Open Weekend Thread

Good luck with the rebuild!
…and thanks for all of the effort you and the moderators put into providing this wealth of information.

Okay, I’m a well known warmist here on WUWT, but I’m open to learning. I’m fairly well convinced that prior to the massive influx of anthropogenic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, that solar fluctuations caused most of the short-term (i.e. non-Milankovtich) fluctuations in climate. These fluctuations can be anywhere in length from sunspot cycles to much longer Bond Event (i.e. around 1500 year) cycles. However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?

5 Jan: NYT Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin: Still Searching for Republicans With Climate Concerns
The Climate Desk, a collaborative journalism project of Mother Jones and several other publications, has produced a video searching in vain for a Republican presidential candidate willing to make any science-based statements on climate…
Toward the end of the video you hear from a truly rare species, a New Hampshire conservative who sees climate change as important.
Then comes Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who’s been studying possible impacts of greenhouse warming on tropical storms for decades – and who has lately been vocal about his longtime affiliation with the Republican Party.
“Responsibility is a big Republican theme,” Emanuel says. “Why should they not take responsibility for what we collectively are doing to the climate system?”
Oddly, the marching orders for Republican presidential candidates appear to be out of sync with attitudes of most members of their party, outside a small fringe that is obstructionist on anything smacking of an energy policy. This makes the field of candidates deserving of the 2011 Climate B.S. Award (B.S. for “bad science”) that they received today from the environmental analyst and blogger Peter Gleick….
Perhaps once the silly season is over, and the surviving candidate starts seeking broader support, climate-smart energy policies could be mentionable once more. Until then there remains a “fundamental Republican science problem.”.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/still-searching-for-republicans-with-climate-concerns/
dear Andrew, your headline proves u r a fool.
go talk to the Conservative governments running all but a handful of European countries, where CAGW is the Gospel Truth, and where mention of Climategate is taboo, and then re-write your piece. if you bothered to check, Andrew, you might even find that some Liberals, once associated with Mother Jones, including some prominent ones i could name, are now sceptics.

“How do skeptics to AGW explain this?”
As usual by following the money, here in the UK the govt now raise more than £40b a year in environmental taxes – fair enough you would say, its saving the planet
Problem is its all stick and no carrot, they are taking the money but not doing anything to guarantee a reduction in emissions

R. Gates writes “temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?”
I can only speak for myself. There are an enormous number of ways in which the earth’s climate and weather change. I am sure there are more unknowns than knowns. So who knows what is causing what. The only thing we can be really sure of, is that whenever we look for a CO2 signal among the temperature records, we cannot find one.

No thread so insignificant that Gates won’t try to hijack it. Gotta get my exclude Gates code working again.

DonS says:
January 7, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“No thread so insignificant that Gates won’t try to hijack it.”
If open threads are insignificant to you, why do you read it?
And: Open threads cannot be hijacked by definition.

Jim:
There is one signal that stands out repeatedly. At the end of each interglacial, co2 keeps rising and temps fall. There has been no variation in that theme that I have as of yet found.
The above is not saying that co2 doesn’t retain heat, it is saying that co2 is not the “driver” of climate that some would believe.

In response to R. Gates…
In engineering, we sometimes use a statistical methodology known as design of experiments (DOE), which is used to ascertain the interaction between primary and secondary factors. It’s been a couple decades since I took the course but as I recall, the technique can only consider a couple interactions.
The Earth’s temperature (if there is such a thing) is dependent upon far more than just the amount of radiant energy coming from the sun and reradiating back to space. All of the heat that ends up being absorbed in the “System” is subsequently transferred to other parts of the “System” through a variety of convective processes in both the atmosphere and the oceans. For example, in the atmosphere we have the Jet Stream, trade winds, Arctic Oscillation, and who knows how many other processes. Similarly, in the Oceans there are ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream and the Japanese Current, short-term events such as the ENSO cycles, and long-term decadal events such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Every one of these factors, and others like them, vary in location and intensity, but it is their combined interaction that determines the global climate. Yet statistical tools like DOE are incapable of considering interactions between so many stochastic processes. In my opinion, that is exactly why climate models are bogus.
History has shown us that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation plays a big role in climate. I would put my money on that factor combined with other convective processes as being responsible for any perceived warming over the past thirty years… or should I say the warming period from the late 70’s to the late 90’s since temperature increases have been largely flat since then…

gee thanks!

Computer rebuild? I hope it hasn’t anything to do with solid state drives, Anthony, as I followed your lead and changed over to such a device. So far, so good.
All the best,
Ian

Paul Westhaver says:
January 7, 2012 at 12:36 pm
Found this..

Mr Gates.
Since there are no reliable global temperature records prior to the thermometer era, how do you know what the global temperatures were in times past, and to what precision?

“R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am Okay, I’m a well known warmist here on WUWT, but I’m open to learning.”
Now that Rog Tattersall has taught you something you must be feeling a bit cooler.
You might also like to acknowledge that because X is not Y it doesn’t follow that Z must be Y.

Congratulations Anthony!

What the F do I know?
But if, as seems to be the consensus, that plants use CO2 and give off O2, then if…if…there has been a lessening of CO2 absorbing plants over the last few decades (de-forestation etc) then couldn’t that account for at least some of the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere? Not that that proves anything with respect to the relationship between CO2 and the apparent slight warming that might have occurred over those decades.

drbob says:
January 7, 2012 at 2:02 pm
Mr Gates … given that the thermometer record spans an infinitesmal portion of Earth’s climate history, I would venture that any variations observed in it, whether accurate or badly recorded, are very likely little more than noise … an 0.01 percent in atmospheric CO2 content the cause of a ‘believed’ climate change event over a statistically meaningless time span ? … no, I prefer to remain entirely skeptical …
_____
Dr. Bob,
You are right of course in the length of time we have thermometer records, and even if we extend the record to include various proxies, the relative length of time for the paleoclimate record is relatively small compared to the age of the Earth, for example. But variations within the record, while appearing as “noise” only are such, based on what kind of signal you’re looking for. The climate is far from being a random walk, and that which is classified as “natural variation” could be seen as noise, only if that is not the signal we are interested in. Solar cycles ENSO, volcanic activity, etc. all can be seen as “noise” in the overall Milankovitch astronomical cycle, yet if we are looking for the ENSO signal over appropriate time spans, then it is no longer noise, and becomes the signal. The time span and what signal you’re looking for is of course the key to what you’ll call “noise” and what you’ll call signal. Some analysis (much criticized by some skeptics, naturally) would indicate that about 17 years is the length of time it takes to definitely see the anthropogenic greenhouse signal amidst the “noise” of natural variations.

Tallbloke said:
“If the ARGO data hasn’t been massaged too badly, then the signs are that large amounts of energy are leaving the ocean from deeper down than ARGO measures. This is the only logic which can account for simultaneously dropping sea levels and rising OHC. Either that or the refreezing of Greenland is worse than we thought…”
_____
I think this merits some discussion. For example, during the current La Nina we are (as is the case for most La Nina’s) seeing a rise in OHC, yet the dropping sea levels really appear as a short-term phenomenon related to a huge amount of water that was moved to the land during last winters La Nina. Australia, Asia, and South America all saw incredible flooding during the same period that La Nina was storing more net heat in the ocean. This makes some sense, as the area of the global ocean that La Nina stores heat (equatorial Pacific for example), is different than the area where the water is being evaporated and moved to land (far western Pacific and south western Atlantic). One would expect to see this water returned back to the oceans during ENSO neutral periods, and that over the long-term, OHC and ocean levels will continue their parallel rise.

Rebuilding a computer is a weekend off?!

Ohhh….the next counter we should be watching…is the facebook one. It’s up to 3400+. I think it was around 3000 when I ‘liked’ it or friended it or what ever Mark Zuckerberg says we sez we say…or something…anyway…
Everyone should ‘like’ Anthony! Fer real!
Even if you have to set up a stupid fake facebook, just to ‘like’ him…or figure out how to ‘like’ him…privately or something…in case “you are afraid to come out of the closet”…sorry shamless Southpark plug…grrr…spell check strikes yet again on this thread…Mann, funny how that happens sometimes…except when it isn’t.

R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
==============================
sucker bait……….
Gates, for the most part skeptics do not think for one minute that we know enough about any of it….to explain it….and certainly don’t believe we can design computer games to predict anything.
The fact that the computer games do not recognize natural variability…..says the computer games do not know if it’s CO2? clouds? winds? sun? elephant farts?…..total fail
What we are left with is spending a lot of money on computer games that do what any child can do….extend a trend
…if this trend continues

R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 2:48 pm
====================
Weather is not climate, try as one might.
Heat does not place ice on continents.
Grasping at straws does not prevent drowning.

Tallbloke:
The floods were one way that the AGW folks were trying to eqaulize the slowing down of sea level rise.
What they failed at is that the normal traverse of water from land to ocean is approx 4.2 months world wide.
One of the longest systems in the world is the Missouri River/Mississippi River system. It has been at normal levels for months now after epic floods this spring.
I am sure there are other areas of the world that are now also dry. Central Plains of the USA/Canada. Urkrane in Europe…just to name a few.
The retained water on land theory doesn’t cut it when dealing with reality.
The OHC has not risen, and in fact looks flat with a negative bias. The XBT data had such wide error bars that nothing of definitive value could be assertained there. Step jump in 2003 when swithcing to ARGO buoys…..and flat since they became predominant.
All in all, the slowing of the rise of sea level is indicative of a cooling ocean. This confirms the slowing down of the sun, as we all know that SW radiation pentrates the oceans, but LWR doesn’t…ok….2 or 3 microns, but evaporation pretty much takes care of any heat.

DirkH says:
January 7, 2012 at 3:57 pm
“Warmists spawn new generation.”
If you’re an American and you have a third grade schoolkid in a public school, you might want to check whether “Kid Pan Alley” activists infiltrate your school. They pretend to “let the kids write a song” which will then turn out to be a warmist or an OWS class warfare song.

Anthony,
Congrats on the excellent statistics! I’ve been here since 2008 so quite a few thousand of your page views are mine 🙂
Regarding the computer rebuild, I agree, it takes time. I just tried to restore an oldish computer with a Windows XP recovery partition, thiking it should work (that is what recovery partitions are for, right?). Wrong, it didn’t even manage to get the graphics card driver to work. 4 bits per pixel is not much…. and don’t even mention the wireless card. Then I tried a Linux LiveCD (Kubuntu), and half an hour later I was browsing the net. Everything just worked.
Thanks for all your efforts, a rest is well deserved!

tallbloke says:
January 7, 2012 at 3:43 pm
I’m not sure I buy his floods as a reason for sea level fall though. Six mm of world ocean is equivalent to a couple of thousand cubic kilometers of water IIRC.
======================================================
360 km³ of water will raise the oceans 1 mm X 6 mm = 2160 km³
..It’s hiding in the deep ocean with the missing heat and the unprecedented droughts

Does anyone have an estimate of how much heat was added to the troposphere by popping off thousands of nuclear devices between 1945 and 1998?
[REPLY: Atmospheric tests may have numbered less than 1000. Start here. -REP]

If there is someone here who can speak from an expert level on the difference between the two sea-level graphs that Tallbloke has presented, please post something.
Note: Saying Nasa, CU, Hansen, Trenberth, etc. etc. etc., are lying is not going to hack it. I’d really like an experts opinion.

Tthe GISS temp has dropped by as much as 0.5 degC from Nov. to Dec. 2011:
http://junksciencearchive.com/MSU_Temps/MSUvsGISTEMP.html
And now GISS is lower than UAH! Is this real??

“”[Reply] I reach more people via my blog than I would via a paywall. TB – mod””
You will never appreciate just how much dopey lay people like myself appreciate your efforts in global education of the climate paradox.

Ferd Burple said:
“The fact that the satellites confirm that the deep oceans are not warming…”
_____
Some amazing satellites, for sure, seeing down 2000, 3000, 4000 meters and more.
Evaporation is a far more effective way of removing water volume than thermal contraction, and as the Grace satellite data showed, that’s exactly what happend during the 2010-2011 La Nina.

“R. Gates says: January 7, 2012 at 4:42 pm
tokyoboy, Odd that you would stop at 2009 with CET,…”
The numerical data says the end year for the graph was 2010, not 2011.
As you say, the 2011 temp is much higher than 2010 (sorry…..).

“Camburn says:
January 7, 2012 at 4:52 pm 8. We all know that water flow from Greenland has increased. Altho, in the mean mass, the volume while up, is not a large volume. Antartic Ice Volume, in your opinion, has gone down. Yet, the oceans are not reflecting the increase in water from said volume.”
Here is some recent anecdotal evidence suggesting Antarctic Ice volume has gone up.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/douglas-mawson-centenary-trip-to-antarctica-frozen-as-cold-reality-sets-in/story-e6frg8y6-1226227156367

Cooking the sea level data……….
http://www.real-science.com/cooking-sea-level-data

Being an open thread I would like to add my two cents worth. The closed shop of the hockey team and the abuse of science for personal and political gain has been outed.
We can thank them for their narrow view and corruption of science, as it has led to a plethora
of real scientific endeavour and recent discoveries are uncovering many of the mysteries of climate.
This rush of real science will give us a real picture of planetary climate, thus forever abolishing
the carpet baggers who’s alarmism frightened gullible MSM and politicians into expensive stupidity.
People like R.GATES et al have done the world a favour as it prods people in the direction of real science.
AGW will die a death of a thousand cuts as more and more diligent scientists release their findings. The internet has been the only source of dissent as the cabal controlled information,
the next global problem for freedom will be keeping the internet free of political control.
One can only hope that the lessons learned in climate science will spread to other disciplines
of science that allow no dissent from the consensus view.
An old proverb that measures the hockey team rather well.
“What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive” Thank you to all here whom are untangling the web.

However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
Define “solar activity”.
Simply put, there has only been serious study of the sun and it’s various kinds of activity done or even been possible for a few decades now, since we have been able to measure all that it is doing, directly (solar wind, UV changes, magnetism etc) and indirectly (changes in cosmic rays). During that time, there has been no significant change in “solar activity”. By significant, I mean on the order of magnitude of those during the little ice age and the Maunder and Dalton minimums. The small changes seen since 1980 hardly count as ‘solar activity”.
However, there is significant and growing evidence that, in the next solar cycle, we will indeed see another minimum. Then you will see actual “solar activity. Until then, you haven’t really seen it.
Wait a few years here, and, if the information is not censored completely by then to prevent you from finding out, you will know. If it is, you will still know, because it will be cold.

R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:10 pm
“Hmmm, the latest ESA sea-level data that I can find seems to confirm the CU sea-level data. We had a fall in sea-level during the 2010-2011 La Nina (as Grace data confirmed a lot of that water went onto the continents), and then we have had a recovery of some of that sea-level in late 2011 as that at least some of that water has drained back to the oceans:
Eurpean data:
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_EN_Global_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.gif
Versus CU data:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
”
Looks like you’re comparing non-seasonally adjusted Envisat data with seasonally adjusted CU data. As the Envisat gif has no legend I can’t tell for sure but that’s how it looks like.

Late to the party, as usual…
But there was this:
R. Gates says (January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am)
“…Okay, I’m a well known warmist here on WUWT, but I’m open to learning…”
Step one – admission that you have a problem.
“…I’m fairly well convinced that prior to the massive influx of anthropogenic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, that solar fluctuations caused most of the short-term (i.e. non-Milankovtich) fluctuations in climate. These fluctuations can be anywhere in length from sunspot cycles to much longer Bond Event (i.e. around 1500 year) cycles…”
So before the “massive influx of anthropogenic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”, there were natural causes to weather and climate changes. Agreed – we’ve been saying that for years.
“…However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity (as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?…”
In about the same way that climate scientist have explained the divergence between global temperatures and proxy results. Wait – they ignore that.
But maybe you’ll answer a question – can you mention exactly when (month/day/year) that GHG’s became the main driver of temperatures (overriding natural drivers)? For example, if there were massive floods in Queensland Australia in the 1800’s, and in the 2000’s, which was was driven by CO2, and which one by natural causes?
To paraphrase an old saying: “Those who ignore extreme weather in the past are doomed to say that current extreme weather is unprecedented”.

Latitude says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:08 pm
Cooking the sea level data……….
http://www.real-science.com/cooking-sea-level-data
______
So this graph, that Tallbloke presented (note: I don’t blame him for the content of the graph) is a an extreme case of the Picking of Cherries:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TJRV2_iLHUg/TrZDLi9qcEI/AAAAAAAAB_0/eog1N-_P_gk/s1600/Searise.gif

..and more cooking the sea level, ring of fire, gravity
and why is all the satellite sea level rise above Australia where gravity is pulling the satellites down
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/discussion-so-far/

R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:25 pm
================
Gates I know you’re not a well puppy….but they agree
http://www.real-science.com/shock-news-sea-level-high-years

So my Open Thread question is, if sea levels are adjusted for glacial isostatic rebound, why is the corresponding sea level change from glacial melt not corrected for ??

ferd berple says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:25 pm
“Fill a box with CO2 and heat it with IR and it will warm faster than air.”
Has this ever been demonstrated? I don’t dispute that CO2 absorbs IR; but I hold that it instantly re-emits it. Any valid experimental setup should NOT use standard glass jars. CO2 is an IR fog.

Anthony, as a frequent reader but rarely comments, enjoy your weekend. Now, about that comouter, I asked my investment adviser about it and he was clueless, but assured me he would investigate it.
Enjoy your weekend off, great site!

How many people know that when Envisat was launched, the first 22 passes showed sea levels falling…..and they didn’t believe it, so they fudged it
..and it was tuned/calibrated to match Jason 2, which was failing and the main reason for launching Envisat
Ever wonder why Envisat matched Jason 2 so closely….and even with all their “adjustments” it’s still drifting away……
Envisat RA2/MWR ocean data validation and cross-calibration activities. Yearly report 2008

WHERE IS THE BOOK ON THE FACT THAT PALEOCLIMATE EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT delta-T LEADS delta-CO2?
I would love to have this book of scientific documentation to point AGW-Believers to….
THIS is simp,y one of the weak points in the AGW-skeptic briefing.
Who will help us remedy it?

Baa Humbug says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:37 pm
“Where on Earth can I find these “local thermal equilibrium” locations?
Also I understand that blackbodies are a theoretical concept only so they don’t exist in reality.”
The stratosphere should be in LTE.
I don’t know how close you can come to a perfect blackbody but anything black is a good approximation. Just give something a good black paint job. You disable something from reflecting light so it has no choice but emitting IR to get rid of the excess energy.

Good luck! I had to do it about six-months ago and if it wasn’t for my home server I would have been deep in doodoo. I had it all backed up thanks to WHS.
Best,
J,

R. Gates,
In truth, we don’t have to explain anything.
It’s your job to explain. You “planetary crisis, act NOW!” types have now had 23 years to make your case.
You fail at the most basic scientific level. This farce has only continued because of the money being poured into it to push an extreme political agenda.
Perhaps you can put together a guest post tackling the points – 10 + 4 from this item at Jo Nova’s.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/influential-people-are-getting-the-message-gina-rinehart-explains-the-science-of-climate-change/

R. Gates, my answer to your original question (waaay back at the start) would just be:
1) ENSO and the other associated oceanic cycles
2) Little Ice Age rebound.
3) Computer model mis-calibration/hindcasting.
The pre-satellite surface measurements are (at best) a proxy. And the pre-surface-station proxies have – in the opinions of the scientists involved! – very wide error bars.
Being skeptical doesn’t require the assumption that “The Sun did it -all-!” The ENSO bits are regarded as “climate” when it’s convenient, and as “weather” when -that’s- convenient.
The most egregious aspect of Mann’s hockeystick isn’t the blade, it’s the shaft. His method will “flatten” any data in the ‘shaft’ portion while trying to fit the ‘blade’ portion. Fundamentally, it’s picking the set of trees that “best match” the 1900-1950 period, then assuming that those same trees (or other proxies) are the best at predicting the pre-1900 period. Repeating the process as needed to extend farther into the past. This is the million-monkeys-to-Shakespeare method. Sure you get a couple of promising starts – but there is -no- guarantee that they’re any better than random noise once you get -past- the start.
Once you recognize that paleoclimatology relies solely on -stressed- trees “right on the edge”, often ”right at the treeline” to manage to eliminate all other factors (precipitation, shelter, fertilization, etc.), you can reach the conundrum:
A tree can be a good proxy for -weather-, as minor shifts in temperature shift growing properties – and may well be the dominant effects. But when you switch to monitoring climate, you have to likewise assume climactic shifts!. Because the treelines -move- on hundred-year scales.
The claim is that “Global Warming is making it rain more!” (or less). Or shifting rain patterns. Well, wait a second. Shifting rainfall patterns will -change- which trees are the appropriate proxies for temperature. Because some trees will now be getting more water, and others less water. Which -will- change whether their growth is determined by temperature.
So there’s the fundamental assumption of paleoclimatology in millennial temperature reconstructions: There can be no climactic shifts, because they devastate the whole plan.
This is the entire reason “hide the decline!” was an issue. The exact same “best performer” trees determined by Mann et al don’t follow post-1960 temperatures very well at all. There -are- trees that track well, but they aren’t the same ones. Demonstrated by Mann’s -own- graduate student, using his own methods.
The -historians- have ample evidence of the Little Ice Age. The evidence is euro-centric. But observations by “The West” are in no way limited to Europe in this era. Expecting a continued rebound hardly seems outrageous.
And then there’s the calibration of the models. The satellite era is too short. So the so-called “instrumental period” is used. At the very least, the error bars on the instrumental period are over-confident. So there’s a lot of ‘hindcasting’ going on as the only way to test how a model works. But the long-term hindcasting runs into Mann’s flat stick. If everything is flat -> then “other factors” like the sun are irrelevant. The good correlation during the pre-2000 era leads to the “Ok, it -is- causation!” verdict. Ignoring the 1970 oceanic-cycle ‘low point’ that influences the steep 1970-2000 rise. Using exactly the same logic that cemented the “So it is causation!” verdict in the late-1990s for the period 2000-2010 would falsify it if applied today. But the logic is now “Oh, the oceanic cycles have depressed the temperature below the climactic signal!” I agree with that. But following through with exactly the same thought is that the oceanic cycles were -amplifying- the climactic signal during 1970-2000 period.
Thus, a periodic effect superimposed on a rising line. But a -more-slowly- rising line than than predicted by the models (since they were calibrated on an up-slope). (The modellers hate the term ‘calibration’ as well, but there -are- parameters to tweak wedged amongst the formulas, and they -do- get tweaked to attempt to agree with reality.)
The fundamental claim of the disaster scenarios is that Earth is “open-loop unstable” with respect to carbon dioxide. And that a long list of potential countervailing factors are minimal in effect (because of Mann’s stick). Shoving those two factors into the geologic-scale temperature/carbon dioxide estimates has lead to a lot of head-scratching, and very little in the way of celebratory papers.

And apropos of absolutely nothing a jolly little ditty complete with its animation from the early 1960’s which British readers of a certain age will remember with affection.

Well a little levity seems appropriate the grand eight magnitudes.
Kindest Regards

http://www.cataroo.com/cst_ROCKY.html for your consideration: times have changed…
“… the “Statehood for Moosylvania” campaign. Ward purchased a small obscure island in the Minnesota lake region and dubbed it “Moosylvania” like its cartoon counterpart. Then he had a van converted into a circus wagon with a calliope and a “Wossamatto U.” logo. Ward dressed up in an Admiral Nelson outfit and his publicist, Howard Brandy, dressed as Dudley Do-Right. They traveled the country and got 50,000 legitimate signatures on their petition for statehood. The stunt climaxed with Ward driving the van, calliope blaring onto the White House lawn. He arrived just as news of the Cuban Missile Crisis was breaking and armed guards escorted him off the White House premises.”
we have drifted far…

Just a congratulations for J.J.Watt, who had a magnificent interception to help the Houston Texans to win the playoff game today.
not related to Anthony Watts, but Anthony ought to consider adopting him

Tallbloke says
This is the only logic which can account for simultaneously dropping sea levels and rising OHC.
———
I recollect a bunch of satellite measurements which put a lot of rain onto the continents over the last few years. Gravimetric measuremts perhaps.

Tallbloke says
Six mm of world ocean is equivalent to a couple of thousand cubic kilometers of water IIRC.
————-
Well it amounts to 12 mm on land. Obviously we don’t see 12mm of water everywhere, but I don’t have a feel for what this represents in terms of increased soil moisture and aquifer recharging.

DirkH says:
January 7, 2012 at 6:22 pm

Baa Humbug says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:37 pm
“I’m not sure how your response answers my conundrum.”
I was thinking about this “CO2 cools the atmosphere because O2 and N2 can’t radiate IR to space” – what would happen if Earth had no H2O and CO2 in the atmosphere? Would O2 and N2 heat up to 100,000 degress like the corona of the sun?
No; LWIR would leave the Earth unhindered because nothing in the atmosphere would stop it on its way to space.

Sure but not all of the energy would be radiated out. What happens to the energy conducted from the surface to the N2 O2? As soon as N2 O2 warm up, they rise away from the surface but still retaining their energy. They are replaced at surface level by cooler N2 O2 from above.
At night the ground cools and so does the N2 O2 at ground level but the previously warmed N2 O2 molecules cannot descend down because they are warmer than the N2 O2 below (Temp inversion).
So no, the temp wouldn’t get to 100,000 but it would get close to whatever the highest surface temp is. (given enough time as conduction is a slow process)
So unless you can show that N2 O2 can conductively cool as quickly as they conductively warm, the mean temp would be higher than a no atmosphere situation because N2 O2 are Low Emissivity gasses.
Therefore, to cool the system quicker, we would need to introduce High Emissivity gasses.

Camburn says
7. This is something that can be measured/observed on a short time span. Sea level recovery has not been apparant by either Evistat nor Colorado, hence the volume of water has to have shrunk.
————
Nit quite. Envisat is heading back to the long term trend.
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/news/ocean-indicators/mean-sea-level/

LazyTeenager:
Envisat has a longggg way to go to get back to the long term trend.
You are clutching at a straw man here.

Janice says:
January 7, 2012 at 7:01 pm
While your question to R. Gates seems well intentioned, I question the part where you say
“perhaps much less than a hundred years”
You use the phrase “massive glaciers” when it seems you mean ice sheets such as the Laurentide Ice Sheet rather than, say mountain valley glaciers. While some of the latter at low latitude and low elevation may have melted in less than 100 years (your term; I have no information), it seems that the Laurentide ice was with us for a long time. Perhaps you can provide more information with places and time frames.

I hatre my computer – do you think you can come over and fix mine?
LOL

Msrkus says
I filled 3 1ltr drink bottles, 1 x dry air, 1 x 1/2 water, 1 x Co2. With little stick thermos on each bottle, I warmed them by a radiator to the same temp.
Temp was lost first by the Co2, followed by the water, then the dry air (which took twice as long to cool as the Co2.
———–
I don’t understand your experiment. It sounds like you had one bottle half filled with liquid water.
This experiment is not easy to do properly. There are complications that need to be addressed:
1. The plastic bottle may not allow IR radiation pass through its walls. Check the absorption spectrum of the PET (most likely).
2. check the bottle with the water in it is not producing a mini water cycle.
3. The thermal capacity of the thermometer may exceed that of the gas in the bottle.
And so on.

DirkH says
Has this ever been demonstrated? I don’t dispute that CO2 absorbs IR; but I hold that it instantly re-emits it. Any valid experimental setup should NOT use standard glass jars. CO2 is an IR fog.
———-
Almost right. I believe the CO2 absorbs the IR, but the collision rate with other gas molecules is much higher than the IR excited state lifetime, so that energy is transferred to the bath gas. A ground state CO2 then absorbs energy from the bath gas and re-emits the IR.
Things to check:
1. Lifetime of IR excited state
2. Time between collisions in gas.
3. Boltzmann intensity distribution of CO2 emission lines. This will be a direct measure of the temperature at which emission occurs. If the inferred temperature matches the actual air temperature then the energy of the original IR photon must have equilibrated with its environment.
If that all checks out the case is closed.

Orson Olson says
I would love to have this book of scientific documentation to point AGW-Believers to….
THIS is simp,y one of the weak points in the AGW-skeptic briefing.
———
It won’t help you.
What you need is evidence that temperature is leading CO2 now. Or at least since some time before the industrial age.
Since there are feedback loops involved cause and effect become self referential and so both CO2 or ocean temperatures can be first causes depending on the circumstance.
The problems that arise from this particular debating point are:
1. A CO2 increase now implies a temperature increase 800 years ago. DirkH (I think) suggested the MWP to account for that, but the timing is not quite right.
2. The previous interglacials had the ocean out gassed at 300pm but we are now at 390ppm and still rising.
So great little debating point but a little lame as far as the truth is concerned.

ferd berple says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:08 pm:
I spent nearly 20 years sailing the Pacific and Indian Oceans on a 40 foot sailboat. We visited hundreds of remote coral atolls. Most of our charts were copies of British Admiralty Charts, drawn 150-250 years ago, drawn by the likes of Cook, Bligh, Vancouver, Flinders, etc. These areas have never been resurveyed as they are too remote.
If there has been any significant sea level rise over the past 150-250 years, it would be apparent in the charts.
Yes, it is worth visiting Google Earth and comparing some of Cooks Charts which can be found on the internet such as Botany Bay Australia and Cook Strait in New Zealand and seeing how remarkably similar they. You do have to make some allowances for such things as estuary silting and reclaiming of land and of course the rudimentary equipment that Cook was using. For instance he did miss Wellington Harbour on his chart of Cook Strait but he also missed Sydney Harbour which was just up the road after “discovering” Australia.
But if we get as much coastline change as you can see from these comparisons from sea level rises in the next 250 years I do not think our grandchildren’s grandchildren have much to worry about.
I recall that there was also a study done some-where comparing the old explorers’ records of observed weather to determine whether extreme events have also changed that much:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1218474/How-Captain-Cooks-ship-logs-helping-scientists-chart-global-climate-change.html
Interestingly not long before Capt Cook landed in Botany Bay and “found” Australia he observed “three water spouts at once, two were between us and the shore and one at some distance upon our larboard quarter.”
When seen these days naturally they are put down to yet another sign of global warming:
Google – Massive Waterspouts Form Off Australia Coast (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/waterspouts-2011-australia-video_n_86...
30 May 2011 – Unbelievable waterspouts off Australian coast – good video …. Global warming must be to blame for these water spouts, as no one has seen one in fifty years. …
Very strange that Capt Cook managed to see three in exactly the same place in 1770.

Alan S. Blue,
Thank you kindly for your lengthy comments. Much to think about…

Baa Humbug says
As soon as N2 O2 warm up, they rise away from the surface but still retaining their energy. They are replaced at surface level by cooler N2 O2 from above.
———-
Interesting question. The development of a thermal inversion like this would reverse the temperature distribution we normally see, due to the adiabatic expansion and compression arising from convection.
Energy could only radiate to space from the surface. So the surface would be cold but the top-of-atmosphere hot. Weird but plausible.

Camburn says
You can’t reduce the error bars of the results by ignoring the error bars of the placement of the collection device.
————–
But you are assuming that the satellite operators are ignoring error bars on the satellite location without proof. And you are assuming that the determination is in fact dependent on this data.
Maybe these assumptions are correct and maybe not, but you just can’t pull objections out of nowhere. You should by default expect that people who do this kind of thing for a living have not already thought of the problems and have dealt with it properly.
The error bars for these sea height measurements by the way are better than 50mm over a 1x1degree grid cell. Which suggests the average over the entire planet is a whole lot better than that.
See http://www.oscar.noaa.gov/methodology.html

Janice,
Your question about the rapid decline of the ice sheets at the start of the current interglacial is a very good one, and it actually sort of happened twice. Just prior to the Younger Dryas, ice sheets were melting rapidly, and then they came back with a vengence in the Younger Dryas, though not quite to the same extent as prior, and they disappeared rapidly as the Younger Dryas ended.
Without researching it (more than I already have over the years), there are several factors at work, with multiple feedback processes in place. But lets forget the Younger Dryas event for a moment (as that is an very different issue) and focus on the intial rise out of the glacial period. The Milankovitch forcing is of course the key as it increases the amount SW radiation hitting the oceans. This warming of the oceans leads to multiple positive feedback processes, which amplify the Milankovtich forcing. These feedback processes relate to CO2 in the atmosphere, water vapor in the atmosphere, the actual exposure of land that was once covered in ice, and changes in ocean circulation. Again, all of these greatly amplify the initial warming brought about from the Milankovitch forcing. Let’s look at each one:
1) CO2 – As the oceans warm, of course they begin to outgas CO2. This effect is fairly well known, but lessor known is the biological effects of warmer oceans, as less CO2 is taken up by the plant life of the oceans as they warm. Even more so, as the atmosphere warms and becomes more humid, there is less dust in the atmosphere to fertilize the plant life, and thus they are less active and remove less CO2 from the atmosphere. From the beginning of Milankovtich warming to the time that CO2 levels really start to show an incease can be several hundred years, but once it kicks in, the additional CO2 really adds to the warming cycle.
2) Water Vapor – In addition to more CO2 in the atmosphere, the warmer oceans evaoporate more water and of course that ends of in the atmosphere and also leads to both more precipitation, but also the additional greenhouse warming from the higher water vapor levels. Glacial periods are generally much drier with more dust in the atmosphere. Interglacials have less dust, more water vapor, and clearer skies which also allow for even more solar warming.
3) Glacial Ice Retreat – As the world begins to warm and the ice starts to retreat the Earth’s albedo begins to decrease, allowing for even more absorption of SW and amplifiying the warming.
4) Changes in Ocean circulation – As the ocean warm, circulation patterns change, allowing for more heat to come to the higher latitudes, which reduces glacial ice cover even faster.
All of these factors (and a few more lessor ones) can allow for relatively rapid declines in the large ice sheets. With temperatures in the higher latitude soaring 15C or more, it really doesn’t take as long as one might think to melt the ice. But most importantly, the changes in solar insolation brought about by Milankovitch forcing alone could never bring this kind of large temperature rise. It truly takes the strong positive feedbacks of many parts of the climate system to see such rapid rises in temperatures.

jorgekafkazar says: January 7, 2012 at 9:41 pm
[McCrae threw the poem away. I’ve wondered if he did so based on second thoughts about the wisdom of urging others to “take up our quarrel with the foe.”]
Unlikely, since he was a Canadian.
We still “take up our quarrel with the foe.”
—
“Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.”
“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.”
“Carbon dioxide which is a naturally occurring gas vital to the life cycles of this planet”
“This may be a lot of fun for a few scientific and environmental elites in Ottawa, but ordinary Canadians from coast to coast will not put up with what this will do to their economy and lifestyle”
“We can debate whether or not… CO₂ does or does not contribute to global warming. I think the jury is out.”
“My party’s position on the Kyoto Protocol is clear and has been for a long time. We will oppose ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and its targets. We will work with the provinces and others to discourage the implementation of those targets. And we will rescind the targets when we have the opportunity to do so”
“As economic policy, the Kyoto Accord is a disaster. As environmental policy it is a fraud”
Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada.
—
Canada is out of Kyoto.

R. Gates;
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 8:54 pm
Edim,
Interesting comments, and certainly there is great thermal momentum in the oceans, yet ocean heat content continues to rise, even during the current very weak solar cycle 24. I find the curious and it leads me to looking for the cause…>>>>
You are clearly looking at the data with the well known “Tiljander Adjustment”. Just turn the graph right side up and you’ll have the actual data and trend to refer to.

I’m having some fun on Skeptical Science’s Facebook wall. (I’ve been banned about eight times from their main site due to posts for which they had no answer.) Maybe others would like to join in on Facebook. Here’s a post I just did …
Four simple questions for you all – true or false?
(1) When the refective (mirror-like) internal surface of a vacuum flask reflects radiation back into the coffee the coffee does not get any hotter – true / false ?
(2) If you hold a mirror over a batch of earth (which is radiating) at night so that the mirror reflects that radiation back to the patch it does not get any hotter, just like the coffee – true or false?
(3) When carbon dioxide captures radiation from the surface and then re-emits it back again it is acting rather like a mirror because the radiation going back has no more energy than that which it captured – true or false?
(4) Hence, when such back radiation meets the surface it does not warm the surface – true or false?
Full marks if you answered true to all questions – you are now a well-informed denier.

mods – apologies, I cut off the top of my own comment. Here’s the whole thing:
R. Gates;
These are the simple scientific facts, but it seems that certain skeptics just won’t accept them, even though they are pretty much right there in the data. Unfortunately, the refusal of some skeptics to accept even basic facts like these makes me suspcious of the motives of skeptics in general, which of course is my hangup and something I need to work on as I’m sure that the vast majority of skeptics truly care as much about the truth as I do.>>>>
(drum roll)
…and another gem from R. Gates that begs to be answered. Let’s look at those “facts” and “data” of his:
R. Gates;
The current rise in sea level is related to two primary factors, thermal expansion and the melting of Greenland and Antarctica.>>>
Ooops. Antarctic ice is increasing, not decreasing.
R. Gates;
The reduction in sea level would be related to cooling of the oceans and evaporation of sea water and its movement to land. As there is currently no sign of the ocean heat content decreasing over the long-term (it is in fact at or near its highest level in some 30+ years)>>>
Well… that’s a bit of a misrepresentation, is it not?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/25/argo-era-nodc-ocean-heat-content-data-0-700-meters-through-december-2010/
XBT shows a decline since 1990, TAO has been pretty much flat since 2000 and Argo shows a steep decline for the last several years.
R. Gates
the only logical thing left is that a great deal of evaporation has occurred and moved that water to the land. This would all be a theory only if the Grace satellite data didn’t show this exact set of facts during the exact period of time that sea-levels declined.>>>>
Well, since your premise is based on decreases in Antarctic ice that turn out to be increasing, and OHC that is increasing that turns out to be declining, the only logical conclusion is that your conclusion is not logical.
R. Gates
If you look at the Grace data that clearly shows the large amount of water that was moved to the land and realize these same areas saw some incredible floods, you can easily see that the Grace data is quite valid.>>>>
Well yes. Oddly, you overlooked all the drought data shown by GRACE. You also over looked all the data on ground water depletion cited by GRACE studies. I note also that the lead story on their site right now says that:
“PASADENA, Calif. – A new NASA and University of Washington study allays concerns that melting Arctic sea ice could be increasing the amount of freshwater in the Arctic enough to have an impact on the global “ocean conveyor belt” that redistributes heat around our planet”
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/
Oddly, you failed to mention that as well.
R. Gates;
The fact that evaporation and movement of water to land occurred to a greater degree than thermal expansion of the oceans during the time period in question is not surprizing or remarkable at all, as the two processes are of vastly different scales in terms of their effect on sea level.>>>
What is remarkable is the ease with which you toss off statements of fact as if true when they are not, imply trends that are the opposite of what the data says, ignore contrary data that contradicts your logic, and then have the unmitigated gall to claim that you are suspicious of the motives of skeptics and accuse them of twisting the facts.
Un.
Mitigated.
Gall.

There has been some discussion above of “ice ages” and Milankovitch cycles. Firstly, ice ages should not be confused with glacial periods. There have been only five ice ages* whereas glacial periods appear to have a strong 100,000 year cycle at least for the last million years. Strictly speaking, the 100,000 year cycle should not be called a Milankovitch cycle, the latter being 19, 23 and 41 thousand years. The 100,000 year cycle is simply the time it takes for Earth’s eccentricity to cycle from its maximum to its minimum and back to its maximum. At its maximum I understand the distance from the Sun varies by about 5%, compared with being almost zero at the minimum. Jupiter is the main planet causing the eccentricity. In effect its gravitational pull modifies the Earth’s orbit just a little bit each year, but the effect is cumulative from one year to the next.
It’s my belief that the variation in average insolation which the Earth receives each year and which varies as the eccentricity varies over this 100,000 year cycle is in fact quite sufficient to account for the glacial cycles because there is a cumulative effect as thermal energy builds up (and is retained) or declines (and is lost to space) throughout this cycle. After all, there are a lot of individual years in the cycle, so a very minute percentage variation can build into something significant over half the length of the cycle, namely 50,000 years.
There will be resulting effects which could explain the saw-tooth pattern observed. Sea ice levels will affect both albedo and insulating effects, leading to atmospheric moisture fluxes which then affect precipitation and land ice. Some of these factors could also affect rates of ocean current flows under the ice, and such rates affect rates of melting.
I don’t believe there is any necessity to assume any carbon dioxide forcing, because we now know that back radiation has a frequency below Wien’s cut-off and thus cannot warm the surface, which means the so-called atmospheric “greenhouse effect” is physically impossible.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciation

r gates~ ‘I’m sure that the vast majority of skeptics truly care as much about the truth as I do.’
Yes, we do. So when do you plan to start INCLUDING the more-than-half of each ‘fact,’ which you are currently omitting?

R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
[…] there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
Global temperatures? What do you mean by that?
We have some data online from USDC (United States Department of Commerce) NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) NODC (National Oceanographic Data Center) OCL (Ocean Climate Laboratory) on Heat Content of the Upper 700 m Layer of Global Oceans going back to 1955. The dataset is based on this study:
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L07608, 2009
doi:10.1029/2008GL037155
Global ocean heat content 1955–2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems
S. Levitus, J. I. Antonov, T. P. Boyer, R. A. Locarnini, H. E. Garcia & A. V. Mishonov
And now please bear with me while doing some quite basic math. As it is only a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the numbers need not be accurate to many significant digits.
Mass of global atmosphere: 5.1×10²¹ g
Specific heat of air: 1 J/gK
Heat capacity of atmosphere: 5.1×10²¹ J/K
Mass of upper 700 m of global oceans: 2.5×10²³ g
Specific heat of water: 4.2 J/gK
Heat capacity of upper 700 m of global oceans: 1.1×10²⁴ J/K
That is, heat capacity of this body of water is more than 200 times higher than that of the atmosphere. It means the contribution of atmospheric temperatures to the global average temperature is absolutely negligible. Can you follow me so far?
Now, according to USDC NOAA NODC OCL, heat content of the upper 700 m layer of global oceans has increased by some 10²³ J since 1980. It implies its temperature has gone up by less than 0.1 K (~94 mK) during the last 3 decades. This rate, if extrapolated, is 0.3 K/century, an order of magnitude lower than official IPCC estimates. Is it the global temperature anomaly you are talking about? Or, alternately, you may of course deny elementary physics. Is it the case?
BTW, it is an extraordinary claim (by Levitus & al.) that temperature of such a huge body of water was actually measured with a precision of 17 mK back in 1980 and this precision is enhanced to 7 mK since then. It would be rather doubtful even if someone has claimed such a precision to temperature measurements in a swimming pool. Anyway, that’s what their error bars would imply.