1) That CO2’s role is lower since up until 2000 CO2’s sesquicentennial portion of AGW was only 45 percent (and that’s a quote from Hansen).

Ah, but since counters has told us that Hansen’s ideas aren’t mainstream, we can safely ignore him.

That the temperature signal and CO2 signal both increase exponentially (logarithmic is concave down, not concave up) is important evidence which deserves its own comment: this correlates well with the physical mechanism by which CO2 increases temperature.

Exponential? You mean it could run away until everything breaks? Physical systems rarely do that — mostly because of energy issues. Explosives can do that because of exothermic energy release. I can’t imagine blankets doing that.

If you think about it, the effect of CO2 must be logarithmic. At some extreme point, it would become an effective 100% blanket with subsequent addition having no effect. The 100% line is approached asymptotically.

Now it’s possible that the CO2 response curve is a sigmoid, like the arctangent or logistic functions, which appear exponential at the low limit.

The fact that the average global temperature is not around 60 degrees C – which it theoretically would be due to the absorption of IR by water vapor at current concentrations without any feedback – strongly suggests that any feedback mechanisms are strongly negative.

But a major component of the lag time constant is the “heat bucket”/”smoking gun” hypothesis of OHC. Which brings us to Trenberth’s quandary: Where did the missing OHC go? ENSO?

> That the temperature signal
> and CO2 signal both increase exponentially
> (logarithmic is concave down, not concave up)
> is important evidence which deserves its own
> comment: this correlates well with the physical
> mechanism by which CO2 increases temperature.

Exponentially? The baseline effect of CO2 is exponential? Not what I’ve read:

Temperature = Temperature0 + ln(1 + 1.2x + 0.005x^2 + 0.0000014x^3), where “x” is the CO2 concentration in ppmv. This formula works pretty well up to 1,000 ppmv.

And this is the standard inverse log f() we all know and love.

Any additional feedback would also be inverse log as a multiplier. I can’t fathom that any feedback could be exponential, that’s like burning our faces off by looking at ourselves in the mirror.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3012/716/1600/addams-mirror-recursion-barber-shop-monster.jpg
(take a close look at recursion #3)

And the CO2 levels are rising geometrically. I don’t see an exponential line anywhere in ol’ Doc Brown’s data plot:
http://i32.tinypic.com/28h3dqh.jpg

> In addition to natural cycles, remember also that there are
> a mix of positive and negative feedbacks. You mention
> the “diminishing returns” which we expect as the
> atmosphere becomes saturated with CO2, but this is
> just a portion of the picture. There is much
> interesting research into whether warming is
> causing certain cloud trends which might inhibit
> warming, and this is a key example of some of
> the other possible reasons why the temperature
> signal and CO2 signal aren’t shaped exactly the same.

Right, I’m aware of those studies. Understanding what goes on inside clouds is a big gap in the science.

But remember there are also studies showing that RH isn’t rising w/ altitude as had been modeled, that the atmosphere isn’t saturating w/ WV as expected, and clouds are taking up extra slack from the increased, simple warming from CO2.

IOW, the system may have heat exchange functions that seem able to keep up with the load.

> I don’t want to sound like I’m excusing the apparent
> mismatch in Hansen’s trends and your calculated one,
> but it’s still well within the error bars at this point in time.

Well, I say Hansen, that’s Hansen/IPCC. But the discontinuity between current observed trend vs. some latent & truly exponential trend brings us to an interesting question: How long do we wait before a super-duper warming trend becomes utterly improbable?

Remember Mann’s hockey stick? He *USED* the ’98 el Nino as part of the blade. Now we should throw the el Nino out. How… ironic.

> The reconstruction reference is a good read, but it’s
> logic in the argument here is flawed. For starters,
> it would be more convincing to publish peer-reviewed
> research, or work from someone widely known such as
> McIntyre.

Well that’s where you could fill the gap. I’m shorter on time for this fun….

> The big deal is that it addresses a strawman: The
> argument is not that CO2 is driving climate change.
> It’s that CO2 and implicit feedbacks are driving the
> climate. The feedbacks are where the bulk of the
> warming will come, but the CO2 is necessary to
> instigate those feedbacks.

Right. But aren’t those feedbacks implicitly in the air, other than the OHC (which has risen, but AFAIK isn’t an active feedback yet … or is it?). And if those feedbacks are only atmospheric then Janssen’s deconstruction is valid. Janssen’s keeps showing the “unknown” category at the top of the stacked bar lines. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s aerosols, maybe that’s WV feedback, maybe that’s God’s magnifying glass.

If OTOH Janssen’s dominant AO variable entailed latent emissivity from the seas due to GHGs, then previous forcings would be in feedback already.

But then that would mean:

1) That CO2′s role is lower since up until 2000 CO2′s sesquicentennial portion of AGW was only 45 percent (and that’s a quote from Hansen).

2) The OHC heat bucket feedback scare is again, overblown (and again see the Aqua data, K. Trenberth, the errant data and what the parrot saw….)

Have you been to Lucia’s blog?
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/ipcc-projections-continue-to-falsify/

> But that trend isn’t a decrease – it’s a leveling off with
> a HUGE increase in the variance. Furthermore,
> throughout the entire graph, there seems to be a
> strong 4 year “up and down” cycle.

That heating & release cycle goes back quite a ways though, don’t you think? I’ve noticed it before as well in data showing the inverse correlation between stratosphere & troposphere temperatures quite a time back. It does seem a bit more pronounced, as though a heat exchange systems is more active.

> It’s simply too early to claim there is a “new trend.”
> What happens if later this year the temperature
> sky rockets upwards?

Wait, apples and oranges.

The point is this: Richard Lindzen cites the actual zero trend goes back to before the ’98 el Nino, a longer trend. I don’t think anyone or Lindzen are wrong for citing that b/c a zero-return plateau, no matter how rough the perturbations, is still a plateau – a plateau that was never supposed to be there by even recent IPCC predictions. Now we have the Keenlyside post-diction….

But let’s be clear: We’re not talking just air temperatures, we’re also looking at ocean warming. The problem is, and as Kevin Trenberth states quite pointedly, somehow the oceans are offloading heat.

We just got done w/ a discussion w/ Leif Svalgaard. One of the things that came up was the net potential loss of solar heating. Something he kept alluding to was that TSI is misleading, that Drew Shindell over-modeled the effect of lower TSI to get the -0.3 to -0.4 degrC drop of the Little Ice Age.

The problem I have with that argument that average TSI has already fallen -0.1 degrC since the early 1990′s. The sun has already become slight less active.

Is there a correlation between that & Trenberth’s quandary? The sun warmed over most of the 20th C., the oceans warmed. The sun starts to dim, the heat goes errant.

Others are suggesting that solar tropospheric heating is only 50-60% of total solar influence on climate and other unaccounted solar forcing mechanisms are at play. I surmise that again, the oceans play a bigger role than anticipated in acting as negative heat exchange systems when the sun dims.

We know the seas demonstrate a 10-year lag behind solar flux and we may be seeing the seas offload heat commensurate with a gradual drop in solar flux since the early 1990′s.

If it’s not to be found in TSI, then what could it be? What other mechanisms could warm the seas? It may sound like science fiction, but we don’t know much about the effects of gravitational, neutrino or magnetic flux. Neutrino detectors are usually huge vats of distilled water….

If the sun’s activity level falls even more (and it has every appearance of doing so by many different astrophysicists’ accounts) then we could well be in for another -0.1 degrC drop by 2020. Other astrophysicists are saying something of the order of -0.2 degrC decrease in solar forcing.

Shindell’s model relied exclusively on a -1.3 w/m-2 change from decreased UV hitting the upper troposphere (reduced solar faculae that went along w/ low sunspot activity). Svalgaard contends that evidence is showing TSI is far more stable than that, but then it’s controversial. So either the climate is more sensitive to solar forcing or TSI didn’t cause the LIA. I think that’s too facile of an either-or.

Here’s how I might break down the problem:

-0.1 degrC decrease solar effect thus far
-0.1 degrC decrease solar effect by 2020
-0.025 degrC effect cloud cover (cosmic rays)
—-
-0.225 degrC decrease from total solar influence
+0.75 degrC global warming since 1880
—-
+0.525 degrC net since 1880
—-
-0.1 degrC effect indirect ocean emissivity
—-
+0.425 degrC net since 1880

That’s a WAGing of course, esp. the ocean emissivity, but think about the chances that indeed there’s some unaccounted solar influence and it’s not in the troposphere. I also suspect that the extra open waters of the Arctic, although higher in albedo, would see a higher emissivity:insolation ratio during the darker months which are 2/3rds of the year past the Arctic circle. Ice sheets act as a blanket as well.

The point being that we need to just break the problem down & look at our options.

Take soot. Please. But seriously folks…

Ramanathan says that globally soot is ~ 60% of CO2′s effect. What shall we say is CO2′s effect per decade? 0.1 degrC/decade? And soot is responsible for 0.06 degrC? Let’s say we aggressively abated industrial soot, which might be 6/10ths of the total soot effect:

-0.036 degrC industrial soot abatement
+0.425 degrC net since 1880 (above)
—–
+0.389 degrC since 1880

OK, Zender (& even Hansen) cite the soot component of the boreal thaw as causing around 19% of all global warming since the 1850′s. Let’s say soot mitigation (the blackest of the black carbons from coal have the most effect, 8x that of preindustrial wood fuels). Let’s trim back the reclamation to half the loss, so say we can reclaim via progressive remediation 9%…

-0.07 degrC from Arctic reclamation
+0.389 degrC since 1880
—–
+0.32 degrC since 1880

This is what I’m talking about. And not one of these points mentions abating CO2 in the near future. Even if there weren’t any feedback mechanisms to worry about (and we may have to adjourn until a new jury is selected on that one….) we’d ultimately want to mitigate CO2 emissions, if for any other reason than 1000 ppm might start feeling a bit stuffy.

> If you insist on claiming a new trend is occuring,
> you need to show some error bars; they’re going
> to be giant for the past two years.

Kinda like that Keenlyside study, eh?

:-)

I’ll address the temperature plateau and its implications in a day or two….

OK, I need time to respond, if you wanna take it to tomorrow’s first thread, fine, or we can keep at it here, it’ll become a low-noise zone as new threads pile forward. Regardless we can explicate ourselves silly with details.

The link to the Pew site is corrupted, linkee no workee.

Overall I read you as a climate moderate, we just need to get you away from the ivory tower a bit longer …. ;-)

There *is* a religiosity to the activist side of the AGW debate, but let’s give counters his due, he comes here w/out expectation on how we’re going to behave toward him.

If we can avoid polemics he won’t be tempted to any himself.

Not to say that if AGW is accurately proven as a lie that I’m going to put a Hummer on my Visa and leave it idling in my driveway, but the truth is important regardless of whether it’s politically-correct or not.

And I don’t think any of the so-called “deniers” would either. The fallacy that those who dispute AGW are out to destroy the planet is just that, fallacy. For example, I work from home most days, so my “carbon footprint”, for all its worth, is less than if I had driven to work.

Our minds can be changed, but not with computer models or garbage data.

It’s simply too early to claim there is a “new trend.” What happens if later this year the temperature sky rockets upwards? If you insist on claiming a new trend is occurring, you need to show some error bars; they’re going to be giant for the past two years.

Hmmm… Why is it that I never see error bars on any of the AGW charts and instead see something like the blue line on my chart? Is it because it isn’t a “new” trend?

Anyway, you don’t think that’s being just a bit disingenuous? The data have an inherent cyclical nature. A linear fit of a sine wave will have wide error bars depending on the wave amplitude but that doesn’t mean all lines within are equally possible. As for eyeballing it, the trend appears steeper than what the linear fit says, IMO. Actually, what I see is the top of a hill. Just from looking at the halfway points between the peaks and the overall trend of the peaks. Look at years 14-16 for an obvious upswing.

I doubt that I’m seeing this because I want to. Mostly, because I really could care less. There have been huge overall peaks and troughs for the last 11000 years of fairly long period (centuries) further modulated by higher frequency cycles and with a general upward trend. I think what’s happening today fits that picture quite well. What I don’t see is any evidence that we have a noticeable effect on it.

The cooling period from the 40′s-80′s is sufficient IMO to discredit the CO2 Causes Warming claim. Sure, there was that aerosol thing but that suddenly appeared after the Hey-what-about-the-midcentury-cooling question was raised. Struck me as ad hoc handwaving (aerosols? Yeah! Yeah! That’s it: aerosols!) and, considering the sparsity of the data, it’s mostly conjecture.

However, there appears to also be a 20-30 year cycle of warming/cooling that couldn’t possibly be represented by this graph. If that cycle is real, this is around the time the turn around would start. So, is that what has been happening the last decade? Sure looks like it but only time will tell.

______________

Anyway, so let’s put everything out of the table and assume (whether it’s a correct assumption or not) that I’m complete wrong about so-called “global warming”. Despite some of you automatically labeling me as a hypocritical energy killer because I follow the AGW “religion”, I still believe in reducing energy usage and the pollution we emit, as well as finding sustainable alternatives and fostering a “green” economy — I haven’t for a second claimed to be perfect, though, so don’t call me a hypocrite for not being so. But that and AGW are different things.

I did believe in AGW previously because, like most people, I haven’t really bothered to research rebuttals yet I’ve begun to experience new rash climate changes in the past few years. So now my question is (and it’s mostly directed to counters, the only person who actually come up arguments from a purely scientific point of view)…does man-made global warming/climate change exist, or is it 100% natural to the planet? Does the amount of CO2/greenhouse gases etc. etc. we emit actually affect the Earth? Simply…what is the TRUTH?

Not to say that if AGW is accurately proven as a lie that I’m going to put a Hummer on my Visa and leave it idling in my driveway, but the truth is important regardless of whether it’s politically-correct or not.

Well, it’s followed the next year by a La Nina cool outlier, so the trends balance out very nicely.

If you wait until the back-and-forth stops and look at it from 2002, you have a slight decline in temperatures in spite of a triple (but milder) set of El Nino and only one La Nina.

There has been a 4% increase in atmospheric CO2 accumulation during the last decade.

If that were so then it would not have shown up as a global anomaly in the satellite records

“…but a more likely one is the strong upwelling and turning of the eastern Pacific…”

I presume you mean a strong upwelling of warm water. But how does a huge body of warm water come to be stored in the ocean depths when warm water is less dense than cold water?