639
95%……. 3.78664
90%……. 3.64645
75% Q3…. 3.40159
50% Median 3.13354
25% Q1…. 2.86865
10%……. 2.62704
5%…….. 2.47892
1%…….. 2.21043
The simulation tells me that if $DGP is the true DGP, then adding a quadratic in time should not bias estimates of B: Their expectation will be almost equal to the true value in the DGP.
So, what happens when I run the model ($+time,time^2) using your data (your actual temperature series and your actual L6[ln(co2)]? I get B-hat = 0.842, with se(B-hat) = 0.39392. That’s way, way different from 3.14, and it’s completely outside the simulated 99% range of estimates above. Therefore, I can conclude with very high confidence that ($DGP) is not the true DGP in the real world.
This entire analysis goes through for this model of yours:
($$) Temp = B*L6[ln(co2)] + A1*L6[tsi] +
A2*L24[aero] + A3*L6[soi] + A4*L60[lod] + u,
where u is a mean zero random error.
Doing everything as above, I get your estimate of B, B-hat = 3.09, and an RMSE = 0.12, and I construct simulated samples where ($$) gives me $$DGP informed by those estimates. Here is the distribution of estimated B-hat (when I incorrectly include the quadratic in time) from the Monte Carlo:
mean of B-hat = 3.0933 (True B in DGP = 3.09)
centiles B-hat
99%……. 3.93211
95%……. 3.67611
90%……. 3.55174
75% Q3…. 3.33218
50% Median 3.09172
25% Q1…. 2.85264
10%……. 2.64004
5%…….. 2.50997
1%…….. 2.25619
So now we run your model again, with your data, but we add the quadratic in time to it:
($$+time,time^2) Temp = B*L6[ln(co2)] + A1*L6[tsi] +
A2*L24[aero] + A3*L6[soi] + A4*L60[lod] + T1*time + T2*time^2 + u,
where u is a mean zero random error.
When we do this, we get B-hat = 1.23754 and se(B-hat) = 0.35. Again, this is nowhere near the simulated distribution of B-hat estimates that should obtain, when we add the quadratic in time to your model ($$)–if of course the model is correctly specified.
I conclude that ($$) is badly misspecified.
This is called specification-testing. It’s important when you apply OLS to any sort of naturally occurring data; you need to lean on your preferred model in various ways to see whether you can break it. Or as someone said, “[bend] over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong” which I don’t see you doing at all, and I think it was a physicist who said that… can’t think of his name… Oh well.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” Our beliefs always seem correct to us — after all, that’s why they’re our beliefs — so we have to work extra-hard to try to prove them wrong. This means constantly looking for ways to test them against reality and to think of reasons our tests might be insufficient.
When I think of the most rational people I know, it’s this quality of theirs that’s most pronounced. They are constantly trying to prove themselves wrong — they attack their beliefs with everything they can find and when they run out of weapons they go out and search for more. The result is that by the time I come around, they not only acknowledge all my criticisms but propose several more I hadn’t even thought of.
And when I think of the least rational people I know, what’s striking is how they do the exact opposite: instead of viciously attacking their beliefs, they try desperately to defend them. They too have responses to all my critiques, but instead of acknowledging and agreeing, they viciously attack my critique so it never touches their precious belief… …and now for something completely different… Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.
― Richard P. Feynman
There are too many physicists in climate science – they understand little about statistics and nothing about Earth sciences – but there are a few exceptions. Webby isn’t a physicist and certainly isn’t an exception.
NW, for some reason pearls before swine pops into my head. Have a happy holiday and a prosperous new year.
Come up with a physical mechanism for a power-law forcing other than the 97% well-understood GHG theory and you may have something. As it is, you are in the land of the 3% detritus.
Let’s look more closely at all the statistical misdirection perpetrated by NW.
Easy enough to put in time and time^2 power-law terms into the CSALT model. I find it makes no difference. The CSALT model discriminates the ln(CO2) term as a much stronger factor than either time or time^2.
Treating the ln(CO2) term by itself, the c factor
Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
c 3.081e+00 1.572e-02 195.923 < 2e-16 ***
In the following z is the time^2 term and n is the linear time term
Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
c 2.882e+00 9.909e-02 29.086 < 2e-16 ***
z 1.057e-08 1.578e-08 0.670 0.503143
n 3.422e-05 1.221e-05 2.803 0.005126 **
So the z and n terms may modify the ln(CO2) term slightly but this is inconsequential BECAUSE YOU STILL NEED A MECHANISM FOR POWER-LAW FORCING. The CO2 control knob is as close as we have to a forcing that follows the secular trend.
NW
The physicist was Richard Feynman, Caltech commencement address, 1974.
http://www.ar-tiste.com/feynman-on-honesty.html
I knew Phil, God rest his soul, and did volunteer work for Dembski for several years.
Web, are you demeaning t and t^2? If you fit without an intercept (which I think you do), all variables need to be demeaned (I mean subtracted from their sample mean values, where the ‘sample’ means the observations used in your regression). I demeaned mine.
It’s too bad Web’s question about my IQ has been disappeared by Santa’s helpers. Now that Roger Miller post of mine makes no sense at all. Oh well.
It is still a lot of fun – and the perfect reply.
The CSALT model points strongly to the existence of a log(CO2) sensitivity to the global temperature series, as I demonstrated by introducing t and t^2 variants — of course these had virtually no effect, even though onlookers swore that it would.
Webster, “The CSALT model points strongly to the existence of a log(CO2) sensitivity to the global temperature series,”
It would because there is, unfortunately the response is to log(CO2 equivalent) not log(CO2) and the CO2 equivalent includes H2O that would vary with “non-anthro” impacts. Since you are so insistent that SOI is on the verge of reversion to mean even though there is plenty of evidence that it is not on reasonable time scales, you are double counting some factors while discounting others.
We all know that CO2 acts as the control knob, so the effective log(C2) sensitivity already includes other GHGs such as H2O. Otherwise the log sensitivity would only be about 1/3 (from current observational data) to 1/5 (according to Lacis and Hansen) of what the effective controlled sensitivity actually is.
Web,
Here is the entire regression I get when ALL variables are demeaned, which is exactly what I report:
regressor, est, se(est)
l6co2 1.23754 0.35142
l6tsi 0.02743 0.01168
l24aero -2.22104 0.16358
l6soi -0.05681 0.00273
l60lod -0.06443 0.00335
time -0.14400 0.03053
time^2 0.00004 0.00001
Here is the entire regression I get when time and time^2 are NOT demeaned but all the others ARE demeaned, which is similar to what you last reported:
regressor, est, se(est)
l6wco2 2.80004 0.11302
l6tsi 0.03343 0.01169
l24aero -1.91342 0.15090
l6soi -0.05615 0.00275
l60lod -0.06976 0.00318
time -0.00076 0.00028
time^2 3.89E-7 1.42E-7
We will have small differences in results when we estimate the same models, because my copy of your dataset was reconstructed from your reported parameter estimates and your “fluctuation components” (so my reconstruction is perturbed due to rounding errors in your published figures). But not anything huge, since it is very easy for me to get your original results for this particular model:
regressor, est, se(est)
l6co2 3.08642 0.04262
l6tsi 0.04805 0.01042
l24aero -1.94854 0.15066
l6soi -0.05645 0.00275
l60lod -0.06731 0.00306
You say that I am introducing a power law into the model. Think again: I’m doing a specification test on your model, meant to see how robust one of its parameters is. The point of a specification test is to stress a parameter estimate. You wish to give the coefficient on co2 a causal interpretation. What I am showing is that the estimated value of that coefficient is “fragile” as we put it in the biz.
Noting that Temp and co2 are the only two (roughly) monotone variables in the model, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that with enough observations, the coefficient on co2 will have to be positive and strongly significant. But there is nothing in the model “competing” with co2 for significant explanation of the variance in Temp. What if something has been omitted–something also monotonically increaing during the sample period. Well in that case, time and its square will be an instrument for omitted variables of that sort. (None of the other variables are monotone increasing).
The Monte Carlo simulations show that if nothing important has been omitted, then adding time and its square should have little effect on the estimated coefficient on co2. But it does, at least if you run the regression that demeans ALL variables (including time and its square). And it is a strong effect, outside of what the Monte Carlo says we could reasonably expect if the original model is correctly specified. (The Monte Carlo is a cumbersome way to make this point–there are good test statistics for specification error–but the nice thing about a Monte Carlo is anyone can follow the logic and do their own.)
I’m not making an assertion that the true value of the coefficient on co2 is 1.24 within sampling error. Frankly I think all these models are misspecified. What I’m doing is showing that the key coefficient estimate in CSALT cannot be trusted for policy purposes. It is fragile.
You are constantly going on about the great fit of your model, but anyone who has run (say) twenty time series regressions in levels (or demeaned levels) knows from experience that you almost always get high R-squared in these cases. High R-squared says pretty much nothing about the usefulness of the coefficient estimates–their fitness for policy and prediction. You talk like a first-year graduate student who has just discovered the stepwise option in their regression package.
Webster, “We all know that CO2 acts as the control knob, so the effective log(C2) sensitivity already includes other GHGs such as H2O.”
It is a complex system of feedbacks so there is not A control knob. Since Tmin and SST are directly related warming from the LIA would produce the same Tmin response. DTR has shifted, inconsistent with CO2 forcing and consistent with LIA recovery including the timing required for OHC and SLR. DTR should not have changed slope if it was mainly CO2 forcing.
captd, it is not an LIA recovery, but a Holocene reversal. Keep the big picture in mind.
JimD, “captd, it is not an LIA recovery, but a Holocene reversal. Keep the big picture in mind.”
It MAY be a Holocene reversal but it is likely a LIA recovery. Since DTR shifted, LIA recovery is more likely.
captd, the LIA was a part of a downward trend, so a recovery would be nowhere near enough to reverse nearly all the Holocene cooling that we have seen so far in the last few thousand years, just as CO2 starts to accumulate coincidentally.
JimD, The LIA was a larger than “normal” dip in the Holocene trend. Since paleo has a rather large uncertainty range, knowing when and if the “global” surface temperature has recovered to that holocene trend is a bit problematic.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0Ljwh9NTkS0/Ubx9dAfZtAI/AAAAAAAAInM/UROadZys8_k/w807-h513-no/giss+and+ersst+with+ipwp+from+0+ad.png
That reconstruction indicates “global” temperature is close to the trend that preceded the LIA.
captd, does that really show the global temperature dropping 1.4 C in the last 1000 years, or is the Oppo line some local proxy? Most studies have said the full extent of Holocene cooling since the optimum has been rather less than a degree. How do you reconcile that?
JimD, How do I reconcile land amplification, limited instrumental coverage and paleo uncertainty? By building an instrumental reconstruction.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/12/2000-years-of-climate.html
captd, you seem to have missed anything that looks at the Holocene period as a whole. Google Holocene temperature with an image search. You will see the kind of thing I mean. They don’t show the last 1000 years getting that warm, which is why I questioned your Oppo line.
JimD, “captd, you seem to have missed anything that looks at the Holocene period as a whole. Google Holocene temperature with an image search. You will see the kind of thing I mean. They don’t show the last 1000 years getting that warm, which is why I questioned your Oppo line.”
Oppo 2009 is the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool and is a Mg/Ca ratio reconstruction. I used the Indian Ocean, Global Sea Level, Global Ocean heat Content, BEST and CET for that version but I can include “Global” SST from any data set and a large number of Mg/Ca SST reconstructions to show the same thing as long as I stick to higher quality paleo. Since the Indian Ocean has the highest correlation to “Global” surface temperature of any region on Earth, I believe that it is called a Teleconnection “Sweet Spot”. You will probably be seeing more of this region in the coming year.
captd, so it looks like you really believe that is a global temperature. Why aren’t you skeptical when nothing else supports it? Be a skeptic.
JimD, “captd, so it looks like you really believe that is a global temperature. Why aren’t you skeptical when nothing else supports it? Be a skeptic.”
No, the scare quotes around “Global” indicates that I am pretty sure that “Global” temperature is about useless. The IPWP is a good indication of global energy but estimating “global” temperatures requires allowing for the T^4, elevation and surface type, land,water ice. GISS temperature is diverging from reality because of its long range interpolation including Arctic Winter Warming where 1 Wm-2 can produce a 1 C or more change in temperature. In the IPWP, 1 Wm-2 produces less than 1/6 of a C change in temperature. If you want to solve the problem you follow the energy not the temperature.
You really are quite ignorant of science, cappy. Physics has taught us that first-order perturbation works quite well when we are dealing with a 1 degree change on top of a 300K baseline. The baselines are killing you aren’t they, cappy?
http://imageshack.com/a/img811/1350/9h6.gif
Which is the model and which is the data? It sometimes even confuses me.
The NW-hack can’t figure out another factor so he goes on gurgling spew,
I don’t need a correlation coefficient to tell me how excellently the CSALT model fits the data. Years and years of experience characterizing physical phenomena tell me how well this kind of variational principle model is working out. And all climate scientists are realizing this — from Lean [1] to Lockwood [2] to Foster [3] to Kosaka [4]. These aren’t some hack economists trying to model game theory, ha ha.
[1] J. L. Lean, “Cycles and trends in solar irradiance and climate,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 111–122, 2010.
[2] M. Lockwood, “Solar influence on global and regional climates,” Surveys in geophysics, vol. 33, no. 3–4, pp. 503–534, 2012.
[3] G. Foster and S. Rahmstorf, “Global temperature evolution 1979–2010,” Environmental Research Letters, vol. 6, no. 4, p. 044022, Jan. 2011.
[4] Y. Kosaka and S.-P. Xie, “Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling,” Nature, vol. 501, no. 7467, pp. 403–407, 2013.
“If you want to solve the problem you follow the energy not the temperature.”
—-
Absolutely correct. Hence why expanding the ARGO float program is probably about the most important single thing we can do to gather more data.
Webster, “The baselines are killing you aren’t they, cappy?”
Nope, it is confusing you though. The ocean surface temperature can vary by 0.4 C with absolutely no change in surface energy, just a change in distribution. Since the land amplifies that variability, “surface” temperature can change by ~0.6C with no change in surface energy. That gives you your approximate range of “unforced” variability.
With different distribution of energy the mixing efficiency changes and those changes or regimes can last as long as it takes, centuries and longer.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-OIxmqSHtUrQ/UrT6bCF6erI/AAAAAAAAK04/MIz4rREZ-yQ/w578-h346-no/v+winds+equator.png
That is the basis for the “Stadium Wave” in that case that is the variation in average V-wind across the equator. If you cared to look, the “average” standard deviation of most paleo reconstructions is 1.25C which is an order of magnitude greater than the anomaly “standard error” meaning that “global” mean surface temperature is a very accurate useless metric unless you allow for actual changes in energy producing the anomaly.
One reason you can find a significant solar impact is that solar impact is greatest in the 42S-42N latitude and atmospheric forcing is greatest in the 42 to pole latitudes.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/12/impact-of-asymmetry-on-forcing.html
Asymmetry is a beyatch for linear no threshold nincompoops.
Thanks, Cap’n, if increased atmospheric forcing in the more equatorial latitudes can increase convection to the more polar latitudes, it can increase the efficiency of the heat engine, and act as a negative feedback to that forcing.
==========
There’s a little pretense of understanding for y’all.
===================
Kim, “it can increase the efficiency of the heat engine, and act as a negative feedback to that forcing.”
Right, more efficient transfer reduces the gradient which reduces efficiency. It is a constant battle to find optimum sustainable transfer which makes weaker forcing, the second and third order effects, more critical at different points. CO2 will basically work itself out of a job unless more mass is added to the atmosphere.
Nathaniel Wilcox (NW) spanks Paul Pukite (whut).
Pukite is at a loss for words and instead of acknowledging that the flaws in his stupid CSALT “model” were revealed resorts to calling what Wilcox wrote “spew” or something equally petulant without actually addressing the nature of the flaws.
Outstanding work, Wilcox. I may have been hasty in judging you. It’s a fool’s errand to try to figure out what the economic cost of CO2 externalities might be in 100 years when the known immediate benefits are making it possible to feed 7 billion souls instead of 1 billion without having fossil fuel to power agriculture, distribution of food, and just about every other thing that we take for granted in the modern world. Trying to project technological advances (or lack thereof) decades in the future is a fool’s errand as well which makes it laughable to guess what it will be like in the year 2100. My guess is that synthetic biology is at a point equivalent to when the transistor began replacing the vacuum tube information technology and that synthetic biology is far more transformative than any technologies which preceded it. Information technology was simply the last prerequisite for reverse engineering the molecular machinery of life.
For a rational discussion of Cowtan and Way, see …
http://climateaudit.org/2013/11/18/cotwan-and-way-2013/
and
http://climateaudit.org/2013/11/23/data-coverage-in-cowtan-and-way/
Arctic Temperature. Not much exceptional to see here.
“[When] attributing warming to man, they [climate alarmists] fail to point out that the warming has been small, and totally consistent with there being nothing to be alarmed about,” ~Dr. Richard Lindzen (MIT)
A small detail when trillions are at stake.
I am curios about Sun spot activity, I am told that we are at a very low number and this is supposed to mean that the Suns power output is reduced. But by how much and what contribution does the variability in Suns output contribute to Global Temperature?
I came across this paper earlier to day but their are others that would say there is an even stronger effect i.e.Some would say that we are heading to another Mini Ice Age.
http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html
R. Gresty. The subject you raise is huge, and quite impossible to address on a blog. There is general agreement among solar scientists that the sun is heading for a new magnetic minimum, but with precisely what characteristics is speculation. I believe it will be called the Eddy minimum. There is general agreement that SC 25 will have a very low magnetic effect indeed.
What effect this may or may not have on the earth’s climate is a matter of intense speculation . You will find “experts” giving views on both sides.
Interesting site
http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/repository.html
So it is 4.30 am on Christmas morning. The turkey breast is in the oven – to be slow roasted at 80 degrees C for 9 hours. Hmmm? I hope this works. A mysterious golden unicorn has appeared on the bookshelf we use for DVD’s. I think I saw Santa disappearing over the horizon.
This is the climate history of the 21st century – March 2000 to June 2013.
TOA longwave flux.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_EBAF-TOA_Ed27_anom_TOA_Longwave_Flux-All-Sky_March-2000toJune-2013_zps64e01a6c.png.html?sort=3&o=1
TOA shortwave flux.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_EBAF-TOA_Ed27_anom_TOA_Shortwave_Flux-All-Sky_March-2000toJune-20131_zpsd3c5a965.png.html?sort=3&o=0
TOA net flux.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_EBAF-TOA_Ed27_anom_TOA_Net_Flux-All-Sky_March-2000toJune-2013_zps13c30ec3.png.html?sort=3&o=4
For energy considerations the net is most significant. Net flux is by convention shown as warming positive. Shortwave and longwave flux are – by contrast – shown as outward flux positive – trends up is increasing energy loss and cooling.
The trends and large interannual variability is easy to see. These result from cloud changes associated with changes in ocean and atmosphere circulation – and especially sea surface. A negative correlation with cloud cover and therefore cloud radiative forcing. Cool SST drives increased cloud cover.
For the future – La Niña are much more frequent and intense than El Niño in cool Pacific decadal modes over 20 to 40 years. This central idea in climate science sets the stage for 2014 and beyond.
All the best for the day and the new year.
… sea surface temperature (SST)…
Chief,
Best to you are yours for the Holidays.
Kids: Grand, hers and mine, blended family, girlfriends at the door all at once.
I have to go; BUT!
“Cool SST drives increased cloud cover.”
Hmmm. I’m going to have a think on that.
A number of studies have demonstrated the connection of ENSO to radiative flux and therefore to cloud. In an analysis of global warming cloud feedbacks, Dessler (2010) used short term variations in surface temperature and CERES data to determine that cloud cover was negatively correlated with temperature. Dessler also plotted ENSO against surface temperature leaving no doubt that ENSO was the primary cause of the short term temperature variations. Leaving aside anthropogenic global warming – the finding of a positive feedback here is in the first instance an ENSO feedback. As was reported, ‘the climate variations being analysed here are primarily driven by ENSO, and there has been no suggestion that ENSO is caused by cloud variations.’ The study takes a statistical approach that may gloss over the difference in processes in play in ENSO and from global warming.
Zhu et al (2007) found that cloud formation for ENSO and for global warming have different characteristics and are the result of different physical mechanisms. The change in low cloud cover in the 1997-1998 El Niño came mainly as a decrease in optically thick stratocumulus and stratus cloud. The decrease is negatively correlated to local SST anomalies, especially in the eastern tropical Pacific, and is associated with a change in convective activity. ‘During the 1997–1998 El Niño, observations indicate that the SST increase in the eastern tropical Pacific enhances the atmospheric convection, which shifts the upward motion to further south and breaks down low stratiform clouds, leading to a decrease in low cloud amount in this region. Taking into account the obscuring effects of high cloud, it was found that thick low clouds decreased by more than 20% in the eastern tropical Pacific… In contrast, most increase in low cloud amount due to doubled CO2 simulated by the NCAR and GFDL models occurs in the subtropical subsidence regimes associated with a strong atmospheric stability.’
Cut and pasted from – http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/09/decadal-variability-of-clouds/
Have fun
“the climate variations being analysed here are primarily driven by ENSO, and there has been no suggestion that ENSO is caused by cloud variations.”
—
Indeed, as ENSO represents the most important short-term variation in ocean to atmosphere sensible and latent heat flux, we know that it causes the changes in clouds variations. The ocean dog wags the atmospheric tail.
So you agree? The point is?
I linked to Deitmar Dommenget yet again the other day – I am not about to yet again.
Oh well – http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2778.1
Thanks for that Chief. Here’s the take away:
“Model simulations illustrate that continental warming due to anthropogenic forcing (e.g., the warming at the end of the last century or future climate change scenarios) is mostly (80%–90%) indirectly forced by the contemporaneous ocean warming, not directly by local radiative forcing.”
—
That was a nice Christmas gift to those who don’t understand the flow if energy on the planet.
Merry Christmas!
And here is the picture that goes with it – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/DIETMARDOMMENGET_zps939fe12e.png.html?sort=3&o=47
Now perhaps you’ll tell me what it has to do with my original comment.
BREAKING NEWS
Scientists discover (yet another)
Hansen/Mann Climate-Change Hockey Stick!!!
“Small influence of solar variability
on climate over the past millennium“
Unsurprisingly, WUWT/Watts conspiracy-centric worldview explains-away *EVERYTHING* as “a one-paper syndrome-in-the-making, funded by an NGO, with a political mission to grab a headline.”
Gosh, is there anything that denialistic “science-is-a-conspiracy” worldviews can’t explain-away?
Fan
I hope you noticed that I pointed out that the research funding was from a respectable source and that one of the commentators had linked to the wrong and was making incorrect assumptions.
Tonyb
Judith, have a Merry Christmas. May you also have a happy, prosperous, and healthy New Year. May your extraordinary truth-seeking ideals bleed unto others and allow them to see that CO2 is not the “Control Knob”, that sensitivity is lower than realized, and to finally extirpate this silly Venus-Earth comparison.
Is obesity an unintended consequence of cheap energy?
“In 2012, about 34.9% of the people in this country were obese, roughly 35 pounds over a healthy weight.”
“Adults are considered obese if they have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or greater. BMI takes into account height and weight. It measures body mass; it doesn’t distinguish between fat and muscle.”
“A 5-foot-4 adult would be classified as obese if he or she weighed 174 pounds or more; a 5-foot-9 adult would fall into that category at 203 pounds or more.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/24/obesity-weight-wrapup/3921563/
I suspect cheap energy does encourage obesity. A lazy person may be inclined to avoid expending his or her own energy when energy can be purchased for so little money. Cheap gasoline, for example, does not encourage walking.
Climate deniers and skeptics are advocates of cheap energy, which may mean many of them are obese. If so, I hope they try to exercise restraint during the holiday season, and not pig-out on eggnog and fruitcake.
Max, Merry Christmas to you. I know of no one who would willingly pig out on fruitcake.
Cheap energy encourages the climate alarmist Eurocommies to hold meetings in in places like Cancun — for margaritas and suntans — instead of staying home during cold European winters.
Well I’m pretty sure we are more sedentary especially kids. I’d say computer games are more of a culprit (cheap energy? as well). Kid are not free to roam around like they used to either due to safety concerns. I used to spend the whole day out on my bike pretty much unsupervised, after a certain age, other than curfew.
I’m fairly certain though that (just like climate change) is due to carbs. In this case of course to the high carbohydrate diet of Americans.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/diet/themes/lowfat.html
The book ‘The Zone’ pretty much spelled it out:
http://zonediet.com/
Merry Christmas Max
Uh Oh , I think I struck a nerve. Waggy may be a butterball.
Funny how obese people existed for centuries before cheap energy came along…
I just went for a walk on a deserted beach with the sun rising over the ocean, the south-east tradewind blowing at about 10 knots, absolutely gorgeous. Kids in our town still wander all over the place – go fishing, ride skateboards down my street. It is a wonder that more of them don’t kill themselves. They are just absolutely fabulous kids without much evident the way of unhealthy weight gain. Beautiful, active, strong, confident, all smiles. It is an amazing aesthetic.
The reality is that more affluent and educated people have better health outcomes. It is more about the quality of food – which is both a personal choice and facilitated by a low costs in a world class farming system.
we could do an experiment by raising gas prices in Somoa where 95% of the folks are fat. or french polynesia, or panama or Egypt.
Egypt is cool. as fat as the US but their gas is 1.00 a gallon. however the daily per capita wage is 8 bucks.
cheap energy isnt enough. In egypt the energy is really cheap, but expensive in terms of total income, but they are still fat.
Among Western Nations, those with the cheapest gasoline also were those with the highest obesity rates. The U.S. standouts with an extremely high obesity rate ( 35.5 % for males) and very inexpensive gasoline ($3.66 per gallon). Below are male obesity rates and gasoline prices (per gal.) in selected nations:
Netherlands 10.4% , $8.89
Sweden: 14.8 % , $8.10
Norway: 15.5 %, $10.08
France: 16.1 % , $8.13
Italy: 18.0 % , $8.61
Germany: 23.3 % , $8.01
England: 25.1 % , $7.75 (UK)
Australia: 25.6 % , $5.30
Canada: 27.6 % , $4.67
United States: 35.5% , $3.66
http://www.iaso.org/resources/world-map-obesity/
http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/gas-prices/20133:United%20States:USD:g
Max you still didn’t learn anything about using up to date data.
Bob, certainly not me. Fruitcake — UGH !
Merry Christmas to you too, Bob.
ordvic, you make a good point about kids not being free to roam.
I hope you have a Merry Christmas.
kids less free to roam
Actually there are no more abductions per capita now than there were in the 1950s. And the vast majority of abductions are by family or friends of family.
I think the greater fear factor of parents may be due to 24 hours news. Child abductions are rare enough that they receive massive coverage.
Judith, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and all who sail with you!
Alex (@FedFanForever) said on December 24, 2013 at 2:48 pm
“Funny how obese people existed for centuries before cheap energy came along…”
______
Of course, and the null hypothesis is obesity is natural.
Max, you treat obesity as if it is the same as CO2 causing warming: one factor must be the cause. Few things in life are so simple.
Consider this: there are four major categories of factors that impact the lifespan (and relative health) of a population. Within each category are many individual factors, all of which have an impact. And, interestingly, the one that many would think has the biggest impact – access to quality healthcare – is in the category that has the least impact (about 10%) on the lifespan of the population.
Time to say Goodby to CAGW in 2014.
The winter of 2013/14 in the UK will remind many that climate change merely states the obvious and that global warming isn’t bad like those on the Left keep telling us. As Henrik Svensmark told us, “enjoy global warming while it lasts.”
If the AMOC sloes down we’ll freeze the limeys and the frogs, and the rest of us will get warmer.
The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change… Over the last several hundred thousand years, climate change has come mainly in discrete jumps that appear to be related to changes in the mode of thermohaline circulation. Wally Broecker
e.g. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/docs/Smeed_2013.pdf
What do you mean if white man? And it seems a dubious proposition to limit it to Europe if the Gulf Stream slows. .
e.g. http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/g/gulf_stream.htm
Dubious as well to think in isolation from snow and ice feedbacks. As Wally says – this is what kick starts glacials.
Chief,
I enjoyed this story that is a wiki link from the second article you linked:
As deputy postmaster of the British American colonies, Benjamin Franklin became interested in the North Atlantic Ocean circulation patterns. In 1768, while in England, Franklin heard a curious complaint from the Colonial Board of Customs: Why did it take British packets several weeks longer to reach New York from England than it took an average American merchant ship to reach Newport, Rhode Island, despite the merchant ships leaving from London and having to sail down the River Thames and then the length of the English Channel before they sailed across the Atlantic, while the packets left from Falmouth in Cornwall?[4]
Franklin asked Timothy Folger, his cousin twice removed (Nantucket Historical Society), a Nantucket whaling captain, for an answer. Folger explained that merchant ships routinely crossed the then-unnamed Gulf Stream—identifying it by whale behavior, measurement of the water’s temperature and the speed of bubbles on its surface, and changes in the water’s color—while the mail packet captains ran against it.[4] Franklin worked with Folger and other experienced ship captains, learning enough to chart the Gulf Stream and giving it the name by which it is still known today. He offered this information to Anthony Todd, secretary of the British Post Office, but it was ignored by British sea captains.[4]
Franklin’s Gulf Stream chart was published in 1770 in England, where it was mostly ignored.[5] Subsequent versions were printed in France in 1778 and the U.S. in 1786.[6] It took many years for the British to follow Franklin’s advice on navigating the current but once they did, they were able to gain two weeks in sailing time.[6]
Heh, prolly sneered at the colonials’ chronometers.
=======
Thanks for that interesting story, ordvic. Empirical data are best for reliability, as whaling captains of both hemispheres knew well. The best early maps of the Antarctic coastlines were supplied by whalers – both their lives and livelihoods depended on the accuracy of such maps
Pray tell, Judith, exactly what X in “Xmas” do you have in mind?
From the article:
“This year may be remembered for its striking number of reports and warning of calamitous events. The National Intelligence Council released its Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds report that included a number of dire possibilities ahead, including the prospect of a catastrophic solar storm, on par with the 1859 Carrington Event. Historical records suggest a return period of 50 years for a repeat of the Quebec-level storm that knocked out the power for 6 million in 1989, and 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event, according to Lloyd’s, in a report this year. Scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory recently demonstrated in tests that ‘geomagnetic disturbances have the power to disrupt and possibly destroy electrical transformers, the backbone of our nation’s utility grid.’ This was also the year the average daily level of CO2 reached a concentration above 400 parts per million. ”
…
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/24/1556217/2013-an-ominous-year-for-warnings-and-predictions
Mann v. Steyn, back to square one.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/367070/mann-lawsuit-jack-fowler
http://c3.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/Order_20131223144647.PDF
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the flat
Not a creature was stirring, not even a rat;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Curry soon would be there;
Some denizens passed out with drinks in their laps,
With runaway warming disturbing their naps.
And ma with her whiskey, and I with my gin,
Had just settled down for an evening of sin,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I swallowed my olive–now WTF was the matter?
Away out the window I tipsily peered,
and stumbled on over,seeing just what I’d feared:
The moon on the drifts of the new-fallen fluff,
Gave assurance that shoveling this s**t would be rough.
And then–well, as near as my eyes could determine–
I saw eight old denizens in a rusty Suburban.
With a driver who appeared to be in a great hurry–
I knew in a moment she must be Dr. Curry.
She sprang from the heap and she banged on its roof,
And whistled, and shouted, and called on each Goof:
“Out, Mosher! You too, Drake! Out, Martyn and Willard!
Out, Springer! You too, Kim! And Marler and Howard!
I’ve got to go home now! Vamos! Sortez! Raus!
Maybe you can crash at NW’s house!”
Hoping someone can take it from there, but no they can’t.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
brilliant :) we just finished reading the original to my 3 yr old grand daughter, now hunkering down to watch A Christmas Story. Merry Xmas!
I love that you have the rhythm and the rhyme – well done.
Moved to right thread.
David Springer | December 25, 2013 at 1:15 pm |
So out of the heap we all quickly ramble,
But the snow was so deep it hid all the bramble.
Picking thorns from our butts we heard someone mumble,
Global warming my ass, climate science is a jumble.
Judith some thoughts for topics in 2014:
1. The impact of changing temperature gradients on violent weather.
2. The impacts of an open arctic on local “feedbacks”, i.e. changes in escaping LW and reflected SW.
Yesterday I posted two items in the old open thread weekend, so I will just repost them below.
An item of interest is that now the US government will allow people to take the costs of rising sea-levels into account when doing a cost-benefit analysis for applying for government money to protect coastal properties. This realization is a step forwards. I am guessing other countries may be ahead with this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/23/fema-flood-program_n_4495117.html
I am not a big fan of Bill Nye’s explanations, but he did OK here, plus who could go wrong when you have shouting Republican denialists scattered through your video.
http://www.upworthy.com/bill-nye-is-too-busy-saving-the-world-to-say-i-told-you-so
At WUWT, Monckton has his Christmas rant. Something about science is a belief system, just like religion, not that there is anything wrong with religion. It is hopelessly muddled as he tries to sort out good and bad belief systems. Anyway, entertaining reading. See if you can make sense of what he really thinks. He should have just given up when he raised religion, and realized his criticism applied equally to that, especially at this time of year.
Monckton provides great comic relief. His puffery combined with his “Lordship” title proves most enjoyable to watch– sad as it is to think that there are people who actually hang on his every word.
Christmas Monckton. There’s a kind of jolly madness about him. He really should be a character in a book.
@rgates
Higher GH gas levels in the atmosphere lead to modestly warmer atmospheric temperatures but much more energy being stored in the ocean. The thermal gradient “control valve” function of noncondensing GH gases is the primary way they keep more energy in the climate system
And since there has been no significant warming of the atmosphere for the last 17 years, there can have been no change in the thermal gradient, and therefore no more heat in the oceans owing to higher this mechanism.
So if it turns out the oceans are indeed warming, it can only have been for reasons other than an altered thermal gradient. Which in turn means for reasons other than higher GHG levels.
“And since there has been no significant warming of the atmosphere for the last 17 years, there can have been no change in the thermal gradient, and therefore no more heat in the oceans owing to higher this mechanism.”
—–
This almost seems like wishful thinking on your part. You seem to not understand the basic concept of a control valve. If a valve is set to “accumulate” energy in the system, you don’t need to set the valve even higher to continue to accumulate energy. It takes decades for the system to reach equilibrium once GH gases stop rising in concentration. They have not stopped and every year they continue to rise pushes out the final Earth system equilibrium that much further and to a higher final tropospheric temperature and total energy in the system.
By the broadest measurements, the system has continued to accumulate energy. The last 10 years have been the warmest in the atmosphere in at least the past 1400 years. The control valve of the atmosphere is clearly set to accumulate, most of that accumulation is going into the oceans, oceans are the primary local driver of weather and climate, this is all basic physics, and wishful thinking will not change these essential facts.
“So if it turns out the oceans are indeed warming, it can only have been for reasons other than an altered thermal gradient. Which in turn means for reasons other than higher GHG levels.”
—-
I have a high degree of confidence that the oceans have been retaining energy for at least the past 40 years. I have an equally high degree of confidence that the fact that we have the highest GH gas levels since the Pliocene is the major cause for the rising ocean heat content.
I have a high degree of confidence that the oceans have been retaining energy for at least the past 40 years.
The Australian Antarctic expedition is trapped in the Southern Ocean by a statistical anomaly.
R. Gates,
It takes decades for the system to reach equilibrium once GH gases stop rising in concentration
1. You are assuming what you are required to prove, ie that more CO2 will necessarily ‘control-knob’ the atmosphere ever hotter. Yet the last 17 years have seen steady rises in GH gasses but no significant rise in atmospheric temperatures. Who knows, CO2 may forever fail as a control knob?
2. Why do you think it will take decades for equilibrium to be achieved, once/if atmospheric temperatures stabilise (whether or not this stability has anything to with CO2 levels) ?
Why not months or years? Why not centuries or millennia?
The “no warming for 17 years” nonsense.
It warmed during this timespan, the last 17 years:
GISS: slope = 0.00771543 per year
HadCrut4: slope = 0.00986027 per year
UAH: slope = 0.0113951 per year
…and it also got colder during the same “pause”:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2010/trend
“Why do you think it will take decades for equilibrium to be achieved, once/if atmospheric temperatures stabilise (whether or not this stability has anything to with CO2 levels) ?
Why not months or years? Why not centuries or millennia?”
—–
There are multiple parts to the climate system that all respond differently to the additional energy in the system. The biosphere responds at one rate, the oceans at another, the cyrosphere at yet another, and finally the atmosphere at even another. The cryosphere is probably the slowest, and could take centuries for total Earth system equilibrium, but certainly the average between all these will be decades– not months or years.
During a La Nina, an atmospheric cooling, the oceans get warmer. During the powerful 1998 El Nino, the oceans cooled significantly – a very noticeable dip.
The notion that the oceans only warm when the atmosphere warms appears to be very wrong.
“The notion that the oceans only warm when the atmosphere warms appears to be very wrong.”
_____
Exceptionally wrong, and the wrong way to think about it. The oceans warm the atmosphere– and never the other way around. Approximately 50% of the energy in the atmosphere at any given time comes from sensible and latent heat flux from the ocean. This is a hugely important fact that many people fail to grasp. During El Niño, more than average amounts of energy leave the ocean, and so we see spikes in the atmospheric temperatures, and ocean heat content drops a bit. During La Niña, and even ENSO neutral periods, ocean heat content tends to increase. If GH gases were not rising, OHC would stay pretty constant over long-periods fluctuating up and down based on ENSO, PDO, and AMO cycles, etc. With rising GH gas concentrations, OHC still fluctuates of course, but the fluctuations are on top of an overall rising long-term trend.
It warmed during this timespan, the last 17 years:
You said 17 years and then showed 10 years.
Michael Mann and James Hansen taught you well.
RGates,
Elegant and simple as it is, your control valve theory of AGW has clearly been falsified these last 17 years. So given your aim of proving AGW, why do you reject the more conventional ‘downwelling longwave’ theory ?
“Elegant and simple as it is, your control valve theory of AGW has clearly been falsified these last 17 years. So given your aim of proving AGW, why do you reject the more conventional ‘downwelling longwave’ theory ?”
——
Far from being “falsified” every new bit of data seems to indicate that the Earth system is responding exactly as would be expected with the energy imbalance created by geologically rapid rising GH gases. This undue focus on tropospheric sensible heat is extremely myopic. In the same way the Budyko looked at energy in the system, is exactly my approach. Downwelling LW from the atmosphere to ocean explains key portions of the control valve mechanism for how increasing GH cause the oceans to store more energy, but many people fail to understand the essential fact that the DLW is not warming the ocean. The increased DLW restricts the flow of both sensible and latent heat from ocean to atmosphere when measured globally. Increased DLW allows the oceans to retain more energy, but the vast majority of that energy comes from solar SW. Thus, when even some scientists say that increasing GH gases allow more heat to go into the ocean or similar ideas, this is absolutely wrong. Increased GH gases and the associated increased DLW allow less energy out of the oceans.
Elegant and simple as it is, your control valve theory of AGW has clearly been falsified these last 17 years
>
far from being “falsified” every new bit of data seems toatindicate that the Earth system is responding exactly as would be expected….
Other than the one crucial bit of data for the Control Valve, that the valve setting hasn’t changed in 17 years, and you have felt it necessary to fall back on outright thumbsucks as to how long equilibrium would take.
This undue focus on tropospheric sensible heat is extremely myopic.
That tired old strawman does you no credit.
Your comments on DWLW are just a web of tangled incoherence.
shorter gail: “I don’t understand what you said, but I am sure as hell going to disagree with it”
Gail,
The next time you put a jacket on and go outside on a cold night, you might think the jacket is warming your body from downwelling LW coming from the jacket. Indeed, if you measured it you would see that there is LW coming from the jacket. But in fact, the LW is not warming your body at all, but simply altering the thermal gradient between your body and the cold night air. What actually warms your body is the energy from the food you eat being metabolized by your body. The jacket slows the transfer of that energy as the net flow of energy is from body to jacket to the cold night air. GH gases are the jacket that surrounds this ocean planet, and adding to them slows the rate of sensible and latent heat flux from ocean to cold outer space. If this very basic physics seems muddled to you, I am not sure what of actual science would not.
R.Gates,
“Gail, the next time you put a jacket on and go outside on a cold night……”
R.Gates, temperature measurements are not being kind to your interpretation of the system, and now it seems you just like to talk about the even-harder-to-measure energy content instead.
So, the next time you pull your jacket off, could you tell us what the heat capacity of the system is?
“R.Gates, temperature measurements are not being kind to your interpretation of the system, and now it seems you just like to talk about the even-harder-to-measure energy content instead.
So, the next time you pull your jacket off, could you tell us what the heat capacity of the system is?”
_______
I am not sure of the context of your question, but let’s start with the Earth climate system. The storage battery for this system is the ocean. Even though more Argo floats are needed (and coming soon), over the past 10 years we are starting to get a pretty good constraint on how much energy the oceans are storing. Within reasonable bounds of uncertainty we are seeing that the oceans are storing approximately the same amount as the TOA imbalance– somewhere around .5 x 10 ^22 Joules down to 2000 meters per year. The difference is going mainly into the cryosphere and a little into the atmosphere. We will be getting even better constraints on this as Argo floats are set to go down to 6000 meters and there will be nearly double the amount of floats within 5 years. This is probably one of the most important measurements we can make related to climate science. The heat capacity of the climate system is largely determined by the heat capacity of the ocean. The atmosphere holds very little of the overall energy of the system, just like a jacket you wear holds very little of the heat of the body-jacket system. Regarding the oceans, there is a maximum heat capacity of water as a liquid, as at some point the oceans are vaporized to the atmosphere and then the water vapor lost to space. This is Earth’s eventual fate as the sun continues to increase in output– though based on that increase alone, it would not be for a billion years or so.
Did I get my best Christmas present ever? Learned I am about to be a grandfather for the first time. That can’t be right – I don’t feel like a grandfather.
On a global annual scale, the change in TOA net radiation and ocean heat storage should be in phase and of the same magnitude. This is due to the fact that all other forms of heat storage in the earth system are
factors of 10 or more smaller than ocean heat storage (Levitus et al. 2001). Previous ocean heat storage datasets required 5- to 10-yr averages to reduce sampling errors. The Willis et al. (2004) analysis demonstrated a sampling error of 0.4 W m2 (1) for global annual ocean heat storage.
Figure 7 gives a direct interannual comparison of these new ocean heat storage data from 1993 to 2003 against those from the 12-month running mean ERBE/ERBS Nonscanner WFOV Edition3_Rev1 and CERES/Terra Scanner ES4 Edition2_Rev1 net flux anomalies. The CERES/Terra
Scanner results are global and the ERBE/ERBS Nonscanner WFOV results cover 60°N to 60°S (or 87% of the earths surface). The net flux anomalies are calculated with respect to the 1985–89 period. They are basically deseasonalized anomalies similar to those shown in previous figures. A 12-month running mean filter has been applied to the TOA radiation data to reduce the temporal sampling noise and to match up directly with the corresponding time scale of the ocean storage data. The ocean heat storage data (Willis et al. 2004) is available only in annually smoothed seasonal data. The drop in the global ocean heat storage in the later part of 1998 is associated with cooling of the global ocean after the rapid warmng of the ocean during the 1997–98 El Niño event (Willis et al. 2004). http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Wong_ERBEreanalysis.pdf
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=164
Earlier OHC used 5 to 10 year averages and is not suitable for interannual comparisons. As Wong et al say – ocean heat content must follow closely energy imbalances at TOA.
By energy conservation –
d(W&H)/dt (J/s) = power in (J/s) – power out (J/s)
W&H = work and heat. The 1st order differential global energy equation is relatively precise (heat from combustion of fossil fuels and radioactive decay are neglected) and derived from first physical principles.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERESvARGO_zps9451b91b.png.html?sort=3&o=0
Net reflected and emitted power is doing nothing in the period. So why is ocean heat continuing to increase in ARGO? There is only one possible explanation for the latter part of this short record at least – and that is the increase in TSI in the 11 year cycle. This peaked in 2013 and is heading down both in the Schwabe cycle this decade and in centennial and millennial variability.
being a grandparent is the best, congrats!
“So why is ocean heat continuing to increase in ARGO? There is only one possible explanation for the latter part of this short record at least – and that is the increase in TSI in the 11 year cycle. ”
——
This is completely incorrect and illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the dynamics of sensible and latent heat flux from the ocean. In fact, there has been a slight decrease in SW solar reaching the surface, mainly due to an increase in the stratospheric optical depth, but also a weak solar cycle, so there has been slightly less input to the ocean. But, at the same time, a cool phase of the PDO combined with the ongoing long-term increase in GH gases, has meant less sensible and latent heat out from the ocean. So less in, but even less out, means OHC has shown a net increase.
Thanks Judy.
Gates – you are pretty free with accusations of fundamental misunderstanding of atmospheric physics.
You need to actually look at the data.
Here is SORCE – http://lasp.colorado.edu/data/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/images/tim_level3_tsi_24hour_640x480.png
Here is CERES with trend lines – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif.html?sort=3&o=154
By conservation of energy the changes must be reflected in changes in global energy content. At toa is as simple as it gets.
Chief,
I concur with Judith Curry, grandchildren are best.
I’ve been told by someone near and dear to my heart:
“If I had known that Grandchildren were this much fun, I’d of had them first!”
Congratulations and best wishes for the whole family.
Thanks buddy – catch you later.
Judith
… I find a number of flaws in Gavin’s reasoning.
1. A confusion about what advocacy actually is. While Gavin gives lots of examples etc., he fails to recognize as advocacy this statement by Thomalies Stocker at the end of the IPCC AR5 video: …
This is no accident. Gavin Schmidt is surely one of the most rabid and one-sided climate scientists of all. And well knows that the best advocacy of all, is that dressed up as science.
This well explains RealClimate’s dogged refusal to discuss issues like the dominant motivation behind government-funded climate science, under the pretense of ‘sticking to the science’.
Judith
Gavin then states:
You can’t be a communicator and pretend that you have no values.
And this is of course EXACTLY what Schmidt has turned into a fine art.
He NEVER admits his overriding political/authoritarian/leftwing values.
Or that he who selects and pays the scientists, thereby calls the science tune.
Little wonder then he Teamed up with the likes of Mann.
lolwot
What we need is for developing countries to lead the way in the transition from fossil carbon energy to a sustainable energy future.
Yes that’ll make sure they’ll remain forever developing but never developed. Keep the blighters in their place eh?
sorry, typo, I meant developED
Ah, your actual plan is to reduce developed countries to the level of developing ones. Knock the blighters for a six. Got it now.
One is very tempted to say “It’s all the 60 year cycle really”. Too simple I suppose!
Happy Xmas all ;-)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:220/mean:174/mean:144/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:720
Where is the half of that cycle where it goes back down? I guess too simple a question for a person of average intelligence to ask. But I learned how to twist a graph.
Anyone can remove a non existent linear tend and thus get a meaningless answer! (in case you were not aware of what Detrend does). You create the distortion, not the data,
Merry Christmas to Everyone, especially Warmers, whose Christmas stocking has too much C02 in it. A sad state of affairs. It’s a Blue Christmas. :(
Andrew
Here is a web site that allows you to look up spending at the Federal State and Local level. Has apps for iPhone and Google phone. You will probably be amazed, and not in a good way.
Merry Christmas!
http://www.openthebooks.com
You seem to want to lump all government in one category, yet most of the benefits you recurve from government comes from your local government which collects the least amount of taxes and usually has a balanced budget. From the roads you drive on to the water you drink and wash your SUV, it is the local government that is most impactful and least wasteful.
Show me where I said that Gates.
You are wrong, anyway.
From the article:
“States on average rely on federal funds for half their annual capital spending on bridges and highways. Ten states count on federal funds for more than 70 percent of such spending, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association.
In South Carolina, federal funds make up 79 percent of state road and bridge spending. In Alaska, it’s 93 percent. The two states have the lowest gasoline taxes in the country.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/25/203253/federal-highway-funding-crisis.html
I came to Dr. Curry by way of Russ Roberts link to his interview of her. Very impressed with her care in keeping science in environmental science.
Recalled a comment I used to make when I worked for the Fed. When people criticized weather forecasting. I would defer from weighing in, telling them that economists haven’t yet earned the right to criticize forecasts made by others.
But we sure have learned a lot about how NOT to make forecasts. :)
Economic impacts of CO2 vs Oil
Jim
Thanks for your prudent perspective and its relevance to climate modeling. As an economist you will well appreciate the challenge of discovering that CO2 does NOT co-integrate with global temperature. See:
Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming M. Beenstock, Y. Reingewertz, and N. Paldor, Earth Syst. Dynam. Discuss., 3, 561–596, 2012
http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/3/561/2012/
doi:10.5194/esdd-3-561-201
Oil price impacts
Contrast the quantification by economist James D. Hamilton of how oil prices strongly impact our economy and increase unemployment:
“Oil Prices, Exhaustible Resources, and Economic Growth,” in Handbook of Energy and Climate Change, pp. 29-57, edited by Roger Fouquet. Cheltenham, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013. Working paper version here.
“Historical Oil Shocks,” in Routledge Handbook of Major Events in Economic History, pp. 239-265, edited by Randall E. Parker and Robert Whaples, New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2013. Working paper version here.
CO2 benefits
Contrast Craig D. Idso The Positive Externalities of Carbon Dioxide: Estimating the Monetary Benefits of Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations on Global Food Production
So why are we supposed to be panic stricken over CO2 rather than the serious prospects of replacement fuels not keeping up with oil depletion in the near future?
ps suggest amending your handle to distinguish from other “jim”s.
Underlying “climate change” is Malthus v Adams. See Jerry Bowyer exploring: Malthus and Scrooge: How Charles Dickens Put Holly Branch Through The Heart Of The Worst Economics Ever
The solution? If God created the earth to be inhabited, then he has provision for its inhabitants. Jeremiah 33:3
Blessed Christmas
David L. Hagen,
You have referred to a theory of F. Miskolczi and to the long-term stability of infrared optical depth in several posts. My reply might be off-topic here, but as we are in “Open thread”, I would like to call your attention to the followings.
That theory is based on computer simulations, namely, on clear-sky radiative transfer calculations on radiosonde data sets. The problem is that weather balloon observations do NOT indicate cloudiness. So his papers perform infrared atmospheric transparency computations on vertical profile samples where about half of the cases have zero transparency (overcast cases) and the value for the other half is unknown (clear-sky), and you even cannot sort out the zero cases (cloudy) from the other. Sorry to say, this method is invalid, and its results are worthless. It is like to calculate your motion in a flat as if there were no walls at all when in reality there ARE rooms and walls. To claim the stability of the infrared transparency based on this computation is nonsense, and good only for the layman readers of the non-scientific, non-peer reviewed journals he published them. The real problem is that the author knows that his method is incorrect, but do not call the attention of the readers that he does it on purpose. — Sorry, I myself would be interested if that claim proved true, but hope is one thing, facts are another.
Vilnius
Thanks for your comments. I encourage you to explore further what Miskolczi is doing. He is taking the assumption that greenhouse gases control the climate and performs the detailed quantitative line by line (LBL) radiative calculations for all greenhouse gases, while quantitatively evaluating over numerous vertical layers and all major directions. As you observe, the clear/clouds are simply approximated. He shows that there is the CO2 influence is negligible and that almost all the radiative impact is due to water variations. Consequently the assumption that CO2 dominates is shown to be false by this quantitative model per the scientific method. That in itself is a valuable finding.
Now the next step is to further develop this simple 1D model to identify the next level of complexity and then of clouds. So I encourage you to carefully examine his stage by stage developments and calculations to show that assumption that radiative CO2 absorption drives climate is false and we must find other causes such as clouds.
What’s really worst with Miskolczi’s paper is that he does enough correct analysis to show that he’s capable of that, but then fails to bring the analysis to conclusion, which would be fully in line with main stream calculations.
Makes wonder, why he does that.
Pekka
The guy turned up here one day a few months ago. As far as I can recall hs computer skills were limited and, just like Phil jones, he was unable to use a spread sheet.
Perhaps that explains the flaws in his very interesting theory
Tonyb
Pekka – politics.
The line-by-line calculations that his paper tells about require some computatinal skills. Perhaps he has had some help for that. The approach is pretty standard, but I don’t know about any sources that would give the required hands on advice. (Presently essentially that can be found from Science of Doom, but that’s rather recent.)
Vilnius
Re: “The problem is that weather balloon observations do NOT indicate cloudiness.”
May I suggest you explore Robert H. Essenhigh’s development of a comprehensive thermodynamic model of the lapse rate based on the Schuster-Schwarzschild integral (S-S) Equations of Transfer that govern radiation through the atmosphere including absorption and radiation by greenhouse gases. Prediction of the Standard Atmosphere Profiles of Temperature, Pressure, and Density with Height for the Lower Atmosphere by Solution of the (S-S) Integral Equations of Transfer and Evaluation of the Potential for Profile Perturbation by Combustion Emissions, Energy & Fuels, 2006, Vol. 20, pop 1057-1067.
Essenhigh’s model does not distinguish the presence of cloudiness or not. Yet it fits the evidence fairly well.
Sreekanth Kolan extended Essenhigh’s model to include the energy balance for the lower and upper atmospheres.
“Study of energy balance between lower and upper atmosphere, Sreekanth Kolan, 2009, Ohio State University OSU1259613805
So I would think Miskilczi’s averaging is a first level approximation. How would you recommend he do the next stage model, and what evidence would you base that on?
PS TonyB Re “The guy turned up here one day” Who are you referring to?
Pekka
See Ferenc M. Miskolczi’s papers.
He has been working on the quantitative details since 1990. He published the full LBL code and validated it etc. I find that far beyond a “spread sheet” competence. Then he is exploring simplified models.
David Hagen,
That was my original point. Why does he miss so badly the correct conclusions after doing all that LBL analysis?
As I also wrote, LBL code is not really very difficult to write, I know that because I have gone through a comprehensive example and done it certainly in more detail than Miskolczi judging from what he writes (You can find all on that exercise in Science of Doom’s blog discussions). I know also that the next step of comparing the results for different concentration is so obvious that no-one gone as far as Miskolczi can miss that idea. He doesn’t tell anything on that. The only explanation I can offer is that he didn’t like the results of that, because the results show that he is totally wrong in all his arguments against standard theory.
His earlier papers are really bad making serious errors on everything from handling radiation to thermodynamics. This latest paper contains the (probably) correct LBL calculation, and some nice and informative figures from that calculation, but then it fails again. It fails both in the use of empirical data as Vilnius has explained, and in interpreting the theory, as has been discussed in numerous critiques of his paper both on this site and elsewhere.
Pekka
Re: LBL code – Have you published or validated your code?
It appears you only read briefly read Miskloczi’s recent article, not his earlier ones where he describes his LBL code in detail. E.g. HIGH RESOLUTION ATMOSPHERIC RADIATIVE TRANSFER CODE (HARTCODE) Version No. 01 Dr. F. M. Miskolcz Technical Report 1989, 220 pp.
For validation of LBL codes including Miskolczi’s, see NASA paper by Kratz et al. 2005 An inter-comparison of far-infrared line-by-line radiative transfer models
Have you included Planck weighting?
On modeling accuracy, note Miskolczi (2010) briefly observes:
Re: “comparing the results for different concentration”. By this I presume you mean climate sensitivity from doubling CO2.
Miskolczi (2010) has calculated these. E.g.
I have written on this site also on the work of Essenhigh and Kolan. The idea is interesting, trying to use an integral equation to determine the atmospheric profile analytically keeping numerical analysis at the minimum. Unfortunately that requires making so severe simplifications that the results are not likely to be quantitatively correct. Even as approximate results some of the figures of Kolan are interesting.
Kolan’s MSc thesis is open on the limitations of the method. I have no objection on it as master’s thesis, but it cannot supersede more comprehensive analyses done avoiding those simplifications. It helps in understanding a few issues, but does not represent the best understanding of issues described there.
David
They guy who turned up here was Miskolczi. I couldn’t spell his name but it seems I am not alone in this. I first read his theories several years ago but others have said there is a severe mathematical problem with some of his equations. I think he answered 2 or 3 questions when he turned up here some months ago but I have no idea what thread it was in.
tonyb
Thanks tonyb. You can find posts on Miskolczi at Climate etc. (Internal/Goggle).
I encourage you to actually dig into Miskolczi’s papers. Note that Miskolczi (2010) actually quantitatively models 3490 spectral radiative intervals in 9 directions for each cell, for 11 greenhouse gas species across 150 atmospheric layers, using 5th order Gausian quadrature with Planck weighting. He averages the available radiosonde data for five latitudinal belts and multiple seasons. I don’t think there is much objection to those quantitative calculations.
The primary objection I have seen is to his unfortunate choice of “stationary” rather than “stable” or “equilibrium” for his subsequent simplified 1D climate model.
The second objection is to the historic radiosonde data itself which shows declining humidity when most climate modelers assume it should be increasing with global warming.
The third objection is to his first order approximations in the simplified atmospheric model the develops after his detailed analyses of the available radiosonde data. e.g., Roy Spencer addresses such approximations/miss-understandings.
Since English is Miskolczi’s second language, I believe thorough editing for English /peer review together with Dale Carnegie courses would help his presentations and interactions.
Since Miskolczi’s results negate the orthodox catastrophic global warming paradigm, they receive a lot of immediate dismissal without examination, and further have gatekeepers preventing publication. However I believe Miskolczi’s quantitative Planck weighted LBL radiative exchange analysis combined with Essenhigh’s SS atmospheric lapse model would go along way towards quantitative understanding of foundational atmospheric radiative energy transfer.
The major uncertainties are by far the more important and very poorly known cloud impacts and variations.
I was the go-to guy for all technical or operational matters for radiosonde balloons and tracking dishes at a military air station from 1975-1978. In the last year I was working for NOAA NSSL in Norman, OK with a mobile tracking/recording station in a field somewhere launching balloons into approaching storms during May and June. Of the great many soundings I was involved with everywhere from the Mojave Desert to USMCAS El Toro on the coast in southern California to tornado alley in OK at the height of the season there were excellent weather conditions along with the sounding charts showing elevation, azimuth, barometric pressure, humidity, and temperature. One junior and one senior meteorologist would man the recorders and write the reports. My job was to make sure the equipment was operating correctly. I can’t imagine that weather reports with cloud types and heights aren’t observed and recorded by the weather weenies before, during, and after the launch. It seems like if clouds are very important there would be plenty of soundings with local weather observations to go along with.
Pekka
Re: “are not likely to be quantitatively correct”.
Have you actually examined Essenhigh’s (2006) detailed development or his approximations and the accuracy of his models?
Essenhigh concludes:
The beauty of Essenhigh’s approach is that it eliminates most adjustable parameters (aka “fudge factors”) in the atmospheric lapse rate, that are so pervasive in global climate models. This helps reduce the “argument from ignorance” problem endemic in most global climate models.
Essenhigh (2006) uses:
Accurate atmospheric profile modeling with radiative exchange such as Essenhigh developed is unlikely to be the cause of 95% of global climate models predicting temperatures over 34 years hotter than reality.
Essenhigh’s Do you know of any thermodynamic models that are more accurate?
Essenhigh notes:
Essenhigh’s approximation could be eliminated by a Line By Line radiative code such as Miskolzi’s HARTCODE combined with an improved model for the concentration variation of CO2 and H2O with altitude.
PS You can contact Essenhigh at his published Ohio State University email for a preprint of his paper, (or contact me at my name (w/o period) at gmail.)
David
Thanks for the links. I will have a read through.
Tonyb
David Hagen,
You mention Essenhigh’s 2006 paper but give the link to an 2009 paper that’s on a different subject (residence time of CO2). Based on abstract this paper expands on the well known straw man arguments that build on confusing two totally different issues. Essenhigh seems to understand that the issues are separate, but then draws strong conclusions with apparently no real justification. The abstract appears to give sufficient basis for concluding that the paper is not of any value, but I don’t have the full paper.
Kolan’s thesis is from 2009 and much more interesting than the 2006 paper of Essenhigh that formed the starting point of that work.
Pekka
Mae culpa. Thanks for noting the error. See:
Prediction of the Standard Atmosphere Profiles of Temperature, Pressure, and Density with Height for the Lower Atmosphere by Solution of the (S−S) Integral Equations of Transfer and Evaluation of the Potential for Profile Perturbation by Combustion Emissions Robert H. Essenhigh *
E. G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conversion, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210
Energy Fuels, 2006, 20 (3), pp 1057–1067
DOI: 10.1021/ef050276y
Publication Date (Web): March 16, 2006
I encourage you to examine both papers and their logic rather than superficial dismissal.
In the 2009 paper, Essenhigh addresses the core problem of which is the cause and which the consequence -CO2 or warming?
Robert H. Essenhigh, Potential Dependence of Global Warming on the Residence Time (RT) in the Atmosphere of Anthropogenically Sourced Carbon Dioxide, Energy Fuels, 2009, 23 (5), pp 2773–2784 DOI: 10.1021/ef800581r, Publication Date (Web): April 1, 2009
Murry Salby provides similar more detailed analyses. See On CO2 Residence Times, the Chicken or the Egg
David,
It should be clear from my earlier comments that I have read both the 2006 of Essenhigh and the master’s thesis of Kolan. I have told what I think of them. Very briefly: The idea is not stupid, but does not lead to quantitatively significant results. The reasons for that are acknowledged by Kolan. The paper is ok, but using it as an argument against main stream results is totally false. It shows no evidence against any present main stream results.
The question of causes of CO2 increase have been discussed to exhaustion here. Salby’s arguments have been found to be empty and based on a technically erroneous interpretation of time series related to detrending of the time series.
As I already wrote, the abstract alone provides a very strong signal on the irrelevance of the 2009 Essenhigh paper. As the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments for human dominance in the increase of CO2 concentration are straightforward and extremely strong, I have no interest in digging deeper into a paper that’s surely irrelevant, there are too many irrelevant papers to read all.
Again in short: All attempts to belittle the human dominance fail totally in lack of an alternative explanation for the fate of the human caused releases. These releases are twice the amount staying in the atmosphere. Any alternative explanation must propose a plausible sink to take both the whole human induced releases and the much larger natural contribution that’s supposed to overwhelm the human releases. Nobody has presented anything even remotely plausible for that, most just dismiss the whole issue and loose by that all credibility. They don’t explain anything, but create a big additional problem. Why should anybody give any weight on that.
At the same time real scientists have studied the real processes. There remain significant uncertainties in knowledge, but not at a level that would allow for a major change in the overall picture. IPCC AR5 tells that the rate of removal of CO2 from the atmosphere is still rather poorly known over periods longer that a decade as seen in this figure. That uncertainty is significant as that affects very much the long term (beyond 100 years) warming from CO2, but Essenhigh or Salby have absolutely nothing to contribute to that as far I can judge.
From the press release.
‘The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that a temperature anomaly of just 1ºC (in near surface air temperatures in the tropics) leads to a 3.5-Petagram (billion tonnes of carbon) anomaly in the annual CO2 growth rate, on average. This is the equivalent of 1/3 of the annual global emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation together.’
http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/Tropical-ecosystems-regulate-variations-in-Earths-carbon-dioxide-levels.aspx
‘We estimate that the global RS in 2008 (that is, the flux integrated over the Earth’s land surface over 2008) was 98±12 Pg C and that it increased by 0.1 Pg C yr-1 between 1989 and 2008, implying a global RS response to air temperature (Q10) of 1.5.’
http://environmentportal.in/files/Temperature%20associated%20increases%20in%20the%20global%20soil.pdf
‘We find a total inventory of anthropogenic CO2 in the ocean in 2008 of ≈140±25 PgC (≈150 PgC if we include the Arctic), and a corresponding uptake rate of 2.3±0.6 PgC/y. Thus, the world’s oceans currently absorbs roughly a quarter of manmade carbon. Our reconstruction quantifies the spatial and temporal distribution of where at the surface this CO2 enters the ocean, and indicates that roughly 40% of this CO2 penetrated via the Southern Ocean. However, only a small fraction remains in the Southern Ocean, with the bulk of it being transported northward by ocean circulation. We also find that CO2 uptake has increased sharply since the 1950’s, with a small decline in the rate of increase in the last few decades. In particular, between 2000 and 2007, the proportion of emissions absorbed by the ocean has declined by as much as 10%.’
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~spk/Research/AnthropogenicCarbon/anthroco2.html
So we have an amount equal to 55% of human emissions in an increase in natural CO2 flux that is temperature related – plus a little in reduced uptake in the oceans. The ocean sinks are about a quarter of human emissions. Where is the rest going to?
There are all sorts of complexities – including variable Redfield ratios in the oceans. I have no doubt that we are changing the composition of the atmosphere. I have huge doubts about how much is anthropogenic and how much is natural variation in a naturally warming climate. The errors on carbon flux are greater than 20% – there are large uncertainties that we would do well not to underplay.
Another interesting study from this year shows CO2 levels at 400ppm at the last glacial termination. This is very much at odds with ‘mainstream theory’.
http://www.academia.edu/2949675/Stomatal_proxy_record_of_CO2_concentrations_from_the_last_termination_suggests_an_important_role_for_CO2_at_climate_change_transitions
.
Chief pushes his chaos theory which is inconsequential. We should refer to it is Baby Chaos because it is at most a few tenths of degrees on top of a 300K baseline.
In the carbon cycle, photosynthesis is somewhere 100 to 120 with similar numbers for ocean -atmosphere CO2 fluxes. With uncertainties like that, waxing eloquent with 0.1 precision is amazing!
“Those wanting to suggest that the net effect on global energy budget is zero they had better show some justification for that assumption.”
Surface station, annual average of day over day max temp difference hasn’t changed hardly at all since the 50’s.
Go to the url in my name.
This was supposed to go somewhere else, sorry.
“Those wanting to suggest that the net effect on global energy budget is zero they had better show some justification for that assumption.”
——-
The effect on global climate energy budget is seen primarily in the ocean, and can now be compared to the TOA imbalance directly. Somewhere around 0.5 x 10^22 joules are being stored in the ocean per year down to 2000m. See:
http://cicar.ei.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Levitus-Lamont-05.pdf
Netflix HR approach …
From the article.
…
Crafting a Culture of Excellence
One day I was talking with one of our best engineers, an employee I’ll call John. Before the layoffs, he’d managed three engineers, but now he was a one-man department working very long hours. I told John I hoped to hire some help for him soon. His response surprised me. “There’s no rush—I’m happier now,” he said. It turned out that the engineers we’d laid off weren’t spectacular—they were merely adequate. John realized that he’d spent too much time riding herd on them and fixing their mistakes. “I’ve learned that I’d rather work by myself than with subpar performers,” he said. His words echo in my mind whenever I describe the most basic element of Netflix’s talent philosophy: The best thing you can do for employees—a perk better than foosball or free sushi—is hire only “A” players to work alongside them. Excellent colleagues trump everything else.
Hire, Reward, and Tolerate Only Fully Formed Adults
…
If you’re careful to hire people who will put the company’s interests first, who understand and support the desire for a high-performance workplace, 97% of your employees will do the right thing
…
So instead of shifting to a formal system, we went in the opposite direction: Salaried employees were told to take whatever time they felt was appropriate. Bosses and employees were asked to work it out with one another.
…
The company’s expense policy is five words long: “Act in Netflix’s best interests.”
…
Tell the Truth About Performance
…
Traditional corporate performance reviews are driven largely by fear of litigation.
…
“Instead, let’s just tell the truth: Technology has changed, the company has changed, and Maria’s skills no longer apply. This won’t be a surprise to her: She’s been in the trenches, watching the work around her shift. Give her a great severance package—which, when she signs the documents, will dramatically reduce (if not eliminate) the chance of a lawsuit.” In my experience, people can handle anything as long as they’re told the truth—and this proved to be the case with Maria.
…
Managers Own the Job of Creating Great Teams
…
Our compensation philosophy helped a lot. Most of its principles stem from ideals described earlier: Be honest, and treat people like adults. For instance, during my tenure Netflix didn’t pay performance bonuses, because we believed that they’re unnecessary if you hire the right people. If your employees are fully formed adults who put the company first, an annual bonus won’t make them work harder or smarter. We also believed in market-based pay and would tell employees that it was smart to interview with competitors when they had the chance, in order to get a good sense of the market rate for their talent. Many HR people dislike it when employees talk to recruiters, but I always told employees to take the call, ask how much, and send me the number—it’s valuable information.
…
Leaders Own the Job of Creating the Company Culture
…
Good Talent Managers Think Like Businesspeople and Innovators First, and Like HR People Last
…
Forgot the link http://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr/ar/2
I wonder if the tech companies are willing to pay the new mass of H1B workers they want the BLS average wage for a given job? If they are really after the best and brightest, that would be fair IMO. If the government is going to make law to let the H1Bs in, they can mandate a wage also.
H1Bs typically work for much less than a US citizen and work long hours. I think that’s why companies want them.
lolwot
shorter gail: “I don’t understand what you said, but I am sure as hell going to disagree with it”
Bogstandard lolwotian projection.
The real science is that you don’t filter, but rather apply a model of the variability to explain the pause.
http://contextearth.com/context_salt_model/
This is what the fluctuations look like. Not a “well observed” 60-year cycle at all:
http://imageshack.com/a/img23/8418/qvv.gif
Why would anyone want to apply that aggressive a filter such that only a 60-year cycle pops out? Are you filter-heads that anti-science?
“The real science is that you don’t filter”
Only in climate science would that be true! All other sciences that deal with power in all its forms would and do disagree.
Did you pause to consider that it is just a near Gaussian low pass filter at 15 years that allows the 60 year cycle to be visible and that the length of the data does not allow for anything longer around 100+ years to be tested properly?
It is not unreasonable to say there is not enough data to prove anything. The problem is that the converse is also true.
JCH
The “no warming for 17 years” nonsense.
So you know this, whereas heavily funded rabid precommitted alarmists like the IPCC don’t ??
“The pause is b.s” claims on the part of the more rabid warmists here, is prima facie evidence of willful bias. Anyone making such a claim is not to be taken seriously.
I do not deny that trend lines that are flat can be drawn. You cannot deny that there was considerable warming during the period. A great deal of went into the oceans, and change in atmospheric components means additional delay in it coming back out.
The Pause is used to imply no warming at all, and that is nonsense. The reflection of a political bias; the wish that warming stopped. There were several 12-month periods that set records.
Surface warming follows net TOA radiant flux.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/HadCRUT4vCERES_zpse5107cfd.png.html?sort=3&o=5
Longer term you can decide for yourself.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-Fig1.png.html?sort=3&o=90
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandLaken2013_zps73c516f9.png.html?sort=3&o=53
None of the monthly temperature data come close to early 1998 – but the critical idea is the 1998/2001 climate shift.
The pause is ore likely than not to be the back edge of the well observed 60 year cycle. The real question is where are we on any longer ~100+ year cycle.
”
RichardLH | December 25, 2013 at 5:48 pm |
The pause is ore likely than not to be the back edge of the well observed 60 year cycle. The real question is where are we on any longer ~100+ year cycle.
”
The real science is that you don’t filter, but rather apply a model of the variability to explain the pause.
http://contextearth.com/context_salt_model/
This is what the fluctuations look like. Not a “well observed” 60-year cycle at all:
http://imageshack.com/a/img23/8418/qvv.gif
Why would anyone want to apply that aggressive a filter such that only a 60-year cycle pops out? Are you filter-heads that anti-science?
“The real science is that you don’t filter”
Only in climate science would that be true! All other sciences that deal with power in all its forms would and do disagree.
Did you pause to consider that it is just a near Gaussian low pass filter at 15 years that allows the 60 year cycle to be visible and that the length of the data does not allow for anything longer around 100+ years to be tested properly?
It is not unreasonable to say there is not enough data to prove anything. The problem is that the converse is also true.
RichardLH does not realize that a CSALT-like model can be used in Kalman filter-like applications. The basis of a Kalman filter is to have a model of the noise to be able to better discern the signal of interest.
Keep on doing naive filters, I don’t care, throw away the valuable info, be my guest. You will be left in the dust of progress.
“Keep on doing naive filters, I don’t care, throw away the valuable info, be my guest. You will be left in the dust of progress.”
I am humble enough not to pontificate ahead of the available data. You may venture where you wish.
The facts are that two samples of anything are not enough to derive firm, dogmatic conclusions no matter how clever your analysis.
The real science is that it stopped getting warmer because it started snowing more and Albedo stopped decreasing.
I do not deny that trend lines that are flat can be drawn.
You could have stopped there and been right.
You did not and are not.
The real question is where are we on any longer ~100+ year cycle.
Put yourself at this point in the Roman or Medieval Warm periods and look ~100+ years ahead. Same Place!
There are critical misconceptions about the flow of energy in the Earth system. Energy of course arrives from the Sun to the surface to the atmosphere back to space as a continuous flow. The flow is modulated as total solar irradiance and in changes in IR emissions and reflected SW. Increased greenhouse gases increase scattering of IR photons. This scattering is what is measure as in Harries et al – http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/321/Harries_Spectrum_2001.pdf – and not diminished emissions in certain frequencies. The latter is a misconception based on the theoretical value of forcing – which defined as the difference in forcing with more greenhouse gases and keeping the temperature constant. The physics are that the troposhpere is warmer almost instantaneously (indeed CO is typically emitted at much higher temperatures – and cool to a local thermodynamic equilibrium in the atmosphere) so some or all of the ‘forcing’ is almost instantaneously compensated for.
A warmer atmosphere has increased IR emissions – including downwards. This decreases net IR losses from the top millimetre of the oceans – and the ocean warms – increasing both IR and latent heat losses to the atmosphere. Oceans may also warm through increases in TSI and decreases in cloud, dust, ice, snow and vegetation.
But energy is of course conserved. The change in global energy content in a period is dependent only on the difference in energy in and energy out. The system is not and never has been in equilibrium. Simplifications based on equilbrium thinking are wrong.
The atmosphere temperature follows net toa energy flux closely – making it a good indication of what is happening with energy flows.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/HadCRUT4vCERES_zpse5107cfd.png.html?sort=3&o=4
And sea surface temperature – showing changes in energy flows from the ocean in the coupled system.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/HADSST3vCERESnet_zps068a355c.png.html?sort=3&o=3
CERES allows for distinguishing between changes in IR emissions and reflected SW. In the early period of ARGO – decreases in reflected SW dominated (power out decreased). In the latter part – changes in TSI (power in) in the 11 year solar cycle shown in SORCE data dominated (power in increased).
Several points:
Even if the atmosphere isn’t warmer, more CO2 means the downwards emissions are (on average) coming from a lower altitude. Which is usually (a little) warmer.
Latent heat losses will, under some (IMO many) conditions, result in increased cloudiness at low altitudes, which will produce a much larger increase in downwards IR (because the clouds act as black-bodies for IR). This will, under certain conditions, produce a very strong positive feedback to the increased downwards IR from increased pCO2.
At the same time, increased low-level cloudiness will increase the albedo for shortwave solar, potentially creating a strong negative feedback to the overall radiation balance at that point. Thus, at some locations, the “greenhouse sensitivity” can actually be negative.
AFAIK it remains an open question how widespread these conditions are, although for social reasons I suspect some of the scientists studying them are afraid they’re pretty widespread.
AK,
You proposed continuing this discussion here. My latest comment has not been answered, but you may decide, what to do on that.
On the influence of more heating of ocean on clouds, I note only that extra evaporation is caused by a higher temperature near surface. As long as the temperature increase is approximately the same at higher altitudes the absolute saturation humidity is also increased, and the altitude where clouds start to form need not change. More detailed knowledge is needed to decide what the outcome is in each particular case.
Assuming well mixed gases in the troposphere – the increased emissions come from all levels proportionately to T^4.
Much of the rest of your comment is pure speculation based on concepts that may or may or not be correct – but for which without data in such a complex system cannot be seriously considered.
Increased latent heat flux from the oceans may for instance result in a decrease in residence time of water in the atmosphere rather than increased cloud.
e.g. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6028/430
This is paywalled but is part of a broad discussion in hydrology that has been going on for years without much resolution – google faster hydrological cycle.
@Pekka Pirilä…
OK, here’s why I think the skin layer heating may be important. Extra energy absorbed over a distance of centimeters or greater will have a much smaller proportional effect on temperature than that absorbed in the skin. Thus, extra downwelling IR will potentially result in greater evaporation at that point in space/time than the same amount of extra shortwave. Except for the small amount of heat conducted downwards, all the energy flowing into the mixing layer (via radiation) will ultimately return to the atmosphere. But the evaporation rate will depend on the temperature, which is much less influenced by absorption of radiation in the whole mixing layer than the skin layer.
Of course, in both cases, the extra energy would be (mostly) returned to the atmosphere, but in complex non-linear systems, we can’t assume it’ll “come out in the wash”, (i.e. average out). It enters the system in different locations (in space/time), and therefore potentially can have different effects. The assumption that they’re the same is unwarranted.
Because the skin layer (and the lowest few hundred microns of the atmosphere that are effectively locked to it) can be warmer than expected from the temperature of the main mixing layer under it, the evaporation rate can potentially be significantly higher than would normally be expected for that combination of SST (mixing layer), lowest troposphere temperature, and humidity.
Thus, there’s no reason to assume that higher evaporation rates will be accompanied by higher air temperatures (above the part so close to the ocean skin that diffusion dominates both heat and water vapor transport). Higher humidity without higher temperature could well lead to greater precipitation (of clouds, not falling) at altitudes a few hundred meters up, with the resultant feed-back of increased IR from clouds which are effectively black-bodies.
This whole idea is based on my understanding of an old post at RC titled Why greenhouse gases heat the ocean, where the effect of low clouds is described as being much greater:
IMO there’s a potential positive feedback loop there that could function independently from the negative feedback on general solar radiation via cloud albedo.
If the research mentioned in that post has been published in any Peer-reviewed venue, I’m unaware of it, which leads me to suspect it’s been suppressed as inconvenient. Part of the fall-out of Climate-gate, I guess (the suspicion that is).
AK
Some counterarguments.
Rate of evaporation is controlled mainly by the atmospheric side of the surface. Relative humidity very close to the skin is normally close to 100%. Thus decisive factors are temperature of the near surface air and transport of moisture out from the immediate neighborhood of the skin.
In absence of strong sunshine the properties of the skin are rather stable. The temperature is almost constant in surface ocean except for the drop in the skin. The influence of additional DWIR is to modify the relative shares of component heat flows a little, slightly less net IR compensated by increases in latent and sensible heat transfer.
In strong sunshine the maximum temperature is just below the skin at a depth of 1 mm or so. Under those conditions the change in DWIR and the change in solar SW have rather similar influence on the heat flows.
@ Pekka Pirilä | December 25, 2013 at 5:40 pm |
By ” temperature of the near surface air” do you mean bottom meter or so, or a few hundred microns near the skin layer? That transport, AFAIK, is dependent on the gradient of absolute humidity across that near layer, and into the portion where forced convection provides the necessary mixing. Has that process even been modeled?
I’d expect evaporation rate to be dependent on a variety of small-scale wave and wind characteristics as well as skin temp. Some of them biological, and thus potentially under the influence of pCO2 in non-meteorological ways. Very complex and non-linear.
Most have probably seen this, but just in case:
Near-surface oceanic temperature gradients
Thanks for that JCH. Hope a few here will take time to read it.
The discussion I have had with AK is as far as can judge based on the intuitive estimates that we have on a phenomenon we both believe to be true. We seem to agree qualitatively on all contributing factors, we differ only on the quantitative estimate (and not necessarily very much even on that). Only a well done full analysis that covers real ocean conditions could resolve the issue, and my guess is that such an analysis cannot be found anywhere.
Concerning the link given by JHC, I add that the second figure is somewhat misleading as it shows penetration of visible light, IR, and microwave. In place of visible light it would be more meaningful to have the curve for solar SW including the near IR. The curve for that is quite different as about 10% of solar SW is absorbed in the first mm and 21% in the first 10mm. These distances are depths only for sun at zenith. Including a reasonable spread for the incidence angle at least a quarter of the energy is absorbed in the top 10mm. The reason for this great deviation from the figure of GHRST is that about 50% of energy of solar SW at the surface is near IR together with the fact that the penetration depth goes down very rapidly with increasing wavelength in the range of near IR.
The important role of near IR is essential for understanding the maximum of the temperature at the depth of about 1 mm.
My curve is based on the solar SW spectrum at the surface as given by ASTM G173-03 Reference Spectra and data on absorption coefficients of radiation in pure water from sources listed by M. Jonasz at http://www.tpdsci.com/tpc/AbsCfOfWaterDat.php. The same data is probably used in drawing the figure at the site http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html
Chief Hydrologist,
A few points.
Reducing IR loss from an object does not warm the object. It merely slows the rate of cooling. The ocean is no exception.
There is no “conservation of energy” vi-a-vis the Earth system’s relationship with its environment. The Earth has continued to lose energy to space for four and a half billion years. Reducing the rate of loss will not stop this, unless you can devise a perfect insulator.
The distinction between the energy content of radiation wavelengths is purely a semantic convenience. A joule is a joule, so to speak, regardless of the wavelength of the radiation transferring such energy from place to place.
Infrared radiation causes no more heating than any other wavelength of radiation absorbed at the same rate.
As you have said, if the components of the Earth system, including the atmosphere, act in a chaotic fashion, then it is to be expected that there will be places on the Earth that will be warmer than expected, and conversely there will places that are cooler.
On a planet cooling at around a millionth of a degree per annum, that rate of cooling is insignificant compared with local effects. Diurnal variations due to the Earth’s rotation, seasonal variations, semi cyclic “waves”, continental drift, isostatic rebound, vulcanism . . . , all these affect the weather, and hence climate.
Changing the constitution of the atmosphere may affect the weather. For better or for worse is the unanswerable question – in spite of billions wasted in the search for an answer.
Please correct me if my understanding of physics is incorrect. No pointless analogies please.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Judy – this is a copy of the comment above hopefully closing out all the italics.
Reducing IR loss from an object does not warm the object. It merely slows the rate of cooling. The ocean is no exception.
The direction of energy flows is Sun, oceans, atmosphere and space. Anything that increases inputs or reduces losses will tend to warm the oceans.
There is no “conservation of energy” vi-a-vis the Earth system’s relationship with its environment. The Earth has continued to lose energy to space for four and a half billion years. Reducing the rate of loss will not stop this, unless you can devise a perfect insulator.
Energy is conserved at TOA – energy in eventually equals energy out.
The distinction between the energy content of radiation wavelengths is purely a semantic convenience. A joule is a joule, so to speak, regardless of the wavelength of the radiation transferring such energy from place to place.
The distinction allows for identification of mechanisms.
Energy out = reflected shortwave + emitted infrared
Infrared radiation causes no more heating than any other wavelength of radiation absorbed at the same rate.
Duh!
As you have said, if the components of the Earth system, including the atmosphere, act in a chaotic fashion, then it is to be expected that there will be places on the Earth that will be warmer than expected, and conversely there will places that are cooler.
Here I am focusing on the statistics of TOA radiative flux.
By the first law of thermodynamics –
d(W&H)dt (J/s) = power in – power out
Almost precise apart from minor terms of fossil fuel combustion and radioactive decay.
Synchronous chaos is something entirely different. It implies that the system behaves in the ways of the broad class of complex, dynamical systems – noisy bifurcation and slowing down in particular. It is a metatheory of climate – governing principles that can organise and explain aspects of the climate system. Importantly for energy dynamics – shifts in cloud caused by shifts in oceans and atmospheric circulation.
e.g. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ProjectEarthshine-albedo_zps87fc3b7f.png.html?sort=3&o=29
‘Earthshine changes in albedo shown in blue, ISCCP-FD shown in black and CERES in red. A climatologically significant change before CERES followed by a long period of insignificant change.’
and – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandLaken2013_zps73c516f9.png.html?sort=3&o=53
They both show noisy bifurcation in 1998/2001.
On a planet cooling at around a millionth of a degree per annum, that rate of cooling is insignificant compared with local effects. Diurnal variations due to the Earth’s rotation, seasonal variations, semi cyclic “waves”, continental drift, isostatic rebound, vulcanism . . . , all these affect the weather, and hence climate.
Changes in global energy content – warming or cooling – depends only on the difference between incoming and outgoing energy in a period – and some minor terms as explained. At toa is as simple as it gets.
Changing the constitution of the atmosphere may affect the weather. For better or for worse is the unanswerable question – in spite of billions wasted in the search for an answer.
In a chaotic climate the future climate state is unpredictable but the potential for extreme changes is there as a mathematical truism. Catastrophe in the sense of Rene Thom. In a chaotic system the way to minimise noisy bifurcation is to minimise the rate of change of control variables – such as greenhouse gas emissions.
The pragmatic ways to do this are obvious – changed farming practices and a range of other technological and societal innovations.
e.g. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/10176217/The-underground-forests-that-are-bringing-deserts-to-life.html
and – http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/climate_pragmatism_innovation
and – http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/
The last is pretty well aligned with the Millennium Development Goals – at least theoretically funded by increases in aid to 0.7% of GDP as committed to by western nations. I’d like to discuss these approaches in greater detail – but we seem stuck on the level of trivial and erroneous detail of atmospheric and ocean physics and a lack of understanding of the fundamental mode of operation of the Earth climate system.
If we can’t stop climate shifts – we may at least build resilience of human societies to whatever happens. So yes good money is being thrown after bad in utter confusion and I wish it would stop soon.
Chief Hydrologist,
I note you have not attempted to correct my facts. Thank you.
You seem to assume that radioactive decay and fossil fuel heat production are “minor”. Lord Kelvin made the same mistake in relation to radioactive decay, so you are only repeating the errors of a brilliant physicist.
As to TOA, this term is somewhat less useful than an infinite plane, a frictionless surface or any number of similar theoretical artefacts.
There is no such thing, and for this reason it is beloved of Warmists.
All matter above absolute zero emits electromagnetic radiation. The fact that matter is observed to have a “temperature” is evidence of this fact.
All matter at a temperature above that of its surroundings, (simplistically), will cool – more quickly or more slowly, depending on conditions pertaining at the time.
In relation to chaotic systems, reducing the rate of change of an initial condition may or may not lead to a desired change in the system. Arbitrarily small changes to inputs may have arbitrarily large and unforeseen effects as the system progresses.
To sum up – the Earth as a whole is cooling. There is, currently, no known method of stopping it. Obviously, you can show an increase in surface temperature as the Sun, or your bottom, or anything else emitting radiation warms the surface from the exterior. The 70% or so of the surface covered by deep water or thick ice stubbornly refuses to warm from without. The only reason that the abyssal depths are as warm as they are is due to the fact that they are only separated by a few kilometers of solid rock from a rather large molten blob comprising the interior of the Earth.
Open thread is fun.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
I note you have not attempted to correct my facts. Thank you.
I corrected your misconceptions. Of these there are many.
You seem to assume that radioactive decay and fossil fuel heat production are “minor”. Lord Kelvin made the same mistake in relation to radioactive decay, so you are only repeating the errors of a brilliant physicist.
The rate of heat production of radioactive decay and fossil fuel is some 0.03 W/m2 each. This pales in relation to the 242 W/m2 arriving at the surface from the Sun. While it may have some relevance for the idea of radiative imbalance – this is a different thing entirely.
As to TOA, this term is somewhat less useful than an infinite plane, a frictionless surface or any number of similar theoretical artefacts.
There is no such thing, and for this reason it is beloved of Warmists.
TOA is the top of atmosphere – and certainly is well enough defined to situate satellites outside of it. In space there is only radiated energy.
All matter above absolute zero emits electromagnetic radiation. The fact that matter is observed to have a “temperature” is evidence of this fact.
As true as this is – the relevance to anything I have said is lacking.
‘All matter at a temperature above that of its surroundings, (simplistically), will cool – more quickly or more slowly, depending on conditions pertaining at the time.’
Yes – many of us are familiar with the 2nd law of thermodynsmics. Your point is again lacking in any significance.
In relation to chaotic systems, reducing the rate of change of an initial condition may or may not lead to a desired change in the system. Arbitrarily small changes to inputs may have arbitrarily large and unforeseen effects as the system progresses.
‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation.’ http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.long
Reducing the rate of change reduces the potential for chaotic shifts. What we desire or not has nothing to do with anything and it is not something we can predict or control.
‘To sum up – the Earth as a whole is cooling. There is, currently, no known method of stopping it. Obviously, you can show an increase in surface temperature as the Sun, or your bottom, or anything else emitting radiation warms the surface from the exterior. The 70% or so of the surface covered by deep water or thick ice stubbornly refuses to warm from without. The only reason that the abyssal depths are as warm as they are is due to the fact that they are only separated by a few kilometers of solid rock from a rather large molten blob comprising the interior of the Earth.’
The Earth warms from the Sun from the most part – and liquid water sinks when cool and salty enough. The abyssal oceans are far from static. The Earth warms and cools as energy is gained or lost.
I have shown this to you before – along with a detailed discussion. The Earth is not cooling – it is mostly generating heat in the mantle from radioactive decay. Enough for a few hundred billion cups of coffee/hour. Sounds a lot aye Mike?
Sufficient the evil of the day – http://phys.org/news62952904.html
You persist in your passive aggressive nonsensical fanaticism – and the belief that your simple ideas and foolish obsessions are both irrefutable and unheard of by the ‘warmist’. I think perhaps they might be – it is really because you are telling yourself a different nonsensical story.
Rather than passive aggressive – I am a rather blunt Australian. I think you are a fool and a bore – so don’t expect any more pleasant and informative answers to your silly theories and simplistic physics. Don’t expect any more answers at all.
“Reducing IR loss from an object does not warm the object. It merely slows the rate of cooling. The ocean is no exception.”
—
Completely incorrect. If an object (or the ocean) is receiving 10 w/m^2 but giving off 9 w/m^2 it will warm. It is the GH concentration of the atmosphere that dictates how many w/m^2 the oceans give off in both sensible and latent heat flux over the long term. Basic thermodynamics.
“To sum up – the Earth as a whole is cooling. There is, currently, no known method of stopping it. ”
—
In a billion years time, the sun will have increased its output to the point of evaporating all of Earth’s oceans away, with most of the water being lost to space. It won’t matter if the interior has been cooling or not– Earth will become essentially lifeless– all because of solar output.
R Gates,
I agree with you. All you have to do is use your magical one way energy transmission filter, which lets energy in, but not out.
You will probably find it on the shelf next to your bottle of phlogiston, or maybe next to the piece of frictionless surface. I’d be careful not to store it next to your supply of universal solvent, though!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Chief Hydrologist,
I sincerely hope that I don’t receive any further “answers” from you. Alas, I fear my hopes will be dashed.
The heat from the Earth does not accumulate. It is radiated to space. The Earth is somewhat “hotter” than outer space, in radiative energy transfer terms. Therefore, the Earth cools. The radiation from the Sun is incapable of maintaining the Earth’s surface temperature at anything like current levels. In fact, the Earth’s temperature increases with depth, once past the level at which annual insolation caused variations are detectable.
You cannot define what the “top of atmosphere” is. Give it a try if you wish. In any case, such a thing would be extremely tenuous, and possess almost no substance. Its ability to radiate energy would thus be almost nil per unit volume by definition.
Attempting to reduce the rate of change of an arbitrarily small parameter being an initial condition of a chaotic system or may not have a given desired result. You may care to provide evidence of your assertion, if you wish, related to the atmosphere,
You claim that the Earth (as a whole, presumably) warms from the Sun, mainly. The Sun has been unable to prevent the Earth from cooling to date. I am unable to fathom why you believe the Earth is warming, when you say yourself that heat from internal radiactive decay is leaving the surface, albeit slowly. Heat leaving a body results in cooling, not warming.
You state that the Earth is not cooling, but apparently warming due to radioactive mass conversion to energy occurring in the mantle. May I respectfully point out that the amount of energy available in the various unstable isotopes has steadily dropped since the Earth’s creation.
I admire your passionate adherence to the apparent theory of the “warming Earth.” Unfortunately, Nature seems to be on my side. Obviously, time will tell.
I must admit to some surprise that you consider your comments to comprise “pleasant and informative answers”. We obviously differ on definitions.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
“You claim that the Earth (as a whole, presumably) warms from the Sun, mainly. ”
—
The sun is the ultimate source of the energy that drives the Earth’s climate system, with the ocean bring the intermediate storage vessel for the majority of this energy.
R. Gates
I have a high degree of confidence that the oceans have been retaining energy for at least the past 40 years. I have an equally high degree of confidence that the fact that we have the highest GH gas levels since the Pliocene is the major cause for the rising ocean heat content.
Looking for your keys under the streetlight?
Or do you know all about, and ruled out, other possible causes of ocean heat changes? Clouds maybe?
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=157
Chief’s plot shows ocean heat equilibrating rather sooner than the decades you claim.
‘Geophysicists believe that heat flows from Earth’s interior into space at a rate of about 44 × 10^12 W (TW).’
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/jul/19/radioactive-decay-accounts-for-half-of-earths-heat
This about three times the heat from combustion of fossils fuels.
‘The total rate at which the energy enters the Earth’s atmosphere is estimated at 174 petawatts[citation needed]. This flux consists of:
– solar radiation (99.97%, or nearly 173 petawatts)
This is equal to the product of the solar constant, about 1,366 watts per square meter, and the area of the Earth’s disc as seen from the Sun, about 1.28 × 1014 square meters, averaged over the Earth’s surface, which is four times larger. (That is, the area of a disc with the Earth’s diameter, which is effectively the target for solar energy, is 1/4 the area of the entire surface of the Earth.) The solar flux averaged over just the sunlit half of the Earth’s surface is about 680 W m−2
This is the incident energy. The energy actually absorbed by the earth is lower by a factor of the albedo; this is discussed in the next section.
Note that the solar constant varies (by approximately 0.1% over a solar cycle); and is not known absolutely to within better than about one watt per square meter. Hence geothermal, tidal, and waste heat contributions are less uncertain than solar power.
– energy from Earth’s internal heat (0.025%; or about 44[4] to 47[5] terawatts)
This is produced by stored heat and heat produced by radioactive decay leaking out of the Earth’s interior.
– tidal energy (0.002%, or about 3 terawatts)
This is produced by the interaction of the Earth’s mass with the gravitational fields of other bodies such as the Moon and Sun.
– waste heat from fossil fuel consumption (about 0.007%, or about 13 terawatts).[6] ‘
wikipedia
There is an obvious problem with mad theories that the sun doesn’t warm the planet. This is just that it is totally insane – and the purveyor utterly recalcitrant. There are obvious examples of – yea even on these very pages – that people believe insane things and will not be convinced otherwise.
Chief Hydrologist,
I assume you are pretending to misunderstand what I am saying. Let me see if I can express it more clearly.
You should agree that the Earth was, say, 0.5 C warmer in the past than it is now. This is obvious if the Earth has cooled from white heat at the time of creation.
Therefore, the Sun was unable to prevent the Earth from cooling to its present temperature. Unable to prevent the Earth cooling 0.5 C, even unable to prevent a temperature drop of 0.0001 degree.
Now it appears you think that the Sun’s output has magically increased, or some other physical process unknown to those of us who do not possess your hidden knowledge has occurred, and not only does 4.5 billion years of cooling stop, the temperature then starts to rise.
You’ve got to be joking, Chief!
Will the Earth now heat up to white heat again? Will all the previous used up radioactive isotopes in the interior magically reconstitute themselves? Maybe the magical multiplicative effects of the greenhouse effect, or spontaneous combustion may provide the answer.
I admire your passion, Chief Hydrologist, but the Earth has cooled, is still cooling, and will continue to cool, in all likelihood. I believe a computed surface temperature for an isothermal interior (beyond the depth at which annual solar variations are detectable) is in the order of 255 C.
In any case, the Earth is cooling very slowly, so I don’t pay too much mind to the prospect of Imminent death by hypothermia here in the Tropics.
You may call me what you like. I am unsure as to the reason you think I care what you think. You may care to enlighten me – or not, as you wish.
All I have on my side is observed fact and Nature. And you?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
@ kim | December 26, 2013 at 8:57 am |
“Thanks, Cap’n, if increased atmospheric forcing in the more equatorial latitudes can increase convection to the more polar latitudes, it can increase the efficiency of the heat engine, and act as a negative feedback to that forcing.”
But more atmospheric forcing by CO2 probably won’t increase convection. Once clouds form, they prevent additional heating by reflecting Sunlight back to space. This is the basis of the 31C limit of SST there.
Note the links to published paper here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/10/citizen-scientist-willis-and-the-cloud-radiative-effect/
This means the poles will probably drive convection changes.
jim2, because H2O has those two Hs, added water vapor reduces density which stimulates convection. Poleward transfer of both water vapor and O3 tend to regulate the polar heat loss. O3 transfer by the brewer-dobson circulation causes the poles to be roughly 50C (~53Wm-2) warmer than without that advective transfer. Water vapor/ice reacts with O3 creating a Mr. Wizard chemistry feedback linked to the ~30C sst limit. That chemistry puzzle has links to solar wind and geomagnetic potential that baffle the hell out of me. Actually, Watts has a post that is related.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/26/new-paper-clouds-blown-by-the-solar-wind/
From the article:
In 2014 Japan could restart its fleet of nuclear reactors (54 reactors were idled following the Fukushima tsunami). Raymond James is estimating that 30 gigawatts eventually get turned back on, starting at 9.5 gigawatts in 2014 (vs. 0 running in 2013). The average reactor in Japan has just under one gigawatt in capacity.
Worldwide there are 66 nuclear plants under construction, 160 planned, and 319 proposed. With 435 operable reactors worldwide today, the addition of new plants should add materially to demand.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1916811-ur-energy-a-uranium-giant-in-the-making
It’s 10.30 am – I think I need to get out of bed.
Okay, my 90-year-old mother laughed her butt off on Dingle Berry.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530224/Can-tear-jerkers-turn-liberal-As-Good-As-It-Gets-The-Rainmaker-make-soppy-says-study.html
Judith, Janis’s work on “The Victims of Groupthink” is an interesting read, especially relevant to the discussions of the climate cabal.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.polsci.wvu.edu%2Ffaculty%2Fhauser%2FPS493V%2FHartVictimsGroupthinkPolPsych1991.pdf&ei=O-y8UrfXOYTSkQfq14CACQ&usg=AFQjCNFFDL5t7QAPxeGbowziQhJHPg9DKw&bvm=bv.58187178,d.eW0
Fracking water vs coal power cooling
“Electricity produced using natural gas combustion turbines and natural gas combined-cycle generators requires roughly 30 percent of the water needed for coal power plants. The study estimates that the amount of water saved by shifting a power plant from coal to natural gas is up to 50 times the amount of water lost in fracking to extract the natural gas from underground shale formations.”
Drought and the water–energy nexus in Texas
Environmental Research Letters Volume 8 Number 4
Bridget R Scanlon et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 045033 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/4/045033
David L. Hagen
Pls look at my comment at
Vilnius | December 27, 2013 at 12:46 am |
David L. Hagen,
See also my reflection on Ian Wilson at
http://judithcurry.com/2013/12/20/open-thread-weekend-41/#comment-427595
From BBC online: the benefits of a warmer climate!
Wildlife ‘thrived’ in 2013 after hot summer
The hot summer in the UK provided a much-needed boost for wildlife with butterflies, moths and grasshoppers all thriving, the National Trust says.
The warm weather also led to an explosion of berries, nuts and seeds.
The trust’s Matthew Oates said 2013 was “one of the most remarkable wildlife years in living memory”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25523879
Faustino,
Interesting topic. Well worth discussing in some depth.
Why should we believe the planet is at the optimum temperature for life just when we happen to be alive?
What is the persuasive evidence that warmer would be net bad for flora and fauna?
Warming has been greatly beneficial since the ice age and since the Little Ice Age, and for the past half century. So, why do we believe it wont continue to be beneficial. Where is the strongly persuasive evidence that warming will not continue to be beneficial?
Could it be that we naturally fear the unknown and that is biasing the scientists research? Could it be that, just as it seems climate sensitivity has been overstated for the past 30 years or so, the damage function has also been overstated – the negative consequences have been overestimated and the benefits under researched and under estimated?
We know life struggles in the ice ages. The are of deserts expanded. high winds blew the topsoil away and caused wide spread sand dunes and loess deposits. The Antarctic ice cores have high concentrations of dust during cold period and low during warm periods. And the coral reefs almost died out.
Conversely, when the planet has been in much warmer times than now, life thrived. The area of deserts shrunk. Coral reefs expanded and thrived. Oil was deposited from thriving life in calm warm sees.
“In a new study, The Positive Externalities of Carbon Dioxide, Idso estimates that rising CO2 concentrations boosted global crop production by $3.2 trillion during 1961-2011, and will increase output by another $9.8 trillion between now and 2050. Richard Tol says the Idso study is wrong, but I don’t understand why it is wrong or what is wrong with it or how wrong it is.
My interpretation of Richard Tol’s Figure 3 here: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/climate_change.pdf is that, excluding energy costs, warming would be net beneficial to above 4 C from now. I believe low cost energy is plausable. If Richard Tol’s Fighrte 3 is roughly correct, if we cut the cost of energy, then GW would be beneficial to beyond 4 C warming from now.
Look at Figures 15.21 and 15.22, pp392-392 here and read the associated text: http://eprints.nuim.ie/1983/1/McCarron.pdf It seems to me the flora and fauna thrived during the warming periods and struggled and died out during the cooling periods. Life loves warming.
To repeat my initial question: why do we believe Earth happens to be at the optimum temperature just when we happen to be here?
Bjorn Lomborg provokes to explore: The Power to Develop
Must we keep the earth as is? Or help the poor develop?
Who / what do we worship?
David, I’m still digesting one of your links from four days ago on how the climate elite in their wis-dumb have turned the World Bank against coal. This piece by Lomborg is a valuable adjunct. Please keep feeding this stuff in. Human beings have never kept the earth as is, With the power to withhold something we take for granted from those who desperately need it comes responsibility few seem to grasp.
Thanks also for pointing to the wonderful Forbes article on Dickens, Christmas Carol and the fight against Malthus in those days. I picked it up from someone else on another thread but it’s a really helpful one for those of us in the UK, given the towering reputation of the novelist.
David L. Hagen,
Yes, excellent article by Bjorn Lomborg; based on this: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/projects/how-much-have-global-problems-cost-world/background.
The world needs cheap power. The external benefits greatly exceed the external costs. Until we can have a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels, we must continue to use them.
If we want to get off fossil fuels, we must allow the world to have a cheaper alternative. We much not raise the cost of fossil fuels but, instead, remove the impediments that prevent us from having the cheap alternative.
And, as a reminder, here are the fatalities per TWh for different electricity generation technologies caused by pollution and industrial accidents on a full life time analysis basis (cradle to grave for all parts of the energy chain):
Energy Source; Death Rate (deaths per TWh)
Coal (elect, heat,cook – world avg);100;(26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal electricity – world avg;60;(26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal (elect,heat,cook) – China;170;
Coal electricity- China;90;
Coal – USA;15;(44% U.S. electricity)
Oil;36;(36% of world energy, 8% of electricity)
Natural Gas;4;(20% of global electricity)
Biofuel/Biomass;12;(21% global energy)
Solar (rooftop);0.44;(0.2% of global electricity)
Wind;0.15;(1.6% of global electricity)
Hydro – global average);1.4;(15% global electricity)
Nuclear;0.09;(17% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)
In short, based on world averages, fatalities per TWh of electricity generation are 600 times higher with coal than with nuclear.
Put another way, replacing coal with nuclear in electricity generation would avoid more than 1 million fatalities per year world wide.
Peter, do you have a reference for those figures? And what does a “full life time analysis basis (cradle to grave for all parts of the energy chain)” mean for nuclear? Have any of us lived that long?
Richard Drake,
Here is a summary of authoritative studies:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html
Such studies have been being done for over 30 years and there has been little change in the relative rankings in that time. Nuclear is about the safest way to generate electricity, everything included.
Peter, thanks for that link. My point about nuclear was of course that accidental deaths could have a tail going on beyond 30 years and, for all I know, beyond 3000 years, unlike other energy sources. We would all hope (and some assume) that it will never become a fat tail. I speak as a self-confessed non-expert for life on energy. I don’t consider myself anti-nuclear, I just reflect we won’t have the data on what might go wrong with the waste until we have an accident or two. And then we’ll know more.
Richard Drake,
Your concerns are all covered in the LCA analyses. That is what they deal with.
Richard Drake,
Here are some links that may be of interest if you want an initial introduction to the subject:
A short post I wrote in 2010:
“What is risk? A simple explanation”
http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power/
Life Cycle Analysis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_cycle_assessment
Waste Management Overview:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Nuclear-Wastes/Waste-Management-Overview/
Radioactive Waste Management:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Nuclear-Wastes/Radioactive-Waste-Management/
Thanks Peter.
http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/12/27/2013-shatters-the-record-for-fewest-tornadoes-15-lower-than-previous-record/
Re David L. Hagen | December 28, 2013 at 12:45 pm at
http://judithcurry.com/2013/12/24/open-thread-3/#comment-429994
You wrote:
“Miskolczi (2010) actually quantitatively models 3490 spectral radiative intervals in 9 directions for each cell, for 11 greenhouse gas species across 150 atmospheric layers, using 5th order Gausian quadrature with Planck weighting. He averages the available radiosonde data for five latitudinal belts and multiple seasons. I don’t think there is much objection to those quantitative calculations.”
My central objection is that the 1.87 global average infra-red optical thickness, and the corresponding 0.154 infrared transparency, are calculated by the above-described clear-sky radiative transfer model on an average cloudy+clear air column, where a) the cloudy IR transparency is zero, and b) the clear-sky IR transparency is not given (perhaps not calculated) in the paper, so their “average” in undefined. It is like calculating one’s motion in a big empty flat as if there were no walls at all, when in reality there ARE walls and rooms. You cannot draw any conclusion from that. It is this method that is incorrect. These numbers’ physical content is empty, their stability is meaningless. To conclude from this that his “results negate the orthodox catastrophic global warming paradigm” is ultimately incorrect.
Re your question: “How would you recommend he do the next stage model, and what evidence would you base that on?”, I would refer to David Springer’s note here: “ I can’t imagine that weather reports with cloud types and heights aren’t observed and recorded by the weather weenies before, during, and after the launch.” That is, to perform VALID clear-sky computation series on REAL cloudless profiles, and present the results of that computation in PEER-REVIEWED journals WITHOUT making unsubstantiated inferences. If the stability of that clear-sky tau time series will be presented, he has made the first, inevitable step. Then comes the question of clouds….
Yes, this relates to an objection I have always had. Even just taking this clear-sky optical depth, you get it by integrating over the window regions that respond to neither CO2 nor H2O in the first place, so unsurprisingly an optical depth defined by the window region shows almost no sensitivity to increasing CO2. This is Miskolczi’s trick to get no CO2 response – a careful selection of what he means by optical depth. Most others would not ignore all the wavelengths emitted by CO2 when making an evaluation of its effects.
JimD, “Even just taking this clear-sky optical depth, you get it by integrating over the window regions that respond to neither CO2 nor H2O in the first place, so unsurprisingly an optical depth defined by the window region shows almost no sensitivity to increasing CO2. ”
“Clear Sky” only applies to ~38% of the surface at any given time and the width of the IR window is about half of the typical value used by K&T. That should imply that “narrowing” of the window while have roughly half of the original estimates. “Clear Sky” from above the Atmospheric Boundary Layer is a different matter which is the big reason I have always stressed clearly identifying which surface is being referenced. 1.5C of warming at 5 kilometers doesn’t have the same impact as 1.5C of warming at the “real” surface.
Science of Doom has a nice post on the subject of the Kiehl and Trenberth “window.
http://scienceofdoom.com/2013/02/02/kiehl-trenberth-and-the-atmospheric-window/
captd, if you were looking for CO2 effects, would you look only for its effect in the CO2/H2O window region? That is what Miskolczi is doing. Good idea? Bad idea?
The basic problem with discussing a specific value of the optical depth, like 1.87 is that it’s extremely misleading. Radiative energy transfer in the atmosphere cannot be described by a single optical depth. Using full radiative transfer models to just calculate the optical depth is futile. The full model must be used to calculate directly the details of energy transfer.
This is a really fundamental error in Miskolczi’s paper. This is directly related to my earlier comment that his radiative transfer model is probably correct (not any better than many other similar models, but not much worse either) but that he didn’t continue to draw correctly conclusions from his calculations but lost all the value of his large effort in the next erroneous steps.
Concentrating on a single optical depth means forgetting that the optical depth is actually extremely different for different wavelengths. A single optical depth is applicable only, if the attenuation of the radiation is exponential, and if the emission within atmosphere is dismissed. Neither of these assumptions is to the least valid for the atmosphere, and therefore the whole concept of optical depth is practically of zero value in understanding the atmosphere. In some parts of his paper Miskolczi seems to understand all this, but then he continues as if had not ever learned anything like that.
David L. Hagen
You encouraged me to explore further what Miskolczi is doing. I took the pain to read the 2007 and 2010 papers.
The earlier is full of sheer nonsense:
“According to Kirchhoff law…” Eq.4 ?
‘Virial term’ in the IR flux relationships ??
“in the presence of a solid or liquid surface, the radiation pressure of the thermalized photons is the real cause of the greenhouse effect” ???
“The principle of conservation of energy dictates” … Eq.7 ????
I can’t understand anyone can buy this…
For the paper 2010 (in the non-scientific, not-peer-reviewed journal Energy and Environment), he might use a correct radiation transfer code, but to calculate the IR transmission of a 60 km thick air column as if there were no clouds when there ARE IR-opaque clouds at 2 km and 8 km and elsewhere is utterly meaningless. If you think this is correct you must think that if you have a good pen then everything will be correct what you write down. GOTO 10
At least, the Acknowledgement of this latter paper is informative. He thanks the help of the Lavoisier Group, which is (google) a think tank of the Australian coal industry. It seems he pursues a political rather than a scientific agenda. GOTO 10
10 CASE CLOSED
From the article:
Utilities Feeling Rooftop Solar Heat Start Fighting Back
…
They finally bought one: an 18-panel, $35,000 installation producing 5.9 kilowatts of power financed for $305 a month. It would be connected to the grid under a system known as net metering that essentially lets residents deduct the value of their solar-produced electricity from their power bill and even be paid for electricity in excess of that.
…
Walker estimates his bill would have dropped most months to an $18 service charge — offsetting that $305 loan payment. Anticipating his power bills would continue to rise, he figured the system could pay for itself in as little as five years; his electricity after that would be free.
That is until his utility, a subsidiary of Honolulu-based Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc., told the Walkers they couldn’t connect their system to the grid.
…
The reason, according to the Hawaiian Electric Co.: so many Hawaiians are stampeding to solar that circuits may become oversaturated, causing voltage spikes, damaging appliances, electronics and even the utility’s equipment. The company needs more time to study the matter.
…
Similar skirmishes have broken out in as many as a dozen of the 43 states that have adopted net-metering policies as part of their push to promote renewable energy. In Colorado, Xcel Energy Inc. has proposed cutting the payments it makes for excess power generated by customers by about half, because it says higher payouts result in an unfair subsidy to solar users.
…
A system of generous net metering rules may have made sense at the outset of the solar revolution to get the party started. Now, however, it’s clear that it will have enormous disruptive impacts on APS and other utilities that bear the burden of keeping the grid operating.
“Somebody has to pay for maintenance and upkeep,” Guldner said, and solar users in the current rate structure aren’t doing so.
…
He had plenty of company. On the day of the vote, the pro-solar demonstrators vastly outnumbered those who had come to plead the utility’s cause. They were also in a far better mood – – outside, a brass band tooted out standards, a DJ played loud rock music and organizers doled out t-shirts, water bottles and pizza to people holding signs that said “People Power Over Monopoly Power: No to Solar Tax!” and “Solar Works For Arizona.”
Inside, it was clear that APS and its supporters were out of luck. The idea for the $4.90 fee came from the solar side — and very likely swung the vote.
The charge won’t be enough to cover the utility’s grid costs until their next rate case in 2015, APS’s Guldner said, and will probably require the company to ask for much bigger fees down the road.
“In 2016, that rate increase could be a big one” and the utility will probably win the argument, Guldner said.
…
The issue of solar saturation is complicated and controversial and both sides in Hawaii have their points, said Michael Coddington, a senior engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. HECO’s policies on solar connections are “similar to many other states” and could be considered “progressive” relative to the policies of many utilities, he said.
…
Phil Undercuffler hopes HECO will drive lots of people off the grid. Then he will sell them batteries.
Battery storage is the holy grail of the off-the-grid crowd. They let users store up excess energy for rainy or cloudy days when solar isn’t working. In theory, you don’t need a power company if you have solar tied to battery storage, especially here. Oahu gets an average of 271 sunny or partly sunny days a year.
Last month, Undercuffler spoke to a standing-room-only audience of more than 100 solar installers in a Honolulu Marriott who came to hear his pitch for battery storage units sold by Outback Power Inc.
…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-26/utilities-feeling-rooftop-solar-heat-start-fighting-back.html
The cost of socialism …
From the article:
FORT EDWARD, New York — When General Electric moves jobs from its capacitor plant in this Hudson River town next year, worker Mark Rock figures he might have to leave, too.
About 200 jobs will head south as soon as September when GE sends local operations to Florida to cut costs. While New York has had successes in the constant geographical tug of war for jobs, manufacturing jobs like these have been dwindling for decades. People in this area south of the Adirondack Mountains are the latest to wonder what comes next.
“The high-paying jobs that we have now in the area are going to shrink,” said Rock, a 41-year-year-old married father of two. “If I don’t find something making at least 20 bucks an hour in New York state, then I’m skipping town.”
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/5509c49062be47df94aff104b2d159af/NY-Town-Loses-Factory
What socialism? This socialism:
A new study finds that a New York mother of two is eligible for $38,004 in welfare benefits–a sum more than the annual salary of a New York entry-level school teacher.
The study, conducted by the CATO Institute, says in many states welfare pays better than work. Topping the list of wage-equivalent benefits for a mother and two children was Hawaii at $60,590. Idaho came in last with $11,150.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/19/Study-NY-Welfare-Recipients-Eligible-For-More-In-Benefits-Than-Teachers-Make
Perhaps you can now understand the case for increasing the minimum wage significantly. It adds an incentive to work. There should be a gap between welfare and the minimum wage, at least for an individual. Child benefits can also be more generous for workers. Maybe we can make you a socialist yet, if you care about the bottom end of subsistence living.
From the article:
After years of speculation that electronics can be accessed by intelligence agencies through a back door, an internal NSA catalog reveals that such methods already exist for numerous end-user devices.
Editor’s note: This article accompanies our main feature story on the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations unit. You can read it here.
When it comes to modern firewalls for corporate computer networks, the world’s second largest network equipment manufacturer doesn’t skimp on praising its own work. According to Juniper Networks’ online PR copy, the company’s products are “ideal” for protecting large companies and computing centers from unwanted access from outside. They claim the performance of the company’s special computers is “unmatched” and their firewalls are the “best-in-class.” Despite these assurances, though, there is one attacker none of these products can fend off — the United States’ National Security Agency.
Specialists at the intelligence organization succeeded years ago in penetrating the company’s digital firewalls. A document viewed by SPIEGEL resembling a product catalog reveals that an NSA division called ANT has burrowed its way into nearly all the security architecture made by the major players in the industry — including American global market leader Cisco and its Chinese competitor Huawei, but also producers of mass-market goods, such as US computer-maker Dell.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html
Nope. It’s much more likely, a probability of 100% actually, that I would see that as swapping one government welfare program for another. Although, paying women for having babies is idiotic.
If you had the minimum wage you wanted, you would still expect the government to look after their children.
The best idea is some variation on the negative income tax that does not pay more for children.
A combination of $10/hr ($20k/yr full time) minimum wage and reasonable benefits in the form of food stamps that depend on family size and income would be a start. The minimum wage increase would just bring it back to where it was historically, and earning the money sure beats the government paying it.
I still say there should be no reward for having children. That is a really bad idea. Making the sperm donor pay is the right way to go – it is fair to the tax payers and puts the burden where it belongs – on the parents.
One big side-effect of introducing a minimum wage is a sharp reduction in the number of jobs available for the unskilled
phatboy, that is a conservative myth. You can calculate for yourself, to pay everyone at a small fast-food place $2 per hour more, only requires a 5% increase in the price of their food.
More socialist interference with the markets. Ham fisted government – unintended consequences.
Jim D, why not check out the actual real-life experiences of places which have introduced the minimum wage, instead of hypothesizing on the effects in places which haven’t?
There have been studies, and it is not conclusively plus or minus for jobs, because increased minimum wages increase the spending power in the community too.
http://www.raisetheminimumwage.com/pages/job-loss
Yep, JimD, it’s always easy to spend other people’s money, isn’t it? After all, you aren’t Walmart or McDonalds – but you would be just pleased as pucnh to force them at the point of a gun to spend more of their money.
Jim D, all that, of course, depends on a lot of things – not least of all, which part of the world you’re in.
There is something the government could do for single mothers. Make it a law that the sperm donor has to support the children. That’s the fair and right thing to do.
Scientists stuck in global warming …
From the article:
Antarctic expedition scientists trapped in ice
Icebreaker ships go to help MV Akademik Shokalskiy after captain issues distress call
Alok Jha, science correspondent, in Cape de la Motte, east Antarctica
The Guardian, Wednesday 25 December 2013 08.12 EST
Akademik Shokalskiy stuck in ice
The Akademik Shokalskiy stuck in ice. Photograph: Laurence Topham
A team of scientists and members of the public who have been retracing the footsteps of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) of 1911 have become trapped in heavy ice a few miles from the coast of Antarctica.
Passengers aboard the ship, the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, were informed on Christmas morning that the captain had issued a distress call to the Maritime Service Authority based in Falmouth in the UK earlier in the day. Three nearby icebreaker ships have been notified of the Shokalskiy’s situation and are on their way to help.
The nearest ship, the Chinese Xue Long (Snow Dragon), will take just over a day to reach the Shokalskiy’s position, around 1,500 nautical miles from Hobart in Tasmania. A French ship called the Astrolabe, and sent out from the nearest Antarctic base, Dumont D’Urville, could arrive around the same time. The furthest ship, also on its way, is the Australian icebreaker, Aurora Australis.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/25/antarctic-expedition-scientists-trapped-ice
The Sun has peaked.
From the article:
The sun has “flipped upside down”, with its north and south poles reversed to reach the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24, Nasa has said.
Now, the magnetic fields will once again started moving in opposite directions to begin the completion of the 22 year long process which will culminate in the poles switching once again.
“A reversal of the sun’s magnetic field is, literally, a big event,” said Nasa’s Dr. Tony Phillips.
“The domain of the sun’s magnetic influence (also known as the ‘heliosphere’) extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field’s polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/video-sun-has-flipped-upside-down-as-new-magnetic-cycle-begins-9029378.html
From the article:
China activists push limit with demands to end ‘dictatorship’
AFP 12/30/2013 4:14:41 AM
Their banners have urged an end to China’s “dictatorship”, scorned the regime as “rogue” and dared leaders to disclose their assets as a step against graft — all dangerous calls under Communist Party rule.
The Southern Street Movement, a loose network of laymen-activists in Guangdong province, is testing China’s limits with overtly political demands and ambitions to inspire placard-waving protests nationwide.
The province has a tradition of defiance — a trade hub long exposed to the outside world, it was the birthplace of Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary who ended millennia of imperial rule in China in 1911.
Yet the dissent-wary government has mounted a growing crackdown on activists this year and a smattering of participants have been detained.
Protesters must overcome their fear, says Xie Wenfei, a 37-year-old from central China whose business card declares him a “Southern Street Movement activist” and proclaims: “If you see injustice and remain silent, you have sided with evil”.
http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/c0dea924-8d05-49ca-aa2a-4a33c0dde3bb
With the obvious importance of the PDO and AMO on the short-term variability of tropospheric temperatures, it would be interesting to have a more lengthy discussion about the role of solar and volcanic forcing on these ocean cycles, in particular, as some research shows the strong role for volcanic aerosols in the AMO:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n10/full/ngeo955.html
The implications of this kind of research as related to climate changes like the LIA is especially interesting. The smoking gun seems to point more and more at volcanic activity, with solar effects playing a weak secondary role. This is especially interesting if volcanic aerosol effects are delayed or spread out via the effects they have on the oceans, and even more so, when several large volcanoes erupt over a shorter period, with overlapping and therefore compounding effects on ocean cycles such as the AMO.
Marcia Wyatt has a new webpage called “Wyatt on Earth”:
http://www.wyattonearth.net/home.html
Links to her Stadium Wave papers are here:
http://www.wyattonearth.net/originalresearchstadiumwave.html
The Gore effect continues …
From the article:
Global warming scientists forced to admit defeat… because of too much ice: Stranded Antarctic ship’s crew will be rescued by helicopter
Chris Turney, a climate scientist and leader of the expedition, was going to document ‘environmental changes’ at the pole In an interview he said he expected melting ice to play a part in expedition MV Akademik Schokalskiy still stuck among thick ice sheet 1,500 nautical miles south of Hobart, the Tasmanian capital Called for help at 5am Christmas morning after becoming submerged in ice Australia’s back-up ship, Aurora Australis could not break through
By Mia De Graaf and Hayley O’keeffe
PUBLISHED: 08:19 EST, 30 December 2013 | UPDATED: 14:42 EST, 30 December 2013
They went in search evidence of the world’s melting ice caps, but instead a team of climate scientists have been forced to abandon their mission … because the Antarctic ice is thicker than usual at this time of year.
The scientists have been stuck aboard the stricken MV Akademik Schokalskiy since Christmas Day, with repeated sea rescue attempts being abandoned as icebreaking ships failed to reach them.
Now that effort has been ditched, with experts admitting the ice is just too thick. Instead the crew have built an icy helipad, with plans afoot to rescue the 74-strong team by helicopter.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2531159/Antarctic-crew-build-ice-helipad-help-rescuers.html
Let’s talk about TED
The following link was posted on my university website in the environmental management website, and thought I’d pass it on, though I wonder if Judith has already and others have seen it
http://www.bratton.info/projects/talks/we-need-to-talk-about-ted/
Interesting. I’ve only seen a few TED talks, none of them in line with the criticism here. Probably because, on Bratton’s assessment, very few would interest me, I happened on a few which did. Bratton seems to argue for unspecified revolutionary change. Like John Lennon, “I’d love to see the plan.”
What attracted me in particular was this anecdote.
“Let me tell you a story. I was at a presentation that a friend, an Astrophysicist, gave to a potential donor. I thought the presentation was lucid and compelling (and I’m a Professor of Visual Arts here at UC San Diego so at the end of the day, I know really nothing about Astrophysics). After the talk the sponsor said to him, ‘you know what, I’m gonna pass because I just don’t feel inspired… you should be more like Malcolm Gladwell'”
It seems to me a lot of Climate Science is like this.
First time on this site. Two questions. What is the starting point for climate models generally or does it vary widely. How far are they back-tested?