by Judith Curry
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked a dozen of the state’s top elected officials and the director of the agency tasked with the state’s environment whether they believe the globe is warming, and whether they think pollution caused by human activity is a cause.
The title of the article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution is Ga. politicians cool to global warming, written by Ariel Hart. Read the whole article; Ariel Hart did a very good job. Excerpts:
[Newly-elected Republican Representative Rick] Allen vehemently rejected the idea that warming is an established fact. “The science if definitely NOT settled,” he said in an email. “Limiting debate to one side is not the same as being conclusive. …
“I am not convinced and I am certainly not ready to destroy jobs and whole industry sectors in order to tax industries liberals don’t like and send the money to sectors that they do like.”
Loudermilk struck similar themes. “I believe that climate change is a function of nature; the climate has been changing as long as the Earth has existed,” he said.
“We absolutely should be good stewards of the planet, and I am very much opposed to reckless pollution and disregard for the environment, but I also know that some politicians and bureaucrats believe in whatever theory gives them an opportunity to take money from the energy sector and spend it themselves in the name of saving the planet.”
At the state level, Georgia’s top official deferred to leaders in Washington. “This is more of a national and international policy issue,” said Brian Robinson, a spokesman for Gov. Nathan Deal. “Not one where we should or would weigh in.”
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, a Republican from Blue Ridge, provided a written statement.
“While some are eager to proclaim that human-caused climate change is ‘settled science,’ there are many others who remain skeptical,” Ralston’s statement read. “Claiming that the debate is over helps advance a particular agenda and disregards the fact that the only provable result of policies proposed as a result is the export of American jobs to countries with abysmal environmental practices.”
To support his view, Ralston cited Dr. Judith Curry of Georgia Tech. Curry believes the Earth is warming — except for a current “pause” — and told the AJC in an interview that, among scientists, “everybody agrees that humans are contributing to warming.” However, she chastises other climate scientists for overstating how much humans are to blame and the certainty of likely consequences.
Jack Murphy, a Republican of Cumming, who chairs the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee and sits on the powerful Rules and Appropriations committees, was skeptical that global temps are rising.
“I still haven’t seen anything that’s positive proof,” Murphy said. “Until I do, I’m going to have to say, well, if it is changing, it’s changing at such a minute stage that I don’t know what the long term effects are going to be.”
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle would not plant his flag in the warming camp, but said he could still support sound environmental policies.
“While scientist(s) will argue over this issue, it does appear that the earth goes through warming and cooling cycles,” Cagle said in a statement provided through a spokesman. “I will leave it to scientific experts to determine what the causes of those changes are, but either way we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of the creation with which we have been entrusted.”
I-am-not-a-scientist was a popular refrain.
“You know, I’m not a scientist,” said Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Steve Gooch. “So I have to base my decision making on information that I get from other people, so I guess it’s hard for me to say for sure.”
However, he added, “I think we have a duty as citizens to protect Mother Earth and try to pass it on to our next generation as good as or better than we found it.” He thinks we’re on the right course to do that, he said, without federal interference.
The chair of the House Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee, Don Parsons, a Republican of Marietta, also remains unconvinced. “As far as global warming, I have read so many different things, so many different reports from different scientific studies that come to different conclusions, I don’t know,” Parsons said.
“I’m not one of those people who just sits and rejects the idea, but I’m just not convinced.”
Ga. Tech prof cited by climate-change skeptics
Among climate scientists, one often held up as a dissenter on global warming is right here at Georgia Tech: Earth Sciences Professor Judith Curry.
One science magazine even dubbed her a “climate heretic.” But look carefully at her statements — including some quoted by GOP politicians — and Curry, too, believes the earth is warming, and that human activity is a cause.
“Everybody agrees that humans are contributing to warming,” Curry said in an interview with the AJC.
That said, she does differ in important ways with scientists who urge immediate action to counteract the Earth’s warming trend. She thinks the earth is warming at a slower rate than computer models predict, and she’s not at all sure that man-made pollution is the primary cause. She differs with many of her colleagues on the meaning of a current pause in surface temperature warming.
She thinks fostering new energy technologies to replace fossil fuels is wise, but that weaning us from carbon-based fuels is a project for the long term. Most jarring for her colleagues, she doesn’t think climate change is an emergency. She loathes false certainty.
She is willing, however, to appear alongside politicians and pundits who flatly reject the basic tenets of climate change that she embraces. On once recent program cited by Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, Curry was interviewed by conservative CNBC personality Rick Santelli, who suggested that mainstream climate scientists have “bamboozled” the American public.
“I think there’s nothing to be gained by not talking to people,” Curry told the AJC.
JC comments
Georgia is a ‘red’ state; dominated by Republicans (except for Metropolitan Atlanta which is dominated by Democrats). None of the politicians interviewed voiced acceptance of proposed federal mandates that would reduce the nation’s output of greenhouse gases. At the same time, none of the politicians made irrational statements, other than possibly Jack Murphy, who is skeptical that global temperatures are rising (it depends on which time period you are considering.)
Ariel Hart contacted me as a result of the written contribution from David Ralston that referred to me. Apparently Ralston had heard of my views from a recent interview that I did for Rick Santelli’s show on CNBC [link]. If you don’t know who Rick Santelli is, among other things he catalyzed the formation of the Tea Party movement. I really don’t like to do live TV interviews: I don’t feel I am effective and they are very time consuming (especially if they get cancelled). I agreed to do this one because it was a 10 minute segment, and also for a personal reason. Rick Santelli and I grew up in the same neighborhood in a Chicago suburb; in fact we lived on the same street and he was good friends with one of my brothers. My Facebook friends from high school got a big kick out of the interview – what are the odds of two kids from Edgewood Ave. talking to each other on NBC news. (Note, Santelli did not realize this connection when he invited me – he spotted my WSJ op ed).
Well, apparently this interview reached people that I haven’t hitherto reached. As far as I can tell, I have had zero impact on any Georgia politicians (although in 2007 – during my ‘consensus’ period – I had a one hour briefing with then Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss).
Does my employment at a University in the state of Georgia make it easier for me to challenge the consensus on climate change? Probably. There is at least one person in the Georgia Tech administration that doesn’t like my position on climate change, but in the broader context I would say that it is easier to challenge the AGW consensus from a ‘red’ state. Is it somehow ‘politically’ advantageous for me in the state of Georgia to challenge the AGW consensus? Not in any way that I have been able to figure out.
In any event, I am very willing to serve as an information resource for any Georgia politicians (or any others), should they choose to seek me out.
Great job Judith, its apparent that for TV Rick wants the sound bites and this type of show not the best venue for a thoughtful climate discussion. The message that the sky is not falling is getting out.
Congratulations in hitting the big time with Rick Santelli!
(Hair do looks much better too.)
Yes extreme weather is much more important than “energy”.
Yet please also consider the importance of transport fuels
(Atlanta especially will shut down especially fast when shortages hit.)
The US still imports 45% of its oil. – and OPEC claims to control 83% of conventional oil resources.
“Tight oil” well production declines ~85% in 3 years.
GROSS per capita oil consumption has been FLAT since 1983.
Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI) for oil declined ~90% from > 100 to ~ 12 in the USA. Consequently, NET per capital oil consumption is DECLINING.
That will bite far faster than “climate change” aka anthropogenic global warming.
==> “Everybody agrees that humans are contributing to warming,”
Right. Well, except for those who don’t agree.
It would surely be surprising if humans weren’t contributing something to what global warming there is — space heating, electrical generation and consumption, automobiles, aircraft — anything that burns fuel creates some heat.
The big question is whether that is enouigh to make a material difference. The eco-activists say it is because they want to bring civilisation and progress to a halt. I think increasingly the evidence is against them.
Human total heat generation is 20-25 terawatts and 20-30% of the land area has been resurfaced or altered.
There is good evidence GHGs make some difference.
People are heating the planet.
Underestimated the direct human direct heating. The human heat generation is about 40 terawatts (thermal power generation is about 1/3 efficient). This is the equivalent of the heat transfer of one hurricane per year.
@PA
‘Human total heat generation is 20-25 terawatts and 20-30% of the land area has been resurfaced or altered.
There is good evidence GHGs make some difference.’
The surface of the earth receives 86 thousand TW of solar radiation, of which 43 thousand go into heating, and 41000 into evaporation.
25/43000 adds 0.058% to the natural heating, not much at all.
R.
Roberto, you’ar off base by two rders of magnitue, as anthropogenic albedo forcing vastly exceeds combustion heat.
Even at the low end of the range, each 1% increment of human surface albedo reduction equals ~ 58 TW
Roberto | January 4, 2015 at 5:10 am |
@PA
‘Human total heat generation is 20-25 terawatts and 20-30% of the land area has been resurfaced or altered.
There is good evidence GHGs make some difference.’
The surface of the earth receives 86 thousand TW of solar radiation, of which 43 thousand go into heating, and 41000 into evaporation.
25/43000 adds 0.058% to the natural heating, not much at all.
R.
Well, the nuclear/coal/oil power plants generate much more heat than power (gas generates more heat than power as well). The additional third world power generation in recent years will put humans in the same class as the flux from the earths core 47 TW since over 10 TW of electric power generation is roughly 33% efficient thermal sources, around 3.5 TW is 50-60% efficient gas, and there is a lot of human thermal generation (think cars) that isn’t grid connected..
Humans are at the 0.1% barrier in terms of direct thermal energy generation vs solar surface heating.
Judith –
You say that [among scientists] “Everybody agrees that humans are contributing to warming,”
First, it is interesting to note your repeated tactic of “consensus-messaging.” Does that strike you as being ironic, perhaps unintentionally so?
Second, it is interesting to note that you are employing the kind of rhetoric that you criticize [from others] as fallacious “appeal to authority.”
Third, It is interesting that despite your claims and those of your fellow “skeptics” – that all scientists agree that warming is taking place don’t doubt that humans contribute to warming – a majority of conservatives nonetheless think that there is no warming taking place, let alone that human contributions are dominant. Why do you suppose that your appeals to authority and consensus-messaging aren’t working particularly well?
noting as a fact that everyone [ that matters] agrees it is warming is
different than arguing that you ought to believe its warming because everyone else does.
As judith has made clear she believes its warming because it is in fact warming.
Joshua
Please provide the scientific data that shows a majority of conservatives think there is no warming taking place. Is that a national poll or an international poll. Was the sample size adequate? What were the polling questions?
Chaos.
CD –
see the links and my comments to david W below.
I will admit to being a bit hyperbolic in the statement about majority. I don’t really have that level of confidence about the quality of questions and other ambiguity with the polling.
but I do think that there is enough evidence to show that large numbers of conservatives in America doubt that any warming is taking place.
Even if you reduced AGW to a dozen factors what contributing “weight” for lack of a better word you describe human co2 contributions Joshua?? Please include links if you have any quantification and spare me the experts on toothpaste result testimonials that are the basic framing of the IPCC “science” super structure. I and many aren’t that interested in expert “opinions” but are looking for empirical proofs of claims that of course have never been produced.
Dr. Curry approves and condones consensus authority all the time Joshua, why would you find the unquantified reference to “everybody agrees” particularly surprising or ironic?
“Everybody agrees” looks like quackery when clearly it’s “we don’t know”. The back hand is a reference to a radiative heat claim that isn’t quantified in the atmosphere and can obviously be overshadowed by other forces. Feedback discussions, obliterated. Hence every advocate driven model has overstated human co2 impacts. Politically the AGW movement bet on simple minded concepts for public consumption like “everybody agrees” long ago because they thought the keys to the city (science authority) and the subsequent policy authority were in hand long ago. Now in the longer game it’s like swimming with an anvil around your necks.
Why hide behind this framing Joshua?, you want a central planning authority (government) over carbon interests. The actual science isn’t really important to you at all. Radiative heat claims to human co2 are contrived and even tolerated in serious science discussions about the Earths atmosphere because of the common political compass driving you, many academics and in fact Dr. Curry. Moderate Greens arguing straw with radical Greens of many stripes such as yourself.
Joshua, “but I do think that there is enough evidence to show that large numbers of conservatives in America doubt that any warming is taking place.”
You can believe that if you like. It might be better to replace “any” warming with “significant” warming though. Especially in the Southeastern US.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem4_US_Georgia.png
Joshua doesn’t like Judith’s true statement (I would phrase it as “Everyone who is sane agrees that humans are contributing to warming,” but that’s just me) because it goes against his “Skeptics are all DEEENYERZ” narrative.
It’s exactly the promotion of that narrative that has made rational discussion of climate issues with the general public effectively impossible. Either you believe that the sky is falling, and soon, or else you are a denier.
IMO, the so-called scientists and so-called journalists who push this false narrative have done worlds of harm to the serious discussion.
Steven, Judith has repeatedly said it is not warming. How could u miss all of her talk of “pause”?
Cap’n –
The point is that most people won’t think that there has been warming if they don’t experience warming.
Wrong again, Joshua.
“Most” people believe it’s warming catastrophically because they’ve been told it is by the media and the government. Evidence to the contrary is denied by those who believe in CAGW.
Given the present “pause”, many of them become “deniers” without understanding that they are.
I doubt you know if large portios of conservatives dismiss warming as real. I don’t think conservatives think warming has not happened: I think they have a different take on warming and its implications which seem far less catastrophic and hopeless than how liberals have painfully and petulantly viewed it.
What a deep thinker is gracing this discussion:
==> “Everybody agrees that humans are contributing to warming,”
Right. Well, except for those who don’t agree.
It is no wonder that politicians are circumspect in their answers to AGW. The consensus community moved the debate into the policy arena prematurely. Without fully understanding the science of climate the AGW supporters pushed the funding, publishing, and promotion toward AGW and muted skeptical efforts. In 1988 climate scientist said “the temperature rise must be caused by CO2 because we have looked at all alternatives and CO2 is the only possibility”. Does that sound conceited to you? Now some 30 years later we have an unpredicted plateau in warming and alternative science positions are creeping into the dialog. The massive investment in climate science modeling can only be classified as a colossal investment failure. We have lived through a time when model outputs are claimed to be “data”, cherry picking is acceptable, hiding data is common, and the use of circular reasoning is rarely challenged. Shame on all of us!
A Politico article says Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe is the Democrats’ favorite denier. The following excerpts are from the piece:
Now that he’s about to take charge of the committee that oversees environmental policy, Democrats aspire to make Inhofe the face of GOP know-nothingism, while at least one Republican consultant says his style of skepticism could create headaches for candidates up and down the ticket in 2016.
“Leave it to today’s GOP to put someone who doesn’t believe in basic science at the helm of the committee that oversees environmental protection,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Michael Czin said in an email Monday, putting the party’s private smirking on the record. “It’s unfortunate that Republicans continue to put more stock in their rigid ideology than science and what’s best for the country.”
The turnabout threatens to put Republicans, who lately have deployed the artful dodge of “I’m not a scientist” when asked whether humans are altering the climate, in a tough position: Are you with Inhofe or are you with science?
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/jim-inhofe-112757.html#ixzz3NgYpCdnf
_________
When asked “Are you with Inhofe or are you with science?” a Republican politician could just say I’m giving careful consideration to the science” or simply “I know nothing.”
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiThRIHwQDE
I know nothing.
ordvic, thanks. I hadn’t seen that one. I need to explore old sitcoms.
Max
Fawlty towers was set in my next door sea side resort of Torquay. Our village cafe has a Fawlty towers night later this month. If you can make it over I will buy you a ticket…
Tonyb
Tony, thank you. I appreciate your offer.
Fawlty Towers is among my favorite Brit sitcoms, along with Are You Being Served, Keeping Up Appearances, and Black Adder.
Politico is good place to observe leftist media meme coordination. This is another form of Gruberism of the traditional kind, liberals smart and conservatives stupid. Eisenhower we were told for generations wasn’t the smart or curious…it’s a timeless media standard. When not propositioning hatcheck girls or interns JFK and Bill Clinton closet Einsteins.
It was old 40 years ago Max.
Manuel is sad because, taking commenters here at their word, he left his pet rat in a room full of harmless plant food.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be sent to mnestheus@paypal.com
“Manuel is sad because, taking commenters here at their word, he left his pet rat in a room full of harmless plant food.”
So we’re all going to suffocate now? “It’s worse than we thought!” Keep at it – before you know it you’ll be going on about the hazards of dihydrogen monoxide.
Note that when a lay person says they do not accept global warming that usually means they question or reject CAGW, not that there is no warming. The framing of the question often implies this policy related meaning as well. It refers to global warming in the sense that action is required. This is a policy issue.
==>? “Note that when a lay person says they do not accept global warming that usually means they question or reject CAGW, ”
And you know this because?
http://www.culturalcognition.net/storage/thumbnails/4177295-25590402-thumbnail.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1414418966031
http://www.culturalcognition.net/storage/thumbnails/4177295-25459993-thumbnail.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1411144058702
Oh. Right. You know it’s true because you say it’s true.
Can I get the image to post?
http://www.culturalcognition.net/storage/no_warming.png?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1408719976946
Joshua, don’t you think that Kahan’s stuff is the simplest understanding of all this? These politicians seem awfully fuzzy on the science, just mouthing various phrases which all end up meaning “We don’t have to follow liberal economics and politics.” They all conclude their comments with that, so I’m guessing that’s what they care about.
I thought you were familiar with my work. My field is conceptual confusion: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/02/05/a-taxonomy-of-confusions/. The climate debate has been a special case study of mine for 23 years. I have run a listserv on it for almost two decades: http://www.climatechangedebate.org/.
This confusion about the concept of “global warming” is pervasive. When someone says that we must do something about global warming they are clearly not referring to the historical temperatures, about which nothing can be done, or even to natural variation in most cases. They mean something human induced and dangerous. The term is deeply ambiguous in public discourse.
http://www.culturalcognition.net/storage/no_warming.png
David –
There is certainly ambiguity in how many people interpret the terms, but when the majority in a group chooses “no warming,” among the options of “no warming,” “human caused” and “naturally caused” in answer to a question about position on warming in recent decades, it simply isn’t plausible to argue that most don’t doubt that any warning has taken place. Your appeal to self-authority doesn’t hold up. If you want to make a case, supply some supporting evidence.
“everybody agrees that humans are contributing to warming.”
This statement uncharacteristically appears to put words in the mouths of others. In context it appears to refer specifically to emissions of CO2 not other mechanism (e.g. albedo changes, waste heat, etc.)
I would prefer to let William Happer, Freeman Dyson, James Lovelock, Roy Spenser, John Christy, and Richard Lindzen among thousands of other highly credentialed scientists speak for themselves.
And which of those six do you think disagrees with that sentiment? I can recall statements from four of them indicating that they would agree. I suspect they would all concur with Dr. Curry that there is a human contribution to warming (from greenhouse gases as well as other sources which you mention), and also that climate change is not an emergency.
The problem out the gate Harold is that AGW is sold on a radiative heat impact that if you add more of something (co2) you get more of something else (heat). Obviously in the open set Earth it’s way more complicated to a point that the observation about a 3% human co2 contribution and undefined co2 sink boarders on quackery. It’s a linear claim not proven by any model or observation and the margins of the measurement discussion are trivial.
None of this actually changes if you accept the “everybody agrees” point above or not. Isolating human co2 as a climate driver was political goal not based on complex science involving feedbacks etc. If someone uses a meaningless science statement either way in a debate what is it fair to think?? Yes, it’s a political posture. So how is AGW really like gravity that can be measured in the real world to begin with??
What makes climate science Post-Normal are statements like “everybody agrees” to a simple minded claim as if the Earth were a fish tank.
“The problem out the gate Harold is that AGW is sold on a radiative heat impact that if you add more of something (co2) you get more of something else (heat). ”
Wrong.
Steven Mosher: “The problem out the gate Harold is that AGW is sold on a radiative heat impact that if you add more of something (co2) you get more of something else (heat). ”
Wrong.
Wherein is that statement wrong? That is the simplified theory behind the policy recommendations, is it not? All the calculations of future warming ignore the non-radiative cooling of the Earth surface by dry and moist thermals, do they not? If I am wrong about the second, where are the published calculations of the change in the hydrological cycle and the associated energy transport rate that is an expected consequence of CO2 increase, other than my own? (as yet published only here.)
Steven – do you know what CARB is? The California Air Resources Board. A carbon tax (CO2 tax) on fuels kicked in yesterday. Rush to fill your tank with a cheap gasoline – producers will undoubtedly pass the tax to consumers.
“Wherein is that statement wrong? That is the simplified theory behind the policy recommendations, is it not?”
the statement is wrong.
Adding C02 raises the ERL.
When the ERL is raised earth radiates from a higher colder point in the atmosphere.
This LOWERS the rate cooling to space.
The policy recommendations are driven by the belief that SLOWING the rate of cooling to space, will result in a warmer surface.
Here is a clue. When someone says “heat trapping” they are being stupid.
Matthew,
This is Mosherism. I’m relating the AGW claim as it is delivered to the street levels and exposing a rather obvious contradiction. Steve wants to ignore the public Gruberesk claims of a generation and tell me what they “really meant”. I become the idiot in his narrative rather warming advocates.
The sales job was and is about “radiative heat”. There a dozens of back stories but more human co2 was suppose to make the Earth warmer but somehow was outweighed by reality. So we really can’t even define what we are talking about that “everyone” might even agree to as a start. You’ll note in these consensus claims how much can’t even be agreed to about what was said now or in the past. Yes, clearly more co2 warming is a radiative heat claim as delivered to the public.
We might ask Bill Clinton here to define “is” for us. Of course “heat trapping” is stupid but it’s the framework of the Green AGW meme for decades. I should Mosher’s dirt for observing the quality of the AGW junk mail for the past 35+ years?
Steven: “Here is a clue. When someone says “heat trapping” they are being stupid.” I am stupid enough to believe you – only you are saying that it is an indirect effect, not a direct one. What difference does it make at the gas station?
cwon14: Matthew,
This is Mosherism. I’m relating the AGW claim as it is delivered to the street levels and exposing a rather obvious contradiction. Steve wants to ignore the public Gruberesk claims of a generation and tell me what they “really meant”.
I agree with you: the details cited by Steven Mosher in his answering post are not the basis on which the policy has been sold — I doubt even 10 of the Democratic members of Congress could explain that to their constituents. The policy was sold via simple “greenhouse” and “blanket” analogies.
“The policy recommendations are driven by the belief that SLOWING the rate of cooling to space, will result in a warmer surface.
Here is a clue. When someone says ‘heat trapping’ they are being stupid.”
What would you call someone who incessantly says “CO2 always warms the atmosphere?”
When someone says “heat trapping” they are being stupid.
When someone says “When someone says `heat trapping’ they are being stupid” they are being stupid.
In the same vein as, when someone says “When someone says `suction’ they are being stupid” they are being stupid.
“This LOWERS the rate cooling to space.”
“Here is a clue. When someone says “heat trapping” they are being stupid.”
Mosh you are just being pedantic, since in normal experience, nothing is a perfect insulator, heat trapping is just lowering heat loss. Ie heat trapping does lower the heat lost to space.
But I’d also like to point out that at the surface according to station measurements, there is no loss of cooling.
@SM: the statement is wrong.
Adding C02 raises the ERL.
When the ERL is raised earth radiates from a higher colder point in the atmosphere.
This LOWERS the rate cooling to space.
Steven, two questions.
1. By ERL do you mean ELR (environmental lapse rate)?
If not, ignore the following.
2. Do you have a source for this effect of CO2 on ELR?
If not, let’s calculate the expected effect.
At 300K the specific heats c_p of dry air and CO2 are respectively 1.005 and 0.846 kJ/kg. So a mixture by weight of .9996 air and .0004 CO2 (corresponding to 400*28.97/44 = 263 ppm of CO2 by volume) will have a c_p of 0.9996*1.005 + 0.0004*0.846 = 1.00494 kJ/kg/K.
Doubling the CO2 to 0.0008 decreases the c_p to 0.9992*1.005 + 0.0008*0.846 = 1.00487 kJ/kg/K.
Why c_p? Well, the corresponding lapse rates are given by g/c_p, namely 9.807/1.00947 = 9.7588 °C/km and 9.807/1.00487 = 9.7595 °C/km for 263 and 526 ppmv CO2 respectively. Doubling CO2 (in this case) therefore increased the lapse rate by 0.0007 °C/km/K. (More accuracy in g won’t change this.)
Assuming no change in surface temperature, the expected decrease in air temperature at 10 km resulting from a doubling of CO2 will therefore be 10*0.0007 = 0.007 °C.
Using dF = 4*F*dT/T for a change dF in flux responding to a change dT = 0.007 in temperature, and taking T = 200K, F = 100 W/m2 at altitude (since round numbers will suffice to make the point), dF = 4*100*.007/200 = 0.014 W/m2.
So the effect of doubling CO2 on ELR, ignoring other effects, is to reduce the radiation to space by perhaps 10 or 20 milliwatts per square meter.
Were that all there is to the greenhouse effect the oceans would be frozen solid.
Instead, doubling CO2 heats the planet by trapping more of the radiation escaping to space. ELR does play a central role in this (can expand on this), but not by increasing.
Vaughan Pratt –
ERL = effective radiating level.
See e.g. here.
Thanks, Harold. That makes more sense. (So ignore my calculations.)
What kind of scientists are advising the leader of the free world, Mosh?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/25/remarks-president-climate-change
“Now, scientists had known since the 1800s that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide trap heat, and that burning fossil fuels release those gases into the air.”
Vaughan
if you dont know what the ERL is then
Effective Radiating Level
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~aos121br/radn/radn/sld001.htm
this is beginner stuff.
Doc knows his stuff, Steven. He gave the most elegant explanation of the GHE I have ever seen, on that thread about his AGU poster, about the semi-gaptooth thing.
Vaughan Pratt | January 3, 2015 at 8:19 pm |
The higher colder point in the atmosphere depends on a constant lapse rate. If the lapse rate is smaller then the higher level is not necessarily a colder level.
The problem with that higher colder radiating level hypothesis is that the lapse rate does indeed get smaller. Increased back-radiation evaporates more water which injects more water vapor into the atmosphere which in turn lowers the lapse rate.
This is a known negative feedback called “lapse rate feedback” and the latest studies attempting to measure it have shown it to be greater than predicted by models. Oopsie.
This is intermediate/advanced stuff that pushes past Mosher’s understanding because it brings hydrology into the picture which drastically complicates the simple radiative transfer model that Mosher naively believes is all that’s needed to understand AGW.
We live on a water world not a gray body. Heat budget in the troposphere is driven by water in all its phases. Latent heat transfers dominate over radiative almost 2:1. Albedo changes are largely driven by water in all its phases. CO2 doesn’t change the earth’s albedo from the ~0.12 of lunar surface to ~0.33 of earth. Clouds do that. Conversely when there;’s no clouds the earth’s albedo is lower than the moon’s because ocean surface is very close to black. Roughly 70% of the eartth’s surface has cloud cover at any one time. That;s a lot of frickin’ clouds. Water vapor, due to cloud formation, has a negative feedback when the surface is not frozen. Coming out of an ice age when vast areas are frozen year round then water vapor amplification works as advertised until there are so many clouds they starve the surface of the shortwave energy from the sun that evaporates water in the first place.
You should probably write down the bit about earth being a water world not a grey body.
” Roughly 70% of the eartth’s surface has cloud cover at any one time. That;s a lot of frickin’ clouds. ”
And under most of that 70% Co2 adds no additional forcing, since the cloud bottom already returns the majority of the upwelling IR.
And under clear skies, as the surface radiatively cools, rel humidity at the surface rises, as the starts to get over ~80% cooling slows, another non-Co2 derived limit to surface cooling.
Water makes the world a full spectrum body, kaleidoscopically, chaotically.
=============
Well, the models predict the ERL (effective radiating level) but the models are wrong.
That would make what the models predict, an IRL (ineffective radiating level).
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~aos121br/radn/radn/sld001.htm
The global warmers say that, “Because CO2 acts like a blanket, surface and lower atmosphere cool by infrared radiation to space from upper troposphere (ERL= effective radiating level)…”
The warmer say CO2 is a blanket. Then they model CO2 like an electric blanket with a thermostat knob and everything. This is why the models are wrong. It is just a blanket – it isn’t a blanket + heating coils.
By far the more common term is “effective emission height”. I like to think of it as the atmosphere’s photosphere for each wavelength.
@DinTX: The problem with that higher colder radiating level hypothesis is that the lapse rate does indeed get smaller. Increased back-radiation evaporates more water which injects more water vapor into the atmosphere which in turn lowers the lapse rate.
Springer raises a good point. The crucial question here is whether this decrease in lapse rate driven by increasing absolute humidity (quantity of water vapor) overwhelms the greenhouse effect or is too tiny to be significant.
The theoretical decrease in lapse rate for a global warming (increase in surface temperature) of 10 °C is plotted on the left of Figure 5 of An Analytical Model for Tropical Relative Humidity by David Romps, J. Climate, 27, 7432-7449 (1 Oct. 2014). Romps plots two cases: no evaporation of precipitation (α = 0), and 50% evaporation (α = 0.5).
α = 0: A surface temperature of 300K drops to 175K at 15 km for a lapse rate of 8.3 whereas 310K drops to 175K at 17.5 km for a lapse rate of 7.7, a reduction of 0.6 K/km, or 0.06 K/km for each additional degree of surface temperature.
α = 0.5: 300K drops to 175 at 16 km so a lapse rate of 7.8, while 310K drops to 175 at 18.5 km, a lapse rate of 7.3. In this case the lapse rate decreases by 0.05 K/km for each additional degree of surface temperature.
This is a known negative feedback called “lapse rate feedback” and the latest studies attempting to measure it have shown it to be greater than predicted by models.
Given that theory predicts that each rise of 1 °C in surface temperature decreases the lapse rate by a mere 0.05 or 0.06 °C/km, and that the opportunity for actual measurement has to be over a rise in surface temperature well under 0.5 °C, even if this effect is twice what theory predicts it is going to be swamped by an ECS of even 1 °C/doubling, let alone 3 °C.
Excellent work, Dr. Pratt. Mosher is still looking for it.
Vaughan Pratt –
The Romps paper is very interesting, thanks! [Non-paywalled version is here, by the way.]
I don’t think lapse rate feedback is overwhelmed, Vaughn, and the way it’s being measured is straightforward – average height of cloud tops. If we presume that relative humidity is constant then clouds will condense at the same temperature but at a higher level. If we use the dry lapse rate then a 1C increase in surface temperature would push cloud tops up 100 meters, the new level where adiabatic cooling reaches the unchanged dewpoint temperature.
The warm cloud top, the same temperature as before, is now 100 meters higher which means there is more greenhouse gases below it to resist back radiation from reaching the surface and less GHGs above it to impede radiation to space.
@DinTX: The warm cloud top, the same temperature as before, is now 100 meters higher which means there is more greenhouse gases below it to resist back radiation from reaching the surface and less GHGs above it to impede radiation to space.
Where the back radiation ends up is irrelevant to global warming because the surface temperature is governed by the atmosphere’s temperature profile, not by the back radiation. (This is particularly clear for Venus.)
The only radiation relevant to global warming is the amount escaping directly to space. Clouds radiate much broad-spectrum FIR, both down (which is why cloudy nights are so much warmer than clear) and up. It is the upward FIR (OLR) that can reach space directly, and when the cloud tops are higher there is less CO2 above the cloud and hence more of the cloud’s broadband FIR can escape directly to space.
… which leads to the same conclusion (higher clouds –> more cooling) but via a mechanism that is easier to calculate with than the back-radiation mechanism. I’ll do the math later (time out for guests).
> Heat budget in the troposphere is driven by water in all its phases.
It’s a women’s world:
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/do-women-really-control-80-of-household-spending-1054/
@HW: The Romps paper is very interesting, thanks!
The most interesting part of the paper for me is his simple formula RH = δ/(δ + γ) for relative humidity as a function of detrainment rate δ and water vapor lapse rate γ, which explains a lot about water vapor. He gave an invited 15-minute talk on the last day of the AGU meeting that packed a remarkable amount of the paper into a clear exposition of the main ideas, without which I would not have been motivated to look at the paper.
In reference to Romps, I was reading a these by Barrett in the UK on modeling issues with mixed phase clouds. Super cooled liquid water in mixed phased clouds have a subtle impact on RH estimates, the difference being RHvp versus RHice.
http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/met130/notes/chapter7/graphics/esw_esi.gif
Not something that really jumps out as significant, but with liquid topped clouds at a temperature in the range of -15C you would be approaching the maximum difference between water vapor saturation and ice vapor saturation. That would have some interesting effects on detrainment and re-entrainment dealing with two phase changes. I used to relate it to an atmospheric heat pipe effect. According to Barrent, adjusting for mixed phase clouds would reduce climate model sensitivity to around 1.6C per doubling.
I think I’ve never heard so loud
The quiet message in a cloud.
=======================
Vaughan Pratt, : Springer raises a good point. The crucial question here is whether this decrease in lapse rate driven by increasing absolute humidity (quantity of water vapor) overwhelms the greenhouse effect or is too tiny to be significant.
The theoretical decrease in lapse rate for a global warming (increase in surface temperature) of 10 °C is plotted on the left of Figure 5 of An Analytical Model for Tropical Relative Humidity by David Romps, J. Climate, 27, 7432-7449 (1 Oct. 2014). Romps plots two cases: no evaporation of precipitation (α = 0), and 50% evaporation (α = 0.5).
thank you for the link to the Romps paper
From the abstract: An analytical model is derived for tropical relative humidity using only the Clausius–Clapeyron relation, hydrostatic balance, and a bulk-plume water budget. This theory is constructed for radiative–convective equilibrium and compared against a cloud-resolving model. With some reinterpretation of variables, it can be applied more generally to the entire tropics.
The principle limitation of these lapse rate computations is that they are based on a thermodynamic equilibrium (C-C) that never exists. There is a persistent transfer of energy and water (hence latent energy) from the surface to the upper troposphere via evaporation and wet thermals, and none of the models is a model of that rate of energy and water transport. The total energy transported that way, evapotranspiration, is greater than the energy transported by radiation (Stephens et al, Trenberth et al energy flow diagrams), so the omission is non-negligible. How that transport changes with CO2 or temperature change has hardly been studied. The Romps et al science paper on changes in lightning strike rate is just one of only a few beginnings. The C-C approximation is not necessarily always bad (may be good on cool, sunny, cloudless days), but it is wretched when there are squalls, thunderclouds, and rain storms — i.e. when the rate of non-radiative transfer of energy from surface is greatest.
@Rob Starkey: What is important is TCR. What Vaughan seem to get wrong is forecasting TCR over specific time periods. What will TCR be over the next 25 years? If someone claims to really know what is happening in this complex system, let them tell you now what TCR will be to CO2 over the next few decades?
Excellent point. My personal road to hell is paved with the good intention of making a straightforward connection between ECS and TCR based on ocean heat capacity above and below the main thermocline. Real soon now, as the saying goes…
Harold W:
The Romps paper is very interesting, thanks! [Non-paywalled version is here, by the way.]
thank you for the link.
Mosh,
The guy with a B.A in English Literature and Philosophy is lecturing us on science? We already know the IPCC propaganda line. No need to repeat it.
Where is the evidence the ERL has risen?
@MM: There is a persistent transfer of energy and water (hence latent energy) from the surface to the upper troposphere via evaporation and wet thermals, and none of the models is a model of that rate of energy and water transport.
But that transfer is precisely what Romps’ paper models. In what way is his model not a model of what he claims to model?
Vaughan Pratt: But that transfer is precisely what Romps’ paper models. In what way is his model not a model of what he claims to model?
In addition to the quote from the abstract that I provided, consider this from their discussion: A simple, analytical theory has been given here for the relative humidity in radiative–convective equilibrium,
its changes with atmospheric warming, and its relationship
to the precipitation efficiency
A great deal of the energy and water transfer that I referred to takes place when the conditions are far from equilibrium, during squalls, thunderstorms, and such. What he derives is a relative humidity profile that is accurate during mild conditions (when the equilibrium hypothesis is least inaccurate), not the rates of energy and water transfer, nor their changes as DWLWIR and temperature increase.
For another: Let M denote the convective mass flux (units of
kgm^-2 s^-1), e and d denote the entrainment and detrainment
rates (units of kgm^-3 s^-1), and c denotes the
condensation rate (units of kgm^-3 s^-1). We can then
write down the following equations for the steady-state
convective mass flux M, the humidity within clouds
That again is a steady-state approximation, whereas a large portion of the mass and energy transfers take place during non-steady-state conditions. As far as I can tell, the mass and energy flux rates themselves are never estimated, and the moist lapse rate is shown to be nearly independent of those fluxes, as long as the system is in steady-state.
By contrast, in the Romps et al paper on lightning discharge rates, the energy flow rate was obtained by multiplying the CAPE by the measured rainfall rate, and multiplying that by a .constant of proportionality.
I respect the work, mind you. But I think it comes up short of telling us whether cloud cover will increase or decrease, whether the rate of evapotranspirative cooling will increase sufficiently to throw the results of the radiative balance models off (I think they will), or whether the increased DWLWIR on the ocean surface will warm it or merely increase the evaporation rate.
For another quote: Therefore, Eqs. (12) and (19) form the
analytical model that we sought: given the pressure p,
temperature T, entrainment rate e, and detrainment rate
d at some height in the atmosphere, this theory gives G
and RH at that height.
To calculate RH, they compute its value over a grid of values of e and d, but these and other rates are never derived nor are their changes with changing surface temperature derived.
Perhaps Prof. curry will clarify what she means when she says, “everybody agrees that humans are contributing to warming.” Is the science now settled? Is this an appeal to authority (“everybody” sounds authoritative to me)? Are there no longer any room for descent and other scientists can no longer speak for themselves? Is this a long journey that is not over? From believer in CAGW to questing the “consensus” to declaring a consensus? Words (e.g. everybody agrees) do have meaning.
PMHinSC | January 2, 2015 at 1:35 pm | Reply
“Perhaps Prof. curry will clarify what she means when she says, “everybody agrees that humans are contributing to warming.” ”
Everybody *should* agree. The waste heat alone from fossil fuel combustion is significant enough to raise urban surface temperature. Is there anyone with more brains than God gave a goose who disputes that human activities causes urban heat islands? If there are, I fart in their general direction, which activity is also AGW given how powerful methane is a GHG.
PMHinSC | January 2, 2015 at 1:35 pm | Reply
(“Perhaps Prof. curry will clarify what she means when she says, “everybody agrees that humans are contributing to warming.” ””
David in TX | January 4, 2015 at 1:34 am |
“Everybody *should* agree. The waste heat alone from fossil fuel combustion is significant enough to raise urban surface temperature. Is there anyone with more brains than God gave a goose who disputes that human activities causes urban heat islands?”
Certain localized places with higher temperature offset by those with lower temperature?
The total power converted to heat by earthlings is 7.5 x 10^9 watts. 1.5 ppm of the 5.3 x 10^15 watts continuously supplied to this Earth and its atmosphere by the Sun. Outside of possible nuclear destruction, earthlings have no possible effect on anything this Earth may wish to do, with temperature, or anything else. God loves roaches, that produce more heat and CO2, than earthlings can ever do.
Will there’s a fly in your ointment. Anthropogenic waste heat is hugely concentrated in small areas. Thus the very places where we live are warmed the most by our activities. That’s anthropogenic warming and there’s no good reason why there should be any compensatory cooling outside the urban environment.
Everybody should agree that anthropogenic activity causes urban heat islands and while the effect diluted over the entire earth’s surface is small it is still non-zero.
HaroldW | January 4, 2015 at 11:05 am |
PMHinSC —
Thanks for clarifying. But Dr Curry’s statement is all about “the physics that says it [CO2] should” warm…note the phrase “[i]f all other things remain equal”.
I respectfully disagree. Perhaps I need lessons in reading comprehension, but my understanding is she is saying that “everyone agrees” anthropogenic CO2 IS warming the environment; no that the physics says CO2 SHOULD warm the environment. I would agree that the physics says that more CO2 (anthropogenic or otherwise) SHOULD warm the environment. Perhaps I missed the class where it is taught that data is no longer required in the scientific process.
I would agree that the physics says that more CO2 (anthropogenic or otherwise) SHOULD warm the environment. Perhaps I missed the class where it is taught that data is no longer required in the scientific process.
But we have the data, for both CO2 and temperature. Furthermore the climate, when defined as the 20-year running mean of temperature (the blue curve in the figure below, namely what the IPCC uses in the definition of transient climate response), tracks log(CO2) (the green curve) very well modulo a well-documented fluctuation (the red curve) commonly associated to either the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) or the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).
http://clim.stanford.edu/FitLogCO2.jpg
When the physics says CO2 should warm the environment, and one observes the environment warming with rising CO2, you need a more nuanced objection than simply that there is no data to support the physics.
“When the physics says CO2 should warm the environment, and one observes the environment warming with rising CO2, you need a more nuanced objection than simply that there is no data to support the physics.”
Vaughn, Well said.
Basil Newmerzhycky commented
To me, this is at best the starting place for a hypothesis, but the attribution of weird weather, or even rising temperatures isn’t proof Co2 is the “cause”. Nor is “we can’t think of anything else that could do it” , science.
Vaughan writes: “But we have the data, for both CO2 and temperature.”
Vaughan- LOL If only CO2 drove temperature change you would have what you need to make accurate forecasts.
The truth is that it is a complex system. As Vaughan wrote earlier ECS is a theoretical number that may not be important over timescales meaningful to humans.
What is important is TCR. What Vaughan seem to get wrong is forecasting TCR over specific time periods. What will TCR be over the next 25 years? If someone claims to really know what is happening in this complex system, let them tell you now what TCR will be to CO2 over the next few decades?
Vaughan Pratt,
http://clim.stanford.edu/FitLogCO2.jpg
Based on your chart “normal” climate would be 1860s and we are in Abby-normal climatesville now. That is what the data says right?
Natural variability is miraculously limited to a +/- 0.1 C range. Land use has zero impact. Black carbon has zero impact. Volcanoes have zero impact. CO2 is the only significant climate variable. I must say this climate science stuff is remarkably simple.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Hxa-Hjsv6xs/VKceucbKyBI/AAAAAAAAMEI/53Yz9m-3O-w/w971-h515-no/lamb%2Bwith%2Boppo.png
@cd: Natural variability is miraculously limited to a +/- 0.1 C range.
Does 20-year global climate usually vary considerably more than that over any given 145-year period? If so then I would agree that it would seem miraculous. Otherwise I wouldn’t.
Land use has zero impact.
Land use has a quite significant impact on CO2. The analysis takes this into account by using all atmospheric CO2 including that attributable to land use.
Black carbon has zero impact.
Black carbon has a very significant impact on CO2. I’m viewing log(CO2) (the green curve) as a proxy for all anthropogenic emissions including black carbon because we have more data for CO2 since 1800 than any other form of anthropogenic emissions. If it could be shown that significantly more than half of the green curve was the result of absorption by black carbon then this would take the pressure off CO2. Mark Jacobson’s work on this may shed some light here.
Volcanoes have zero impact.
There have been on the order of a hundred significant volcanic eruptions since 1850, not one of which has had a discernible impact on 20-year climate. If you’re referring to the sustained-volcanism theory, that’s at best a correlation with insufficient quantitative evidence of a significant impact on 20-year climate.
CO2 is the only significant climate variable.
As I said I’m only using it as a proxy for the impact of industry. By all means propose an alternative proxy for which we have enough data to make it usable.
I must say this climate science stuff is remarkably simple.
If you can show how making it more complicated improves our understanding, I’m all ears. I love complex theories if (and only if) they shed additional light.
@Rob Starkey: What is important is TCR. …
Answered here. (I wish WordPress had an easy way of working back to the correct Reply button.)
Vaughan Pratt: When the physics says CO2 should warm the environment, and one observes the environment warming with rising CO2, you need a more nuanced objection than simply that there is no data to support the physics.
Well said. I referred to it without citing it explicitly or explicitly referencing the post.
Changes in poleward ocean heat trnsport could complicate issues
http://water.columbia.edu/files/2011/11/Seager2005OceanHeat.pdf
If only there were evidence there had been any
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n6/fig_tab/ncomms1901_F5.html
Vaughan Pratt | January 5, 2015 at 11:33 am |
“But we have the data, for both CO2 and temperature.”
Yes but the data for the past 17 years shows no decline in rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 with no concomitant increase in temperature.
The data disputes the hypothesis.
“When the physics says CO2 should warm the environment, and one observes the environment warming with rising CO2, you need a more nuanced objection than simply that there is no data to support the physics.”
Yes but when one observes the environment not warming despite relentless emission of aCO2 into the atmosphere you need to consider the possibility that the physical explanation proffered is either wrong or incomplete.
I would prefer to let William Happer, Freeman Dyson, James Lovelock, Roy Spenser, John Christy, and Richard Lindzen among thousands of other highly credentialed scientists speak for themselves.
AFAIK, all of those people agree with Dr. Curry’s statement.
There is a world of difference between believing that CO2 does not have a warming effect and saying that the warming effect of CO2 is not a good justification for proposed policies.
Remember, the majority of the warming predicted by GCMs is a result of water vapor, in a very-difficult-to-predict positive feedback loop. Not CO2. Questioning the accuracy of the GCMs is entirely rational and what one would expect from real scientists, like those you brought up.
On the other hand, claiming that human-emitted CO2 (and methane, and land use changes) have no effect on climate is, indeed, anti-science.
“fizzymagic | January 2, 2015 at 8:50 pm |
On the other hand, claiming that human-emitted CO2 (and methane, and land use changes) have no effect on climate is, indeed, anti-science.”
Just for the record I made no such claim. My claim is that there is no empirical data supporting the claim that anthropogenic CO2 is having an effect on the climate. Until there is it is unwise to say “everybody agrees…” is a scientific fact. I understand and don’t dispute the physics that says it should, but understanding physics is not enough.
PMHinSC —
Thanks for clarifying. But Dr Curry’s statement is all about “the physics that says it [CO2] should” warm…note the phrase “[i]f all other things remain equal”.
PMHinSC: . My claim is that there is no empirical data supporting the claim that anthropogenic CO2 is having an effect on the climate.
Unless there is another mechanism responsible for the warming since 1850, then the co-occurrence of warming with CO2 increase is empirical evidence supporting the claim that anthropogenic CO2 is having an effect on the climate (see Vaughan Pratt above). No convincing evidence for such a mechanism has been reported: modeling such as Scafetta’s that finds periodicities in the global mean climate is evidence that such a mechanism (or set of mechanisms) exists, but a complete account of how the mechanism works has not been proffered. We are stuck, in my opinion, with the most perplexing situation: the evidence does not clearly support any particular explanation for the warming since 1850.
Where is your proof that feedback from water is a net positive one?
There have been justified complaints that “consensus” has no place in science. Without defining what she means, Dr. Curry is now claiming consensus when she says, “everybody agrees that humans are contributing to warming.” This sloppiness devalues her arguments; particularly considering her previous statement “If all other things remain equal, it’s clear that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will warm the planet; however the real difficulty is that nothing remains equal.” Am I to conclude that CO2 is contributing to warming (that arguable hasn’t occurred for 18 years) but we can’t measure it because it is nullified by negative feedback? A minimum scientific standard should demand the ability to measure the link between anthropogenic CO2 and temperature (where is the “human signature in the atmosphere?”). IMHO Harold W contradicts himself when he says 4 out of 6 agree “everybody agrees” and then goes on to claim that they all agree to an undefined statement about what they agree on. Just the number of commentators with disparate views supporting the “everybody agrees” statement is a testament that it means everything to everybody and it will be used by everybody for everything. Once you have to explain what you mean by “everybody agrees,” you have lost the argument. It is not possible for anyone to be as public and have spoken and written as much as has Prof. Curry and not contradict herself, or misspeak. I hope this is the case and she will clarify what she means.
I am puzzled that you think Dr. Curry is unclear, when you cite her: “If all other things remain equal, it’s clear that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will warm the planet; however the real difficulty is that nothing remains equal.” As I wrote, I can recall statements from 4 of your 6 scientists explicitly agreeing with this sentiment, and would be rather surprised one of them does not.
“Am I to conclude that CO2 is contributing to warming (that arguably hasn’t occurred for 18 years) but we can’t measure it because it is nullified by negative feedback?” We can certainly measure the extent warming and estimate the role of greenhouse gases such as CO2. It’s been done in many places, e.g. Otto et al. (2013). GHG warming is not, to my knowledge, being nullified by negative feedback; it is being reduced by a natural cycle which is currently in its cooling phase. [I avoid “nullified” because only one dataset (RSS) shows such a long period of zero linear trend. All others show small positive trends over that interval.]
I subscribe to the view that “all other things remain equal, it’s clear that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will warm the planet”, and we are adding more CO2, hence I see no reason to expect that any interval of zero temperature change will last indefinitely. The key question is not whether temperature will increase, but how much, how fast. Some believe the rise will be swift, large, and cataclysmic. I see it as being slower and “not an emergency”.
“HaroldW | January 3, 2015 at 11:13 am |
I am puzzled that you think…”
I am looking for science not “estimate the role of greenhouse gases such as CO2…I subscribe to the view…I see no reason to expect [or] …some believe.” The first data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 Mission was presented in Dec, there is no data showing man’s signature in the environment, the cart is clearly before the horse, and it is premature to declare the theory to be confirmed. Please note I have not expressed my opinion or stated that the theory is not true; just that there is insufficient science to declare it as confirmed. I am looking for science not premature declarations of “everybody agrees” quibbling over degree.
HaroldW | January 3, 2015 at 11:13 am
“I am puzzled that you think Dr. Curry is unclear, when you cite her: “If all other things remain equal, it’s clear that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will warm the planet; …. ”
Please give any evedence that “adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will warm the planet” This is but a fool claim made by erronious modeling.
AGW has been a central planning, Marxist in subtext political meme offshoot of green activism from inception. The trouble for both advocate and skeptic tactically is that most voters don’t care deeply enough and are scientifically insecure to embrace the political realities associated with something form formed from the academic left. Each time advocate become a political critical mass the logical reaction and resistance can stop or slow the “policy” which in fact isn’t based on science at all. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough logic or public science self-confidence to root out the political fringe of the green culture in either academia or culture beyond stopping them at major moments. The political risk of being “anti-environmental” was conceded generations ago in the political class so there is very little leadership or incentive to change this status quo.
Climate “science” and specifics are analogous to the average voter as might be debate over accounting rules or tort reform which can become very partisan among small even self-interested parties. Most voters can’t absorb those complexities either but a set of dogma is created. Of course the scale is very different when neither side might be predicting world wide catastrophic events unless power and control are ceded to their policy wishes (Although the reader might research a discussion of “mark to market” banking asset rules circa 2008). Green political ambitions are Messianic in structure and completely culture driven in many segments.
The deficiency of particular opponents to science political corruption and agenda (the basics of the broad climate science, warming enclave movement) shouldn’t be the singular focus. AGW activism needs to be related to the overall schism hostages found in academia, media and popular culture as a whole. Those are the dots that need connecting, not the weakness of the Party that markets itself on defending individual rights….often poorly to be sure. True to form Dr. Curry seems preoccupied with her relative standing inside the Green Culture as she struggles with their excesses. Another false goal post submerged in the infirmities of the Georgia GOP AGW resistance. The GOP polls are hair-splitting and weak relative to those somewhat more interested in the AGW agenda is neither a surprise or that informative. None of it addresses the broad abuse of “science” for a political agenda that the AGW movement represents or the comparatively weak reaction Dr. Curry and her many followers have maintained in the process. Finding weak GOP postures is no excuse for what the AGW movement (or Dr. Curry’s position in the debate) is or ever was being the main point.
“AGW has been a central planning, Marxist in subtext political meme offshoot of green activism from inception”
in 1896? really?
Greenpest.
========
Steve, were they arguing to regulate J.D. Rockefeller in 1896 because he was warming the Earth??
No, “they” hated him then and now for many common reasons that are obfuscated under the guise of the climate “science” debate today. If you took a proper look at the roots of the “Green” movement you could certainly go back to 1896 or many other social cultures for the roots. Collective man hating man as the center of social and economic ills? Isn’t that the center of Marxist framing? Just a coincidence it’s embraced with advancing certainty based by academic left-wing political ideology today? Do you need a graph to acknowledge this?
Do you seriously think all of this is rationalized by a 3% human CO2 contribution that has yet to be defined (quantitatively) in impact?
Steve, somewhere there are serious scientists doing real science and frankly no one cares much because they wouldn’t care a hoot if “everyone agrees”. Plenty do care, which is a reflection of the science decline involved here. The political movement of AGW is very real and dwarfs in importance the obscure nature of what has been proven regarding human co2 emissions. It’s past time technical skeptics cross that bridge as a basic starting point.
1961 – World Wide Fiend for Nature.
@cwon14: Steve, were they arguing to regulate J.D. Rockefeller in 1896 because he was warming the Earth??
For the benefit of those who rely on Wikipedia to decrypt SM’s cryptic acronyms and dates, I’ve added an entry for Arrhenius at Wikipedia’s article on 1896.
I’ll add an entry for the acronym ERL for Effective Radiating Level when the term appears somewhere in Wikipedia. Currently not even the more common terms Effective Emission Height and even more common Effective Emission Level (defined on p.1650 of this 1999 article by Schneider, Kirtman, and Lindzen) appear. (No, not that Schneider, yes that Lindzen.)
What does appear is the term I’ve been using, photosphere, as defined in terms of optical depth for “the optical path from the observer’s altitude to outer space”. Schneider et al’s 1999 temperature-based definition of EEL is essentially equivalent to the astrophysicist’s definition of an optical depth of 2/3 for a star’s photosphere, with visible light replaced by far infrared.
Steven,
I’m sure John Tyndall and Karl Marx met each other. London was a small world in those days. With the Communist Manifesto being published in 1848 and John Tyndall being professor of physics at the Royal Institution from 1853 to 1887, they must have at least heard of each other, if only in the British Library.
“Georgia is a ‘red’ state; dominated by Republicans (except for Metropolitan Atlanta which is dominated by Democrats)”
look at any voting map of the last election
it’s true throughout the country
almost exacting to the city boundaries
this is important
a stark economic and cultural divide
exemplified in the climate debate
This is a good post. It’s refreshing to read that there are elected officials that seem to be thinking clearly about these issues and they are seeking advice from experts. The reporter didn’t quote anyone that would echo the progressive green meme that “the science is settled, the time to act is now and the planet is doomed if we don’t”. Has Obama lost all sway in Georgia politics?
The reporter did quote Andrew Dessler
I saw that and thought it was one of the most bizarre statements I have seen recently and Dressler is from Texas A&M. I guess he has never considered getting a second or third medical opinion before subjecting a loved one to life threatening invasive surgery. Did the reporter have to go all the way to College Station to get this?
“seeking advice”?? or Getting cowed and submitting to the authority of the Climate Eunuch class as “science”??
Submit or be labeled “irrational” or anti-science and if you have dissent it better conform to approved standards.
Like any cartel, the left-wing climate science deference has to be exposed and depoliticized. Not likely near term and the article reflects it.
It’s curious the Jack Murphy gets close to the “irrational” label for even alluding to “temperature records”. That seems to be a political Holy Grail that warming advocates simply aren’t going to tolerate…even Dr. Curry. It’s not my priority but it takes us back in time in the debate when in fact the debate was more generally rational and the political blood lust of warming advocates was generally acknowledged. So again we get politically correct spectrum of topics of discussion from either the “consensus” or its affiliates.
there was a Little Ice age. I dont know why so many skeptics want to Disappear the Little Ice Age.
I think our understanding of past climates, and how they might have been shaped, would be improved if we recognised that neither the MWP or the LIA were monolithic unbroken periods of warmth or cold lasting hundreds of years.
Whilst each period could be characterised as being often warm or cold there were plenty of periods within each with the opposite characteristics.
tonyb
Tony.
why do you let skeptics get away with denying that there was a cooler period in our immediate past. Regardless of its twists and turns and nooks and crannies, the LIA was in general ( pick a random spot) cooler than today.
Stop denying your own work
Sorry mosh, but you have lost me there
Of course there was a mich cooler period in our immediate past it’s just that it didn’t last unbroken for five hundred years at a perishimgly cold level whereby the Thames was continually frozen.
Tonyb
Steven Mosher
?
when I last heard of the LIA , it was a skeptic argument for natural variation
when did skeptics start to “disappear” it?
I missed that
this comes across to me as yet another rhetorical reset from the warm side
Mosher I dont know if you are being facetious or what but all I hear from skeptics is that there was LIA and the other side is trying to get rid of it for obvious reasons. Sometimes your logic or thought process has too many sub text themes involved to follow.
Ceresco,
The basic thing about Mosher to me is that he really believes the debate will be settled with spaghetti charts. It’s the black hole of back bench skepticism that maintains political denial of the actual academic culture involved with AGW advocacy or as in the case of Dr. Curry apologists and facilitators.
I appreciate his and similar efforts at times but it is fundamentally obtuse to the core of the AGW movement and the resistance.
Tony, Ceresco, John
Mosher may be experiencing a type of anxiety disorder, with the record breaking California Freeze heading his way. He needs to be assured that an Arctic Parka is not necessary; dress in layers.
Richard
tonyb, Mosher is just messin’ wid ya. As far as “global” temperature goes, the LIA was around 0.9 C cooler than today and the MWP was about the same as today. Regionally, temperature swings more than offset most of the weak “global” climate signal especially when longer term averaging is used.
When you use the tropics, the real heat source for “Global” temperatures,
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-XQe_TNmTlHg/VKCTt6PZmOI/AAAAAAAAMBs/oYMjbc5o7Dc/w665-h449-no/tropical%2Bsst%2Bversus%2Bglobe.png
Which happens to have a 94% correlation with GISS global btw, even though it it is only 44% of the globe, you get a better picture of what is going on than with CET or kriging to the nether regions of the poles.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-QixN6RvJjP4/VGio57R499I/AAAAAAAALvI/SFCi1UgvHWc/w669-h459-no/oppo%2Bnormal.png
Since there are a few pretty good tropical ocean reconstructions you can get a better idea of what the “global” MWP/LIA temperature range was.
Now Mosher and the minions will make a case that nether regions of the poles matter since you have to have a real “global” anomaly and once you include Arctic Winter Warming and Sudden Stratospheric Warming and convert sea ice to land, without weighting for actual energy involved, temperatures match theory better, but they are running out of nether region locations to manufacture data for aren’t they? So unless they krige up a new “global” where CET has a higher than 94% correlation, the tropical oceans and especially the Northern Indian Ocean are the teleconnection sweet spots.
Skeptics Deny the LIA
“Allen vehemently rejected the idea that warming is an established fact. ”
Jack Murphy, a Republican of Cumming, who chairs the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee and sits on the powerful Rules and Appropriations committees, was skeptical that global temps are rising
.
It’s pretty simple guys.
Skeptics deny that its getting warmer.
on the other hand
Skeptics argue that the warming is natural.
You see they are not interesting in finding the best explanation, they are only interested in denying what the other side says.
If I say its warming since the LIA, all manner of skeptics of skeptics will
say “thats not settled”
If I say the warming since the LIA is due in part to man, they will say
No the warming we deny is natural.
Their goal is not to find the truth and state it with the appropriate caveats and uncertainty estimates. Their goal is to say Not X. Anyone can say not X. Takes no study whatsoever, all you need is a commitment to say no.
Mosh, don’t you think you’re being just a wee bit disingenuous there?
Out of context and not a direct quote.
Mosher
There are many at CE who respect your contributions, me included. However these recent comments are not helpful, and are off the mark; your descriptions of skeptics are totally distorted.
Steven Mosher | January 2, 2015 at 2:26 pm |
It’s pretty simple guys.
Skeptics deny that its getting warmer.
on the other hand
Skeptics argue that the warming is natural.
This is bs.
1. It is much warmer than it was 200 years ago.
2. The ocean takes a long time (century scale) to come equilibrium, so all things being equal the ocean will continue warm for a while. The warming of the atmosphere was basically an impulse change relative to the ocean response rate.
3. Most of the warming is natural and preceded the CO2 change.
4. The percentage of natural vs man made warming is a matter of some debate.
5. The man made source attributions are fairly well known. About 3/4 of emissions is from burning things we find in the ground and 1/4 is from burning things we find on top of it – the “on top of it” part incidentally destroys 0.5 gT/y of sinking capacity.
6. The natural vs man made contribution to the CO2 increase is a matter of some debate.
If we shot everyone living in the tropics, the CO2 increase would stop in about 8 years. If we stopped using fossil fuel the CO2 level might stabilize depending on how fast we burn forest.
If we level off in the 12 gT/y range for emissions the CO2 level will plateau in the 500-550 PPM range This means we have experienced the bulk of CO2 induced warming.
rls, Yep, Mosh is trying to make a philosophical point to a practical crowd. There is no skeptical handbook and no organization of skeptics, just people that have diverse opinions. To some, 1 degree of warming over one and a half centuries isn’t really warming, especially when the past 20 years haven’t warmed much at all. Georgia in particular hasn’t experienced any warming, in fact most of the Red states are blue temperature wise. The UK hasn’t experienced any significant warming as tonyb and his extended CET seem to indicate. “Global Warming” requires very specific attention to detail and careful kriging or adjustment to tease out. Not something your average “not a scientist” can do.
The guys and gals from Georgia probably just see this.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem4_US_Georgia.png
It takes a true scientist to see this.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.gif
Steven Mosher
“skeptics deny that it is getting warmer”
jeez, nobody says that
everyone acknowledges the hiatus is the flattening of a general trend
even me, and I’m a Luke Skydragon
it’s just that the end of the world is not near
thanks for explaining your statement though
I’ll need a few minutes to untangle my brain
@cd: the MWP was about the same as today
Where “today” is defined as some point in time since 1900. Some say 1925, some 1940. Is there anyone who says 1998?
The issue here is that most alarmists have dropped the C from CAGW. They are getting very quiet about looming disaster and tipping points and no longer mention Catastrophes.
So what do we have now? Slight and Mildly Annoying AGW? .. . Or Pleasant and Barmy and Mainly Harmless AGW?
It is clear Mosher belongs to the school of ‘Pedantically and Technically Correct But Who Knows if There is Really a Problem AGW’.
The issue here is that most alarmists have dropped the C from CAGW.
The term CAGW is a straw man invented by those protesting the conclusions of climate science. It cannot be found anywhere in the climate science literature unless you count literature protesting its conclusions.
The only possible “catastrophe” mentioned by the IPCC is that associated with methane, which they assess as highly unlikely.
Pratt pretends to only read the academic litchurchur. His pretense is catastrophic and anthropogenic.
=============
Oh, chirrun, grand and great, there never was no catastrophe, never. That was no strawman, though, that there was mirage, a will o’ the wisp, which landed the haymaker on your ancestors’ civilization with panic stricken policy.
============
Pratt brings catastrophe down with a bump, like the bass fiddler killer catching the lady’s parrot. ‘Polly want a crackertastrophe’.
Don’t look now, but Gore sports an instrument case chakra full of MegaFranklins.
You and yours are sad and tragic jokes, Pratt. Bright, but what good is that to the world’s destitute? You coulda been a contenduh. And we are laughing now.
======================
I’d join the crowd saying Mosher is losing it but I never thought he had it in the first place.
tonyb: I think our understanding of past climates, and how they might have been shaped, would be improved if we recognised that neither the MWP or the LIA were monolithic unbroken periods of warmth or cold lasting hundreds of years.
I agree with you. The MWP was warmer than now, on the average, and the LIA was cooler than now, on the average, but a well-defined LIA with a clear beginning and end does not seem to have existed — that was the message of the paper by Kelly and O’Grada in vol 8 of the Annals of Applied Statistics.
Steven Mosher: Their goal is not to find the truth and state it with the appropriate caveats and uncertainty estimates. Their goal is to say Not X. Anyone can say not X. Takes no study whatsoever, all you need is a commitment to say no.
Once in a while you are just plain wrong, and this is one of those occasions. All kinds of skeptics say all kinds of stuff, but you have not quoted any of them in particular or any particular claims, or any particular evidence with respect to those claims or your claims about them.
I, for example, have written that the Earth “has warmed”, but that it may not “be warming”. I have also written that the case that CO2 has caused the warming to date is full of holes, and I have cited some of the research about those holes.
Vaughan Pratt: The term CAGW is a straw man invented by those protesting the conclusions of climate science. It cannot be found anywhere in the climate science literature unless you count literature protesting its conclusions.
Are you serious? Scientists have regularly been prediction CO2 caused warming-induced catastrophes since they stopped predicting catastrophes due to global cooling. Whether the alarmists themselves use the word “catastrophe” does not matter, it is no straw man to call them “catastrophists” or to refer to “catastrophic” AGW.
Matthew
I agree with your surprise at vaughans comments. The science literature is riddled with references to how serious future climate will be due to man
Here is an example from uk met office where they talk of ‘An increase in more extreme events’
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/i/e/MO_COP_brochure_72dpi_1_.pdf
I expect to visit the met office later this month to talk about this exact subject as the past looks to have much more extreme events than anything currently claimed to be unprecedented or given as proof that man is responsible for a sharp deterioration in climate
Tonyb
@MM: Whether the alarmists themselves use the word “catastrophe” does not matter, it is no straw man to call them “catastrophists” or to refer to “catastrophic” AGW.
Like Springer, you and Tony are conflating science and mitigation. Though there are notable exceptions such as Hansen, most scientists strive for objectivity. Labels such as “alarmist” and “catastrophist” insult their objectivity.
The issue is a substantial number of scientists that are ‘issue advocates’; their objectivity is questionable given their advocacy http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/20/climate-scientists-joining-advocacy-groups/
Vaughan Pratt: Labels such as “alarmist” and “catastrophist” insult their objectivity.
Maybe so, but Hansen, Ehrlich, Schneider, Holdren, Jackson and others have prominently sounded the alarms and warned of catastrophes. Are you denying that they have done so?
You said that the “C” in “CAGW” was a straw man, but plenty of scientists are on record warning of catastrophes if humans do not reduce fossil fuel use by a large amount and rapidly. Your claim that it is a straw man is contradicted by many examples.
Vaughan
I endorse what Matthew said.
Are you really unaware of the alarmist advocates who are also scientists?
Tonyb
Please don’t flush your credibility down the toilet, doc.
Doc, google “climate scientists warn of catastrophe”
Don
You can eliminate any doubt by googling
‘Climate scientists Rm of catastrophic warming.’
On my search engine the first result that comes up is from Australia’s own prof sherwood.
Tonyb
I heard it on the grapevine,’ Effects of CC Irreversible
Warns UN Panel in Report’.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/effects-of-climate-change-irreversible-un-panel-warns-in-report/2014/11/01/
Fercrisakes Vaughn, Hansen has been hauled off in handcuffs multliple times at climate protests. You’re defending the indefensible and in the process giving faculty in liberal academic institutions a reputation of having no integrity and being unworthy of public trust. That will be your legacy.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jim-hansen-risks-jail-research-clear/
Hansen:
“We really should be aiming to keep CO2 no higher than about 350 parts per million and possibly somewhat less than that if we want to maintain stable ice sheets and stable shore lines and avoid many other issues. That would require starting today. We’d have to reduce CO2 emissions at six percent a year if we began next year. If we began five years ago, it would’ve been three percent. If we wait until 2020, it becomes 15 percent. So if we’re hoping to maintain a planet that looks like the one that humanity has known, we’re out of time right now.”
Maybe so, but Hansen, Ehrlich, Schneider, Holdren, Jackson and others have prominently sounded the alarms and warned of catastrophes. Are you denying that they have done so?
Of course not. Those five are among the ones that have crossed the line between science and advocation of mitigation. The IPCC works hard to maintain that line by keeping WG-I and WG-III separate, without however being judgmental about the distinction.
You said that the “C” in “CAGW” was a straw man, but plenty of scientists are on record warning of catastrophes if humans do not reduce fossil fuel use by a large amount and rapidly. Your claim that it is a straw man is contradicted by many examples.
Every such example is a mitigationist (if you’ll permit me to coin yet another label). The IPCC report’s WG-III is all about mitigation, whereas WG-I is about the science. Please indicate where in WG-I there is any warning about catastrophes.
Ok, let’s boil all this down to its simplest possible terms.
If I calculate from all the available data about past temperature, CO2, and ocean structures and currents, that the global mean surface temperature in 2100, averaged over 20 years, will be three degrees above the global mean for 1960-1990, independently of the value claimed by climate scientists for equilibrium climate sensitivity, whether 3 degrees or 6 degrees per doubling of CO2, does that make me an alarmist? A catastrophist?
@curryja: The issue is a substantial number of scientists that are ‘issue advocates’; their objectivity is questionable
Exactly so.
@tonyb: Are you really unaware of the alarmist advocates who are also scientists?
What on earth did I say that would suggest I wasn’t?
On my search engine the first result that comes up is from Australia’s own prof sherwood.
So?
You underestimate how much Google knows about your druthers, methinks.
I am with Dr. Pratt, on this one. Mitigation gots nothing to do wit da science. The IPCC’s job is to keep all that separate. Climate scientists get in big trouble, if they cross the line. That’s why 97% of climate scientists agree that they ain’t worried and they never heard of mitigation. Thanks for straightening these guys out, doc.
The LIA is a temperature record. The MWP is a temperature record. 2014 is a temperature record. Just watch what is about to happen.
Mosher writes—“It’s pretty simple guys.”
But then Mosher mistakenly tries to define how all skeptics think.
Humanity can be contributing to the climate being warmer than it would have been without humans, but that does not mean that the IPCCs suggested actions make sense.
The fact “skeptics” quibble here often bitterly over the smallest of side details or the largest of blind spots imaginable in his case indicates Mosher is incorrect.
Rob
has it warmed since the LIA?
Why dont you go call out the idjits who deny the LIA?
What do you think of congressmen who say
“I’m no scientist, and its hasnt been warming”
Huh? write them a letter.
Mosher, unless you have special powers and can insert yourself into the individual’s neuronal synaptic connectors, how could you possibly know the intent of the statement vs the literal interpretation of such a statement. Warming has become shorthand for a variety meanings, as explained in a few comments above. You just made a huge over reach.
You know the questions and answers are much more nuanced than you are letting on.
“What do you think of congressmen who say
“I’m no scientist, and its hasnt been warming”
Huh? write them a letter.”
Read harder.
There is no time frame attached to this assertion.
Are you a “pause denier”?
When they got told it was “unstoppable” because it was “already in the pipeline” (remember that?) and it doesn’t happen, is it not fair comment to say “it hasn’t been warming”?
The worst mistake science made was to allow the politicisation of the issue.
Scientists are about as adept at politics as politicians are at science, so we end up with a situation where scientists are out of their depth in the political arena, and politicians don’t have to know much about science, because they’ve made the science part largely irrelevant.
As the economic mass of the Post WW2 education and science establishment reached excess they couldn’t stop themselves for embracing central planning (left-wing) ideology at many levels. It was in their self-interest to be paid and validated as “experts” and climate science is just one ugly authority drivel example. If they didn’t support this structure they wouldn’t be funded or socially relevant as a starting point. All of this is self denied of course, the ideology is really that strong and self-indemnifying but declaring it a “mistake” misunderstands the event itself.
What I meant is that scientists playing politics are no match for politicians playing politics.
And politicians don’t have to do science.
The problem with scientists is that they are not really good at science. They proved that when they settled for a consensus on something they are wrong about. Their model output disagrees with real data and they still think they are right.
As Dr. Lindzen is well quoted regarding IPCC research from INCEPTION; Paraphrasing; “They made up their minds before the first research report was ever produced”.
Politics overcame science generations ago. We live now in the world of that design.
The worst mistake? You are an optimist. It is not a mistake; it is a design.
1+
You’ll be called a “conspiracy theorist” 5…4…3..2..1 well soon to be sure.
The worst mistake science made was to allow the politicisation of the issue.
What should/could science have done to prevent it?
Rhetorical question. Obviously science should have anticipated what the politicizers are going to demand the science should look like, and preemptively changed it accordingly so as to avoid all this arguing.
It might well have been scientists themselves that started the politicisation process, depending on who you listen to, but the point is that once started, politics rapidly adopted the role of driving the science.
It might well have been scientists themselves that started the politicisation process, depending on who you listen to
According to the politicisers themselves , they started the process, see
United Nations General Assembly A/RES/43/53 of 6 December 1988 , “Protection of global climate for present and future generations of mankind”.
Vaughan Pratt: What should/could science have done to prevent it?
They could have (a) avoided the repeated and ongoing exaggerations and (b) avoided the conspiracy of silence concerning doubts and qualifications. Scientists, you may recall, asserted that Katrina was a harbinger of things to come and that hurricane seasons would perpetually be more severe than they had been up to that time. Scientists wrote of the death spiral of Arctic ice, and the disappearance of snow from British and N.E. American winters. Scientists tolerated (and reproduced) Lisa Jackson’s ludicrous demonstration of “ocean acidification” by dipping chalk into vinegar. Scientists could have avoided writing stuff such as Schneider wrote about shading the truth in order to support the alarm, and they could have rigorously avoided the pejorative and baseless “denier” insult.
There are lots of things that the scientists ought to have done differently, and most of these have been pointed out repeatedly since Hansen’s, Schneider’s, Holdren’s and Ehrlich’s first exaggerated public announcements.
@MM: They could have (a) avoided the repeated and ongoing exaggerations and (b) avoided the conspiracy of silence concerning doubts and qualifications.
“They?” You tar with a broad brush, Matthew.
Certainly those scientists who exaggerate or conspire to cover up are an embarrassment to science. Pretty much every branch of science can point to examples.
But the implication that this is how climate science standardly operates is just as offensive as the implication that all politicians are crooks based on the bad apples that the mainstream media gets so much mileage from.
Scientists wrote of the death spiral of Arctic ice … they could have rigorously avoided the pejorative and baseless “denier” insult.
If you’re not denying that Arctic ice is in an ongoing decline (since you said “baseless’), is your complaint with the phrase “death spiral”, or what?
Scientists tolerated (and reproduced) Lisa Jackson’s ludicrous demonstration of “ocean acidification” by dipping chalk into vinegar.
You have this backwards. She merely reproduced a commonplace in chemistry.
What is your concern here? That the acid in vinegar, acetic acid, is not the same one as in ocean acidification, namely carbonic acid?
Didn’t read all of the responses, but most, and I find them heartening. Once again Judith, your impact on this important issue is undeniable. There are certain people in the world who by means of a rare courage and manifest integrity, inspire us to want to do better. The arrogant, utterly “certain” alarmists are afraid of you… and with good reason.
At the state level, Georgia’s top official deferred to leaders in Washington. “This is more of a national and international policy issue,” said Brian Robinson, a spokesman for Gov. Nathan Deal. “Not one where we should or would weigh in.”
That was said by a leader that no states needs.
When the national policy and international policy goes down a wrong path, that is exactly when the states must weigh in!
+1
Nice dodge! Slick politician speak.
“Everybody agrees that humans are contributing to warming,” Curry said in an interview with the AJC.
I strongly disagree with that. Human caused warming cannot even be measured. There is no way to separate it from natural variability. I have read and listened to many scientists who say our CO2 has done no harm and has not caused the natural warming that was going to happen anyway.
A warm period has followed every cold period in the past ten thousand years and inside the same bounds.
““Every sane person agrees that humans are contributing to warming,”
Mosh
I think that Hubert Lamb got it about right when he wrote this foreword to one of his revised books shortly before is death;
“The idea of climate change has at last taken on with the public after generations which assumed that climate could be taken as constant. But it is easy to notice the common assumption that mans science and modern industry and technology are now so powerful that any change of climate or the environnment must be due to us. It is good for us to be more alert and responsible in our treatment of the environment, but not to have a distorted view of our own importance. Above all, we need more knowledge, education and understanding in these matters.”
Hubert Lamb DEC 1994
tonyb
Steven Mosher: ““Every sane person agrees that humans are contributing to warming,”
Sane estimates (i.e. estimates derived reasonably by sane people) of the human contribution to the warming since 1850 range from 0% to about 110%. Each estimate confounds the effects of diverse human impacts, such as deforestation and urbanization.
Mathew.
Do you deny that deforestation changes albedo and thus contributes to
change?
Do you deny that black carbon contributes to the melt in greenland?
Do you deny that adding C02 will have any effect? Do you assert that it must have zero effect.
Do you deny that changing aerosols in the atmosphere has any effect?
Do you deny that building huge cities that suck water from their rural surroundings have any effect?
Do you deny that building dams, changing rivers, have any effect?
Finding morons that say zero EFFECT ( not zero net, but ZERO effect whatsover) is evidence of one thing. Stupid people exist.
It’s not that I can’t speculate with the claim and agree…..it’s simply “we don’t know” is more logical. There are cloud feedbacks, ocean feedbacks etc. etc. and the sink isn’t defined.
The real point is that the claim could well be trivial in scale. That’s even likely.
“More human co2 doing “X”” is a soundbite for an agenda more times then not. So when it is brought up it looks l more like political superstition then a logical science claim. We’re touching on the dichotomy of activists. They claim it’s “simple” like gravity but when the dirt is dealt with it becomes “complicated” with Gruberism all over it. You’re too stupid to understand and do what we say. “We all agree” fits right in.
There are no proofs or tests in climate science, conclusively. The solution was to re-engineer the science method and society that accepts
on belief not evidence. Sadly the success of that culture is found everywhere around the AGW claim. If it isn’t proven then the correct answer is “we don’t know”. “Everybody agrees”…..we’re right back to toothpaste dentist endorsements……a far cry from “science” in my book.
Matthew R Marler
When JC and other skeptical scientists say that “humans are contributing to warming” it is an acknowledgment IMO of the human contribution, but not the whole story. They read the IPCC reports and see only guesstimating for the amount of natural variability; they do not, as opposed to consensus scientists, accept the conclusions of the IPCC.
Regards,
Richard
according to cwon
“There are cloud feedbacks, ocean feedbacks etc. etc. and the sink isn’t defined.
So, when humans burn stuff and create black carbon, and that black carbon ends up on greenlands ice sheet, and when Anthony watts argues that this contributes to the ice melting.. you think anthony is full of crap?
Go tell him.
When Roger Pielke Sr. argues that changing land use changes the temperature records, you think he is full of crap?
go tell him.
When a skeptic argues that the climate is sensitive to initial conditions and chaotic, I note you are there to tell him that he is full of crap.
So, your position is that it we cant know if it was warmer in the LIA?
The Thames froze magically at above zero?
Treelines moved cause trees are in on the hoax?
trees are blossoming earlier for the hell of it
species are migrating cause hell its fun.
The sea level is rising because water is magically being created somewhere..
Lamb was wrong
“But it is easy to notice the common assumption that mans science and modern industry and technology are now so powerful that any change of climate or the environnment must be due to us.”
1. there is no common assumption or consensus that ANY change is due to us.
2. There is an occasional skeptic who ASSERTS that climate science claims this. But the science actually doesnt.
Mosher, “Lamb was wrong”
but how wrong?
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-hVnd1uOfaiQ/VKcIuuh2W_I/AAAAAAAAMD0/E7s1oqFYxok/w971-h515-no/lamb%2Bwith%2Boppo.png
And who do you think has it right?
Captain
I am bemused that apparently we have managed to spend billions and get up to AR5 and yet man has not been fingered as the culprit according to mosh.
We might as well all go home and Judith can close down climate etc.
As regards Lamb, he is mostly right but I think greatly underestimates the warmth of the first half of the 16 th century which was indistinguishable to much of the MWP. According to documents I have seen in the Scott
Olar institute in Cambridge it seems possible that the Northern sea route opened up. The period around 1540 had three or four of the warmest years in the extended CET record.
Tonyb
captain
That chart?
Lamb thought it was wrong.
more BS from tony
Lamb
‘“But it is easy to notice the common assumption that mans science and modern industry and technology are now so powerful that any change of climate or the environnment must be due to us.”
NOBODY thinks that this is a COMMON assumption.
Nobody thinks that ANY change is due to us.
In rubbishing the late great Hubert Lamb mosh inexplicably claims;
‘Nobody thinks that ANY change is due to us.’
Would you like to elucidate? Did you really mean to say this? What have the last twenty years of the ipcc, the Kyoto protocol, action by various governments been all about?
Tonyb
Mosher, “Lamb’s Thought was wrong.”
Which thought, that at this point in the precessional cycle that a new ice age is possible or that we might experience some “global” warming before that?
It looks to me like there are a few wannabe climate scientists that aren’t qualified to hold Lamb’s jock strap.
The coach, worried over disappearing grey teeshirts, warned the team that athletic equipment didn’t grow on trees. My brother decorated the tree in the coach’s front yard with jock straps for Halloween.
=========================
Everybody knows, duhduh duh duh duhduh,
Well there’s 95 per cent probability that humans
are responsible for global warming, according to
the IPCC 5th ASSessment Report.
Steve Mosher says
“1. there is no common assumption or consensus that ANY change is due to us.
2. There is an occasional skeptic who ASSERTS that climate science claims this. But the science actually doesnt.”
wow…multiverse theory is true
I not only woke up in a new year
but also a parallel universe
help! where am I?
I think Mosher made a New Year’s Resolution to be more humorous for the benefit of all CE denizens. I, for one, appreciates his consideration for the rest of us.
I am pretty sure Mosher means “any change” in the sense of “every change”. No one believes that every climate change has been due to mankind. Prehistoric climate makes that obvious. Lamb made a false generalization if you read it that way.
Steven Mosher: Mathew.
Do you deny that deforestation changes albedo and thus contributes to
change?
Do you deny that black carbon contributes to the melt in greenland?
Do you deny that adding C02 will have any effect? Do you assert that it must have zero effect.
Do you deny that changing aerosols in the atmosphere has any effect?
Do you deny that building huge cities that suck water from their rural surroundings have any effect?
Do you deny that building dams, changing rivers, have any effect?
Finding morons that say zero EFFECT ( not zero net, but ZERO effect whatsover) is evidence of one thing. Stupid people exist.
that’s an example of confounding everything possible that produces an estimate that humans have produced more than than 100% of observed climate change. What I assert is that (a) the quantitative estimates of the diverse effects that you hypothesize are poor and (b) there is no case to be made that reducing anthropogenic CO2 will reverse albedo changes caused by deforestation.
@cd: Mosher, “Lamb was wrong” … but how wrong?
Capn, if your accompanying figure is using the data from Figure 3 of Oppo 2009 (Nature, titled “2,000-year-long temperature and hydrology reconstructions from the Indo-Pacific warm pool”) then it is grossly misrepresenting that figure.
If from elsewhere then please say where.
http://www.pages-igbp.org/download/docs/newsletter/2010-1/Open%20highlights/Conroy_2010-1(32-34).pdf
In what way is it different from how it is represented here?
http://www.pages-igbp.org/download/docs/newsletter/2010-1/Open%20highlights/Conroy_2010-1(32-34).pdf
Vaughan Pratt, ” then it is grossly misrepresenting that figure”
How is it grossly misrepresenting either figure?
@cd: How is it grossly misrepresenting either figure?
In Oppo 2009 Figures 3(a) and (b) both contain the blade of a hockey stick. Your figure is labeled “Lamb with Oppo 2009 overlay” but the overlay completely omits Oppo 2009’s hockey stick blade.
Vaughan Pratt, “In Oppo 2009 Figures 3(a) and (b) both contain the blade of a hockey stick. Your figure is labeled “Lamb with Oppo 2009 overlay” but the overlay completely omits Oppo 2009’s hockey stick blade.”
The Oppo 2009 data ends in 1955 and that plot includes data to 1955. The data is archived here.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/datasets/climate-reconstruction
under Sea Surface Temperature-Pacific
You can do your own overlay if you like.
Vaughan, Since you mentioned the hockey stick, here is a little trivia. Oppo 2009 is roughly 50 year smoothed core samples binned to ten year data points to make combination to other records easy. The 50 year smoothing is natural, i.e. the sedimentation doesn’t produce annual resolution.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Z_Bt6YEkLjA/VEqqqJ81jBI/AAAAAAAALo4/lCQvF-e8tRM/w577-h344-no/oppo%2Bsmooth.png
That is the Oppo 2009 data “spliced” with the Indian ocean temperature data with both annual and 50 year smoothed versions. 50 year smoothed which matches the natural smoothing of the reconstruction, not much of a hockey stick. Annual or monthly instrumental data produces a nice hockey stick. How large of a hockey stick would you like?
Careful Cap’n, he’ll dream up catastrophic sticks during his nap.
===========
@cd; The Oppo 2009 data ends in 1955 and that plot includes data to 1955. The data is archived here.
Thanks, capn. That was the answer I was looking for to my “If from elsewhere then please say where.”
So the apparent discrepancy with Figure 3 (a) and (b) of Oppo 2009 disappears when the red curve in those figures is removed, right?
Vaughan, “So the apparent discrepancy with Figure 3 (a) and (b) of Oppo 2009 disappears when the red curve in those figures is removed, right?”
Right, I thought that would be a better comparison for Lamb, who didn’t have much paleo data available.
Vaughan
The captains chart closely follows the borehole data from the university of Michigan and the CET data. We have been warming for some 300 plus years. The giss and Hadley figures are merely staging posts of warming and not the starting post.
Tonyb
@tonyb: The captains chart closely follows the borehole data from the university of Michigan and the CET data.
The Michigan borehole data, averaging 837 sites around the world, is given by the red curve in
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/borehole/gst.jpg
The shaded area is one standard deviation on each side.
To my eye it looks like a smooth monotonically rising curve. Both Lamb’s and Oppen 2009’s curves in cd’s chart for 1500 onwards are all over the place by comparison. What is your criterion for “closely follows”?
Thanks for calling attention to the article, itself something of a MSM rarity. Interesting that most of the Georgia politicians responses focused on the science not being settled, unwillingness to simply extrapolate ‘catastrophic consequenses’, and practical policy consequences (job export to China) rather than some simple (and wrong) Republican ideology like Inhofe’s “hoax”. Much more thoughtful than, for example, Kerry, Obama, and Holdren. Your influence shows, and is hopefully growing.
Rud Istvan: ) rather than some simple (and wrong) Republican ideology like Inhofe’s “hoax”.
One of the improvements that I expect for 2015 is better reporting, possibly mostly confined to Republican-Majority states and districts, on the multiple objections to a policy of extreme CO2-reduction. That article is an example, and I expect many more such examples.
Rud, everything about the debate at the public distribution level was simple and wrong on the part of advocates from the very beginning. Yet, the meme of Inholf as the knuckle dragger in the story is MSM doctrine. I actual don’t like the term “hoax” because it’s so benign as if there really isn’t a left-wing science and academia community to observe in the story. Generally Inhofe is far more correct then where Dr. Curry leads the debate.
Cwon, actually not. Inhofe wrote and published a 2012 book, The Greatest Hoax, citing Genesis 8:22 and his faith that ‘God’s still up there’ as evidence that it is ‘arrogance to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate’. That is regretably clear religious based true complete denial, not a scientific statement about natural variability in relation to whatever warming impact GHG like CO2 have.
You can see him actually say this on Youtube EKd6UJPghUS. Another reason I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat.
Rud,
Agree completely. Agw’s a hoax, and paeans to God’s wisdom in creating an atmosphere lowly man could not injure, do much harm. There are times I wish Inhofe and Rush Limbaugh and the like would keep their mouths shut.
Inhofe rocks, at least his prayers have been answered. So, there is that.
==============
So, Rud, you believe God wouldn’t impose natural variability? Could you elaborate? :)
there is no God
you just crash rocks together for 14 billion years
and out pops a Lamborghini Countach
As long as there are republicans claiming a hoax
As long as there are republicans denying any warming
there can be no science debate.
I am not a scientist. Let’s debate science.
Yes, what a wonderful world it would be if only we could get rid of those danged Republicans. I’m not a particularly intelligent person, which might explain why I actually somewhat believed that.
It was funnily enough, the global warming circus that wised me up. Obama, whom I actually voted for, did more to change my views than I thought possible for a single person, even a President.
“As long as there are republicans claiming a hoax”
That depends on which hoax.
Hoax A: There is no radiative forcing from CO2.
Hoax B: Global warming extent and impacts are exaggerated.
Though it remains uncertain how much RF is realized, those contending Hoax A are probably wrong.
However, I find Hoax B to be spot on.
“Hoax B: Global warming extent and impacts are exaggerated.”
Actually you cant know they are exaggerated.
If I KNEW they were minimal and then LIED and said they were not, that would be a hoax.
See.. If we are uncertain, then there cant be a hoax.
We do know that observed trends ( BEST and otherwise ) are at rates which are less than the low end rates predicted.
Climate is like a hoax of chocolates, You never know which one you’re gonna get. Moshe reads the label, and weeps.
==============
Steven Mosher | January 2, 2015 at 6:00 pm |
“Hoax B: Global warming extent and impacts are exaggerated.”
Actually you cant know they are exaggerated.
If I KNEW they were minimal and then LIED and said they were not, that would be a hoax.
Fine. We can eliminate the uncertainty.
The global warmers should be given 1 year to bound the climate sensitivity to +/-20%. If they can’t bound sensitivity they are incompetent, we should then terminate the $ 22+ billion in US annual funding for global warming activities ($2,658 billion for climate science) because it is wasted money.
If they do bound it – then we will know the change is minimal and the global warming extent and impacts are exaggerated.
See.. If we are uncertain, then there cant be a hoax.
The last sentence should have read:
See… if we are certain – then it is a hoax.
“As long as there are republicans……. there can be no science debate.”
Now with that statement I agree totally.
I wish they would raise their game to a more intellectual level. I personally think they have more science on their side than they are aware of. By dumbing down the debate to an emotional level, they open themselves to justified criticism from the dimwits on the left.
Well if you read the NRO article linked above by Judith it sounds like there wouldn’t need to be a belief by Republicans in AGW to get a carbon tax. A nuetral carbon tax now with gas prices plunging is an ideal solution for tax fairness taking the burden off payroll taxes (and increasing pocket book wealth) and properly transferring it to consumption. A win/win for everyone.
A revenue nuetral carbon tax, I meant to say
The link was replaced, here it is again:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395458/carbon-tax-has-something-everyone-irwin-stelzer
@Lucifer: However, I find Hoax B (global warming extent and impacts are exaggerated) to be spot on.
Since you didn’t say whether they are exaggerated by 10%, 100%, or 1000%, would you mind clarifying “spot on”?
I’m having difficulty seeing how all three of those levels of exaggeration could be equally “spot on”.
“hoax of chocolates”
Nice, Kim. But I do wish I could get the two hours back I so foolishly wasted watching that nauseatingly bad movie.
The global warmers should be given 1 year to bound the climate sensitivity to +/-20%.
If you mean equilibrium climate sensitivity, this has little bearing on the likely global temperature in 2100 as it refers to an equilibrium temperature that may not be reached for many hundreds of years.
If you mean the more relevant transient climate response, we’re already there as your range of +/-20% would be met by a range of 1.5-2.1 °C/doubling. Typical estimates of TCR are around 1.8 °C/doubling and you’ll be hard pressed to find any TCR estimate that is more than 0.3 °C/doubling above or below 1.8.
So, V, no catastrophe, eh? Whoever came up with that hoax of chocolates? Oh, nevermind, your box of journals musta been eaten by the ‘C'(ats) Word.
=============
Don’t confuse a TCR of 1.8 °C with an ECS of 1.8 °C. The former entails a much higher temperature rise by 2100 than the latter.
What the rise turns out to be will depend among other things on the trajectory followed by CO2.
ERSST V4 increased the SST trend over ERSST v3b about 0.02°C per decade.
That is an warming adjustment of about 0.003°C per decade per year. Applying the simple math that they have been doing this for 14 years and altering 10 decades of temperature – the effect is 0.003*14*10 or about 0.42°C of warming is generated by computer.
If the adjusters and versioners quit adjusting historic temperatures we might take them more seriously.
Half of AGW is CGAGW (computer generated anthropomorphic global warming).
Hoax is a weak word as the ability to play a false reactionary narrative indicates. It’s not hard to see why, even if neither of us might endorse it, we see a religious response to a movement that is more built on political and cultural faith then science. That response is also easy to twist in a culture with a strong secular predisposition. So this is literalism without context.
It’s curious the secular views are often so offended by religiously based parties who are no where the center of the policy in question and the authority it invokes. I’m not going to go into the rabbit hole of what “God as Man” rejection is being invoked by other religiously based responses and what they might mean. I get the symbolism of the argument without believing Inhofe or others are imposing theocratic science as the basic argument. That’s a quote mine of misinformation and straw. It’s also a huge double standard that worshiping of a politically motivated science isn’t very much a modern replacement of the theological predispositions you might be critical of. Why one without the other?
If you’re trying to say these are equal faults that’s very false. People aren’t executing science policy in the mainstream to suit biblical preferences. This simply isn’t a social problem where as a radical statist ambition is very much in the DNA of the AGW movement. Religious response is a form of dissent to attitude that is prevalent. Romans could have rejected Pagan beliefs on their own merit but in the end made other choices. I’m sorry that anything comes up that can be twisted such as religious commentary or the word “hoax”.
There are plenty of flaming secular, Marxist sympathizing academic lefty’s on this board on a regular basis. I’m mean they’re on every thread in drag or not. I can’t recall anyone making bible as science quotes here so I think your point about Inhofe isn’t in context to where the debate actually is. There is something about fanatical mainstream AGW belief systems, religious and political excess that naturally impacts people in very fundamental ways. I no more condemn Inhofe then I would soldiers holding a bible service in Afghanistan as if this isn’t willfully misinterpreted as the West imposing Christianity on Islamic peoples by parties in conflict. The anti-religious posturing isn’t surprising and to a degree on the surface something effective for AGW advocates. I would just argue it’s based on simplicity and to a degree cultural bigotry. We hear religious scientists smeared all the time in this fashion so what exactly are you embracing? Then again, this is the risk of making religiously based comments outside a group so wholly unsympathetic to ones belief system.
I simply want climate Paganism destroyed, I don’t need climate Christianity to replace it and I really don’t think that’s the point for most political skeptics of the AGW cause.
I never thought of science as a religion. Who is the Pope of Science? Is there a God of Science? Are there Ten Commandments of Science. Is there a Science Heaven and a Science hell? Any religious holidays for worshippers?
The Ten Commandments of )Climate) Science:
1. I am a scientist, thou shalt not think any thoughts that contradict me, nor place false skeptical views before mine.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of Michael Mann (or his holy writ, the Hokey Stick) in vain (lest ye be sued).
3. Remember Earth Day, keep it holy.
4. Honor thy climate scientists and government apparatchiks.
5. Thou shalt not kill the CAGW meme.
6. Thou shalt not have relations with skeptics.
7. Thou shalt not steal the emails that show how corrupt we are.
8. Thou shalt not tell the truth about Mann, Gleick, Schneider….
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s government grant.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s jet fuel guzzling Lear jet.
Thanks to Inhofe, I’m a believer in miracles. In front of my eyes his basket of bread turned into a basket of roses.
==================
Gary, you have creative talent. Can you do a Denier’s Ten Commandments?
Max,
You keep putting your tongue in your cheek like that and it’ll get stuck permanently one day.
But just for you ….
1. I am not a god, I will not pretend to know things for which I have no real data.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of science in vain by labeling every random political thought you have as “science”.
3. Remember the Alamo.
4. Honor thy skepticism, and the ability to think for yourself.
5. Thou shalt not kill the global energy economy based on faulty computer models.
6. Thou shalt not suck at the government teat.
7. Thou shalt not steal others’ tax money to fund your junkets to Cancun.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against or otherwise torture innocent data.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife (unless he’s Brad Pitt, and then let’s face it, every conservative guy wants Angelina Jolie).
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s freedom.
(I was gonna just post the real Ten Commandments, but not all skeptics are smart enough to believe in God :-) )
Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., spokesman for the conservative Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, believes in God and has some interesting thoughts on what’s wrong with climate science.
‘The problem is in thinking that science is “the basis for knowledge.” It isn’t. It never has been. It never can be.’
“That is because science—in terms of scientific method, testing hypotheses by real-world observation—cannot justify any truth judgments based solely on empirical observation.”
“Science will restore its trustworthiness only when, and only to the degree that, its practitioners rediscover, and re-embrace, the Biblical worldview that is its only firm foundation.”
For more, see:
http://townhall.com/columnists/calvinbeisner/2014/07/23/the-threat-to-the-scientific-method-that-explains-the-spate-of-fraudulent-science-publications-n1865201/page/full
6. Thou shalt not suck at the government teat.
More succinctly, cut science funding.
Australia seems to be taking the lead there.
“6. Thou shalt not suck at the government teat.
More succinctly, cut science funding.”
Not necessarily–Not spending more than available requires tough choices. Spending on everything only requires fantasy
I am sorry I missed the interview. I have watched Santelli for many years and enjoy this debates with economists. He is truly a free market adherent. For some reason the link to not provide the video but I am sure it is my fumbling around and will keep trying since it is shown on the screen but not turning on.
If politicians are going to weigh in, I wish they would at least cite some data or graphs or references to MWP or LIA or anything that demonstrates a little understanding of what the issues are between the climate scientists.
I am extremely pleased you are getting some well deserved recognition by the more mainstream media. You can bet the financial pros watch CNBC so after the WSJ piece and this interview they are getting to know you.
But Chaos!
But moral hazard!
=============
“I-am-not-a-scientist was a popular refrain.” should be followed by, and nor do I listen to most of them, especially the clear majority who say that humans are contributing most of the warming with GHGs. Greenhouse gas increases have added nearly 3 W/m2 to the pre-industrial forcing. Even with a low sensitivity this easily can account for the near 1 C of warming, and that is excluding the negative effect of aerosols. Adding in aerosols, the sensitivity increases. By any measure, humans have contributed enough forcing to account for nearly all the warming even with the lowest sensitivities, so the correct statement is not just “most” but “nearly all”.
1C of warming starting when? Did CO2 cause “nearly all” of the warming prior to 1950 when the anthropogenic CO2 levels were too small to contribute much warming?
Even with low sensitivity, GHGs can account for up to 1 C. If the actual warming due to GHGs is less due to other factors such as the so-called LIA recovery, that means it accounts for more than “most”.
The higher the sensitivity, the colder we would now be without man’s effect.
========
Even kim might prefer a 350 ppm climate to a 700 pm one. This is the choice we face at this time. Closer to 350 or closer to 700. Policy matters.
I prefer…
not to freeze to death in winter,
to have mechanized agriculture so the world has plenty of food,
to use machines to build buildings, roads, bridges and infrastructure,
to have instant on lighting in my home,
to have a world of information at my finger tips,
to be able to safely travel around the world,
to cool my home in the summer,
to have a supply of raw materials for manufacturing
to have machines that can manufacture an extraordinary amount of stuff
I would also prefer to have all these things without changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. But the reality is that we have all these things and nobody wants to give them up. And this high standard of living that we have is based on our ability to burn fossil fuels. And at this time, there is no reasonable substitute for fossil fuels. So if you want to stop the increase in CO2 you need to work on the energy problem, so start inventing solutions.
Dick H, you give up too easily on human ingenuity. Support their efforts. Don’t sit at the back and throw things at the ones who try.
Dick fears he will be denied fossil fuels immediately and demands immediate solutions. I would be alarmed too if I thought like Dick.
Jim, I work at one of the most innovative companies in the world. My colleagues are working on direct solutions to many energy problems. I see new ideas becoming reality all the time. I support anything that works. I will profit from their success. I don’t support false solutions and green washing or choosing the wrong technology for the wrong reason. I would love to see a cheaper, better non carbon energy infrastructure. But I understand what that means and the challenge it presents.
Max you couldn’t be more wrong, but don’t worry, it’s normal, you are usually that amount of wrong.
Jim D | January 2, 2015 at 3:09 pm |
Even kim might prefer a 350 ppm climate to a 700 pm one. This is the choice we face at this time. Closer to 350 or closer to 700. Policy matters.
I prefer 700 PPM to 350 PPM. 350 is far too close to the 200 PPM starvation level and requires much more water. The claims that pathetically low levels of CO2 are good for plants are deluded and misinformed.
Unfortunately we can’t raise the CO2 700 PPM and it is starting to look like a little over 500 PPM is the limit.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
December 2014: 398.78 ppm
December 2013: 396.81 ppm
NOAA is reporting a 1.97 PPM increase as a 2.32 PPM increase. It is sad that all government data has to be “adjusted” to make global warming look viable as a theory.
The 1.97 PPM increase at the time of the greatest emissions growth and highest emissions in history is fairly pathetic for a kinda El Nino year.
The CO2 increase is due to a 40 GT/y (at 280 PPM levels) decrease in carbon sinking (67 GT at current CO2 levels). That is the amount of sinking lost by burning rainforest which incidentally injected 170 GT of carbon into the atmosphere. The increase in CO2 has little to do with emissions.
Jim D: Greenhouse gas increases have added nearly 3 W/m2 to the pre-industrial forcing. Even with a low sensitivity this easily can account for the near 1 C of warming, and that is excluding the negative effect of aerosols.
How much has the rate of non-radiative cooling of the Earth surface increased in consequence of the warming?
Have there been important negative consequences of the warming?
Have there been important positive/negative consequences of the CO2 increase itself?
Hopefully scientists in 2015 will devote more of their research resources to providing better answers to these questions than what is available to us now.
It is a major difference in climate, comparable with entering a different geological period if we get to 600-700 ppm by 2100 as would be expected with continued emission per capita growth on top of population growth. Restraint is needed rather than experimenting with the earth’s climate in this way. Given the state of knowledge on rapid climate change, anything else is just reckless.
“It is a major difference in climate, comparable with entering a different geological period if we get to 600-700 ppm by 2100 as would be expected with continued emission per capita growth on top of population growth. ”
If you assume gravity is zero or a zero inertia (light speed) cannon you could hit the moon with a baseball. But those aren’t good assumptions, and your’s aren’t either.
Old energy is about $10/barrel to extract, new energy is about $50/barrel. Coal prices are steadily increasing.
If statements about projected alternate energy source costs are even half-witted we aren’t going to be increasing fossil fuel use for the majority of the century. More than 3/4ths of fossil fuel emissions come from countries with a flat/declining emissions growth rate or massive nuclear programs.
The following chart shows the situation (except for China – the Chinese projection is just daft in view of their nuclear program and agreements)
http://photos.mongabay.com/09/forecast_co2_line.jpg
PA, you have to remember that China and the other countries, US and EU, are only going to be motivated to reduce per capita CO2 by global agreements such as Paris. This is not automatic and only results from seeing climate projections that have been made, such as by the IPCC. Support these agreements if you want China to feel more pressure, and also to stop transitioning to more reserves of fossil fuels that can be made available if the technology goes in that direction. The whole realization about CO2 levels is what is driving the right choices for future fuel and power.
Jim D…
The US has about 30% environmental crazies. There is a major green party presence in Europe and they are sort of leftist anyway.
There are protests and riots in China over the pollution.
Domestic politics are going to limit the amount of fossil fuel consumption.
The carbon credits were sort of a disaster. They were an excuse for Europeans to do nothing and were 90% fraudulent.
We might have to disagree on this.
Jim D: Restraint is needed rather than experimenting with the earth’s climate in this way. Given the state of knowledge on rapid climate change, anything else is just reckless.
Given all of the uncertainties, this is a good time to restrain the urge to increase the power of government, especially to restrain the urge to increase government power to redistribute wealth. The people who have invented and developed fracking have done more to help the world’s poor than all of the energy-related government mandated wealth transfers to date, practically all of which have gone to cronies of the people in government.
JimD – Neither you nor anyone else “knows” what the climate will be like if CO2 levels reach 700 ppm.
““I-am-not-a-scientist was a popular refrain.” should be followed by, and nor do I listen to most of them, especially the clear majority who say that humans are contributing most of the warming with GHGs. ”
Jim D,
You need one more modification;
‘and nor do I listen to most of them, especially the clear majority who say that humans are contributing most of the warming with GHGs’ , but I’m very keen to listen to the few who says things that allow me to cling to my preconceived notions.
Judith said: “There is at least one person in the Georgia Tech administration that doesn’t like my position on climate change”.
I wonder if this comment could reach that person in GT’s administration:
I understand that, nowadays, universities have to compete: for students, for projects, for researchers, for higher quality educators, etc. Georgia Tech is in all top 20 lists of best engineering and technology universities worldwide, as it is ETH Zurich. But I just want to focus and compare a sample of the public work of only two individuals from these high techs: Judith Curry vs. Reto Knutti.
Reto has written a lot but I am focusing in his: http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti12natcc.pdf document, where in the abstract he ends: “the uncertainties should not stop decisions being made”.
On the other hand, Judith, has written a lot in her blog. Being one of her most important writtings about uncertainty and its role in the climate change scientific basis.
So far, both opposed views seem to be equaly respectable.
But now please read the first line in Reto’s linked abstract “Estimates of impacts from anthropogenic climate change rely on projections from climate models”. This is a crazy statement. But may be you, administrator in GT, cannot understand the craziness in this issue, so let me translate into plain english: “I, Reto Knutti, have set invented climatic scenarios based in invented greenhouse gases concentrations and in their invented relations with global temperature. And the impact of humans in climate change is, in this writting, based on the projections given by those scenarios (that were based in the invented impact due to humans)”. To put it clear: this is called “circular reasoning” and has nothing to do with science, nor technology.
Now, administrator in GT, tell me: between Judith and Reto what professional would you prefer for your high tech university?.
Judith, do you have a personal position statement on Climate Change for politicians? It seems that someone in your position, someone who is being quoted (used) by politicians, should make it very clear what their position is. I am thinking of a very clear and concise statement written at scientific level that non-scientist politicians can understand (6th grade level). Something that lists the facts as you see them, the opinions, areas where you have a policy preference areas where you don’t.
Dick, my two recent congressional testimonies is I think the most useful for politicians:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/16/senate-epw-hearing-on-the-presidents-climate-action-plan/
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/curry-testimony-2013-il.pdf
I try to avoid personal policy preferences in my public statements, rather I discuss the efficacy (or not) of proposed policies and their unintended consequences. My focus on the policy arena is more general, in terms of how to approach decision making under deep uncertainty.
That’s great for me and most of the people here, I am interested in the topic and I have been reading your blog for years, I know your position, but I am thinking about for the average Joe politician. One page, brief clear statements, written for a specific audience, non scientists. Statements that cannot be misinterpreted or misused.
One of the most difficult things about communicating to a wide audience is being able to understand how different people think, or to think at their level. Most politicians, on either side of the issue, are going to have a very limited base of information. You need to understand that and communicate in a way that allows your target audience to understand where you are coming from before they get lost. They may get lost if the text is too long or if it is too technical. If they get lost, they may fill in some of their blanks themselves. But clear and concise at a high level prevents them from getting lost. Then if they want to learn more you can point them to the docs you linked.
Dick, as an economic policy officer, I often had to do one-page briefs on extremely complex subjects. It is an art which is not easily mastered; and some subjects can not sensibly be dealt with in one page. This art has never been relevant in Judith’s work, and when she engages publicly she seeks to get across more complex ideas reflecting her understanding in a clear and comprehensible way. Good for her, good for the debate. People like me like to encapsulate Judith’s knowledge and good sense in, for example, letters to the editor, to inform a broad audience at a simple level. Judith’s work has also clearly influenced the main environmental writer of The Australian, who writes lucid and relevant pieces comprehensible to a large and educated audience. I think that Judith’s doing a great job, don’t expect her to do everything.
Faustino,
I find the suggestion of a one page policy statement on an issue regarding control of the global energy economy about as helpful as a claim you can predict the future “global average temperature” of the Earth based on a calculation done on the back of an envelope.
Fake simplicity is as dangerous as fake certainty. In fact, I think they are flip sides of the same coin.
Gary, I agree, it always seemed to me that those who demanded one-page briefs (Premiers, Cabinet Ministers, Heads of Department) lacked the capacity to comprehend the issues on which they made determinations, or even to realise that a one-pager could not be a sensible basis for discussion and determination. I submitted an old but relevant and uncirculated paper of mine to Australia’s current competition policy review, I pointed out scathingly in my covering note that the one-page summary was demanded by the client, Queensland Treasury (and was probably all that most people read). In QT, the person with the expertise who’d penned the one-pager was rarely invited to discussions. Probably the best Minister I’ve come across in Australia, Hawke era Finance Minister Peter Walsh, always insisted on the officer who’d done the work, however junior, being involved in briefings. But that was rare, although when I worked for a body chaired by Hawke, I got to sit across the Cabinet table from him so was available if required.
I don’t think that it is Dr Curry’s role to produce one-page briefs.
Faustino, thanks for your insight. I get it. My only concern is that I feel there are politicians our there who might latch on to Dr. Curry for the wrong reasons. Or others who might vilify her unfairly. A clear and concise statement might alleviate some of that.
However, she can communicate as she sees fit. I respect that.
My WSJ op-ed is the closest thing to a one pager (800 words):
http://judithcurry.com/2014/10/09/my-op-ed-in-the-wall-street-journal-is-now-online/
Common strategy in pushing political agendas like warmunists have on offer is to make it so complicated no one understands it. Look at climate change. People who dedicate their lives to it have vastly different opinions. None of them know. It’s all pretense. So some of them then pretend to understand it and ask for your trust to speak for you and/or to parrot them to others.
“I-am-not-a-scientist was a popular refrain.”
As an excuse for deferring to scientists, an unfortunate comment.
In view of the wide range of disciplines that have their noses in the climate-science tent, few of the thousands who style themselves climate scientists are much more likely than the guy at the next bar stool to be right about the important issue, which is whether the want, misery, and death caused by denying ourselves the benefits of fossil fuels will be less than the want, misery, and death that using it will. And it doesn’t take a climate scientist to see that most of the huge reduction over the last century or so in weather-caused suffering–as well as in other non-war-related suffering–has in one way or another resulted from exploiting fossil fuels.
So a legislator who votes for burdening that resource’s use just because scientists say we should is abdicating his responsibility.
Joe Born’s lofty praise of fossil fuels got me to thinking about the importance of beasts of burden.
It doesn’t take a scientist to see how much human misery has been reduced by our quadruped friends, horses, burros, mules, oxen, elephants, and camels. Sure, a team of men could pull a heavy wagon or plow, but after such a back-breaking feat those poor wretches wouldn’t feel like going home and showing their wives much attention.
Who believes he could pick up a thousand pound log with his nose? Also, who thinks he could saddle-up another person and ride him at break-neck speed across the continent to deliver letters to California? And who wants to herd cattle to Dodge on foot?
We should be thankful our four-legged servants have helped advance our civilization and saved us from the misery of sore muscles, torn tendons, achy joints, and early arthritis. Many have also been our affection companions. Remember how much Trigger loved Roy Rogers.
I forgot to include llamas and sled dogs.
Very well formulated. You have found your calling. Stick with it.
Joe Born
Perfect. Any politician that does try to cripple the economy with such nonsense will last no more than one term in office. Only starry-eyed true believers will support the no-fossil fuel agenda.
Neither India nor China will cut back fossil fuel consumption significantly, and that is about 2.5 billion people.
Nice job Doc. You did very well in the rapid paced interview.
I find it quite troubling how many folks feel CO2 and Temp have some linear relationship. There is very little discussion of saturation points and IR.
Deniers think the relationship should be linear or there is no relationship. I’m not aware of any climate scientist who would agree, but maybe I don’t understand what you are talking about.
Yeah, that whole climate sensitivity thing is a tea party plot.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/2/c/f/2cfca9ed59cb49f7b68570481ee87f53.png
Interesting, “I’m not a scientist” seems to be a popular qualification now when it comes to expressing counter opinions to the “consensus” on climate causation by politicians. Perhaps there’s a change in the cultural superstructure going on reflecting changing fortunes, or the lack there of, in the economic substructure? Accountability can be a bitch. Pretty soon we’ll be hearing more denials, I’m not an economist. I never met Mr. Gruber. I’m not a democrat, I’m an Independent. I don’t know the man or woman, he or she must have been a minor functionary. Dr. Mann who? It’s almost Biblical, like the three denials of Peter before the crucifixion. Denialism can be contagious when shit doesn’t happen as predicted and the hammer and nails come out.
when was the last time a republican refused to increase defense spending cause he wasn’t a general and wasnt sure about the future threats.
I’m not a general.. ya, you hear that one all the time.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/12/03/feckless-and-cowardly-republicans-join-democrats-in-cutting-military-benefits-n1926785
Apparently there are a few feckless and cowardly Republicans that vote with the feckless and cowardly Democrats on military issues. Most Republicans are not feckless and cowardly.
Smart politicians avoid detailed defense issues as carefully as detailed climate issues, or detailed economic issues. It is the climate scientists who mistakenly think they know all about policy issues.
Democrats are much better. They take pride in their ignorance.
Steven – you remind me of a dear San Francisco Democrat friend who preached to me about all the defects (and worse) of the Republican Party. After the third pitcher I asked him, What makes the Democrats different? Unfortunately, he died ten years later, and I will never get my answer.
Mosher
Most of the top level decisions in government and business are made by people who are not educated or experienced in the technical fields at hand. They depend on men and women who are experts and must listen to and question those with the requisite knowledge and with different opinions. If a government official is asked about climate change and that official has not yet been briefed on the subject an answer related to “I don’t know” is legitimate.
The ultimate decision of who is to run the government, and thus make those decisions, is made by the voters. And neither Mosher nor any other elitist/progressive can stop them in a democracy.
Yet.
There was something called common sense that guided people, alas it has greatly deteriorated in the progressive age. Ignoring the obvious political tilt and self-serving nature of the experts involved is either ignorant/willful or both in some combination.
GaryM
They tried but they are now out of office, but they will try again.
Being against military spending can and does result in American soldiers, or worse civilians, maimed and killed. War and conflicts that have been avoided with shows of force and some that haven’t because of lack of force. In short with military spending comes tangible near-term results and experience with the results of long term decisions in an uncertain future. US has almost 250 years experience with the pros and cons of military spending.
Being against spending on climate change mitigation means jack diddly squat. Any adverse consequences are decades, if ever, in the future while the spending on it causes near-term harm in other programs that could have better used the funding. Plus we’ve no experience whatsoever in cost-benefit of climate change mitigation because it’s never been done before.
So on one hand we want to avoid the death and destruction we know happens from military conflict and on the other hand we have a threat that has never materialized and spend money to stop the imaginary threat on actions which have never been shown to have any positive effect.
Is that too difficult for Mosher to grasp? Apparently so.
you’al have missed the point.
when it comes to the climate, your republican politician says
“well, I aint no scientist, and I am not sure, so let’s do nothing. Can’t be spending money unless we are sure there is a problem”
When it came to building defenses for the “next war” of course generals
told us it would be a two front war, one in the Fulda gap and the other
somewhere in Asia. Now, these republicans didnt say
“well, I aint no general, and I am not sure, so let’s do nothing. Can’t be spending money unless we are sure there is a problem”
Nope. they didnt that at all. They allocated money for a B2, for star wars, for an ATF, for a multi role strike fighter, for a whole host of stuff that proved worthless on 9-11.
When ole colin Powell stood before the UN and laid out the “evidence”
you didnt hear my right wing friends clamoring for more transparency, or second opinions, or certain proof. Nope none of that.
And when folks decided that a campaign in Afghanistan was the right thing to do, none of you would have listened to a historian tell you about the prospects of winning there. Na, you listened to the generals who told you
this time would be different. you listened to the general cause you aren’t a general.
Mosher
You’ve missed the point. The politicians are not buying the l#es of the so called scientists. The politicians can read the IPCC reports and can independently conclude that the scientist have no clue regarding internal variability; that by following the reference trail you find it is all based on a 1996 paper using proxy estimates. And they know about Mann-ufacturered proxy estimates.
The politicians can hear the voices of level headed scientists that tell them the science is not settled.
Richard
Mosher
“Nope. they didnt that at all. They allocated money for a B2, for star wars, for an ATF, for a multi role strike fighter, for a whole host of stuff that proved worthless on 9-11.”
You left out Katrina and the Great Recession. Your words and thoughts need to be buried in Berkley. What has happened to you?
Richard
I didn’t miss a damn thing Mosher. We know war happens and we know military hardware, force level, and force readiness reduces the adverse consequences of waging war.
We don’t know that anthropogenic climate change happens, we don’t know what effect our mitigation spending will have.
If you can’t understand the simple difference between military wars and climate wars then you are hopelessly inadequate in critical thinking capacity.
“She is willing, however, to appear alongside politicians and pundits who flatly reject the basic tenets of climate change that she embraces.”
“Basic tenets?” Since when is the product of multiple computer models, using estimated, kriged, pseudo data a “basic tenet of climate science?”
Even if the incredibly poor temperature reports, based on sparse data, limited global coverage, and more than a,little guess work, do come close to reflecting an actual increase in “global average temperature (oh please!), that is not a “basic tenet of climate science.”
Now, CAGW is a basic tenet of progressive politics. It is a central factor in the dogma of the Church of Global Warming. It is the foundation from which western governments are seeking centralization of control over the energy economy. But “global warming”, and its poor step-brother, climate sensitivity, are at best the end products of a scientific process, not a tenet, basic or otherwise, of that science.
1+
Look I cringed reading the whining local GOP cast whimpering in fear of being called anti-science or a Holocaust Denier and this meriting the praise of Dr. Curry but it was to be expected.
Many people are cynical of Keynesian economic theory of the way to reduce debt is for the state to sponsor more debt with printed money. Of course on camera they have very little to say when the economy is growing. We’ve reached another level of social dishonesty and politicians are going to play the hobby horse AGW meme in a very similar fashion. They’re not going to see their share of climate funding and perks proportionally singled out and nothing serious is going to impact actual carbon production.
It will die on its own weight although it should be dead long ago.
If the climate thing fizzles politically, the Guardian-perusing classes can always go back to plastic shopping bags or stickers on apples as a focus for their free-floating indignation. That should sate the activist urge till some global cooling or Montreal-resistant ozone take hold.
So long as they stay with green philosophy: Think tiny, but act expensive.
Stickers on apples are a source of complaint?
O
M
G
Yes, David, it came in a quiet period between ozone depletion and Y2K.
Sadly, nofruitstickers.com is now defunct, and the domain name of nofruitstickers.net is up for sale.
I am no dragon slayer by far, but there is one question that should be answered once and for all.
A question that both alarmists and sceptics both see to agree is already answered:
The question is the following, and it is more interesting and less certain than one would think:
When and by whom was it proven that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and if so – to what extent is CO2 a greenhouse gas?
NASA, on their website only hints at Tyndall in the 1860’s “recognizing the greenhouse effect” and “suggesting” that changes in CO2 could change global temperature” and Arrhenius in the 1890’s “speculating” that changes in CO2 could alter surface temperature.
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
So NASA are still presenting speculation from the 18th century about the role CO2 might might have regarding global temperature.
This is NASA’s foundation on the mechanics of global warming.
Surely better research has been done since the 1800’s, and surely we have a better understanding of how CO2 “traps” energy/heat today, more than 100 years later?
So what are the seminal and ground breaking scientific papers that NASA have left out?
In what 20th -century experiments and in which scientific papers were the heat-trapping properties of CO2 established once and for all? And at what magnitude?
The scientific papers must exist. Surely we can’t still be relying on 150 year old speculation..?
Can anyone help me out here?
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
Good page, Mosh, but I am still looking for the seminal scientific papers on how CO2 traps energy/heat and to what extent.
Surely there must be some peer-reviewed science on the subject?
Not only historical anecdote?
start with the history which you have wrong.
If you cant read the history, then you wont get the science.
Then, learn to fricking search
First
In what 20th -century experiments and in which scientific papers were the heat-trapping properties of CO2 established once and for all? And at what magnitude?
1. C02 doesnt trap heat. you dont even understand the basics
2. The best experiment is the one we are doing now by adding c02
to the atmosphere. no lab experiment can help you. We are
doing an uncontrolled experiment on our planet. There is no
second earth to use as a control.
your very question shows you wont understand the answer.
We are gently, reversibly, geo-engineering the atmosphere and climate, to the general net benefit of man and the biome.
==============
rufus1000
accept that CO2 is evil
you will be assimilated
resistance is futile
Great link Mosher, the links page recommends Real Climate, Skeptical Science and the drones at Climate Progress. Critical thinking at its best.
I can’t help thinking what a wonderful experience it would have been to have had Mosher as a college professor. But only if you had first played for Bo, Woody and Bear.
“In what 20th -century experiments and in which scientific papers were the heat-trapping properties of CO2 established once and for all? And at what magnitude?”
Mythbusters, special episode.
I saw it on TV so it has to be true.
Mosher is stuck for an answer so just calls people stupid, unable to learn, unable to read…
That’s a nice link Mosher
A good video on the history is given by Ray Pierrehumbert at the 2012 AGU meeting. It’s an hour worth watching for anyone who is genuinely interested in the scientific development of the ideas.
Jim D:
Still no peer-reviewed science proving CO2 to be a greenhouse gas capable of globale temperature change.
Not even close.
rufus, huh? Did you not see the papers he listed back through the 20th century? What were you looking for? Do you know why the earth’s surface temperature is 33 C warmer than its radiative temperature? It’s the greenhouse effect that explains the temperatures we have. Do you know why the radiative temperature has to be 255 K? How far back are you starting from? Do you know why CO2 radiates in the IR, or physics stuff like that? How about thermodynamics like Clausius-Clapeyron or atmospheric lapse rates? Try the video first and say which parts you are questioning.
JimD, don’t you mean 32K. Perhaps you missed the memo but the general consensus is that 15 C was a bit high.
captd, 33 K now, global warming has made this more correct, and headed towards 36 K.
Now, JimD, I saw just the other day a climate scientist published that the global surface temperature was 14.45236712 C +/- a touch. Since that 33k “discrepancy” analogy is as old as the climate science hills, don’t you think it might be time to revise some of the basic talking points?
I think the ~255K also has a couple of assumptions involved like a fixed albedo and a perfect black body.
captd, you can find 15 C just as much as 14 C. This is a complete sidebar, and you need to be telling rufus that even the skeptics accept that the greenhouse effect has this real-world effect of 33 K that is observable and understood in terms of basic physics. No mystery about the 33 K.
JimD, What I can tell Rufus is that a doubling of CO2 equivalent will produce about 3.7 Wm-2 of additional atmospheric resistance to heat loss which if all other things remain equal would increase surface temperatures by between 0.8 and 1.2 C. That’s about it though, most everything else requires considerable speculation.
captd, some implied denial there, it seems. Or maybe you are saying you yourself don’t understand the 288 K surface temperature in terms of a greenhouse effect, even though the scientists do.
JimD, “captd, some implied denial there, it seems. Or maybe you are saying you yourself don’t understand the 288 K surface temperature in terms of a greenhouse effect, even though the scientists do.”
I understand a lot more than you might think. 288K was an assumption as is assuming that 390Wm-2 is exactly the expected radiant energy of that assume 288K. The 33K versus ~150 Wm-2 GHG effect is a simplified illustration not a take home absolute relationship. There is no 255K/240Wm-2 radiant surface. There is an effective radiant layer, meaning and average. There is no clear surface to TOA 40 Wm-2 “window”. There is a roughly 40Wm-2 “window” from above the atmospheric boundary layer, but water vapor and clouds, especially mixed phase clouds dominate radiant transfer below the ABL.
You should step up your game.
captd, OK, an improvement on your previous statement. That is 150 W/m2 of greenhouse effect, equivalent to that 33 degrees.
Rufus
You have to excuse Jim D. He trades in the currency of inductive reasoning. If you are looking for nominees for Logician of the Year, the climate science establishment usually comes up short.
JimD, “captd, OK, an improvement on your previous statement. That is 150 W/m2 of greenhouse effect, equivalent to that 33 degrees.”
Equivalent to the simplified explanation of the GHE. There are other GHGs and Manabe, considering the influence of those thought the greenhouse effect could be as high as 100 C. That would make the ~340 Wm-2 estimated DWLR, the total GHE or about 100C per 340 Wm-2. The interesting part would be the poles where below -29C CO2 doesn’t have much impact so water vapor and ozone are the big dogs. Pole ward advection of water vapor and solar generated ozone from the equator would play a larger role meaning solar cycle peculiarities would also have a greater role. Other than the confusion over how solar does its job, solar and volcanic forcing variations tend to correlate with most respectable paleo reconstructions than CO2 which tends to have that lag issue. Mysterious changes in ozone and stratospheric water vapor have been included in the list of what ate my warming items.
It could be pretty exciting what that ~5% of the atmosphere neglected in most model actual does.
captd, it is about 150 W/m2 and various energy budgets (Trenberth, Stephens) agree on this much. This is the state of the science and it has converged on this type of number despite your best efforts to blur things.
JinD, “captd, it is about 150 W/m2 and various energy budgets (Trenberth, Stephens) agree on this much. This is the state of the science and it has converged on this type of number despite your best efforts to blur things.”
As an average, it is in the 150 Wm-2 range, but as Stephens et al point out there is +/- 17 Wm-2 of uncertainty at the “surface”. That is more than 4 times the estimated impact of a doubling. While you think it is an attempt to blur things, that is serious issues that needs to be clarified.
If you look at the MODTRAN results for the subarctic winter, CO2 has very little impact so energy advected pole ward is lost more easily as CO2 concentrations increase. There is a hole in your CO2 blanket. If “all things remain equal”, there isn’t an increased rate of advection, then CO2 would have a stronger impact, but with increased advection the efficiency of CO2 at retaining energy is reduced. So you have both convection and pole ward advection as negative feedbacks to increased CO2 forcing.
To figure things out you have to up your game to a Manabe perspective and consider those “other” greenhouse gases and the dynamics of the Stratosphere. It is just another layer of complexity JimD. Nothing that the true geniuses of climate science cannot handle right?
captd, forcing leads to warming, but not necessarily uniform. There are good reasons for the Arctic to be warming faster as is currently observed. Continental land also warms much faster than the tropical oceans. These are not necessarily reprieves of any kind. If the globe has to emit several W/m2 more, something has to warm, either small areas warm a lot, or large areas warm less. Currently the warming focus is nearer the poles where ice albedo feedbacks help restore the balance as the sea-ice goes away. A short-sighted view is that it is great if the polar areas are warming faster.
captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2 | January 2, 2015 at 6:53 pm |
JimD, What I can tell Rufus is that a doubling of CO2 equivalent will produce about 3.7 Wm-2 of additional atmospheric resistance to heat loss which if all other things remain equal would increase surface temperatures by between 0.8 and 1.2 C. That’s about it though, most everything else requires considerable speculation.
—————————————————-
You can’t define resistance in units of power.
Try thinking of it as an albedo change to the surface. A doubling of CO2 in clear dry atmosphere in effect changes the albedo of the illuminated surface (dirt, rocks, plants, water, snow, ice) i.e. more incoming solar power is absorbed than re-radiated until new equilibrium temperature is attained. It’s pretty simple that way. Problem is the surfaces stray pretty far from grey bodies when latent cooling becomes a factor. Ocean surface cools largely by latent cooling not radiative. Conductive is inconsequential because SST and near surface air temperature are very close on average hence little conduction. The difference between ideal and actual absorbers and emitters is too great for simple radiative transfer solutions to give practically usable answers. It’s a water world where surface cooling is dominated by latent heat transfer not radiative or conductive.
JimD, “There are good reasons for the Arctic to be warming faster as is currently observed.”
Well of course it is. You get an anomaly twofer with Arctic winter warming. That is not an indication of more energy being retained though. , it is actually an indication of negative feedback as more energy is being lost to space. That is one of the biggest flaws of the “Global Mean Temperature Anomaly” metric. All the minions go “lookie there! It is warming!! Yeah, from -30 C to -25 C in winter while 45 to 55 North cools by about a degree. Here is a blast from the past.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/significant-warming-of-the-antarctic-winter-troposphere/
The real climate boyz in search of “significant” Antarctic warming. Doubling CO2 actually increases the rate of Antarctic heat loss. Not much about 0.5 Wm-2 per doubling, but it is an increase.
Texas,
I generally use R values when thinking of atmospheric resistance to heat loss kinda like it is an insulation. BTW, conductive transfer is peanuts on short time scales but it is an order of magnitude greater than the impact of a doubling of CO2. If you remember the Kimoto paper I have referenced, latent, sensible and non-CO2 spectrum radiant will all increase as the CO2 spectrum becomes more restrictive.
Dear Rufus: to see that CO2 is a greenhouse gas all you have to do is to look at its infrared spectrum. Your question should be posed slightly differently:
We know that on a planet with no water an addition of CO2 into the atmosphere would cause a warming. A calculable warming. Unfortunately, no one has supplied us with such a planet yet.
What we want to know is what influence a CO2 has on the Earth. Please calculate a warming that an addition of a 0.01% of CO2 to the Earth’s atmosphere would cause. Bear in mind, that ice core data shows that low temperatures seem to lead to a desertification.
I offer this example for the debate.
I am not a ‘climate scientist’ in anticipation of incoming from Mr Mosher.
Experiment on the Cause of Real Greenhouses’ Effect – Repeatability of Prof. Robert W. Wood’s experiment
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS:
The greenhouse effect inside greenhouses is due to the blockage of convective heat transfer with the environment and it is not related, neither obeys, to any kind of “trapped” radiation. Therefore, the greenhouse effect does not exist as it is described in many didactic books and articles.
The experiment performed by Prof. Robert W. Wood in 1909 is absolutely valid and systematically repeatable.
In average, the blockage of convective heat transfer with the surroundings causes an increase of temperature inside the greenhouses of 10.03 °C with respect to the surroundings temperature.
PLEASE, READ THE PDF OF A WHOLE DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENT.
http://www.biocab.org/Wood_Experiment_Repeated.html
http://www.biocab.org/Experiment_on_Greenhouses__Effect.pdf
This was meant for replies @rufus10000 | January 2, 2015 at 5:23 pm
below.
This is a straw man argument. To climate scientists, the greenhouse effect is a figurative term, not a literal description of what is happening.
. If you want a real description of how CO2 causes global warming, which comes with the proof that it is happening using satellite observations of the escaping IR radiation from the top of the atmosphere read this:
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming.html
Of course if you prefer ignorance, you can continue to believe what you believe and ignore the real science.
eadler2,
Thanks for the link. I like the graph of the data from the Nimbus 4 satellite.
the atmosphere is not a box.
the experiment doesnt even test the hypothesis.
1. Adding C02 will raise the ERL
The box cant test this.
You need an actually atmosphere to test the theory
Thanks for the replies.
eadler2 was first off the abuse blocks with “straw man & claims of ignorance.”
Quote:
“If you want a real description of how CO2 causes global warming …”
General links to ‘doomsday settled science’ sites with might be the yardstick for battling ‘ignorance’ for you eadler2, but, a rebuttal of the repeatable experiment was all you needed.
Any site that has a Kevin ‘Linus” Trenberth diagram of heat hiding in the deep oceans , waiting to return like the Great Pumpkin, is pathetic.
Mr Mosher.
Thanks for your time.
I have a 5 line answer for you:
There was an old man named Arrhenius
Whose physics were rather erroneous
He recycled rays
In peculiar ways
And created a “heat” most spontaneous!
Quote: “You need an actually atmosphere to test the theory”
Finland introduced the first carbon(sic) tax in 1990.
25 years of carbon(sic) taxing worldwide.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/10/29/factbox-carbon-taxes-around-world
The time has come for proponents like you to correlate the data to show you can control the climate with action on carbon(sic).
The data exists.
The experiment has been going on for 25 years now.
More or less extreme climate over 25 years?
How many years of taxing are required (answer= infinity)
No more wishy-washy hand waves like “You need an actually atmosphere to test the theory”. Pathetic.
Australian PM Tony Abbott just gifted the UN-IPCC with $200M to stop extreme doomsday climate change, yet we are still having bushfires.
There is your ‘experiment.’
Mosher: “Adding C02 will raise the ERL”
A tropical tropospheric hot spot by any other name – one that has yet to be shown by direct measurement to exist. It would appear that reality has different ideas. Of course, please advise if I’m wrong about that.
“There was an old man named Arrhenius
Whose physics were rather erroneous”
He was in fact a Nobel Laureate. And he was 37 when he published his theory. Poetic licence, I guess.
NIck
Yes, good scientist but he didn’t get his Nobel directly for his climate theory. He also substantially revised his temperature calculations 5 years after he got his Nobel
tonyb
If you are 18, then 37 indeed is an old man. Considering life expectancy then and now the perception of what is old has changed dramatically. My grandmother looked 80 in 1944, when in fact she was 50. I can’t imagine her at 50 being able to join Tina Turner on stage for Tina’s last concert tour at 70. At 37, I’m not sure I could have joined Tina on stage either.
Life expectancy was low then because of high infant mortality. 37 was about 37.
JCH | January 8, 2015 at 9:45 am |
“Life expectancy was low then because of high infant mortality. 37 was about 37.”
Only partially true.
Following table is life expectancy in US by age starting in 1850 up through present.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html
In 1850 a newborn boy could expect to live to age 38 while a 20 year-old in that year could expect to live to 60 years of age.
In 2011 the newborn could expect to live to 76 while the 20 year-old could expect to live to 77 years of age.
So despite the almost complete disappearance of infant mortality as a factor life expectancy at the beginning of adulthood increased by over 17 years.
Always check your facts first then admit to the world second lest you appear to be someone who just makes things up as they go along.
You are using averages. He was a man of means. That’s my family tree. It’s full octogenarians going back to England.
JCH
Your family tree may be filled with octogenarians but Arrhenius died at 68 years of age.
Doh!
Fact check first, post second.
Rufus,
You have asked a legitimate question about the central dogma of climate science, to which Mosher replies with the website version of a book about AGW – a very weak reply. The website, in turn, refers to the work of Arrhenius, which appears, at first glance, to consist of models.
Arrhenius, arguably the father of AGW theory, based his work on the measurements of Tyndall. So, you have asked a good question.
Does anyone have a link to a modern, at least 20th century, peer reviewed paper on the IR absorption properties of CO2? I’m not saying the idea is bogus, I would just like to see the work, out of curiosity. If I find any I’ll post the links. Still looking.
Go look at HITRAN
DAFS
I repeat
DAFS
read more. comment less
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786448108626963
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/doi/10.1086/140516
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/doi/10.1086/142678
http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.41.291
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/josa/abstract.cfm?uri=josa-43-11-1037
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ao/abstract.cfm?uri=ao-1-6-759
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ao/abstract.cfm?uri=ao-1-3-359
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022407366900720
Investigation of the Absorption of Infrared Radiation by Atmospheric Gases – Burch et al. (1970)
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ao/abstract.cfm?id=30734
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631070505001155
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022407307003512
“read more. comment less”
You’d think with all this knowledge about the effect of Co2 in the atmosphere, GCM’S would actually get surface temps correct, I mean we know by now it’s the control knob, right?
“You’d think with all this knowledge about the effect of Co2 in the atmosphere, GCM’S would actually get surface temps correct, I mean we know by now it’s the control knob, right?”
Why would you think that?
The effect of C02 on radiation is one tiny slice of understanding the temperature response.
watch the “control knob” presentation by Alley. he makes it clear
that C02 is NOT the full story.
Skeptics need to STOP wasting their time on the bad metaphors used by Alley and others and get down to the real science.
ya team skeptic we need More guys like Nic Lewis who actually do work, who actually get published, who actually are having a debate.
Mr. Mosher,
Thank you for the links.
Steven Mosher | January 3, 2015 at 7:36 pm |
“Skeptics need to STOP wasting their time on the bad metaphors used by Alley and others and get down to the real science.”
There is no real AGW science. Pro or con is nothing but just-so stories.
It’s ALL a waste of time except for those getting paid to write the stories.
Write that down.
rufus
Here is a website, entitled “CO2 Science”, that contains a list of the papers that appear to provide the justification for the central dogma of AGW. I am not endorsing the conclusions or claims, I am just providing the link – doing my due diligence. Note that the site describes some DIY CO2 experiments.
http://www.co2science.org/subject/questions/1999/co2history.php
Rufus asked:
“Still no peer-reviewed science proving CO2 to be a greenhouse gas capable of globale temperature change.”
As some here have recently posted, the ability of CO2 (as well as Methane and some other gases) to be much more lenient to incoming short-wave radiation (sun) than long wave radiation (think heat from ground below) has been well documented over 100 years ago. Its as basic a principle as “fresh water at standard atmospheric pressure freezes at O deg C”.
There is no recent “peer reviewed” articles on either topic. I doubt one could go to a major physics journal and get a paper published on how water freezes at 0C. Same with CO2 long wave radiation trapping.
I am no dragon slayer by far, but there is one question that should be answered once and for all.
A question that both alarmists and sceptics both see to agree is already answered:
The question is the following, and it is more interesting and less certain than one would think:
When and by whom was it proven that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and if so – to what extent is CO2 a greenhouse gas?
NASA, on their website only hints at Tyndall in the 1860’s “recognizing the greenhouse effect” and “suggesting” that changes in CO2 could change global temperature” and Arrhenius in the 1890’s “speculating” that changes in CO2 could alter surface temperature.
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
So NASA are still presenting speculation from the 18th century about the role CO2 might might have regarding global temperature.
This is NASA’s foundation on the mechanics of global warming.
Surely better research has been done since the 1800’s, and surely we have a better understanding of how CO2 “traps” energy/heat today, more than 100 years later?
So what are the seminal and ground breaking scientific papers that NASA have left out?
In what 20th -century experiments and in which scientific papers were the heat-trapping properties of CO2 established once and for all? And at what magnitude?
The scientific papers must exist. Surely we can’t still be relying on 150 year old speculation..?
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/simple.htm#L_0141
I’ve searched for the words evaporation, convection and radiation on that page. Results:
Word – Number of hits
Evaporation – 1
Convection – 2
Radiation – 76
They’re clueless. The Earth’s surface is cooled predominantly by non-radiative heat exchange.
http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/images/Erb/components2.gif
This is the electrical circuit analogy model for the Earth’s heat balance:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9lXuyw4qEQQ/VGwxMQ_n3mI/AAAAAAAAGtk/eySBG5g_4Lo/s1600/circuit%2Banalogy%2B2.png
The paper can be downloaded here:
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=1539#.VKfGbXvRatP
Well that’s a clever way to do it. Edim. Whatever you do, don’t actually read the article in case you learn something; just do a word search instead — then interpret some peculiar meaning into the results
MikeB, that was just an illustration and I read the article few years ago, actually.
This shows a decrease in certain IR frequencies emitted when viewed through a narrow aperture in specialized equipment.
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/321/Harries_Spectrum_2001.pdf
The broad spectrum monitoring shows IR emissions increasing in the period. What is really being measured is an increase in absorption and emissions in the atmosphere. Molecules absorb photons and emit in all directions – and so increasingly miss the aperture as CO2 rises. But it does provide observational evidence of the effect.
I do have a question on the topic.
What is the correlation of temperature and forcing?
One would expect that warming would have a positive water vapor feedback because of higher specific humidity. This would give small changes in solar a high multiplier.
That’s a great question, Another BIG LIE is that all forcings are equal. By that I mean the narrative that a watt of power in visible sunlight has the same warming effect at the surface as a watt of power in infrared coming downward from a warm cloud.
This is just physically untrue. Earth surfaces aren’t black bodies that absorb all frequencies equally. Surfaces such as snow are great infrared absorbers but poor visible light absorbers. Water is completely transparent to visible light and opaque to infrared.
All forcings are not equal.
Write that down.
Another BIG LIE is that ECS (amount od warming from one doubling of CO2 ppm) is a constant. It isn’t. It varies with the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere which tends to vary with the temperature of the surface. This in an ice age ECS is high. In an interglacial it’s low. It’s high in a warm desert and low over a warm ocean. In a wet tropical climate ECS is small because it competes for absorption of the same photons with water and water vapor in the atmosphere. CO2 is well mixed, water vapor isn’t. So where and when there is the most water vapor there’s the least opportunity for CO2 to increase the GH effect.
** CO2 is well mixed, water vapor isn’t. So where and when there is the most water vapor there’s the least opportunity for CO2 to increase the GH effect.**
And most of energy of the sun goes into the tropics- tropics is 40% of surface area of Earth, per year gets most sunlight.
So tropics has 3 to 4% water vapor, rest world about 1 % or less.
Or extend 23 degree north and south of tropics to 40 degrees north and south- that more that 50% of surface area of Earth- rest world has much less sunlight and water vapor.
“Actually, it (the effect) has been observed. The NASA AIRS instrument flying for over 10 years on Aqua has measured the decreased IR emission to space with increasing CO2 in certain spectral bands, and have retrieved the (gradually increasing) CO2 content based upon those measurements…”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/direct-evidence-of-earths-greenhouse-effect/#comment-73738
Yup. But the effect is small and made smaller in the presence of water and water vapor which overlaps CO2 absorption bands.
The best way to understand it is in terms of albedo. Greenhouse gases make the atmosphere “darker” in non-visible portions of the spectrum thus heating atmosphere through the absorption of energy that would otherwise not be absorbed.
The caveat is that the troposphere is already heated almost everywhere by latent heat released from condensing water vapor. So the tropospheric heating effect of non-condensing greenhouse gases is redundant. The net result is we observe more non-condensing GHG heating where and when there is the least water on the ground and in the air. We see this most in that AGW is greater in higher latitudes than lower because higher latitude air is colder and holds less water, it’s greater in winter than summer, greater at night than day, greater over land than ocean.
Where the BIG LIE starts is so-called water vapor amplification. CO2 supposedly causes more water vapor to go into the air and water vapor, being a greenhouse gas, causes even more GH warming. Supposedly twice as much as the original increase in CO2. The lie is made plausible by proposing that the net effect of cloud cover is warming, not cooling. If you have more water vapor you must have more clouds too. If the net effect of clouds is cooling instead of warming then the amplification is bogus.
The strongest evidence I can find of the net effect of the water cycle is cooling not warming because of clouds shading the surface. The critical observational evidence is that tropical deserts have the highest mean annual temperature of all climate types. They also have the fewest clouds and water vapor in the air of all climate types. QED
David says:
“The strongest evidence I can find of the net effect of the water cycle is cooling not warming because of clouds shading the surface. The critical observational evidence is that tropical deserts have the highest mean annual temperature of all climate types. They also have the fewest clouds and water vapor in the air of all climate types.”
Do you have links to papers for that?
Here are some links for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palembang
Lot of water vapor/clouds/rainfall in tropical rainforest Palembang, Indonesia. Moderates the temperature. Check the TOA insolation month-to-month, note rainfall; 2.59S 104.45E:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/ar5/srlocat.html
Now compare that with very dry desert Dallol, Ethiopia; 14.14N 40.18E:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallol,_Ethiopia
You can look at these pairings all day long, same result. Water rules, CO2 drools.
Por ejemplo, compare the TOA insolation for July, in Dallol with February in Palembang. Bout the same. Look at the temps.
It’s basic earth science. Temperatures are observed.
http://www.earthonlinemedia.com/ebooks/tpe_3e/climate_systems/tropical_desert.html
Distinguishing Characteristics
Temperature
The tropical desert has the highest mean annual temperature of any climate on Earth. The high temperatures are a result of the high sun angles throughout the year and having the highest percentage of sunshine of any climate. No month has an average temperature below 18oC (64.4oF) and many places have consecutive average monthly temperatures in the mid 30os Celsius (90oF). Daytime temperatures can reach 50oC (120oF) at low elevation inland deserts.
The sky in the tropical desert remains cloud-free due to the subsiding air of dominant high pressure resulting in large amounts of insolation. The cloudless skies during the day lets insolation in, but also lets much heat out at night. Without the absorptive blanket of clouds, longwave radiation emitted from the Earth readily escapes to space, chilling the nighttime desert air. The high energy input during the day and large loss at night results in an extremely large daily temperature range.
Precipitation
Precipitation in the tropical desert is very irregular and unreliable. Low latitude deserts average less than 25 cm (10 in) in a year. An entire year’s worth of rain may fall in one downpour. The continental location of many tropical deserts places them far from a source of moisture, the ocean. Combine continentality with the strong subsidence of the subtropical high and you have one of the driest places on earth. Air subsiding from the subtropical high is adiabatically warmed which reduces the relative humidity of the air. Relative humidity can drop to 10% or less. The extremely low relative humidity causes evaporation of what little surface water there is. The subsiding air also promotes atmospheric stability, further inhibiting precipitation.
http://www.earthonlinemedia.com/ebooks/tpe_3e/climate_systems/Oasis_Mauritania_I_Balderi_FAO_18834_small.jpg
Climatologists describe the desert as an “arid” climate. An arid climate, as defined on the basis of the soil moisture balance, is one in which the annual precipitation is less than half of the annual potential evapotranspiration. In the tropical desert the only substantial source of surface water other than exotic streams is an oasis, where the groundwater table is near the surface.
I also have questions about the amplification effect on water vapor caused by additional CO2. I think it goes:
CO2 > + Temperature > + water vapor > continue to equilibrium > stop
So why would not this also be true:
+ Temperature > + water vapor > continue to equilibrium > stop, when + Temperature is caused by a decrease in albedo or any number of reasons? The whole process of an initial change amplifying itself in almost all cases until it eventually stabilizes looks to me like ‘before’ is almost always a peak and ‘after’ is almost always a valley. Then the valley of the new equilibrium turns back into a peak, and is now unstable. ‘Before’ is highly sensitive and ‘after’ is hardly sensitive. Then ‘after’ becomes the next ‘before’, and goes from stable to unstable. While I am saying I don’t get how this works, it does remind me of chaos peak and valley diagrams so it may actually make sense. So an amplification effect may require this peak to valley to peak to valley evolution and perhaps that sensitivity is variable. Maybe I am the only one that finds it amusing that chaos theory might help their amplification theory work.
Ragnaar, what would happen to the local weather/climate if you dug a 1000 sq mile hole about 1000 ft deep in the middle of the Sahara and built a pipeline from the sea to keep it filled it with water?
Don Monfort:
“…what would happen to the local weather/climate if you dug a 1000 sq mile hole about 1000 ft deep in the middle of the Sahara and built a pipeline from the sea to keep it filled it with water?” The new lake would store and release heat thereby dampening things. It would cool the days and warm the nights. There would be humidity changes. I believe you could get daily stratocumulus clouds as we often get on Minnesota summer days. Some of these things might be described as negative feedback/low sensitivity. Dry air might be described as more of a positive feedback/high sensitivity effect. Am I following? Sound like a fine idea. To see if we could make the deserts a bit more useful for mankind. And back to the peaks and valleys chaos diagrams, we’d take a peak, and make it more of a valley. I am in favor this project.
Don Monfort:
Also you’ve me thinking, and now it seems glaringly obvious to my slow self why, as it has been pointed out that the land temperatures appears to lead the sea surface temperatures. The SSTs are more of a valley (of stability) whereas the land temperatures are more of a peak (of instability).
It would depend what you did with the fill. It’d be a pretty deep hole: Lake Chad (at the bottom of one of the biggest “depressions” is around) 280 meters above sea level. The shores of the ancient Lake Megachad were at around 335.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ImportedImages/Schools/SSPP/Geog/drake/megachad7.jpg
OTOH if you pumped sea water up to that level, my (very quick) calculations say you could do it in a year with 1 terawatt. At 50 watts/square meter from PV, averaged over days, that’s 20,000 square kilometers, small potatoes compared to Lake Megachad:
That’s what I am thinking, Ragnaar. Given enough water to evaporate in all that heat and you get clouds, rain and cooling. Eventually, maybe a rainforest.
AK, we don’t have to worry about where to put the dirt. It’s a thought experiment.
Well, no dust from the Boedele Depression in the eon of Lake Megachad. I wonder how the Amazon Basin handled that.
===================
@Don Monfort…
Thank you for telling me that; I wouldn’t have realized otherwise.
I was just funning ya, AK. Don’t be like Brandon.
Scientific papers certainly exist. If you are interested you can read an account of the history of global warming science on the American Physical Society web site produced by Spencer Weart:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
A brief oversimplified summary of the narrative is that after Arrhenius did his work, a lot of scientists discovered a lot of reasons to be skeptical that CO2 could cause further warming of the atmosphere. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that definitive observations were made of the propagation of IR in the atmosphere that the today’s theory of how CO2 works was discovered.
The Physicists who looked at the data and discoverd how this works were Lewis Kaplan and Gilbert Plass who was used newly developed digital computers to do his work. You can read more at the web site.
If you want to see modern observational evidence and see rudimentary calculations of how the effect works read this link.
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming.html
The Influence of Carbon Dioxide Variations on the Atmospheric Heat Balance by Lewis D. Kaplan
http://journals.co-action.net/index.php/tellusa/article/viewFile/9364/10973
Wow, Lewis Kaplan was my original Ph.D. advisor; when he retired Hsiao-Lan Kuo became my advisor
eadler2
As you stated, the Kaplan paper is about the output of a model.
Judith, it’s a small world! :)
Rufus,
Here is a link to a 20th century paper that has a little math in it:
Regions of validity of various absorption-coefficient approximations by Gilbert N. Plass (1953)
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0469%281954%29011%3C0163%3AROVOVA%3E2.0.CO%3B2
rufus,
Here’s another paper for you. Unfortunately, it’s paywalled, which bugs me no end.
Gilbert N. Plass (1953)
A Method for the Determination of Atmospheric Transmission Functions from Laboratory Absorption Measurements
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/josa/abstract.cfm?uri=josa-42-9-677
Rufus,
Here is reprint of the 1959 article, not a prp, entitled “Carbon Dioxide and Climate” by Gilbert N. Plass.
I don’t think anyone is looking at these, I might be peeing into the wind. Anyway, here it is:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-dioxide-and-climate/
I’m enjoying these refs – the papers I cut my scientific teeth on. I started my PHD studying infrared radiative transfer
here is a small sample
https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/papers-on-laboratory-measurements-of-co2-absorption-properties/
Need I say it again? Has there been ANY recent scientific study using empirical evidence to solidly state in its conclusion that atmospheric temperatures will increase more than about 2 degrees C for any increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration?
Send me the reference, please.
Without that link, all else is just window dressing!
your question shows you wont understand the answer.
Your answer shows you refuse to understand the question, Mosh.
Methinks he (Mosher) doth protest too much…
Meknows he doth protest too much.
He only protests, but does not explain. A missed chance to teach and gain a mind. Whatever.
This is a good starting point. Maybe Chapter 10 would be good for you. Lots of studies there.
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
Jim D. — Thanks for the suggestion. I looked at the Exec Summary of Chap 10 and I wasn’t impressed. Two problems jumped out.
One early quote said, “The consistency of observed and modeled changes across the climate system…points to a large-scale warming
resulting primarily from anthropogenic increases in GHG concentrations.” First of all, “points to” isn’t the same as “proves”. Secondly, the rise in temperature over time has been quite inconsistent.
Another quote: “Solar forcing is the only known natural forcing acting to warm the climate over this period but … is not consistent with the expected response to solar irradiance variations. The Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) could be a confounding influence but …does not project strongly onto 1951–2010 temperature trends.” In other words, they can’t explain the rise in temperatures since 1970, so they claim that the warming must be anthropogenic.
This is poor reasoning in general. Why would they expect to be able to explain the warming since 1970? But, in this specific case, the reasoning is even worse. We know there was rapid warming during the early part of the 20th century. Science has no explanation for this warming. Therefore, one cannot rule out the possibility that the same unknown factor that caused the planet to warm early in the 20th century also caused it to war in the period 1970 – 1998.
David in Cal, they looked at the largest known alternatives, solar and internal ocean variations, and these don’t account for much of the warming, if any. If you can think of something comparable with these two effects, you need to say what it is. So far they have anthro, solar and oceans. What have they missed that has similar magnitudes in the historic record?
Medotheth he knowth
Meknows he doth.
Try again,
“Has there been ANY recent scientific study using empirical evidence to solidly state in its conclusion that atmospheric temperatures will increase more than about 2 degrees C for any increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration?”
Key misunderstanding???
ANY increase.
There are stupid questions. you just asked one.
Charitably, ‘any given increase’. Any question can be made stupid, by the clever.
============
thats just the first half of the stupidity
I should ask him
“Have you done an experiment to test whether having vice clamped down
on your tender parts will cause any damage. I predict that his tender parts will suffer no damge, so lets test it.”
I propose the following to settle this matter of C02 warming the planet
Let’s take all the C02 out of the atmosphere and see if it cools. Until you guys show me the paper documenting this experiment I will cling to my belief that C02 is a trace gas and no amount of increase or decrease will have any effect.
I want an experiment where we remove all the C02. because experiment is how science works. We only know what we know by doing experiments, controlled double blind experiments. They alone provide knowledge.
How many more times do I have to say this? In the 20th century there were two periods when average global temperature increased: 1910 to 1940 and 1970 to 1997 and no increase in the 21st century. It is like[y that the second increase was just a consequence of the first, delayed by the propagation time of the oceans. If the rise had been mainly due to human action it would have been a steady monotonic rise since 1910, not just two periods in the 20th century. Does anyone seriously dispute these statements?
Natural changes in temperature due to both terrestrial and solar causes, predictable and not so predictable (volcanoes and extended solar mins and maxes are examples of not so predictable) can mask any background warming of human origin so one can’t expect to see a monotonic warming. Some human activity works to cool the planet and warming/cooling activities aren’t always in the proportion. For instance aerosol production cools the surface by reflecting sunlight and there was far more aerosol production before things like the US Clean Air Act of 1964 started reducing that particular human caused cooling factor.
Steven Mosher, try me. I can understand a lot. I have been looking for an answer to this question for quite some time, without any luck. Try stating the answer without using GCM output as empirical ‘evidence’.
Thanks
“Steven Mosher, try me. I can understand a lot.”
Simple. here is a test.
What is wrong about your question. See if you can get that right.
Mosher doesn’t understand the different answers out there so instead of letting himself be cornered into one of them and having to explain why it’s right he deflects by telling you you’re stupid and go find the answer yourself.
JC SNIP
So Mosh.
You are still dodging the question:
What is the peer-reviewed scientific foundation for the “global greenhouse effect”.
Is it the speculations of the 18th century, or can you show us the peer-reviewed scientific paper where CO2 was once and for all established as a gas heating the earth, and to what extent.
A link to this all-important scientific paper, Mosh.
Your question presupposes that there is one paper that can lay out over 100 years of science.
go to amazon.
enter the words radiation transfer theory
and order a few books.
C02 does not heat the earth is your first wrong assumption.
In other words
” or can you show us the peer-reviewed scientific paper where CO2 was once and for all established as a gas heating the earth, and to what extent.”
Is a ignorant question. that is NOT how c02 works. Period.
Personally, I thought the following blog posting was a good explanation of the “basic science”: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/20/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-a-physical-analogy/
Of course, this doesn’t address the “Wicked Problem” that Dr. Curry is trying to teach us lay folks about.
JC snip
He always wanted to pretend to be a climate scientist.
http://and2hardboiledeggs.tumblr.com/image/58185250564
“Georgia politicians cool to global warming”
This is the same kind of cooling as global “cooling”..
We have mostly Repub politicians expressing the same views they’rve always had.
All they’ve done is discovered a new justification in the form of Judtih.
Georgia has pretty much been totally mixed up since colonial times. Nothing new here.
“Georgia politicians cool to global warming”
In contrast politicians of the major European countries led by UK, France and Germany have fixation about their CO2 emissions and CAGW.
Latest data from the NASA’s OCO2 satellite surveillance shows that the industrialised Europe, i.e. UK, Germany, France, Italy show ‘nothing’, while impoverished Balkan peninsula least populated, least developed, least industrialised has excess of CO2 !
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SEE-CO2.jpg
The red lines indicate boundaries between different tectonic plates which are outlined by the repeated occurrence of earthquakes (white dots). This area is tectonically active: “Italy sits at the boundary between the African and Eurasian tectonic plates where the Adriatic plate is being deformed”. East boundary of the plate is rising, and could be that the CO2 is seeping from the Earth’s interior. I was born and grew up just few miles from one of those red lines; to me they mean more than just lines on the map The earthquake of 15th April 1979 at 07:19 AM (local time) had Richter magnitude of 7.0 and caused catastrophic destruction.
Let’s remember that the CO2 at the ground level is benevolent gas.
HNY
same with the west coast of north america. no CO2 in smog city. lots of CO2 up in the pacific north west and baja.
http://oi61.tinypic.com/10cmf00.jpg
Hi
There are two fault lines, one on each side of the Adriatic. There is no excess CO2 on the Italian side, which is rising, while the Balkan’s side is sinking (error in my comment above), Roman built roads in some places are 2-3m below low tide.
“The primary source of carbon/CO2 is outgassing from the Earth’s interior at midocean ridges, hotspot volcanoes, and subduction-related volcanic arcs”
http://www.columbia.edu/~vjd1/carbon_cycle.gif
http://www.columbia.edu/~vjd1/carbon.htm Gavin’s stomping ground
http://eesc.columbia.edu/faculty/gavin-schmidt
“It is like[y that the second increase was just a consequence of the first, delayed by the propagation time of the oceans.”
How could the first increase be a cause of the second? What caused the first increase? Why did it stop?
“If the rise had been mainly due to human action it would have been a steady monotonic rise since 1910, not just two periods in the 20th century. Does anyone seriously dispute these statements?”
Why does human-caused imply that the rise would be monotonic? If natural variability is large, why would you not expect to see it modulate (or even swamp temporarily) the signal of human-caused temperature increase?
Your statements don’t make much sense to me.
Jim D:
Hahahah.
For en flokkgjenger.
Tenk selv.
Det er skremmende, men uansett verd det.
Norwegian for “For a herd gangs . Think for yourself. It’s scary , but anyway worth it.”
I was only asking how much of the basic physics you know, but typical of the i-am-not-a-scientist types, denialism trumps trying to even understand how the greenhouse effect works in today’s climate. You sent questions as though you were trying to understand, but that appears not to be the case. We see this a lot on this site. Very few want to actually understand the science, sadly.
JimD
I want to understand. I’ll read the papers and do my best to understand – I am a skeptic, not a denier, which is a contemptuous label. Do you have some good links?
JustinWonder, so it depends how many rungs up the ladder you are starting. Do you understand that the greenhouse effect is worth 33 C in the current climate? Do you understand that the no feedback response to doubling CO2 is 1 C? What about your understanding of how Arrhenius included water vapor effects to get a positive feedback?
Justin
The foundational textbook blog on climate can be found at Science of Doom. Start at the beginning, there are 5-years of intelligent posts.
http://scienceofdoom.com/2009/11/
I agree that SOD is a FANTASTIC resource for explaining basic concepts of relevance to the science of climate change
It’s nice to see that both JC and the folks at SKS agree on the excellence of SOD:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Woody-Guthrie-award-to-Science-of-Doom.html
Such praise is indeed well deserved.
JimD
No, no, and no.
Howard,
I’ve visited SOD and I will give it a shot.
Thanks for the link, and the effort.
JustinWonder, OK, seems you have to start with basic physics. SOD would be good for that. The ones I suggested assumed you believed basic physics. Start with why a gas like CO2 is a greenhouse gas and O2 isn’t, for example.
JimD – “…I …assumed you believed basic physics…”
Believed? For the record, I took the usual and customary physics for scientists and engineers in the first two years of college long ago. Then I completed a BA in math with some graduate work. I’m not beyond hope. :)
Thanks for the recommendations!
Science of Doom…. blech… more blog science. Up your game.
I don’t read it, I just look at all the sexy pictures
The truth is “We just don’t know”
They’ve been burning scientists “On the stake” for centuries. They now just dismiss the one’s they don’t agree with and try to end their careers.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/02/nasas-new-orbiting-carbon-observatory-shows-potential-tectonically-induced-co2-input-from-the-ocean/
Science should be about scepticism, questioning and challenging the norm. They one’s that don’t are not true scientists.
Politics can make strange bedfellows. The merging of Right with Left ideologies around climate catastrophe is not going to happen. There are too many people who understand the stakes in the warming game. Bargaining issues is where the danger lies. A critical misunderstanding regards to what is being traded requires vigilance on the part of observers and recognizing the poewer structure who can go off inadvertently. Currently Obama is the loose canon on the environmental ship of state. Keeping he and his staff from wrecking havock for the next several years seems to be the first priority awaiting the proposal of a coherent energy plan.
It’s the first Battle of the Alamo and we have to hold out for 2 years. It’s gonna get real ugly pardner. Keep yer powder dry and don’t waste yer ammunition.
Dr. Curry, is the world warming?
Pick your time frame and check for yourself:
http://ccentralassets.s3.amazonaws.com/images/made/images/remote/http_assets.climatecentral.org/images/uploads/news/12_19_14_upton_IPO_temperatur_anomoly_1050_531_s_c1_c_c.png
At least use a graph that goes past 2012. There’s three more years of no warming since then…
Politicians claim climate science is about liberals redistributing wealth and you say this is rational Dr Curry?
You bet it’s rational. You didn’t know much of politics is about redistribution of wealth? What did you think happens to tax revenues?
> What did you think happens to tax revenues?
Redistribution like this:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
Redistributing tax breaks may be tougher.
Tax loopholes are the toughest.
“…redistribution of wealth…”
He who robs Peter to pay Paul can expect the support of Paul. Here in the US, with the expansion of disability, food stamps, Obamacare, etc, the number of Pauls is growing. To verify, check out the labor participation rate.
Labor participation wealth:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/01/23/the-85-richest-people-in-the-world-have-as-much-wealth-as-the-3-5-billion-poorest/
The title says it all.
By chance the 85 have JustinWonders to cover their back
The labor force (LF) participation rate is for the age 16 and older population. Unless the number of young workers entering the LF is as great as the number of older workers leaving for retirement, the latter would have a negative influence on the LF rate. I haven’t looked at the numbers, but I suspect retirements of boomers may already be affecting the rate. This has been expected.
There has been a small decline in the LF participation rate for prime working-age population, but more for males than females, which some analyst believe reflects growth in the number of stay-at-home dads.
Among the age groups, the 16-19 year-old group has had the sharpest decline in LF participation rates.
Willard – “By chance the 85 have JustinWonders to cover their back”
You couldn’t be more wrong. How did you come to that erroneous conclusion?
Willard
The increase in the Military budget is peanuts compared to Social Programs. In the last 20+ years the Military budget has gone from $300 Billion to $600 Billion. Social Programs budget has increased from $700 Billion $2.7 Trillion. Guess which one is causing the Debt to explode?
The military budget was closer to $800 billion than $600 billion last year. Social program spending includes money for V.A. why are you against veterans nattawa?
> Guess which one is causing the Debt to explode?
Let me guess: a few trillions for Irak occupation, a speculative bubble that wasted more than 50 trillions, and various aggressive subsidies to rent seekers.
Speaking of which:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/05/28/bank-bailout-cost-us-taxpayers-nothing-think-again
But food stamps, of course, of course
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B8mer%27s_determination_of_the_speed_of_light
how about the speed of gravity?
Wrong.
Steven dear, you want us to accept your superior opinion frequently, without any hint why. So you’ll have to trust me on this one. Happy New Year.
There are very few climate scientists who would claim human caused GHG emissions are not warming the planet. The best estimate is about 3%.
Calling this a hoax is the last refuge of people who are set on denying this for personal/ideological reasons and don’t have the understanding of the science to make real arguments.
The next two issues is how much warming where, and what are the consequences. There is uncertainty in the figures for warming as the IPCC report admits. It is a matter of judgement about what are the most probable outcomes. Judith Curry feels the numbers should be lower than the IPCC has set, but she seems to be in the minority among climate scientists in this.
The figures I am familiar with from a poll done after the AR4, by Pielke and Annan, is that about 50% of climate scientists agreed with the IPCC report, 20% said it understated the risk, and about 20% said it overstated the risk.
So Prof. Curry is somewhere in the 20% who feel the risk is overstated.
Next we have to look at the policy question. Eventually fossil fuels will run out and we will have to find substitute energy sources which will be non GHG emitting. We have the choice of doing this sooner and reducing the risk of climate change which 70% of climate scientists believe are damaging,
or risking severe climate change which can be very damaging for hundreds of years that the CO2 will remain in the atmosphere, and make the transition to non emitting sources when the fossil fuels run out.
http://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/what-if-we-burn-all-the-fossil-fuels/
These are the choices. For the sake of my children and grandchildren and all of the life on the planet, making the transition to non emitting energy sources as quickly as possible seems like the right thing to do. In my mind the judgement of Georgia Republican politicians and Judith Curry are deeply flawed.
The best estimate? You are an optimist. That’s not an estimate, it is a fake.
eadler2 | January 2, 2015 at 10:40 pm | Reply
There are very few climate scientists who would claim human caused GHG emissions are not warming the planet. The best estimate is about 3%.
—————————————————————–
Given a fart in a hurricane qualifies as human GHG emissoin that warms the planet to some small degree the big surprise is that anyone at all who disagrees that human caused GHG emissions are warming the planet. The salient question is how much warming?
It is so odd that yet-another-warming phase of the Holocene can attract so much fear and expense.
While past warmings were not beneficent everywhere (eg Medieval Warming Period in California), consider what cooling Bond Events can do and have done in the not very distant past (2200 BC ring any bells?). I’m sure the climate scientists in our midst know of those doozies. (Or what’s a climate scientist for, right?)
We know what just a bit of cooling can do to eg Africa, China, drought-wise especially. We know what a lot of cooling can do to most of us, drought-wise especially. I greatly prefer the cool, but I’m not so sure of the benefits of living in a cooling world. It may be just as well that those who fritter money and resources on cooling the planet are frittering in vain. (I know “frittering” implies “in vain”, but I’m told one can’t be emphatic enough when delivering a “climate message”.)
JC SNIP
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1LENN_enUS463US463&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=%22heat%20trapping%22%20co2
We find many august sources from physics texts to NASA and NOAA to Andy Dessler referring to greenhouse gases, CO2 in particular, as “heat-trapping”. Dessler goes on to say, in addition, that water vapor is not just heat-trapping it’s heat-amplifying.
Wow.
JC SNIP
JC SNIP
I can explain the greenhouyse effect to you but you wouldn’t understand.
It’s really simple. GHGs lower the planet’s effective albedo in a roundabout manner by making the air “darker” to infrared frequencies. The roundabout way is that the sun doesn’t produce much longwave infrared for the atmosphere to absorb but visible light that makes it to the surface is absorbed, translated into longwave infrared emitted upward, which is then absorbed by the air near the surface because greenhouse gases trap a portion of it.
Thanks for asking even though you can’t understand the answer.
For reference see here what real scientists, not internet poseurs, write about it in physical astronomy, which science knows a thing or two about electromagnetic radiation and gases:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/albedo.html
Meh.
“The term albedo (Latin for white) is commonly used to applied to the overall average reflection coefficient of an object. For example, the albedo of the Earth is 0.39 (Kaufmann) and this affects the equilibrium temperature of the Earth. The greenhouse effect, by trapping infrared radiation, can lower the albedo of the earth and cause global warming. ”
Which only shows that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. The greenhouse effect has nothing to do with changing the albedo (reflectivity) – except as an indirect effect, if the warming melts the polar ice.
‘The geometric albedo is defined as the amount of radiation relative to that from a flat Lambertian surface which is an ideal reflector at all wavelengths. The bond albedo is the total radiation reflected from an object compared to the total incident radiation from the Sun. The bond albedo for the Earth is given as 0.29 by de Pater and Lissauer, compared to their value of 0.37 for the geometrical albedo.’
Please check the reference before confirming our opinion.
What you refuse to believe, elisat, is a highly acclaimed, award winning online hypertext physics reference.
I’d sooner dismiss an anonymous blog commenter like you than hyperphysics, [shrug]
Hmm… I might have mentally inserted the word “reflected” before “radiation relative to that from…”. So does the geometric albedo include radiation emitted as well as reflected? If so, I stand corrected, but I still think it’s a very misleading way to word it.
Hello guys; do you want to enroll and get a diploma in climatology, for $50, or $150 bucks? If you a Warmist – but if you are not, use that offer, to expose the scam!:
https://www.edx.org/course/making-sense-climate-science-denial-uqx-denial101x#.VJOzeTAOog
I had to look it up since I’ve only ever used the Bond albedo. Answer: no it doesn’t, it’s the ratio of *reflected* intensity at theta=0 to incident flux.
‘Say, are yer pro albedo or anti albedo?’
I’m pro-albedo, as troublesome as it is, for without it there wouldn’t be any people around. Albedo is one of those things that keep me awake at night. :)
Wonderful irony again here at CE.
Judith says that everyone accepts the basic of warming…..and all her little sky-dragon ‘skeptics’ come fluttering around.
If I fart in your general direction, which I do at every practical opportunity, I’m demonstrating the basic tenet of anthropogenic warming, unless I’m farting at you on a day where the outside temperature is greater than 98.6F in which case I’m then demonstrating the basic tenet of anthropogenic cooling.
The simple statement that “everyone accepts basics of AGW” is false on the face of it because “everyone” is categorically not true except perhaps in a small UN/IPCC conference room where there’s show of hands. Without a committment to magnitude of AGW then of course “everyone” (+-10%) accepts the basics. If I light a kitchen match it’s anthropogenic warming, Duh. It’s a throwaway, meaningless statement without defining who “everyone” is and what constitutes “the basics”. In other words its a safe, politically correct cop-out answer that means exactly nothing.
Are you suggesting that Judy makes no sense, Big Dave?
I’m suggesting that “everyone” and “basics of AGW” need to be defined otherwise the postulate is meaningless as I demonstrated by a fart in a hurricane is small measure of AGW (or cooling depending on ambient temperature).
I realize you have little reading comprehension so please don’t torture me with endless questions about something a precocious child would understand right away.
Thanks in advance.
” If I light a kitchen match it’s anthropogenic warming, Duh. ” – David.
No wonder Springer is confused about so many things.
Michael, instead of addressing, underlines an absurdity. Did you miss the point, even though it’s right there where you lit the match?
==========
kim and Springer – a fine pair.
> I’m suggesting that “everyone” and “basics of AGW” need to be defined otherwise the postulate is meaningless
Has Judy defined what you call a “postulate, Big Dave?
Beware the sheep and the goats.
We read in the above post “the agency tasked with the state’s environment whether they believe the globe is warming, and whether they think pollution caused by human activity is a cause.”
The answers to both questions are explained succinctly with correct physics in this page.
I am surprised at Lt. Gov Cagle’s relatively enlightened (for a Republican) views. He seems open to the possibility that we may need to take some action.
I am fairly dismayed at the understanding of the science on both sides of the aisle. Progressives too often perform a sort of sleight of hand where they jump from the science that human are contributing to warming to we must take drastic action or catastrophe will result. Conservatives don’t want to consider the possibility that even moderate action might be necessary.
I would be very interested in know what the sides of this issue felt to be the relative probabilities of various scenarios.
For example, probabilities of human caused global warming in this century producing the following: (I’ll put my estimates in parenthesis)
1- Ecosystem catastrophe (1%)
2- Mainly negative effects but not catastrophe (39%)
3- Some positive and some negative effects – on balance a wash (50%)
4- Mainly positive effects (9%)
5- No negative effects (1%)
The challenge of providing the probability estimates I asked for are that you really need to consider three separate factors:
1- How much additional greenhouse gas will increase global temperatures
2- How much additional greenhouse gas will humans put into the atmosphere
3- What will be the consequences of #1 and #2
+many
David
When mosh apparently went mad in the first half of this thread I had unkindly thought you had been masquerading as him. Someone else suggested Mosh had developed a sense of humour. However, reading his many comments basically saying that no one has claimed man has caused the warming I will settle for the mad theory.
Hopefully he will be reappear and able to explain just what he was going on about yesterday because I think most of us were confused.
tonyb
Attribution, she’s a bitch;
Don’t know how just scratch that itch.
Puff the Magic Climate
Lived by the CO2;
Nature turned and bit him, someplace rich.
======================
The way the IPCC does this is to consider the effects for each temperature increase. For example, how would your percentages change between a 1 C increase and a 4 C increase? The difference is the benefit side of mitigation.
The higher the temperature increase the more likelihood of negative effects, although I assume somebody could have the opposite assessment that more increase would be positive.
This obviously isn’t an effort to disentangle factors that could affect policy. It actually requires you to consider all of the factors at the same time and weigh their likelihoods.
BTW, I wasn’t totally clear but my intent was this assessment should be done with the consideration that no significant policy action will be done with respect to climate change. This is not the same as business as usual because we might believe (as I do) that human contributions to greenhouse will decline through economic and technological forces without any deliberate climate related action.
So my assessments are based on climate sensitivity at the lower end and economic forces reducing human influence.
James, see this:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/12/31/2014-%e2%86%92-2015/#comment-660583
You could apply the reasoning in your link to anything in life.
Should I get the advanced degree or take the job? What route do I take to work? Should my wife and I have a child? Which house should I buy?
It’s amazing that we can still make decisions.
The cases you mention are vastly simpler than climate.
Huh?
1- Ecosystem catastrophe (0.005%)
2- Mainly negative effects but not catastrophe (1%)
3- Some positive and some negative effects – on balance a wash (58.995%)
4- Mainly positive effects (38%)
5- No negative effects (2%)
When I posted this question on another blog (not climate related but it veered into the topic on one post) some of the alarmists ended up with a significant percentage in the middle.
I am wondering if we might by surveying a broad cross-section we might come up with “sweet spot” of consensus.
Edim
Sorry to sound dumb but the simplistic energy balance that you describe is meaningless the earth breathes, by day and by night, by the seasons and on larger timescales too. I see no real benefit of looking at a dynamic planetary breathing in a static way or am I missing something that you can help me with.
Thanks
Ward, I don’t know if averaging the cycles is meaningless. Maybe. However, if it’s plausible, then it should be done properly, according to the physics of (multimodal) heat transfer.
Ok, Mosher, I’ve been thinking about your challenge: ‘what is wrong about your (MY) question?
Firstly, I am not a trained scientist, so I may not explain myself the way you would. Secondly, I don’t spend all of my waking moments on this subject (i.e., I have a life). i think this riddle has so many facets, it can be argued from many sides without rebuttal – just because.
However, since you are not straight foreward with me, I can only assume you have the knowledge and won’t share it…and won’t have any discourse with me, after all – why should you care what I think?
So, my answer is: my question presupposes a proper experiment can be laid out whereby one can ascertain the reason and importance of CO2 as it relates to atmospheric temperature. If one cannot design such an empirical experiment, then you must go about it another way. The empirical experiment must include all the elements of our global circulation system, therefore, it cannot be so designed, since we cannot go to the outside and observe. It is global in nature and we cannot exit.
However, I have been thinking that some aspects can be isolated in such a way as to be able to observe parts of the system. Since we are talking about and comparing to a greenhouse, why don’t we do experiments within a greenhouse? Say that we are able to isolate the greenhouse from the earth’s atmosphere, so there is no interference. Steve, has this been done? You could do an experiment in there with different concentrations of CO2 in the greenhouse ‘atmosphere’ to verify the findings of the models.
I don’t have the funds or backing to do it myself, but, certainly someone connected to the US Government could. I think the results would be very influential in our discussion.
I don’t want to make this too long. Can you comment on my experiment design? I’ll check back later this afternoon, after I go to the store for my wife….
Thanks
Jeff
We might need to wait until 2021, Jeff:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/25feb_greenhouses/
Such experiments seem to require an atmosphere, though.
Your proposal is based on a misunderstanding of how additional GHG’s act in the real earth’s atmosphere. The mechanism cannot be reproduced in a small enclosed space like a greenhouse. It requires 15 KM of atmosphere to demonstrate the effect. There is data on the transmission of radiation through the earth’s atmosphere from satellites which shows how the so called Greenhouse Effect warms the earth, so no additional lab experiment is needed.
Read this link and you will see data which demonstrates what is happening.
You need to understand the Stefan Boltzmann and Planck equations which determine the rate of radiation versus wave length and temperature, which is college physics. Here is the introduction. You need to read all the sections to understand how it works.
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming.html
How high is the Top Of Atmosphere today, above your town? What is the temperature there? Is it by any chance increased by an absorption of an outbound IR radiation by CO2?
This logic is a fairy tale masquerading as a theory. But I may be wrong. Please give me a link to a radiative theory correctly predicting stratospheric temperatures.
“Since we are talking about and comparing to a greenhouse, why don’t we do experiments within a greenhouse? Say that we are able to isolate the greenhouse from the earth’s atmosphere, so there is no interference. ”
another mistake.
1. you cant do a controlled experiment. there is no second earth to use as a control.
2. You cant use a controlled box to represent the atmosphere because
the box lacks what is most important, an ERL
Seeing the flaw in 2 is easy. Suppose I showed you a “greenhouse” effect in an enclosed structure. What would a good skeptic say? A good skeptic would say “Well, the atmosphere is different than a small enclosed box”.
As you said, you are not scientist.
Start with the history I pointed folks at.
Observational science is different from experimental science.
Steven – I just did a short search for ERL, my favorite result was Buy it from Amazon. I’ll assume that it is an Effective Radiative something. How high is it in Berkeley now? Does it change with the time of day? With seasons? With a location? What is the temperature there? Can your equations predict it?
Curious George,
You need to improve your search technique or search engine. ERL is effective radiative level. This is the effective height where upward radiation that originates in the upper troposphere makes it into outer space without being reabsorbed.
eadler2 – thank you for supplying the letter L – Level. I agree that I should improve my search technique; I used an iPad on a slow connection; promise to avoid it if possible.
As you seem to be an expert on ERL, answering my other questions which eluded you should be a piece of cake: How high is it in your town now? Does it change with the time of day? With seasons? With a location? What is the temperature there? Can your equations predict it?
Steve Mosher
I’m sorry, I spent the day with my family and could not respond.
Well, you have verified what I’ve suspected for a long time — there have been NO recent empirical studies that conclusively conclude that atmospheric CO2 increases atmospheric temperature significantly.
To state that there is some anthropogenic component is foolish. I don’t know of a single skeptic scientist that does not agree with that. The disagreement comes from the attribution percentage. Without a complete analysis, including natural sources, such an attribution would be premature.
We don’t know what we don’t know. To state that all the important factors have been incorporatred into the GCM programs is not correct. Very few of the natural factors are included. The world’s weather patterns and even the 30 year history (average) have multiple factors that need to be studied – that have not been.
Follow the science to learn that the AGW conclusions have not deviated for the past 30 to 40 years….what kind of active science is that? The recent discussion concerning the cause for the 21st century pause is tacit agreement that the GCM’s need to be corrected.
Remember the Biosphere? Such a closed system, if big enough, could host a study of the CO2/temperature question.
Hey, I’m just an Engineer and couldn’t possibly know your business. But I am a critical thinker and have yet to find the evidence you say is there. Interestingly, not one AGW scientist has been willing to point me to the study I’m seeking. Instead, they call me names and tell me my logic is full of error! As Mike Mann told me — go do your own research!
Steve, you have helped me a bit, though. By your responses to me, you have confirmed where the science is lacking. And this is very crucial to the conclusions you seek. At this point, the only conclusion I can take away is: Limiting atmospheric CO2 will not affect global temperatures and all money and time devoted to the task is, therefore, completely wasted!
What a shame….
Climate scientists kind of cherry picked the back-radiation from CO2, although they do note it cools parts of the stratosphere. But, just because they have shined a light on tropospheric CO2 does not mean it might not show up in other terms of the climatic differential equation.
Clouds are often cited as a large uncertainty due to albedo effects. But how does the extra CO2 affect the dynamics of clouds. Does the internal energy of the molecule cause more heat to be released near the tops of thunderstorms? Could it cause the water vapor in the storm cloud to condense or form ice at higher altitudes that it would without the extra CO2? Could this extra altitude effect the release of more heat into space?
It seems some climate scientists have looked at aspects of greater CO2 concentration only if that aspect makes the warmista case.
The questions you ask don’t make physical sense. I don’t see any reasons why climate scientists should pay attention.
Your reply is nonsense.
“Climate scientists kind of cherry picked the back-radiation from CO2, although they do note it cools parts of the stratosphere.”
Sorry but they didn’t cherry pick CO2. They also look at CH4, N2O and CFC’s.
Heat of condensation is released at the tops of thunderstorms as result of condensation of water vapor into droplets. The presence of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere have no bearing on the condensation phenomenon. If the CO2 molecules were adding energy to the water vapor condensation would slow down and less heat of condensation would be released. That is why the premise of your question is wrong.
Your assumption that climate scientists are biased is ignorant. They are working from data that shows CO2 is suppressing emission into outer space of IR wave lengths in its absorption spectrum.
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming.html
Funny they can’t predict the amount of meaasured warming if they know how much warming X amount of CO2 will cause.
No remote possibility they have something serious wrong or missing in the global warming hypothesis?
David,
“No remote possibility they have something serious wrong or missing in the global warming hypothesis?”
The best understood phenomenon is how CO2 and other GHG’s including water vapor cause the earth to warm. The climate sensitivity for CO2 in clear air is the best understood and quantified part of the global warming theory. This is the iron clad part.
What is uncertain are the actions of other parts of the system – clouds, volcanoes, melting glaciers, ENSo and other ocean current phenomena, and aerosals. Also, solar irradiance is not predictable. That is what climate scientists are wrestling with to improve the models, and the reasons the models are not useful for accurate annual predictions and why the total climate sensitivity is so uncertain.
That is why claiming that the science is wrong about CO2 seems ridiculous to people who understand what is going on.
Yer iron clad hypothesis produced climate models running seriously too hot buddy boy. Time for you to maybe wake up and smell the coffee.
eadler2 – it is your idea that energy carried by CO2 can’t affect condensation that is non-physical. CO2 molecules can release their internal energy via collision which will heat the molecule it hits. Eventually, just about all the water will condense, so it will eventually release any heat picked up from the extra CO2 molecules. That, or the CO2 will radiate directly into space. CO2 can also radiate and that radiation can excite a water molecule. I’m not seeing the non-physicality of any of this.
A HuffPost commentary on congressional Republicans to show what the US is in for in the next couple of years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-zombeck/the-2015-gop-clown-car-bi_b_6402678.html
Shame on me for stereotyping, but I always took you for a rabid HP devotee. I liked this article that they ran this morning stating that 31 governorships and 68 or the 98 state legislative bodies are controlled by the Grand Old Party. Power to the People!
I have to admit to reading HP articles quite a bit. But with a different motive. I want to get inside the brains of the economic illiterates.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/03/gop-states-gov-plan_n_6409330.html#comments
Obama didn’t know that here are 50 states. I think he said 52. In any case, had Sarah Palin said that the press would have lampooned her mercilessly for years.
The Huff and Puff post is pure garbage. What’s her name was ingenious, devious, and predatory in her ability to get lightweights to write articles for free. What an idea! Create a business where the “employees” don’t get paid! Then she sold the whole enchilada, made millions, and paid the writers nothing, nada, zip. There’s a lefty hero for ya, get your money for nothing and the labor for free!
Medicaid expansion tears them between supporting the people versus supporting the Party, doesn’t it. More red states are shifting towards the people and away from the Congressional GOP wishes, and this is because of how well the new healthcare works in the blue states. Not having to answer to the congressional GOP leadership makes all the difference. Some movement on minimum wage too.
Also a recent poll has put the nation’s biggest problem now as Congress itself, which has overtaken the economy for the #1 spot. The people are getting restless. They need a Congress that functions and passes legislation for them.
Socialist Obama’s “healthcare” system does suck. I don’t believe anything out of Paul Krugman’s mealy mouth. If people wise up, they won’t replace Socialist Obama with Socialist Hillary.
Oh no.. Jim you do realize that Obamacare is essentially the same plan that was proposed by conservative Heritage Foundation? A more socialized system would really be one like Great Britain’s where the government runs the system, followed by single payer systems, and then by the public option which involved the government providing it’s own plan on the healthcare exchange. The public option was rejected before the bill was passed. Obamacare has more to do with providing more help to poor and lower middle income people to make insurance more affordable and regulating the health insurance markets. And if you think “subsidies” are examples of Socialism then I you must think the mortgage and charitable deductions are also examples of Socialism .
JimD
Your conclusion is not warranted. If the Congress did pass legislation about 50% wouldn’t like it, but most people would still agree that Congress is bad but for different reasons. Congress, like the people, is divided.
Congressional approval is probably near 10% because they are not passing anything. Immigration would have passed, but the Republican leaders were afraid to put that up because they knew that. Democracy inaction.
Gee Jim D, now that dingy harry is no longer the Senate majority leader, congress will now be able to function the way it is supposed to and Odumbo will no longer be protected from having to deal with legislation he does not like.
I expect a continuous stream of joke bills with enticing names like the Pay Everyone More Bill or Give Everyone a Job Bill, or the Kill the Job-Killing Healthcare Bill to come to the Senate and many will still fail to reach a vote there. This has been the House pattern so far.
Nice try Jimmy Dee, if they were all joke bills, then dingy Harry could have at least taken them to the floor for debate and defeat. He was too busy protecting Obama to, you know, actually do anything productive.
It’s far better to pass a kidney stone than another socialist piece of garbage law.
JimD
If the Dems wanted immigration reform they could have done it without a single GOP vote in either the senate or the house in 2008 -2010. They didn’t do it because it is a third rail issue. Note that many repubs also want “IR” but they aren’t going to do it either for the same reason. Obama did a mini version with his phone and pen, after his last election when he had that flexibility he talked about with Vlad’s emissary.
Thanks for the link. It is spot on.
The AGW denial statements by the Ga Republicans are good examples of what Zombeck is talking about in his post. The echoes are here in this Climate etc. blog.
Meh, all in all, remarkably clear thinking by a bunch of state Republicans. Do not send to know for whom the skies clear, they clear for you.
===================
He said 57.
Scott
Not one of those states speaks Austrian natively, either. How insular! Or parochial! Or chauvinistic! I’ll settle for Ubuic instead of Obamic.
=================
When Obama compared himself to Lincoln, my friend Peter Bocking speculated since Obama is sort of a Eurosocialist, that perhaps he is a Lincoln Continental.
This same Peter riffed that were Al Gore’s hair to catch on fire it would provide enough heat and light for a small English village.
=================
WHY THERE IS GLOBAL WARMING
The information below came from either books or downloaded from the Internet
Please pass this information around to friends. Take Care, Harold
People in the USA, are being told by the U.S. government and media that global warming is man-made. If that is true, how can the government and media explain the high temperatures the earth has experienced in past years when there were far fewer people? Let us look back in the world’s history: for example, between roughly 900AD and 1350AD the temperatures were much higher than now. And, back then there were fewer people, no cars, no electric utilities, and no factories, etc. So what caused the earth’s heat? Could it be a natural occurrence? The temperature graph at the bottom of this article shows the temperatures of the earth before Christ to 2040.
In the book THE DISCOVERERS published in February 1985 by Daniel J. Boorstin, beginning in chapter 28, it goes into detail about Eric the Red, the father of Lief Ericsson, and how he discovered an island covered in green grass.
In approximately 983AD, Eric the Red committed murder, and was banished from Iceland for three years. Eric the Red sailed 500 miles west from Iceland and discovered an island covered in GREEN grass, which he named Greenland. Greenland reminded Eric the Red of his native Norway because of the grass, game animals, and a sea full of fish. Even the air provided a harvest of birds. Eric the Red and his crew started laying out sites for farms and homesteads, as there was no sign of earlier human habitation.
When his banishment expired, Eric the Red returned to congested Iceland to gather Viking settlers. In 986, Eric the Red set sail with an emigrant fleet of twenty-five ships carrying men, women, and domestic animals. Unfortunately, only fourteen ships survived the stormy passage, which carried about four-hundred-fifty immigrants plus the farm animals. The immigrants settled on the southern-west tip and up the western coast of Greenland.
After the year 1200AD, the Earth’s and Greenland’s climate grew colder; ice started building up on the southern tip of Greenland. Before the end of 1300AD, the Viking settlements were just a memory. You can find the above by searching Google. One link is:
http://www.greenland.com/en/about-greenland/kultur-sjael/historie/vikingetiden/erik-den-roede.aspx
The following quote you can also read about why there is global warming. This is from the book EINSTEIN’S UNIVERSE, Page 63, written by Nigel Calder in 1972, and updated in 1982.
“The reckoning of planetary motions is a venerable science. Nowadays it tells us, for example, how gravity causes the ice to advance or retreat on the Earth during the ice ages. The gravity of the Moon and (to a lesser extent) of the Sun makes the Earth’s axis swivel around like a tilted spinning top. Other planets of the Solar System, especially Jupiter, Mars and Venus, influence the Earth’s tilt and the shape of its orbit, in a more-or-less cyclic fashion, with significant effects on the intensity of sunshine falling on different regions of the Earth during the various seasons. Every so often a fortunate attitude and orbit of the Earth combine to drench the ice sheets in sunshine as at the end of the most recent ice age, about ten thousand years ago. But now our relatively benign interglacial is coming to an end, as gravity continues to toy with our planet.”
The above points out that the universe is too huge and the earth is too small for the earth’s population to have any effect on the earth’s temperature. The earth’s temperature is a function of the sun’s temperature and the effects from the many massive planets in the universe, i.e., “The gravity of the Moon and (to a lesser extent) of the Sun makes the Earth’s axis swivel around like a tilted spinning top. Other planets of the Solar System, especially Jupiter, Mars and Venus, influence the Earth’s tilt and the shape of its orbit, in a more-or-less cyclic fashion, with significant effects on the intensity of sunshine falling on different regions of the Earth during the various seasons.”
Read below about carbon dioxide, which we need in order to exist. You can find the article below at:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html.
FUN FACTS about CARBON DIOXIDE.
Of the 186 billion tons of carbon from CO2 that enter earth’s atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth’s oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.
At 380 parts per million CO2 is a minor constituent of earth’s atmosphere–less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present. Compared to former geologic times, earth’s current atmosphere is CO2- impoverished.
CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product. Carbon dioxide is a nutrient, not a pollutant, and all life– plants and animals alike– benefit from more of it. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers want to stimulate plant growth, they introduce more carbon dioxide.
CO2 that goes into the atmosphere does not stay there, but continuously recycled by terrestrial plant life and earth’s oceans– the great retirement home for most terrestrial carbon dioxide.
If we are in a global warming crisis today, even the most aggressive and costly proposals for limiting industrial carbon dioxide emissions and all other government proposals and taxes would have a negligible effect on global climate!
The government is lying, trying to use global warming to limit, and tax its citizens through “cap and trade” and other tax schemes for the government’s benefit. We, the people cannot allow this to happen.
A temperature graph normally goes here that shows the Earth’s Temperature from -2400 to guesses in +2400.
If the Earth’s temperature graph is not shown above, you can see this temperature graph at the link:
http://www.longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm
I think you’ve nailed it. I have never heard of any of this before.
Do you have anything on how the government took down the World Trade Center towers? Or what they are really hiding in Area 51?
Good One!
Yeah, we’ve been lied to, officially, officiously, offensively, well awfully awfully. Will the officials, the judges in the Steyn/Mann case figure this out? Speech yet unheard will flow freely, whether they do or they don’t.
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Wow Harold,
You have managed to post the most illogical argument on the internet against the idea that CO2 is causing global warming. To make a long story short, you claim:
In the past there have been other drivers for global warming, Milankovitch cylcles and such, so this time it cannot be CO2. This is a totally fallacious and illogical argument. Anyone who is objective can see that.
In fact the evidence that CO2 is currently warming the planet is incontrovertible if you know anything about the physics of electromagnetic radiation and its relationship to temperature. Here is a detailed and physically correct description of the evidence.
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming.html
The fact that CO2 is recycled by nature doesn’t negate the fact that human emissions on top of natural process are adding to CO2 in the atmosphere. In fact in an average year natural process absorb about 1/2 the CO2 emitted by human industrial processes. The rest remains in the atmosphere. I don’t see how you can blame the CO2 increase on nature.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/anthrocarbon-brief.html
Really – you cite SkS as your source for rebutal? You must be one of the 2 or 3 people who actually still reference the site.
Note I won’t sink to the level of biased blog science, eadler. I wanted to get down in the mud and wrestle with pigs I’d use WattsUpWithThat as a reference.
Wikipedia won’t accept SkS or WUWT as sources and neither should you.
Up your game.
Actually, SKS is not the source of my rebuttal. It is a place where I can find graphs taken from peer reviewed papers, which is what I did to explain how human emissions of CO2 have resulted in increases of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
Personally, if you used Wattsup as a reference, I would take the trouble to show how your reference is mistaken, and then make a disparaging comment. I wouldn’t mind if you did that also, In this case you have no rebuttal and are looking for a way to hide it.
Eadler2, your statement that “The rest remains in the atmosphere” is a common misconception, and the cause of the CO2 increase would not be an issue if this statement were true. The fact is that our emitted CO2 molecules, like the much greater mass of naturally emitted molecules, are all gone in just a few years. That is, the concentration increase is not made up of our emitted molecules, which “the rest remain” incorrectly implies.
Thus the oft heard statement that just half of our emissions are absorbed is a misstatement of the fact that the increase is equal to roughly half of our emissions. It is an interesting question whether this misstatement is deliberate, since it nicely hides the attribution issue.
SkS produces many of their own graphics, charts, etc. If it comes straight from the literature without alteration then at least cite the original source.
Or don’t, I’ll just continue ignoriing blog science. Wikipedia is as low as I’ll go and they don’t cite blogs either. Up your game.
Barnes | January 3, 2015 at 3:09 pm |
“Really – you cite SkS as your source for rebutal? You must be one of the 2 or 3 people who actually still reference the site.”
Just because global warming deniers don’t like SKS, doesn’t prove they are wrong.
If you are so smart, and they are so dumb, explain why this graph doesn’t prove that human emissions aren’t the cause of the increase in CO2 seen in the atmosphere.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/CO2_Emissions_Levels_Knorr.gif
I score.
You score.
We all score
The Ice Cores.
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http://www.science20.com/files/images/global_1.png
This a chart of the derivative of surface station temp, where global minimum temp is made from large regional swings of temp, where maximum temps of the same station does not show any such change.
At the bottom of the url in my name are the same sort of graph for individual continents. They also show you when you calculate the slope of temp for both warming and cooling during the year.
I don’t argue with SkS. I don’t argue with my ex. In five minutes she can say things that I would need five days to prove wrong.
How about turning the tables? Can’t I consider SkS wrong until they prove themselves right – but my question never made it through moderation.
You can do what you like. No one can force you to reply to what SKS says.
So you are saying that you are unable to counter the message of the graph I showed. It says human emissions are being absorbed by natural causes and 46% end up in the atmosphere to increase the CO2 level.
Since you can’t counter it, and don’t want to accept the evidence of the graph, you simply prefer to assume it is wrong without proof. This doesn’t seem reasonable. No wonder your marriage broke up.
No one can force SkS to reply to what I say. You seem to be rather obtuse.
Dave in TX,
“I’m afraid a residency time of only 1000 years won’t be sufficient to avoid the next ice age. 10,000 years would be a more comfortable hedge.”
We will probably have to wait about 30,000 years for the next ice age. If we want to use them to avoid the next ice age, we should save the fossil fuels for the time when we need them, not expend them too soon.
eadler’s in with the crew who know when we’ll need them, which can’t be now, for sure. Yes, that is certain.
So put the toys at play, rain, rain go away. Set your course, Climazbub, lest you fall off the rim of the tub.
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eadler2 | January 4, 2015 at 10:43 am |
“We will probably have to wait about 30,000 years for the next ice age.”
Really. More Skeptical Science prognostications or is that your own stupid wild assed guess instead of theirs.?
The salient question is why does less than half of manmade CO2 emission stick around in the atmosphere? Will the sink that’s lapping it up half as fast as we can dig it out of the ground continue drawing it down at same rate if we cut emission level?
According to the work of Susan Solomon published in the PNAS, higher levels of CO2 will stick around in the atmosphere for 1000 years after emissions cease, but there will be an initial decline from the peak.
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704/F1.large.jpg
Higher CO2 levels will recruit new negative feedbacks. Bet on it.
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Kim,
“Higher CO2 levels will recruit new negative feedbacks. Bet on it.”
You comment has aroused my curiousity.
I am familiar with positive feedbacks to temperature – water vapor concentration melting glaciers, reduction of summer sea ice in the Arctic, increasing atmospheric methane from clathrates and permafrost.
In addition higher water temperatures will reduce the absorption of CO2 by oceans.
Can you list and explain the negative feedbacks that will occur as a result of high CO2 levels, or is this simply an unsupported belief that all will be well?
The biome, and she do it NOW.
=======
@eadler
I’m afraid a residency time of only 1000 years won’t be sufficient to avoid the next ice age. 10,000 years would be a more comfortable hedge.
If we weren’t increasing the CO2 level in the atmosphere already we’d be forced to invent some way of doing it.
Glaciers a mile thick covering half the northern hemisphere continents is going to suck. Big time. Write that down.
That work is highly defective. It makes the unwarranted assumption that humans won’t turn around and drag it back out again…
@Kim
I asked you for a list of the negative feedbacks you claimed would cancel the warming effects of CO2. I was genuinely curious about whether you actually knew anything or whether your belief in this was unsupported by any information that you had. This is your answer.
@kim | January 3, 2015 at 11:38 pm |
The biome, and she do it NOW.
So it is clear that this is religious faith unsupported by any real information.
eadler2, among those negative feedbacks are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. There’s a list you could own. Heck, I’ll even throw in unknown knowns, like all the stuff you know that just ain’t so.
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eadler2 | January 4, 2015 at 11:49 am
“I asked you for a list of the negative feedbacks you claimed would cancel the warming effects of CO2.”
Well…
1. Pretty curves from Susan Solomon. They show that the likely low 500 PPM (somewhere in the 520 PPM range) that is likely CO2 maximum doesn’t cause a hill of beans worth of warming. There isn’t much to explain.
2. The unknowns driving temperature include ice cover, snow cover (98% is in the Northern Hemisphere), specific humidity low level, specific humidity high level, evaporation, clouds low level, clouds high level.
The stratosphere is warming from CO2 and cooling from reduced specific humidity. Many of the other measures have a similar good news/bad news profile.
The CO2 warming calculations assume more CO2 and all other things being equal (a static analysis). The atmosphere is dynamic and things aren’t so pretty.
Solar on the other hand appears to have strong positive water vapor feedback and water vapor increases exponentially with real (TSI) external heating.
Eadler2, I think you mean “explain why this graph doesn’t prove that human emissions are the cause of the increase” not “aren’t the cause.” First of all, at most it would be evidence, not proof. Second, it is quite possible that the ice core proxy data is faulty and hides large natural oscillations, for which there is some evidence. This is a well known problem. Absent the ice core data you merely have two roughly linear tends, so of course there is a correlation, since all linear trends are correlated.
David,
There is also an ironclad equation that shows this. If we divide sources and sinks of CO2 into human and natural mechanisms, and use the best data we have, the human emissions into the atmosphere are positive. Using the law of conservation of matter, the natural mechanisms must be absorbing the CO2 emitted by humans. This is true whether the plot is linear or exponential.
If you want to limit the time frame by taking out the ice core data, you would come to the same conclusion. There are oscillations shown in the ice core data on CO2, but also in the modern CO2 data.
Unless you doubt conservation of matter, there is no doubt that human emissions are the source of close to 100% of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times. People who doubt this have some agenda in mind besides understanding the science.
Not the source. Maybe the “cause”.
Except that “cause and effect” is a myth.
I doubt my agenda is other than understanding the ocean and warming. Yours? Ain’tcha got no curiosity? It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that schwing.
=================
There isn’t an ironclad equation that proves it unless you also have proof that anthropogenic sources don’t change the sinks. If it does that would make them anthropogenic sinks and now you are arguing over how much they change them as to whether or not the increase in CO2 is primarily anthropogenic. I happen to agree that it likely is but that is from inductive reasoning and is not deductive in nature.
@Steven,
Good point. It is definitely true that humans are reducing the effectiveness of the natural sinks. One example is setting fire to the rain forests which would otherwise sequester carbon from CO2 that they absorb from the air. This would lead one to say that human activity is the cause of the increase in CO2, which is a more inclusive way to express what is happening, than human caused emissions are the cause of the increase.
I’m not sure that was my point at all but I’m certainly not prepared to argue the increase in CO2 isn’t human in origin. There isn’t proof was the point I was making. I’ve seen claims of proof before but it wasn’t well thought out.
The effectiveness of the natural sinks seems to be increasing, and yes, it’s likely because we’ve raised the CO2 level.
Note too, encouraging natural sinks through your biomass would better entail restricting burning forests rather than restricting burning fossil fuel. Mebbe you could settle the whole mess, wash that dirty baby, before throwing it out with the bathwater.
==============
Eadler2’s argument has a number of flaws:
The land based carbon sequestration is about 115 GT per year.
The atmospheric carbon increase is only 4.2 GT/y (2 PPM/y) and over 2 GT/y is from destroying carbon sinks.
Since the atmospheric CO2 level is close to in balance (and had to be in balance 200 years ago) and the 115 GT/y includes a 50% CO2 fertilization bonus – we know that in the last couple of centuries we destroyed about 38 gT/y (115/3) of carbon sequestration. Further this 38 GT/y would have benefited from the CO2 fertilization so it is really 57 GT/y of sequestration that was lost.
This ignores the 170+ GT of carbon released while destroying the carbon sinks.
So right now 2.2 GT per year of carbon is going into the atmosphere from fossil fuel emissions because 57 GT/y of carbon sinking was destroyed, and the emissions are the problem???