So can somebody please explain to me, using those graphs, just exactly what is the physics that explains why Methane (CH4) is claimed to be 20 times as obnoxious as a GHG than CO2, carbon dioxide is ?

Not with those graphs George, they’re little more than cartoons and miss out key data (such as concentration).

Tell us, Joel, why is the planet’s temperature flat to declining, even as the harmless, beneficial trace gas CO2 continues to rise?

Why, have you missed the other 49 times that I have explained it? It is due to the characteristics of systems that have both an underlying (approximately) linear trend plus noise. Basically, it is for the very same reason that it is not at all unusual to find week-long periods here in Rochester in the spring when the temperature trend is negative even though we know that we have a very strong seasonal cycle and the seasonal “forcing” at that time is positive.

As Benjamin P. notes, there is also a recent paper by Swanson and Tsonis (and a guest post over at RealClimate by Swanson) that proposes a more complicated hypothesis, which still amounts to climate variability superimposed on the long term warming trend, but with a more multidecadal character…more along the lines of the PDO stuff that has been talked about a lot here…and on this basis predicts a “pause” in the warming. However, I am still skeptical that such an explanation is necessary as there is no real indication that approximately decade-long negative trends should be that unusual. See, for example, Easterling and Wehner http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/csi/images/GRL2009_ClimateWarming.pdf (who even show the existence of 15-year negative trends in a climate model forced with steadily increasing GHGs).

As for your continued use of the word “trace gas” presumably to imply that somehow a gas present at only ~4 parts in 10,000 couldn’t possibly have much effect, I will only remind you (yet again!) that ~99% of the atmosphere is made up of diatomic molecules that are essentially transparent to infrared radiation, so the remaining ~1% play a disproportionately large role in the radiative balance. Furthermore, the fact that the forcing of the IR-active gases depends approximately logarithmically on their concentration over a large range of concentrations also means that small amounts play a disproportionately large role.

So far this summer we have had only 18 days over 90F and NONE over 95F
In 2008 we had 9 days between 90 and 94 and 11days 95F and over.
In 2004 (mid cycle 23) we had 24 days between 90 and 94 and 14 days 95F and over.
What is really interesting is 17 of those over ninety degree days were in May and we hit 98 twice compared to this year when the may high was 89 and only for one day.

Can someone tell me how that translates to North Carolina being HOTTER? Yes Yes I know its weather NOT climate…

Check out; http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Atmospheric_Transmission.png

Okay don’t holler I know it’s a wikipedia reference.

Now cast your eye on the third line from the bottom which is labelled Methane; and note that the scale goes from 0.2 microns to 50 microns wave;ength range, which encompasses the entire of interest solar spectrum range, and earth surface emitted infra red radiation (well it would be nice to go past 100 microns).

So can somebody please explain to me, using those graphs, just exactly what is the physics that explains why Methane (CH4) is claimed to be 20 times as obnoxious as a GHG than CO2, carbon dioxide is ?

I can’t see where it has any effect at all in any meaningful partof the spectrum.

bill (20:02:08) :
Try doing some lots of temperature and Ice cores. I found that on exit from an ice age CO2 and temperature rise “simultaneously” entry into an ice age does not seem to be co2 related.
The simultaneousness is of course difficult to prove since the record has such large time slices. But it does not look as if CO2 is lagging temperature. . .

Check out these posts (and comment threads):

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/21/co2-does-not-drive-glacial-cycles/

/Mr Lynn

Benjamin P. (22:57:19) :

So AWG exists solely as a some great conspiracy in an effort to….?

Well, it depends if you are open to the possibility that politicians have political plans. There is no conspiracy as such, in the sense of secrecy. What there is though, is an open vocal call for a global response to global problems, which is to say, the creation of a global governance. You can see it called for quite openly here:

http://www.worldforum.org/

Read that site, read the names, and see whether you agree with their vision. I would agree with their vision, except I think it is too complex a task for us at the moment. Too many parts of the world simply wouldn’t go with it. But being a global problem, global warming is emphasized.

Now, the world needs to unite for all sorts of reasons, as there are many global problems, like nuclear proliferation. So it makes sense to emphasize global warming, to start to build global governance, so that we can then begin to deal with other global problems. And if global warming happens to not be a real problem? Well politically we’re still trying to build some sort of global governance, and I can point you to religious quotations where it is indeed ethical to perpetrate a lie for the sake of something good. So it is not hard to believe, rather, it would be hard to believe that politicians are not doing this. After all, the whole world is at stake.

Read it.

Swanson, K.L. and A.A. Tsonis, 2009: Has the climate recently shifted? Geophysical Research Letters, 36, doi:10.1029/2008GL037022.

http://www.uwm.edu/~kswanson/publications/2008GL037022_all.pdf

But what do I know? I am just a rock loving geologist, not a climate scientist.

If I get the gist of that right, the temperature swings up and down come about because the climate is more sensitive to swings than previously thought, and this suggests that far from cooling being a sign that the climate is not running away, it could well be a sign that the climate is even more sensitive, and thus more prone to warming. Well, that’s a fine post-rationalised answer. We can all post-rationalise, we’re all very good at it. And that’s fine, I don’t mean to claim that it is only a made up answer, for everything we think is something we created or made up. Rather, it could well be true, but the problem is, how do we know if it is true?

How would you know if it true?

So AWG exists solely as a some great conspiracy in an effort to….?

Smokey (12:15:19) :

My apologies. I sure thought that’s what you were implying.

Mr Lynn (12:23:59) :

You too agree with John that AWG is a means to…? Secretly? Some agenda of some sort? I saw a link from some fellow here that got a lot of praise…green-agenda.com or something like that. Really quite humorous.

“This hypothesis has been abundantly falsified, to the satisfaction of thousands of scientists and laymen here and elsewhere”

Not to me–I have not seen this abundant falsification you speak of. I’ve seen Smokey post a graph countless times of the last 10 years of temperature data, maybe that’s what you are talking about.

Smokey (18:47:35) :

“We already know that water vapor affects temperature. ”

But temperature also affect water vapor.

“Tell us, Joel, why is the planet’s temperature flat to declining, even as the harmless, beneficial trace gas CO2 continues to rise?”

An interesting read over at real climate. I know, a bunch of conspiracy, anti-science types there, but its a guest post talking about their recent publication. So not so anti-sciencey, grant-money graberish, or heck, their guest post author likely wants some grant money too. Can’t trust anyone who says the earth is warming….okay, too much sass there.

Read it.

Swanson, K.L. and A.A. Tsonis, 2009: Has the climate recently shifted? Geophysical Research Letters, 36, doi:10.1029/2008GL037022.

http://www.uwm.edu/~kswanson/publications/2008GL037022_all.pdf

But what do I know? I am just a rock loving geologist, not a climate scientist.

Ben

John the question has never been that temperatures have risen, or will rise, or will fall… All of those things will occur over the course of the next several thousand millennia. The question is what is the driver of that warming and/or cooling.

CO2 is not powerful enough to do this ( even the IPCC admits to this ) Though it is, I suppose, the gateway gas ( pun intended ) according to the IPCC. Because of the minuscule change in temperature attributed to CO2 they have massive feedback effects that then reshape the temperature to something much higher then it is.

Add onto this that the datasets we are using are NOT scientificaly accurate ( any data you have to adjust is not very scientific ) It is for this very reason this site came into existence. Anthony started doing something that it still seems no one else has thought about doing. Going and looking at the stations that get the bloody data that gets ‘adjusted’ from this I have to admit that I do not see any scientific merit to many of the sites that we use to even say there is global warming.

Now you say that the satellites are behind the curve and they are going to be going up, which I suppose makes sense… It also makes sense that we would see the largest gain in 4 years ( you mean since el Nino started to fade and la Nina came into play? ) Which will certainly effect the temperature data. (as it has in many times past )

I suppose the thing that I am confused about is why any of this is even a question to you? It is readily apparent so why bring it up? A better question would be what is the best way to take the earths temperature so we can actually gauge what is going on. The second question is so long as it is going in the upward direction do we really have anything to be worried about? Hate to say it but I am much more scared of temperatures reversing course on me then I am about them getting a couple degrees warmer. This is mostly because I can see a great many more issues with a colder world then I can a warmer one.

I do not think I stayed on point here I think I rambled a bit. Bottom line. Temperature over last 2000 years looks pretty damn unstable to me, I would rather be at the high end of the temperature spectrum, rather then the low end ( at least during my life ) I am tired of people saying science is settled and then turning a blind eye to anything that disagrees with their ’science’ which looks more and more like a belief system to me.

Well, how about a few hundred million years BP? No apparent correlation, and when CO2 rises, it’s generally after temperatures do. Long-enough timescale?

/Mr Lynn

We already know that water vapor affects temperature. You set that strawman up and knocked him right down, you he-man, you! Gosh, the ladies must be awfully impressed. But not scientific skeptics.

Tell us, Joel, why is the planet’s temperature flat to declining, even as the harmless, beneficial trace gas CO2 continues to rise?

Take your time.

It is entirely analogous the seasonal cycle: Nobody ever claims that they don’t believe in the seasonal cycle just because we have a week in March or April where the temperature trend here in Rochester is negative. However, people nonetheless understand that one can predict with great confidence that it is going to be considerably warmer here in June than it is in January.

As for sulfur dioxide, water vapor, or methane: Sulfur dioxide oxidizes into sulfate aerosols that cause cooling. Methane causes warming…and is not ignored…but will not be as major a player as CO2 over the long term, primarily because it has a shorter residence time in the atmosphere. And, water vapor is extremely important but its concentration in the atmosphere is “slave” to the temperature so human emissions of water vapor (at least on the magnitudes that we are currently capable of) are not relevant; of course, the role of the water vapor feedback is very relevant and now quite well-demonstrated (see, e.g., http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;323/5917/1020 ).

This is completely disingenuous. Of course all the Warmists will admit that other factors besides CO2 influence climate, but as Smokey points out, the whole raison d’etre of the movement to control ‘carbon’ by establishing vast bureaucracies and spending trillions of dollars on ‘alternative’ ‘clean’ energy is based on the hypothesis that carbon dioxide is the great villain, liable at any moment to turn the poor old Earth into an uninhabitable ‘cauldren’ (to use Hansen’s term) like Venus.

This hypothesis has been abundantly falsified, to the satisfaction of thousands of scientists and laymen here and elsewhere. But nowhere do we see the Warmists, Alarmists, Algorytes, and Eco-fascists saying, “Gee, we were wrong about CO2. It’s not a problem.” Instead they plow ahead with insidious ‘cap-and-trade’ (carbon) schemes, and insane nonsense about ’sequestering’ ‘carbon’.

John Galt is right: Smokey is right.

/Mr Lynn

“For you to claim that the warmist say the CO2 is the ONLY variable in climate change is dishonest…”.

Can’t let you re-frame the argument like that.

I thought my point was pretty clear: that the AGW crowd has placed their big bet on CO2 as the main driver of global warming.

Notice my original statement: “You will rarely see an article about sulfur dioxide, water vapor, or methane. No, it is almost always CO2…”. See the words ‘rarely,’ and ‘almost always’?

I don’t see anything incorrect in my original statement.

The AGW hypothesis is exploited by various warm-mongers, such as Gore, Hansen, Waxman, the Obama administration and the MSM. They misrepresent AGW for their own purposes.

Smokey is right.

I’ve read articles about Methane, SO2, water vapor, as well as CO2. I’ve read articles about solar variance, oceanic oscillations, el nino and la nina. I’ve read articles about aerosols, albedo, land use changes, etc.

For you to claim that the warmist say the CO2 is the ONLY variable in climate change is dishonest, because I’ve never met a scientist who makes that claim.

The only folks I see making the claim that “warmist” say CO2 is the only variable is the “denilists, skeptics, coolists, “.

Perhaps I am reading the wrong warmists and you could point me to where the claim CO2 is the only variable is claimed.

You are wrong. ALL of the global warming hype depends entirely on the repeatedly falsified claim that CO2 is the primary cause of the lack of empirical evidence for AGW. Everywhere we look, we see the propaganda about the evil “carbon” — by which they mean carbon dioxide. You will rarely see an article about sulfur dioxide, water vapor, or methane. No, it is almost always CO2; “carbon.”

Why does the AGW scam depend on demonizing this essential, beneficial, and completely harmless trace gas? Because the claim that CO2 will lead to a “tipping point” and cause runaway global warming is the corner that the AGW contingent has boxed itself into.

You see, if CO2 doesn’t lead directly to climate catastrophe, then there is no rationale for spending $trillions — or any substantial amount of money at all — to mitigate a non-problem. Is there?

No. So CO2 must be kept as the cause of the CO2=AGW hypothesis. The AGW gang has hung their collective hats on demonizing CO2 — and now it turns out that CO2 has no measurable effect on temperature at all. None. The entire argument demonizing CO2 comes from always-inaccurate computer models; real world, empirical evidence that CO2 causes global warming is non-existent.

For you to back away from the failed CO2=AGW conjecture is telling. It means that the realization that CO2 can not be the cause of noticeable global warming is becoming apparent to the general public. Bad news for the climate alarmists.

Look how different our graphs are!
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/offset:-0.1/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/offset:-.1/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:2000/offset:-315/scale:0.005

Your green line looks pretty damning, but you had some nice cherry picking there. If you add a regression line to your data, you should use the full spectrum of data you are presenting.

Alternatively, you could have presented this graph if you really wanted to start your trend at 2001.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/offset:-0.1/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/offset:-.2/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:2001/offset:-315/scale:0.005

That looks like a lot more cooling and should suit your argument better, without ignoring data you are presenting (of course, as we know, you are ignoring a lot of other data, but that’s beside the point).