http://www.livescience.com/environment/070716_gw_notwrong.html

Wait, there’s scientific evidence that says what?

http://www.realclimate.org/images/2008_from1979.jpg
http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/warming_earth/scientific_evidence.htm
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/globalwarmA.html

But that temperature rise must be just a natural cycle, right?

http://www.monthlyreview.org/080728farley.php

Caused by people, huh? Who says?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,475367,00.html?sPage=fnc/scitech/naturalscience
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

Thousands huh? Do they all agree?

http://www.reason.com/news/show/34939.html

I found this article to filled with much more hot air and bluster than scientific fact. It was more on the political and media argument

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

than the scientific one about global warming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

I find appalling the lack of citations for the author’s assertions. Thankfully, at least some are in the comments. Great job, Leif, for adding scientific credibility to this discussion.

Deny all you want, but hard evidence for global warming over the past 50 years is solid. Whether humans caused it is arguable. Whether the conclusions can be debated is allowable. Whether or not you deny global warming, it doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for taking care of our environment. I think I’ll keep recycling and give up the SUV and aerosol cans.

REPLY: Here’s a link to round your’s out:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/27/james-hansens-former-nasa-supervisor-declares-himself-a-skeptic-says-hansen-embarrassed-nasa-was-never-muzzled/

More likely it’s the suns radiance that fluxes with the variations of the thermal fusion engine in the suns core as reflected in sunspot magnetic anomalies.

No, it’s more likely the oceans moving heat around that’s always there. When the oceans all end up in roughly the same phases, you get an extreme one way or another (warming or cooling). When they’re in disparate phases you get something in between. But of course, these are all regional effects, as all things are. There’s no “global” climate or temperature.

I have read this post on Miskolczi here:

http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher+Basic+Greenhouse+Equations+Totally+Wrong/article10973.htm

Miskolczi showed that the CO2 equations for forcing in climate models where flawed because they treated the atmosphere as infinite instead of a decreasing medium. So the IPCC climate models show the CO2 forcing much stronger than it really is.

And another research published a paper in Journal of Geophysical Research that showed CO2 effective forcing tapers off sharply beyond 300ppm, like a capacitor charging. Here:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSENMARSCHALLENGE.pdf

I have read numerous articles from either credible sources or individual that show the extra contribution of CO2 by humans just isn’t causing the warming. More likely it’s the suns radiance that fluxes with the variations of the thermal fusion engine in the suns core as reflected in sunspot magnetic anomalies.

This energy is absorbed by the land and things that inhabit it but the greatest absorber is the oceans which a researcher at NOAA showed was most likely influencing land temperatures.

You will notice that most of the melting in the polar ice occurs in the sea ice and not land bound ice. That proves to me that air is not the significant medium of warming. And the last time there was significant absence of
Arctic ice was back in the 20~30s. It seems to cycle with the PDO and ADO ocean current cycles.

So I think the worlds AGW alarmists better forget about CO2 levels and start worrying how they can keep the populous from running out of energy and freezing or starving to death. I seriously doubt that PV solar, wind grid tie-in or biofuels will be able to supply that need unless there is a significant decrease in population or more effective use can be made of the regulars of oil, coal, and nuclear. Looking at future population trends I think the world needs a massive sterilization treatment otherwise significant conflicts will ensue over water and energy. Security is also an issue.

Rite now Obama’s plan just won’t really vitalize the economy, it will just lead to either more inflation or a long term depression. Allowing companies to make effective use of of exiting reserves of coal, oil and gas will generate enormous tax revenue. I also think that energy companies are better able to develop viable energy sources without excessive subsidizations and mandates. Right now the Democratic congress and presidency will just hamper that severely by trying to regulate CO2 emissions.

Energy efficiency yes, carbon emission regulation or sequestering no. It’s a money scam to burden consumers with more taxes to fund congressional pork and socialism. Consumerism without significant manufacturing will not bail out this economy, government can’t create real jobs or productivity, but as we have been seeing for the last 100 years they can sure screw things up.

This argument merely plays with words and does nothing to refute AGW. In the current context, it is understood that the term ‘climate change’ is shorthand for ‘anthropogenic climate change’.

The assumption in Ambler’s argument is that climate change is always due to natural causes. His argument can be expressed:

P1: Climate always changes, due to natural causes
P2: The climate is currently changing
Conclusion: Therefore, the current climate change is due to natural causes.

This argument is fair enough as far as it goes, since the conclusion follows from the premises, but it totally fails to refute anthropogenic climate change. Why? Because Ambler’s starting point, P1, is the very issue in contention.

He simply assumes that all climate change is due to natural causes, in effect deleting the ‘anthropogenic’ from ‘anthropogenic climate change’ and substituting ‘natural’.

Refuting AGW requires empirical evidence, not mere word-play.

So much for reality based.
===============

Which has nothing to do with it being a linear function, just an increasing one which the log function is.

So I think Harold Ambler was at least doing something worthwhile by putting out some information about the relationship not been so simple,

No he was putting out false information, how is that worthwhile?

frankly I still don’t see

as being a wrong part of that sentence either.

Of course it is, just increase the amount of CO2, which is what this whole business is about!

The models may still be very impressively complicated, but I still wait to see them proved in the real world as being useful.

The Hitran model of IR absorption does a really impressive job of modelling that part of the real world and is widely used for that purpose.

My high school physics is many years ago, so my understanding of absorption stems from stuff like remembering the discovery of helium in the Sun’s spectrum and that elements have specific fingerprints that absorb in only certain frequencies. So an understanding of rotational vibration and temperature relation to absorption characteristics of CO2 is hint towards an extra bit of knowledge for me, I guess this means there are some feedback considerations? I will have to look into it more. But dare I say, the idea that CO2 has merely a linear relationship to temperature I think is very prevalent in the casual layman’s mind, when you hear stuff like Venus has a high concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and its surface can melt lead, you may see what I mean.
So I think Harold Ambler was at least doing something worthwhile by putting out some information about the relationship not been so simple, frankly I still don’t see

“Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation…”

as being a wrong part of that sentence either.

The models may still be very impressively complicated, but I still wait to see them proved in the real world as being useful.

You were asking for the name of the next Einstein that would turn the conventional wisdom upside down,and upset the self-satisfied scientific community? ? We in the scientific community can already name him. He is NASA’s (or was), Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, working at the Ames Laboratory in Hampton Virginia.

He was one of the Physicists who saw the results of NASA weather data from their then new weather satellites, and tried to reconcile them with conventional theories; and they didn’t correspond.

So he went back to the Swartzchild-Milne mathematical equations, just like Einstein did to Newtons’s equations, and found an unaccounted for error. Like Einstein, the error was in a mathematical simplification that was obviously correct. Except it isn’t.

As with Einstein, the results are fundamental to a different understanding of the way nature operates our atmosphere.

Yes GHG theory works, but in a world of an essentially infinite pool of liquid GHG covering 70% of the Earth ’s surface, the Earth does NOT run away in Global Warming. Why Not? Because the mathematics says it has achieved a “Saturated GHG” condition billions of years ago, based on energy balance reasons. For every increase of a GHG like CO2, or Methane, the major GHG changes to compensate. It gets rained out of, or evaporated into, the atmosphere as required to a new equilibrium value, to return to the “saturated GHG equilibrium” condition. So the only way to really warm the Earth is to alter the Albedo or percentage of sunlight reflected or absorbed by the Earth. So thermal pollution from Solar installations is possible, but changing CO2 levels do not.

By the way, Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi was muzzled, thoroughly frustrated, prevented from publishing his work, and has quit his lifelong position at NASA. At the same time, Astronomer-trained Dr. Hansen acting as if he is a Climate Scientist, and master of Information technology, neither of which is the case, complains of censorship while conducting over 1400 public media events on NASA paid company time.

At the same time, his mis-management of one of the five historical climate temperature databases deviates from the other four worldwide systems by a inexplicable and continuing set of inconceivable, incomprehensible “corrections” meant to show that other times, like the “Grapes of Wrath dust bowl thirties were not as hot and today is hotter still. In the opinion of this Scientist, he should be publicly excoriated, and then prosecuted for destroying the integrity of one of mankind’s precious historical databases. He is as guilty as those barbarians whose arson burned the Ancient Library of Alexandria.

Just as aside, Dr. Miskolczi is a jovial, round- faced, silvery haired individual who even looks much like Einstein. His peer-reviewed papers published here and abroad, represent a long list of radiation theory work going back into the 1980s. Debate over his theories roil the physics department at many institutions, and requests for reprints of his papers are very high.

Huff Post ought to interview him…

I agree by the way, Mr. Holgren and Ms. Browner are unfortunate appointments by Mr. Obama.

Thanks for the warning; although I really don’t see what made you think I would say anything like that.

You were supporting the original writer’s right to criticize without his being a modeller himself. I was pointing out that he at least needed to be conversant with the science which in this case he clearly isn’t.

Rotation-vibration effects (I Googled- is that right?) may provide extra complexity to CO2 absorption behavior in real world physics, and Harold Ambler may be remiss in not mentioning that, but I still don’t feel reassured that you only need to write a million lines of guaranteed bug free code to prove this.

But issues such as this are why the model needs to be as long as it is. Ambler was remiss in writing a load of crap about something he doesn’t understand. And Ro-vib doesn’t provide extra complexity to CO2 absorption, it’s what CO2 absorption is all about!

“But you’d better know something about the material that dahduh referred to so that you don’t say such crap as: ..”

Thanks for the warning; although I really don’t see what made you think I would say anything like that.

Rotation-vibration effects (I Googled- is that right?) may provide extra complexity to CO2 absorption behavior in real world physics, and Harold Ambler may be remiss in not mentioning that, but I still don’t feel reassured that you only need to write a million lines of guaranteed bug free code to prove this.

Running the numbers may be very comforting and persuasive to some but you don’t have to set up your own model making industry to qualify as still being able to criticize said models.

But you’d better know something about the material that dahduh referred to so that you don’t say such crap as: “Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. That is why plotted on a graph, C02’s ability to capture heat follows a logarithmic curve. We are already very near the maximum absorption level.”
I’ve highlighted the only part of that quote which is accurate!
If the original author wants to criticize the science he’d better get it right, otherwise he deserves whatever flak comes his way.

Not true for sea water which typically has CO2 & carbonic acid (H2CO3) = 1%, bicarbonate (HCO3-) = 93%, carbonate (CO3–) =6%.
So the vast majority of dissolved CO2 in sea water is in the form of the HCO3̄̄- (bicarbonate ion)

Because of the partial pressure of the CO2 above the solution. At 2.5 atmospheres, the pH will indeed be lower, at 3.7.

But your buffer theory said that couldn’t happen!
Les Johnson (14:15:52) :

Carbonic acid in solution, is in equilibrium with the CO2. The vast majority of CO2 stays as CO2, with very little of the CO2 converted to H2CO3.

Carbonic acid is an important BUFFER in blood. It keeps the pH in a narrow range.

In large part because of the return of excess CO2 vis the lungs, note that blood pH is ~7.4 just within range of the pKa of 6.36 (neutral pH ~6.85). Sea water is at a pH of ~8.3, outside the buffer range.

I hold my hands up and say I shouldn’t have said plateau, that implies I know something about the future i.e. that world temperature is definitely going to go down, I should have said levelling off. And as for statistical significance, I guess I would have to come back to you with a trend that lasts 30 years, and again I can’t do that.

I still hold that models can be criticised without dealing with every aspect of that, for instance everything in your model may be ticketyboo, making the right assumptions about physics and having perfectly formed mathematical assumptions. However there could be something missing from the model that makes it totally redundant. I know this may sound like a copout, but this could mean “unknown unknowns” are not catered for, or even speculative things like cosmic ray effects could be more significant (they are not in any models are they?).

If so, it seams that only way to check the models worth is by comparing them with some aspect of reality. When you pointed to “this” I saw a blizzard of lines that must be model runs, with thick lines indicating real world temperature projections (after adjustments have been made by the various entities who provide those projections, and also provide the models), I don’t doubt that at least one of model run that was frighteningly spot-on, but I worry about the usefulness of these models. For example, here in the UK the Met office is beginning to make a name for itself by predicting what the next six months weather will be, I don’t know how seriously they want us to take them but I’m sure that if they ever got it right over two seasons they would certainly want to be taken seriously :-)

In conclusion, really, whilst everything you say about studying the actual models and criticising them in detail can’t be denied as worthwhile, it still remains that the onus is on the people who create these models to show that they have any worth in the real world and have useful predictive power. I know the “precautionary principle” could be invoked, i.e. that we should assume that the worst projections are correct and large-scale endeavours should be taken up to mitigate them. However I think this pre-emptive action could be dangerous for the modelers cause, because when situations occur such as today when the undoubted recent warmth gives way to “surprising” cool periods, then people across the board may end up forever disbelieving the models .

I remain unconvinced that model making is a mature enough science to have this responsibility.

Freeman Dyson’s paper, “The Question of Global Warming”, published in N.Y. Times last summer, addresses this issue partly.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494