…for some reason the AGW theorists can’t seem to explain WHY do you need man made CO2 to get this water vapor feedback started. My car puts out water vapor, and that by itself could start anything that the CO2 can start; so the CO2 is totally superfluous to any argument based on water vapor feedback.

Two differences between CO2 and water vapor:
1. CO2 is a well mixed gas. Water vapor is demonstrably not. Hence the “G” in AGW.
2. When there is an “excess” of water it is sometimes observed to precipitate back out of the atmosphere, occasionally at prodigious rates.

…total cloud cover worldwide at 99 deg C.
So now we turn the laws of physics back on, and watch what happens.
…
So talk of runaway heating are simple nonsense; from people who just don’t have much problem solving skills.
George

An initial column full of water droplets at 99 deg C from 0 to 20 km? That would be an interesting experiment. I don’t think the models could handle 6 cm of boiling water distributed over the entire surface area of the earth.

Phil, I think you mean water vapor. According to the AGW theory, the increase in CO2 will cause an increase in water vapor, which then causes runaway global warming. In said theory, and in all other GH theories, water vapor is by FAR the most important GHG in Earth’s atmosphere. “”"

And the thing that grabs me Pamela, is for some reason the AGW theorists can’t seem to explain WHY do you need man made CO2 to get this water vapor feedback started. My car puts out water vapor, and that by itself could start anything that the CO2 can start; so the CO2 is totally superfluous to any argument based on water vapor feedback.

And if their runaway warming is based on water vapor, then they surely are barking up the wrong tree.

Consider the following mental experiment. We turn off the laws of physics (on out playstation climate modeller); then we crank up the surface temperature of the entire earth to say 99 degrees C (I said just the surface, no more than afew microns deep, so I don’t melt all the ice), and we evaporate enough water into the atmosphere to form a solid cloud layer from the ground to 20 km or so, all over the earth; total cloud cover worldwide at 99 deg C.

So now we turn the laws of physics back on, and watch what happens.

Well of course, if this runaway warming Venus scenario really exists, I would expect the earth’s surface temperature would continue to rise, to put even more water vapor into the atmosphere and eventually boil way the whole of the earth’s water supplies.

But remember; only the top few microns are at 99 degrees, so there isn’t any energy source except the sun to keep on raising the surface temperature and supply latent heat to any more water.

Guess how much sunlight reaches the surface after passing through 20 km of totally water saturated clouds; go and ask somebody in St Louis Mo if you don’t know the answer.

Well some of that cooler material under the hot skin, is going to cool the bottom of the atmosphere and clouds, and it is going to start to rain; for 40 days and 40 nights it will rain; and maybe longer; but the top of the cloud layer is going to cool since the sun cannot maintain it at 99 deg C.

Well you can continue this experiment on your own desert island sandy beach. You’ll get cooling and precipitation till eventually some breaks in the clouds will let sunlight through to slow down the cooling process; and you’ll end up right back where we are now.

Unlike Venus, with its higher solar constant and denser atmosphere and lack of water; the earth does not have a stable hot state, that can be maintained by our 1367 W/m^2 solar constant.
Even if you force it to some extreme condition; it won’t stay there, and in practice; starting from where we are, with the laws of physics opperating all the time; there is no way to reach the condition that I set up above.

So talk of runaway heating are simple nonsense; from people who just don’t have much problem solving skills.

George

I don’t think that we differ in opinion about the (lack of measurable) feedback of CO2 on temperature… That is the case at the end of the Eemian, where the lag of CO2 is several thousands of years, starting to decrease when temperatures are already at minimum and ice sheets at maximum. The subsequent drop of 40 ppmv CO2 has no measurable effect on temperature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html

Melting under vacuum would only be valid if all of the ice were evaporated. Cold liquid water has high solubility for CO2, so the extent of degassing is critical before the ice refreezes by evaporation cooling. It freezes at the surface, so could trap the CO2. However, even if the CO2 issue is resolved at levels presently claimed, and the present level is higher than previous, the feedback amplification for heating has not only not been falsified in its claims on effect, but I think it has had critical flaws in its logic. The CO2 issue was only a secondary issue, and my write-up only stated that I was not convinced there were no problems, but did not state that even if it were being correctly described, that it would affect my conclusions.

I agree that it is better to use no historical land data at all, but I would make an exception for the data obtained at sea and coastal data, as far as the measuring method is reliable (not always that obvious…), as these are normally (in current times) providing background levels.

If there are cracks in the ice, that doesn’t make a difference if it are mechanical cracks (from drilling or transport): the full air will escape through cracks, not only CO2, and from diffusion one would expect too high CO2 levels, not too low.

If the cracks are caused by “exploding” clathrates (as Segalstad/Jaworowski say), then O2/N2 will escape first, leaving CO2 clathrates which decompose at higher temperatures and lower pressure, at 0.03% of the original volume, thus probably also measuring too high levels…

The Etheridge work showed that at closing depth there was no difference between CO2 levels ( http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1996/95JD03410.shtml ) in the firn from the still open bubbles and CO2 in the ice of already closed bubbles, taken via different ways but measured both with the same GC equipment. Two cores had at maximum five remelt layers, the third core even less.

I am aware of two methods used for ice core CO2 measurements: the older method melted everything under vacuum over a cold trap, freezing out any water vapor, the other is what still is in use: crushing the ice under vacuum and a cold trap. The difference between the two methods was a few ppmv less CO2 for the total melt. I fear that the method you propose will give too low values… and a few other problems: the water/refreezing volume is quite a lot larger than the air volume to be measured…

I do not disagree on the unreliability of Beck’s data for global averages. However, it is still not valid to select some sets as being much more likely to be GLOBAL averages, as all were still over land. The fit of one set to another is not a sufficient justification to accept it, as that plays to a bias. I suggested to just not use any of the early chemical data and that is the only fair way to bypass that problem. Also it appears to me how the same arguments can result in tree ring reliability as questionable. Trees grow in forests and are surrounded by probably changing local conditions. Regarding the technique for gas samples, I understand that a vacuum is applied before the ice is crushed, so the CO2 in cracks could escape. The fast sealing firn to ice also probably gets some local melting during summer, so that is suspect. The slow sealing ice, which probably does not melt at all, has the problems I stated (the large firn porous area can absorb the CO2 selectively at large depth before the large surface area compresses completely). Also I read that other ways of getting the gas composition gave other results. It seems a method was selected that agreed with preconceptions. I would like to know details of these other methods. My suggestion would be to gas displace (Argon) any surrounding gas or gas in cracks, then melt and evaporate all of a sample, then freeze out the water vapor to a thin solid sheet (to keep gas out). The remaining could be examined for total gas details, and would satisfy me much more as accurate composition. Any trapped CO2 would be released this way and give total gas trapped up to any lost in the cracks and displaced.

Thanks for the full article, which makes a nice overview of the problems with AGW. I only have comments on the parts of CO2 data and ice core CO2 reliability (my favorite hobbies…):

About Beck’s paper: see my comments here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html

Callendar excluded “suspect” historical CO2 data which were intended for agricultural purposes (Giessen, Poona, the latter in the midst of rice and soy fields) with a priory criteria. That his data are smoothless in line with ice core (50 years later!) and MLO CO2 trends only proves that he was right.

Further, several series were taken over/near the oceans and these series have averages and ranges around the ice core data. Even the minima (at high wind speed) of the land based data are below the ice core data, which shows that the ice core data are not far off the real background CO2 level of that time:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/beck_1930_1950.jpg

About ice cores:
The first issue is right, there is smoothing of the oce core CO2 record, which is the reciproke of the amount of snow falling each year. For the fastest accumulation ice cores (2 of the Law Dome ice cores: 1.2 m ice equivalent per year), the smoothing is about 8 years, increasing to several hundreds of years for the Vostok ice core with a few mm ice equivalent. But that means that the Law Dome ice cores should see any peak of CO2 lasting a decade or so, including Beck’s historical 1935-1950 peak of +80 ppmv CO2. That is completely absent in the Law Dome records (neither visible in the stomata record).

About the second issue:
One need to be cautious with stomata (index) data: stomata are formed in leaves and leaves, by definition, grow on land (sea plants are a different story). But near ground over land CO2 levels have a positive bias compared to background. That can be compensated for by calibrating the stomata data with ice core CO2 data (!), but that is no guarantee that historical changes in landscape/vegetation and local temperature/humidity over time have not more influence on local CO2 levels, thus stomata response, than background CO2 changes over time…

The third issue is practically a non-problem at Antarctic conditions:
Any liquid layer at the surface of some enclosed air bubbles is about 5-10 atoms thick. The amount of CO2 dissolving into this is negligible. Moreover, measurements of CO2 in ice cores are taken under vacuum, leaving virtually no CO2 in any liquid layer. Remelted layers are only present in some cases at near coast ice cores and are avoided as much as possible.

Cracks in the ice should (and does) in general increase measured CO2 levels, as the current outside air is at 385 ppmv, while the inside air bubbles are at 180-300 ppmv… There is no liquid water at all in ice cores like Vostok at average -40°C, but these show the same CO2 levels for the same gas age as other, more coastal ice cores:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_001kyr_large.jpg

As an extra, compare the timing of the increase in CO2 with the decrease of d13C in the same ice cores/firn/atmosphere and with the completely independent decrease of d13C in the upper oceans as measured in coralline sponges:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif

Many of the objections against ice core CO2 data (mostly from Segalstad/Jaworowski, 1992), including the non-existent offset between ice cores CO2 dating and atmospheric measurements, were resolved by the 1996 (!) work of Etheridge on three Law Dome ice cores. These show that the ice core CO2 measurements are a reliable, but smoothed, reflection of ancient CO2 levels. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html

Problem here, Mike, is that King Canute actually went down to the shore to prove he was NOT all-powerful by showing his silly subjects that he could not control the sea as they boasted he could.

Silly subjects. Although there do seem to be a lot of the same still infesting the enlightened even today, so we probably do need a new King Canute to restore balance. A Man of Wisdom.

convection, and instability that offers negative feedback to climate warming
NASA researcher Sirpa Hakkinen of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Mass., and the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081006180815.htm

Thank You!

I mentioned 9 deg F. The first time it was just something from the day’s news doubling the projected 2100 temperature rise. “…the MIT-based research found a 90% probability that worldwide surface temperatures will rise at least 9 degrees ((F)) by 2100.”

I wholeheartedly agree that the to date temperatures increase by much less…roughly 1 deg F. But, that’s apparently enough to start damaging our western forests. The warmth allows the pine beetles to survive the winter. In Arizona;, and the U.S. and Canadian Rockies: the pine beetle damage exceeds the fire damage.
The authors of these accounts are the ones who suggest that the warmth and the reduced precipitation, may be early signs of global warming.

The second mention was the 9 deg F increase it takes to get from glacial cold up to Interglacial warmth. The third mention was to the projected 9 deg F increase that would be on top of the present day’s interglacial warmth. This could be either from the MIT study, or from smaller projections that (arbitrarily) act over a longer period of time.

I will cncede that I have a certain fondness for “9 deg F”…because it equals “5 deg C”. So it provides the only opportunity to go back and forth ( OK, besides the freezing and boiling points of water) without approximations.

There has been NO significant temperature rise in 1978-2003. Rise between 1907-1950s made 2/3-3/4 of overall temperature rise during the 20th century. Fact: global temperatures are now equal or lower compared to 30ties (USA) or 50ties /Europe). See Armagh observatory temperature record at http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Armagh1796-2002.html (2008 has 9.78C average). Do not even consider to use HadCRUT or GISS for any comparing with anything. SSTs are better (no UHI), but still flawed after WWII by wrong accounting for sampling techniques.

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Hi Juraj,

I can’t confirm all that you have said but agree with much of it.

There has been NO net global warming (and probably about 0.3C cooling) since ~1940, imo.

Hadcrut3 ST data appear to exhibit ~0.07C false warming per decade (due to UHI, land use change, etc.), compared to UAH LT data.

Best, Allan

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Moderator:

Kindly delete the vulgar post from Yo Ma Ma (16:54:59) .

Perhaps you could replace it with one from Yo-Yo Ma.
http://www.yo-yoma.com/news/songs-joy-peace

Play this:
http://myplay.com/audio_player/myplay/300664/357990/358015?allowBrowsing=1

The interglacial immediately prior to this one (Sangamon ~130,000 years ago) was also warmer (~4C) than it is today and sea level was ~10-15m higher than it now is.

If the ice core CO2 data are correct, atmospheric CO2 was in the 290ppm-315ppm range at the warmest part of the Sangamon Interglacial. If you look at any chart of ice core-derived CO2 vs. temperature over the Upper Pleistocene, you’ll see a couple of curves that move in relative unison (with the temp’s leading the CO2 by ~800 years)…If you tack the modern data onto the Pleistocene ice core curves, temperatures behave just like the prior interglacials; but the CO2 *appears* to go asymptotic. If the ice core CO2 is right, our modern atmosphere is not being warmed significantly by anthropogenic CO2. If the ice core CO2 data are wrong (and the plant SI data are right), 80% (or more) anthropogenic CO2 emissions are being taken up by natural carbon sinks. If we go back to the warmest part of the Pliocene (mid-Ploicene Warm Period), CO2 levels were around 500ppm; but average temperatures were only ~5C warmer than they are today.

There’s just no hard evidence in the geological record of CO2-driven climate change. And there is a fair amount of evidence that atmospheric CO2 levels have at times reacted to climate changes.

I did an Earth science MS a couple of years ago and was impressed with OIS 11. (Oxygen Isotope Stage around 400,000 years ago) The astonomer A. Berger wrote a paper arguing that the current interglacial is more like OIS 11 than any of those in between and that since OIS11 lasted around 50,000 years, the present interglacial will be around the same length, about 2.5 times longer than usual.

During OIS 11, sea level rose around 22 meters, whereas the highest level during the Holocene was probably 2 meters, around 5,000 years ago.

For a project, I searched for and believe I found beach terraces that correspond to these periods. Awesome to stand 6 storeys above sea level and image the land below you was once under the sea.

If Berger is right, we are already almost a third through this interglacial. And even without any human activity, this interglacial will see much of London and New York under water. It’s just a matter of time.

My professor, who is a specialist in Quaternary geology, believes we are just recovering from the Little Ice Age and so do I.

You are right. I stand corrected.

The one from 1928 to 2008? (80 years) That’s about a 1/10 of 1 degree rise – over the next two hundred years.

The one from 1935 to 1970? (35 years) That would be a decrease of some 10 or 15 degrees.

The one from 1998 through 2009 (11 years) – that would be a decrease of some 4 or 5 degrees.

The one you WANT to cherry pick from the entire world’s geologic history is the single short little 35 year period from 1973 to 1998 – but that also does NOT yield a 9 degree increase.

You are exaggerating the assumed and guessed effect of CO2, are thereby lying. The world’s crops (every green plant on the earth!) are growing and living some 12% to 27% faster, stronger, hardier, and more resiliantly due to a fortunate increase in CO2. More food, fuel, fodder, feed, and seeds for all of us.