Anthony – This post is a joke, right? Or, do people post on old blogs in an attempt to get the last word in?

Still louder, now, but still and all
Still ’tis shadows on a wall.
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Your posts are very long and hard for me to follow, so I will not react to everything in them. But this has me puzzled:

I’m also an analog circuit designer of long standing, so I understand exactly how feedback works; and it is physically impossible for the input signal (cause), to happen after the output signal (effect); if for no other reason, that energy processing systems must have a propagation delay.

I think you forget that there is a third element involved: orbital changes. This triggers the increase of temperature, which increases the amount of CO2, causing the temperature to rise more. In the context of this mechanism CO2 is a feedback.

O.M.G…. I CANNOT believe this assertion:

Was he serious? Is he really a scientist? One must disprove everyone else’s theories before promulgating or proving their own?

I think you did not understand Dr. Meier. He did not mean that you must disprove his hypothesis to to prove your own.

He ment that in order to prove your own hypothesis about climate change, you must take ALL known and relevant physics into consideration. The IR absorption of CO2 is relevant to any hypothesis concerning climate change. This is even more true if this hypothesis sets out to disprove the rising CO2 level as the cause of climate change! Physics do not take sides.

Ric – use all the available UAH data and one discovers that the obsevations after 2000 are actually mostly above the long term trend line, which is not fantastic evidence for a levelling off, never mind cooling …

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1978/to:2008/plot/uah/from:1978/trend:2008

Global cloud cover has only been observable since the first polar orbit satellites went up circa 1979, so albedo effects of clouds, and the growth and loss of polar ice sheets, it a relatively young quantitative study
Cosmic rays and solar wind particles to first other do not change on a 23-year cycle, but on an 11-year cycle. The cloud cover http://www.leif.org/research/cloud-cover.png and albedo http://www.leif.org/research/albedo.png do not show any 11-year period.

And I can’t imaging how ground based global cloud studies can even be conducted.
Well, other people can. The cloud cover and the resulting albedo are closely related. There are observational programs running right now that measure the Earth’s albedo by measuring how bright the Earthshine on the Moon is.

So I take statements that there is no link between cloud cover and global temperatures with a grain of salt.
And to accept that there is a link requires not just a grain but a whole bag of salt.

cosmic rays/solar particles are not the be all and end all of climate; [...]I leave it to those wh do do field research in these areas to put some meat on the bones.
So far, the bones have been hard to come by.

I do share your frustration, but one does not combat bad science with worse science.

“…I do not understand Dr Meier’s starting position to be anything other than a recognition of that (entirely rational) proposition. So, when he asserts that it is for those arguing against AGW to prove their case he is saying: “Look chaps, we know we are putting more of the heat-making stuff up there so you tell me why our extra heat-making stuff isn’t making extra heat.”..”

As I said earlier, we don’t know how strong the ‘heat-making’ (sic) stuff is. A major plank of the warmers argument is that it’s strong – the deniers say it’s weak. With that as the point at issue, you can’t just assume it’s strong and then say to your opponent “Where’s the extra heat? “. The deniers argument is that there ISN’t any….

“It may be that AGW is so small as to be insignificant, but that is a world away from saying it does not exist at all.”

Ummm. In theory you are right. Something that is insignificant still theoretically exists. But in terms of the AGW argument something that provides an insignificant rise in temperature, which is too small to be measured, does NOT exist in any practical sense, and it is a reasonable comment to say this. Otherwise we will have to keep on referring to the extra global warming we cause on the soles of out feet when we walk across the room…

“…the predicted temperature rise due to that forcing, summarised in IPCC AR4 WG1 Section 9.6 which give an expected increase in temperature, after a doubling of CO2e, in the range 2-4.5C. As this is consistent with recent observations, his point is that the onus is on those who propose a purely natural and alternative explanation to provide a mechanism (solar, ocean circulation changes, or Factor X) that would explain the warming, and explain why the radiative forcing of the increased GHGs is not having the predicted effect…”

Again, the hidden assumption here is that because I can correlate CO2 increase with temperature in a model, the one must be causing the other. The correlation falls down in recent years, so most appropriate thing to say is that it must not have been an accurate assumption to start with. Instead, this strange position takes the 20 years of correlation as proof that this is a causual relationship, and then tries to defend the relationship when it fails by saying that since some heat is missing, your opponents must find it before they can continue the discussion.

It’s NOT there! And the fact that it’s not there is the fact that breaks the concept of AGW.

Well “global warming” by CO2 has NEVER been proven, in fact all the long historic “data” says that global warming causes atmosperic CO2 to change and not the reverse.

The cosmic ray/charged particle “effect” is a lot more compolicated than just being the sole cause of cloud formation.

A result of the solar magnetic flux changes, that accompany sun spot cycles is more than just the global flux of such particles.

The magnetic fields that accompany sun spots reverse every 11 1/2 years,sp the magnetic cycle is 23 years. So far as I know, the earth magnetic field does not reverse in synchronism with the sunspots, so in one sunspot cycle the vector sum of the solar magnetic field, and the earth magnetic field, is quite different, and a 23 year climat/sunspor linkage has been observed, but not an 11 year effect.

In addition to just the total cosmic rays striking the earth, a significant effect of the local magnetic field, is that cosmic ray and solar charged particles are steered selectively by the fields. Particularly the lower energy charged particles lock onto the local magnetic field and spiral around the field lines to end up striking the atmopshere, in the regions of the magnetic poles; which is well known as the origin of aurorae in the polar regions. So what ?!.
Well as everybody knows, the polar regions are cold, and the tropical regions are hot, so water vapor in the atmopshere tends to be concentrated in the warmer regions, and scarce in the polar regions. So anything that steers charged particles around alters the cloud formation, because in the tropics, there’s much more water to nucleate. Cosmic rays concentrating near the poles have little water vapor to work with, and lower relative humidities too.

Don’t look for a bold effect that stands out like a sore thumb like the Mauna Loa annual CO2 6 ppm amplitude cycle.

Global cloud cover has only been observable since the first polar orbit satellites went up circa 1979, so albedo effects of clouds, and the growth and loss of polar ice sheets, it a relatively young quantitative study. And I can’t imaging how ground based global cloud studies can even be conducted.

But Wentz et al showed that a one degree C rise in global surface mean temperature (whatever that is) causes about a 7% rise in global evaporation, and a 7% rise in total atmospheric water vapor; and also a 7% rise in global precipitation. Of course precipitation tends to happen somewhere else from where the evaporation happens, and at some other time, but they have to equalize; and precipitation means DARK clouds, that can’t really be studies quantitatively from satellites, although albedo effects can.

So I take statements that there is no link between cloud cover and global temperatures with a grain of salt.

No, I am not a researcher in this field, and I have to take the reported data that others gather, and try to find some sense in it. You might have noticed I try to find some way of explaining it in temrs that any 8th grade high school science student can grasp. Doesn’t matter if scientists can understand it; if the public, and the politicians can’t understand it, then they will believe any story the AGWers give them. I don’t have any axes to grind; I don’t and never have worked for any energy/resource development company, nor do I invest directly in their stocks or their products. So I buy gasoline, and maybe my 401K fund, invests in energy behind my back.
Neither do I swill at the public trough and constantly beat up on the tax payers to keep funding my research. Have you noticed the government generally doesn’t fund studies to show ansolutely nothing untoward is happening; so researchers know that is not a fruitful line of research. I have a friend lawyer, whose specialty is defending doctors against medical mal practice suits; and he makes good money at it. His clients are well heeled insurance companies who can afford his fees; and his experience is that a very large fraction of malpractice suits are simply fraudulent; which is not to say malpractice doesn’t occur. He doesn’t take those cases.
Bank robbers rob banks, because that is where the money is.

So all I care about is that we get the science correct, and we do so, before we actually destroy this planet, both ecologically, and economically.

No cosmic rays/solar particles are not the be all and end all of climate; but they do amplify the effect of solar activity, as it manifests in sunspot cycles; and anything including dust, that enhances cloud nucleation leads to cooling, and anything that inhibits cloud formation leads to warming.

I leave it to those wh do do field research in these areas to put some meat on the bones.

But frankly, as a physicist and mathematician, I would not want to have to try to defend the AGW climate thesisi.

When I went to school, any thesis that claimed the cause (CO2) of some effect (global warming), actuaally happend as much as 800 years after the effect has happened, would be a statutory bar to that theory. Today in this internet blog world it is just a ho hum. Yes I do understand the infra-red spectroscopy mechanism of molecular absorption as in the CO2 molecule; and I understand how that can result in heating of the very surface of the planet; which is 73% water; and at that point the water cycle takes over. The exact quantitative aspects of that relationship, I will leave to thiose in the field; but the mechanismis unavoidable.
I’m also an analog circuit designer of long standing, so I understand exactly how feedback works; and it is physically impossible for the input signal (cause), to happen after the output signal (effect); if for no other reason, that energy processing systems must have a propagation delay.

The claimed CO2/ water feedback system is in my view just nonsense; bcause feedback systems, actually have a time response as well, and the delays in climate systems are such, that these feedback systems would oscillate wildly, if these feedback were really there. Feedback amplifiers tend to go into limit cycle rail to rail oscillations, if the delays are excessive for the amount of feedback; and you don’t see too many climate systems that are in oscillation. The Mauna Loa CO2 signal is not an oscillation, but a clear result of the driving input signal that is linked to the rotation of the earth, and its orbit around the sun.

I’ve seen a lot of “climate papers” that talk about “forcings” and “feedbacks”, but I’m still waiting for such an analytical paper that includes the time response of that system.

Well the trouble with computer “GCMs”, is that they may be climate models; but they certainly aren’t models of the climate of any planet in our neighborhood. The idea that a mean global temperature exists all over the world, instead of a daily temperature spread that can be as much as 150 deg C, and that the earth radiates at a constant 390 Watts per square meter, from pole to pole 24/7, per the official NOAA energy budget diagram is just silly.
Averaging the measured temperatures at various points on earth at various times, makes almost as much sense as averaging all the telephone numbers in the Manhattan phone book, and claiming that is the mean NYC telephone number. those temperatures are all differnt, because they are supposed to be; and their average has no scientific meaning or validity whatsoever.

Dr James Hansen’s GISStemp anomaly plot, is a graph of the GISStemp anomaly; and nothing else. Every point plotted on that graph, was measured nowhere at any point in time, by anybody; it is simply the manufactured output of applying some unknown algorithm, to some unknown and closely guarded secret set of raw data; whose long term history integrity is highly suspect.

Likewise HADcrut, and RSS, and UAH, are simply plots of other algorithmic outputs from other raw data sets done by other people. All of them are interesting relative to other data points on the same page; but they don’t agree with each other, which is all the proof that you need, that none of them is likely to be an accurate measure of anything like a mean global surface temperature. they don’t have any meaning at all other than on that page they are plotted on.

We don’t have any sound practical method to measure a real global mean surface temperature; and in the unlikely event we came up with a method; the result would still be meaningless, because energy gains and losses from the earth have no simple relationship to any such number. Just the radiative losses from the earth are more related to the fourth power of temperature; so even the mean 4th power of temperature would be more meaningful; but still useless because each differnt terrain type, has totally different thermal processes.

The John Q Citizen public takes GISStemp as the gospel truth mean global surface temperature, even though it is labelled an anomaly, which presumably means it is always wrong if it isn’t zero. They can’t even give it a real temperature scale value, because it is referred to some other mean number over some period of time, during which they were also unable to measure the mean temperature of the earth.

That is not my idea of science, when we discard the Newtonian theory of gravity, in favor of Einstein, all because we found that the precession of the perihelion of Mercury was off by 43 lousy seconds of arc per century, from what Newton said it should be. We don’t abide physical theories that have glaring discrepancies between theoretical (modelled) predictions, and actual experimentally observed data.

The problem is that there is no evidence that CO2 is responsible for the warming. Previous warming anomalies show that natural variability exists on the same scale as current warming, so we cannot eliminate natural causes as the source of current warming. More importantly, the southern hemisphere has shown no warming at all. As greenhouse gas warming is a global phenomenon that should be more-or-less even planetwide, this is a very large piece of evidence that the warming is not caused by greenhouse gases.

Finally, the fact that we cannot prove that it is natural does not mean that it is man made. As a scientist you must know that in a situation without conclusive evidence, no conclusion can be drawn. Whether the uncertainty merits action on climate change legislation is a matter of debate, but do not foist a negative proof on us as evidence.

And I agree with lucia, time and data will tell. What are they telling us now?
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I am using the climatological definition of ‘recent’. The IPCC projected that temperatures would rise at an average of around 0.175C / decade from 1990-2010. According to the UAH satellite record the actual rate was 0.174C /decade.

What’s that definition?

I see about 0.17 K/decade between 1990 and 2000, much less since 2000.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1990/plot/uah/from:2000/trend/plot/uah/from:1990/to:2000/trend