Who Are You Going To Believe – The Government Climate Scientists or The Data?
By Dr David M.W. Evans (republished here with permission, PDF link below)
We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message – here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention.
What the Government Climate Scientists Say
Figure 1: The climate models. If the CO2 level doubles (as it is on course to do by about 2070 to 2100), the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 3 = 3.3°C.i
The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century.ii
Feedbacks are due to the ways the Earth reacts to the direct warming effect of the CO2. The threefold amplification by feedbacks is based on the assumption, or guess, made around 1980, that more warming due to CO2 will cause more evaporation from the oceans and that this extra water vapor will in turn lead to even more heat trapping because water vapor is the main greenhouse gas. And extra heat will cause even more evaporation, and so on. This amplification is built into all the climate models.iii The amount of amplification is estimated by assuming that nearly all the industrial-age warming is due to our CO2.
The government climate scientists and the media often tell us about the direct effect of the CO2, but rarely admit that two thirds of their projected temperature increases are due to amplification by feedbacks.
What the Skeptics Say
Figure 2: The skeptic’s view. If the CO2 level doubles, skeptics estimates that the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 0.5 ≈ 0.6°C.iv
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.
The feedbacks dampen or reduce the direct effect of the extra CO2, cutting it roughly in half.v The main feedbacks involve evaporation, water vapor, and clouds. In particular, water vapor condenses into clouds, so extra water vapor due to the direct warming effect of extra CO2 will cause extra clouds, which reflect sunlight back out to space and cool the earth, thereby reducing the overall warming.
There are literally thousands of feedbacks, each of which either reinforces or opposes the direct warming effect of the extra CO2. Almost every long-lived system is governed by net feedback that dampens its response to a perturbation. If a system instead reacts to a perturbation by amplifying it, the system is likely to reach a tipping point and become unstable (like the electronic squeal that erupts when a microphone gets too close to its speakers). The earth’s climate is long-lived and stable— it has never gone into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus — which strongly suggests that the feedbacks dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2.
What the Data Says
The climate models have been essentially the same for 30 years now, maintaining roughly the same sensitivity to extra CO2even while they got more detailed with more computer power.
- How well have the climate models predicted the temperature?
- Does the data better support the climate models or the skeptic’s view?
Air Temperatures
One of the earliest and most important predictions was presented to the US Congress in 1988 by Dr James Hansen, the “father of global warming”:
Figure 3: Hansen’s predictionsvi to the US Congress in 1988, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellitesvii.
Hansen’s climate model clearly exaggerated future temperature rises.
In particular, his climate model predicted that if human CO2 emissions were cut back drastically starting in 1988, such that by year 2000 the CO2 level was not rising at all, we would get his scenario C. But in reality the temperature did not even rise this much, even though our CO2 emissions strongly increased – which suggests that the climate models greatly overestimate the effect of CO2 emissions.
A more considered prediction by the climate models was made in 1990 in the IPCC’s First Assessment Report:viii
Figure 4: Predictions of the IPCC’s First Assessment Report in 1990, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellites.
It’s 20 years now, and the average rate of increase in reality is below the lowest trend in the range predicted by the IPCC.
Ocean Temperatures
The oceans hold the vast bulk of the heat in the climate system. We’ve only been measuring ocean temperature properly since mid-2003, when the Argo system became operational.ix,x In Argo, a buoy duck dives down to a depth of 2,000 meters, measures temperatures as it very slowly ascends, then radios the results back to headquarters via satellite. Over three thousand Argo buoys constantly patrol all the oceans of the world.
Figure 5: Climate model predictionsxi of ocean temperature, versus the measurements by Argoxii. The unit of the vertical axis is 1022 Joules (about 0.01°C).
The ocean temperature has been basically flat since we started measuring it properly, and not warming as quickly as the climate models predict.
Atmospheric Hotspot
The climate models predict a particular pattern of atmospheric warming during periods of global warming; the most prominent change they predict is a warming in the tropics about 10 km up, the “hotspot”.
The hotspot is the sign of the amplification in their theory (see Figure 1). The theory says the hotspot is caused by extra evaporation, and by extra water vapor pushing the warmer wetter lower troposphere up into volume previously occupied by cool dry air. The presence of a hotspot would indicate amplification is occurring, and vice versa.
We have been measuring atmospheric temperatures with weather balloons since the 1960s. Millions of weather balloons have built up a good picture of atmospheric temperatures over the last few decades, including the warming period from the late 70’s to the late 90’s. This important and pivotal data was not released publicly by the climate establishment until 2006, and then in an obscure place.xiii Here it is:
Figure 6: On the left is the data collected by millions of weather balloons.xiv On the right is what the climate models say was happening.xv The theory (as per the climate models) is incompatible with the observations. In both diagrams the horizontal axis shows latitude, and the right vertical axis shows height in kilometers.
In reality there was no hotspot, not even a small one. So in reality there is no amplification – the amplification shown in Figure 1 does not exist.xvi
Outgoing Radiation
The climate models predict that when the surface of the earth warms, less heat is radiated from the earth into space (on a weekly or monthly time scale). This is because, according to the theory, the warmer surface causes more evaporation and thus there is more heat-trapping water vapor. This is the heat-trapping mechanism that is responsible for the assumed amplification in Figure 1.
Satellites have been measuring the radiation emitted from the earth for the last two decades. A major study has linked the changes in temperature on the earth’s surface with the changes in the outgoing radiation. Here are the results:
Figure 7: Outgoing radiation from earth (vertical axis) against sea surface temperature (horizontal), as measured by the ERBE satellites (upper left graph) and as “predicted” by 11 climate models (the other graphs).xvii Notice that the slope of the graphs for the climate models are opposite to the slope of the graph for the observed data.
This shows that in reality the earth gives off more heat when its surface is warmer. This is the opposite of what the climate models predict. This shows that the climate models trap heat too aggressively, and that their assumed amplification shown in Figure 1 does not exist.
Conclusions
All the data here is impeccably sourced—satellites, Argo, and weather balloons.xviii
The air and ocean temperature data shows that the climate models overestimate temperature rises. The climate establishment suggest that cooling due to undetected aerosols might be responsible for the failure of the models to date, but this excuse is wearing thin—it continues not to warm as much as they said it would, or in the way they said it would. On the other hand, the rise in air temperature has been greater than the skeptics say could be due to CO2. The skeptic’s excuse is that the rise is mainly due to other forces – and they point out that the world has been in a fairly steady warming trend of 0.5°C per century since 1680 (with alternating ~30 year periods of warming and mild cooling) where as the vast bulk of all human CO2 emissions have been after 1945.
We’ve checked all the main predictions of the climate models against the best data:
The climate models get them all wrong. The missing hotspot and outgoing radiation data both, independently, prove that the amplification in the climate models is not present. Without the amplification, the climate model temperature predictions would be cut by at least two thirds, which would explain why they overestimated the recent air and ocean temperature increases.
Therefore:
- The climate models are fundamentally flawed. Their assumed threefold amplification by feedbacks does not in fact exist.
- The climate models overestimate temperature rises due to CO2 by at least a factor of three.
The skeptical view is compatible with the data.
Some Political Points
The data presented here is impeccably sourced, very relevant, publicly available, and from our best instruments. Yet it never appears in the mainstream media – have you ever seen anything like any of the figures here in the mainstream media? That alone tells you that the “debate” is about politics and power, and not about science or truth.
This is an unusual political issue, because there is a right and a wrong answer and everyone will know which it is eventually. People are going ahead and emitting CO2 anyway, so we are doing the experiment: either the world heats up by several degrees by 2050, or it doesn’t.
Notice that the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2; they just disagree just about the feedbacks. The climate debate is all about the feedbacks; everything else is merely a sideshow. Yet hardly anyone knows that. The government climate scientists and the mainstream media have framed the debate in terms of the direct effect of CO2 and sideshows such as arctic ice, bad weather, or psychology. They almost never mention the feedbacks. Why is that? Who has the power to make that happen?
About the Author
Dr David M.W. Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The area of human endeavor with the most experience and sophistication in dealing with feedbacks and analyzing complex systems is electrical engineering, and the most crucial and disputed aspects of understanding the climate system are the feedbacks. The evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006, causing Evans to move from being a warmist to a skeptic.
Inquiries to david.evans@sciencespeak.com.
Republished on www.wattsupwiththat.com
This document is also available as a PDF file here: TheSkepticsCase
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References
i More generally, if the CO2 level is x (in parts per million) then the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to the extra CO2 over the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm as 4.33 ln(x / 280). For example, this model attributes a temperature rise of 4.33 ln(392/280) = 1.46°C to the increase from pre-industrial to the current CO2 level of 392 ppm.
ii The direct effect of CO2 is the same for each doubling of the CO2 level (that is, logarithmic). Calculations of the increased surface temperature due to of a doubling of the CO2 level vary from 1.0°C to 1.2°C. In this document we use the midpoint value 1.1°C; which value you use does not affect the arguments made here.
iii The IPCC, in their last Assessment Report in 2007, project a temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 (called the climate sensitivity) in the range 2.0°C to 4.5°C. The central point of their model estimates is 3.3°C, which is 3.0 times the direct CO2 effect of 1.1°C, so we simply say their amplification is threefold. To be more precise, each climate model has a slightly different effective amplification, but they are generally around 3.0.
iv More generally, if the CO2 level is x (in parts per million) then skeptics estimate the temperature increase due to the extra CO2 over the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm as 0.72 ln(x / 280). For example, skeptics attribute a temperature rise of 0.72 ln(392/280) = 0.24°C to the increase from pre-industrial to the current CO2 level of 392 ppm.
v The effect of feedbacks is hard to pin down with empirical evidence because there are more forces affecting the temperature than just changes in CO2 level, but seems to be multiplication by something between 0.25 and 0.9. We have used 0.5 here for simplicity.
vi Hansen’s predictions were made in Hansen et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 93 No D8 (20 Aug 1988) Fig 3a Page 9347: pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf. In the graph here, Hansen’s three scenarios are graphed to start from the same point in mid-1987 – we are only interested in changes (anomalies).
vii The earth’s temperature shown here is as measured by the NASA satellites that have been measuring the earth’s temperature since 1979, managed at the University of Alabama Hunstville (UAH). Satellites measure the temperature 24/7 over broad swathes of land and ocean, across the whole world except the poles. While satellites had some initial calibration problems, those have long since been fully fixed to everyone’s satisfaction. Satellites are mankind’s most reliable, extensive, and unbiased method for measuring the earth’s air temperature temperatures since 1979. This is an impeccable source of data, and you can download the data yourself from vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt (save it as .txt file then open it in Microsoft Excel; the numbers in the “Globe” column are the changes in MSU Global Monthly Mean Lower Troposphere Temperatures in °C).
viii IPCC First Assessment Report, 1990, page xxii (www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf) in the Policymakers Summary, Figure 8 and surrounding text, for the business-as-usual scenario (which is what in fact occurred, there being no significant controls or decrease in the rate of increase of emissions to date). “Under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, the average rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century is estimated to be about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0.5°C).”
ix http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/observations/gathering_data/argo.html
x Ocean temperature measurements before Argo are nearly worthless. Before Argo, ocean temperature was measured with buckets or with bathythermographs (XBTs) — which are expendable probes lowered into the water, transmitting temperature and pressure data back along a pair of thin wires. Nearly all measurements were from ships along the main commercial shipping lanes, so geographical coverage of the world’s oceans was poor—for example the huge southern oceans were not monitored. XBTs do not go as deep as Argo floats, and their data is much less precise and much less accurate (for one thing, they move too quickly through the water to come to thermal equilibrium with the water they are trying to measure).
xi The climate models project ocean heat content increasing at about 0.7 × 10^22 Joules per year. See Hansen et al, 2005: Earth’s energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications. Science, 308, 1431-1435, page 1432 (pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha00110y), where the increase in ocean heat content per square meter of surface, in the upper 750m, according to typical models, is 6.0 Watt·year/m2 per year, which converts to 0.7 × 10^22 Joules per year for the entire ocean as explained at bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/giss-ohc-model-trends-one-question-answered-another-uncovered/.
xii The ocean heat content down to 700m as measured by Argo is now available; you can download it from ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv. The numbers are the changes in average heat for the three months, in units of 10^22 Joules, seasonally adjusted. The Argo system started in mid-2003, so we started the data at 2003-6.
xiii The weather balloon data showing the atmospheric warming pattern was finally released in 2006, in the US Climate Change Science Program, 2006, part E of Figure 5.7, on page 116 (www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-chap5.pdf).
There is no other data for this period, and we cannot collect more data on atmospheric warming during global warming until global warming resumes. This is the only data there is. Btw, isn’t this an obscure place to release such important and pivotal data – you don’t suppose they are trying to hide something, do you?
xv Any climate model, for example, IPCC Assessment Report 4, 2007, Chapter 9, page 675, which is also on the web at http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-2-2.html (Figure 9.1 parts c and f). There was little warming 1959 – 1977, so the commonly available 1959 – 1999 simulations work as well.
xvi So the multiplier in the second box in Figures 1 and 2 is at most 1.0.
xvii Lindzen and Choi 2009, Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 36: http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf. The paper was corrected after some criticism, coming to essentially the same result again in 2011: www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf.
xviii In particular, we have not quoted results from land thermometers, or from sparse sampling by buckets and XBT’s at sea. Land thermometers are notoriously susceptible to localized effects – see Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? by the same author: jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/corruption/climate-corruption.pdf.
Your figure one and figure two are the same
REPLY: Fixed thanks, a formatting error led to a duplicate. Scourge of document conversion – Anthony
First photo “What the Government Climate Scientists Say” is the same as the second photo. Think you put the wrong one there, should be x3 in the box.
Coherent argument, multiple footnotes.
This should be carried in major media outlets.
Kurt in Switzerland
Figures 1 and 2 are identical. Text indicates that they should show something different.
There seems to be a typo in the box summarising the feedback; should it be x3
The mixup in diagrams is a FATAL FLAW : please fix prontissimo.
REPLY: Using the refresh button helps too – Anthony
Simple and easy to read, states the case beautifully, and really examines how fraudulent any supposed case for catastrophic warming is.
Heretic, how dare you quote the facts!
Official Team response.
Check Figure 1 – it is missing the X3 amplification box show in the original paper
The matching figure 1 and 2 mistake appears to be from the original PDF file.
REPLY: Yes I know, the PDF file has been fixed also…Anthony
The first and second diagrams seem to me to be identical. Should the first one have a X 3 function, not x 0.5?
REPLY: This was fixed a couple of minutes after publication, try the refresh button on your browser – Anthony
Clear and precise with no Ambiguity of information. In Hockey terms this is a SLAP SHOT or a HOLE IN ONE well done Dr David Evans. Lets see what the rent seekers come up with in reply, I already know and can see the cut and paste crowd at work.
So, “serious skeptic”, how is Fig. 4 consistent with the “agreed-upon” 1.1K in Figs. 1 & 2??
I assert that the 1.1K is inappropriately extrapolated laboratory data, and should be at most 0.1, negligibly different from 0.0K, and further assert that that is H0.
Fig. 4 indicates that there is no evidence to the contrary.
Now surely, dr Evans, we are not going to let facts stand in our way (tongue in cheek)
Well….. what more can you say?
Further to the above: G&T are right. You are wrong.
And another thing. I read elsewhere that there are hundreds of phenomena or processes that could affect climate (per the study being promoted by WUWT). Doesn’t the essence of this paper, being all about concentration on carbon dioxide/temperature/feedbacks, rather help the warmists’ case?
Dr. Evans
The exposition is marvelous, however I do have a question on the 1.1 degree direct effect of CO2. Can you provide the source for this prediction that after unraveling does not point back to Hansen’s empirical relationship?
In Loudon’s textbook on Quantum mechanics there are two primary means whereby an increase in the partial pressure of an IR absorbing gas such as CO2 increases absorption. The first is a Lorentz pressure broadening and the variable term of pressure is against the entire atmosphere, not the self pressurization of the IR absorbing gas. The second is temperature broadening which is also a Lorentz transformation from the gaussian function for the QM energy absorption/emission of the gas (CO2).
In running the equations in Loudon with the increase in the partial pressure of CO2 from 0.028% of the atmosphere to 0.39% of the atmosphere does not result in a 1.1 degree temperature increase. Obviously there are more calculations involved related to the statistical mean time between absorption and emission against the mechanical transfer of the increased energy in the CO2 molecule to another non CO2 molecule but no fundamental equation that I have seen can, at the partial pressure of CO2 observed, produce the 1.1 degree result.
What is wrong here?
I am a little unsure about what the figures are saying in regards to doubling of CO2. I thought that for each doubling of CO2, you had a logarithmic increase in temperature. The figures make it seem as though the relationship is linear and every doubling of CO2 led to a 1.1 degree increase in temperature.
REPLY: Typo related to format conversion image/cut/paste – now fixed – Anthony
The posts under David’s original blog has some good discourse also. A skeptic brings up some rubbish “slayer” arguments that are sometimes used to attack the CAGW meme but, being titally wrong, only serve to discredit the skeptics. David Evans obviously understands Physics very well and explains why these “slayer” arguments are just plain wrong. Excellent.
I realize Anthony Watts and his crew, not being Physicists, cannot be expected to correct the occasional egregious Physics errors committed from time to time on WUWT. However, WUWT is so well supported, has a large community, is uncensored, and is full of such diverse and interesting content (as well as posts) that I am quite wiling to overlook the odd articles/posts on WUWT that makes us few Physicists cringe.
The blue box is wrong in fig 1. Should be 3x
REPLY: Try the refresh button on your browser -A
I think it is the “sceptic’s case” in respect to CO2, and there is a whole lot more going on. But they are sceptics about CO2, so it is quite correct.
Yep, I’m adding my voice to Onion and Novareason. Please fix this first figure before too many copies get sent out.
Aside from that, this is great. Cheers.
REPLY: Apparently nobody knows how to use the refresh button, it has been fixed just a couple minutes after it was published. – Anthony
I’m not a scientist but I am a grammarian. The word “data” is the plural of “datum.” Therefore the proper usage is “the data say” not “the data says.”
We are now 22 years into the global warming story. This is a very good summary of how the crux of the argument has always been just about water feedbacks. In my opinion the evidence clearly rules out the large feedback factors that are still used by climate models – as do arguments from the faint sun paradox. All this should be welcomed as good news, and surely scientists would now want to bring this to the public’s attention – rather than apparently wishing the evidence away! This area of science seems to have got embroiled with politics and various vested interests. This paper is a good start and needs more exposure.
Note: Figure 1 should have feedback x 3.0 (not 0.5!) The PDF file has the same problem.
Please fix the feedback parameter in the first graphic!
REPLY: It has been noted and fixed, please read other comments before piling on – Anthony
What a lot of the skeptic scientist generally have missed is that the 1.1 deg C rise with CO2 doubling comes from a calculation in which the IPCC brains unilaterally and for no good reason (other than their desired agenda) multiplied the thermodynamic factor for CO2 (effectively, the probability factor regarding the chances of a CO2 molecule colliding with another molecule during the instant between IR absorption and IR re-emission, allowing the energy to become heat energy) by a whopping factor of 12, bumping the warming from 0.1 deg C to 1.1–1.2 deg C.
This was patently dishonest, but they NEEDED to make CO2 more effective. All the while, they masked their duplicity by lauding and marveling how constant this (now inflated) factor had been in the literature over time.
It’s too bad that so many skeptics honor this falsehood, just as so many honor the false CO2 graph composed of Arctic ice core and Mauna Loa volcano data and validate it in discussions as if it was true. It’s cherry-picked and manipulated data and has to be labeled so as often as it comes up.
“Wow, it’s such a hot day!” he said, while turning up the heat. “It must be global warming.”
We HAVE to keep checking the thermostat on these guys or we end up arguing nonsense.
Figure 3 is wrong. The lines for scenarios A,B and C in Hansen’s 1988 graph did not start at the same place in 1988 as depicted in figure 3.
Useful summary. Well done!
Minor point: the rhs in each of Figs 1 and 2 should be ‘predicted’ or ‘expected’, and not ‘observed’.
Dear Dr, Evans.
Thank you for this. You can’t get any more Lay than I am and I managed to follow your argument well enough. The only area of confusion is at the top, where you describe the basic positions of sceptic and warmist. A second diagram in each case, describing the differences over feedback effects, could make things even more clear.
Figures 1 and 2 are misleading in that they look at changes in temperature rather than actual temperatures. No one ever said that temperatures would increase steadily and in fact all the projections and models suggested that after the major El Nino peak in 1998 there should be a return to the trend line which implies that temperatures should fall or at least stop increasing in order to return to the trend line. The fact that they have done that should be no surprise and certainly does not invalidate the models.
David, this is overall an excellent exposition and I know how difficult it is to write a concise debunking of CAGW. There is however one weakness that I’m sure the CAGWers will exploit viz: in Figure 3 you compare Hansen’s 1988 projections with the UAH satellite tropospheric temperature record. My recollection is that Hansen’s projections were surface air temperatures, rather than lower troposphere. I don’t think a spaghetti graph would help here — rather a sentence explaining why you choose UAH.
[Aside] I am recalling the screaming of a CAGW fanatic screaming far too loudly for comfort: “cherry-picker, cherry-picker…” during David Archibald’s presentation when he and Anthony visited Hobart not so very long ago. [/Aside]
I’ve been ill served by popular media. It has taken a lot of reading on my part to become aware of the existence of feedbacks in global warming theory, yet this is what the theory of the crisis hinges on.
[snip – reword this and resubmit, without making accusations -Anthony]
[q]I am a little unsure about what the figures are saying in regards to doubling of CO2. I thought that for each doubling of CO2, you had a logarithmic increase in temperature. The figures make it seem as though the relationship is linear and every doubling of CO2 led to a 1.1 degree increase in temperature.
REPLY: Typo related to format conversion image/cut/paste – now fixed – Anthony[/q]
Having read this paper over at Mises.org, oddly enough I figured that you would have fixed the graphic soon after I posted my comment (and you did) so I was commenting on the what would be the fixed graphics (if that makes any sense).
Both figures are saying that every doubling of CO2 leads to a direct 1.1 degree increase in temperature. But the CO2/Temperature relationship is logarithmic: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
I don’t know if it is something that Dr. Evan overlooked or if it is just a poor or simplified wording, but the figures are implying the direct relationship between CO2 and temperature are stronger than they are.
scepticalwombat says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Figures 1 and 2 are misleading in that they look at changes in temperature rather than actual temperatures. No one ever said that temperatures would increase steadily and in fact all the projections and models suggested that after the major El Nino peak in 1998 there should be a return to the trend line which implies that temperatures should fall or at least stop increasing in order to return to the trend line. The fact that they have done that should be no surprise and certainly does not invalidate the models.
I most firmly disagree: NO published model result of ANY of the 23 known GCM used thus far has predicted a 15 year flat period while CO2 levels increase. NONE.
At best, Steve Mosher has indicated informally on this site that 3% of the total model results show a flat period, but the remaining 97% of the total computer runs continue to “falt line” in s nice neat straight “average” line linearly increasing with CO2 increases. ALL published results use “averages” of dozens to hundreds of model runs as their result.
Further, NO model results have EVER predicted ANY El Nino or La Nina period, much less the 1998 super-El-Nino. This includes back-casting and forecasting: No model results shows a El Nino spike or La Nina dip caused by those oscillations in the mid-Pacific winds and currents.
Now, to be fair, I will leave you to prove your statement by showing either the 3% of the runs that Mosher mentioned, or a published result of any 15 year flat period.
Very Nice Anthony..
the data in simple understandable format… but the AGW faithful will cry heretic!
Reality… what a concept…
Yes, need to re-publish the PDF as well. The warmist feedback is incorrect as well.
> I thought that for each doubling of CO2, you had a logarithmic increase in temperature.
No. Temperature change is roughly linear in log(CO2 change).
REPLY: Is it really? That is what you and the rest of RealClimate believes, but observations and other calculations suggest that isn’t actually the case. From http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/25/what-does-a-reduction-to-350-ppm-of-co2-get-you/
For a short period of time, such as our history of CO2 measurement, it appears as linear, but on the larger scale, not so much. – Anthony
That’s the best summary of the skeptics case that I have seen. Thanks.
higley7 said @ February 26, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Wrong! It comes from MODTRAN a computer program designed to model atmospheric propagation of electromagnetic radiation for the 100-50,000 cm-1 (0.2 to 100 um) spectral range by Spectral Sciences Inc. and the US Air Force. You do understand that there is a difference between these organisations and the IPCC?
Figure 7 could be more clear. It would be helpful to separate the actual ERBE data from all others by using a different color or setting it apart somehow. At first and second looks, it appears that ERBE is simply an outlier amongst many data sets, rather than being the only data amongst many models.
David Evans can you explain how and why you altered Hansen’s scenario A, B and C lines in figures 3 and 4? I presume there was a good reason to do so, but wouldn’t it have been clearer to just leave them unmodified? I don’t see how it helps to modify the prediction if you want to test the prediction.
I notice for example that in figure 3 and 4 you show Hansen’s 3 scenarios meeting in the year 2008. That doesn’t occur in Hansen’s original, in fact scenarios A and C are far apart in 2008:
http://www.zeeburgnieuws.nl/nieuws/images/hansen_1988_temp_prediction.jpg
Obviously something has been shifted up or down. What though? and why?
Excellent work. Thank you.
Well done. Very clear and understandable.
How can a piece like this be submitted for formal publication and peer review? Might that be in the works? I wonder what Revkin would say about this presentation?
pkirk21 said @ February 26, 2012 at 12:17 pm
No, the temperature increase falls off rapidly as more CO2 is added. Almost everyone uses MODTRAN to do the sums.
haha, nevermind :). The pdf still shows the incorrect image though. Just a head’s up.
REPLY: No, it doesn’t: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/theskepticscase.pdf
-Anthony
Sorry – that should be figures 4 and 5.
nomnom says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“Obviously something has been shifted up or down. What though? and why?”
Consult the footnotes.
“vi Hansen’s predictions were made in Hansen et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 93 No D8 (20 Aug 1988) Fig 3a Page 9347: pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf. In the graph here, Hansen’s three scenarios are graphed to start from the same point in mid-1987 – we are only interested in changes (anomalies).”
I don’t think this should be presented as “the” skeptical case. While there isn’t model independent evidence to support large climate sensitivities to CO2 forcing in the current climate regime, there also is not conclusive evidence that the net feedbacks are actually negative, although Lindzen, Spencer and others have work arguing that, and the long term stability of the climate is suggestive of that. A positive assertion of a climate sensitivity of 0.6 degrees C, leaves about 80% of the recent warming unexplained rather than the two-thirds to be explained with the direct effects of CO2 forcing. There are plenty of good candidates, anthropogenic black carbon, anthropogenic aerosols (reduction), natural variation (e.g., PDO and other multi-decade climate modes) and solar activity. The IPCC conclusions and confidence are not warranted by the evidence. One can be skeptical based just upon the model diagnostic issues and the lack of model independent evidence for high sensitivities relevant on the time scales of interest, and being unable to reject mostly natural variation, or a sensitivity of 1.1C or even 0.6C as null hypotheses.
All feedbacks are irrelevant if the system has a governor or thermostat. Willis’s theory that ITCZ Cu-Nims have this effect seems highly likely and I hope the Eschenator will publish soonest.
This incorrectly assumes that CO2 is a cause of warming and not an effect. Even Al Gore’s graphs show CO2 increases are an effect, not a cause of warming. There is no evidence that CO2 actually causes warming, despite any theoretical greenhouse contribution calculations.
In this post, Evans basically cherrypicks data sets, time periods, and studies to arrive at the conclusion that it wants to arrive at. Let’s focus, for example, on the “atmospheric hotspot” (tropical tropospheric amplification) issue. Evans does not discuss the known issues with the radiosonde trend data that he shows and the fact that different radiosonde analyses and different satellite data analyses yield different results.
In particular, he ignores many of the conclusions in the very report that he got the data from ( http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-chap5.pdf ):
The first statement tells us that the models and data agree for fluctuations over time periods for which the data is robust. Where they disagree is for the multidecadal trends where both the radiosonde and satellite data is not very robust and has known artifacts that can affect these trends. For these reasons, the authors of the report concluded that the remaining disagreement between models and data was more likely due to issues with the data than problems with the models.
Finally, it is not clear where the claim that 2/3 of the warming projected in the models is due to the “hot spot” comes from. This claim is not correct. In fact, as Isaac Held, one of the top modelers has recently noted, the hot spot has two effects: (1) to increase the magnitude of the water vapor feedback, which would increase the warming and (2) to cause the lapse rate feedback, a negative feedback in the models (i.e., one that reduces the warming). However, Held argues that the effect in the models of (2) is actually larger than (1), so that the net effect of the “hot spot” is likely to lower the amount of surface warming…and, thus, the absence of the “hot spot”, if real, would…if anything…increase the surface warming.
To be honest, this conclusion that the increase in the lapse rate feedback due to the “hot spot” is larger than the increase in the water vapor feedback kind of surprised me because I had always thought that the water vapor feedback wins over the lapse rate feedback…i.e., that the net effect of these two feedbacks together is amplification of the surface warming. However, Held explained to me that, while this is true, the water vapor feedback can be thought of as consisting of two parts: (a) the part that would occur even if the troposphere warmed uniformly rather than with tropical tropospheric amplification and (b) the additional part that occurs due to the tropical tropospheric amplification (“the hotspot”). Contrarily, the lapse rate feedback is solely the result of the tropical tropospheric amplification. And, if you compare only (b) to the lapse rate feedback, you find that the net effect of these two is a small negative feedback, so that is the net result that one at least naively expects from tropical tropospheric amplification (as opposed to just a uniform warming of the tropical troposphere).
So, to summarize, the comparison between models and data regarding the “hot spot” remains unsettled. And, at any rate, the “hot spot” is not responsible for most of the surface warming in the models; in fact, if anything the net effect of the “hot spot” missing would be to make the net feedbacks a little more positive because the net effect in the models of having the “hot spot” is a slight negative feedback to the surface warming.
My reasoning why the offical view for doubling of CO2 (1.1c) could actually be wrong is down to lab work I did a few years ago. It was only done for interest and therefore no report or analysis with it. The key conclusion I found and it was very suprising at the time, was that compared with the atmospheric air (~386ppm CO2) against 100 percent CO2 volume, there was only a 3c difference. This would take just short of 15 doublings of CO2 to reach this level if it was ever possible. Almost 15 doublings using the offical view should show a 16.5c difference, yet in the lab could only show a 3c difference. This value only represents about 0.2c rise per doubling of CO2, much lower than the 1.1c quoted.
The Warmist’s lack of logic boggles the mind! Consider this statement at the top of the post:
If water is THE predominant greenhouse gas, it doesn’t need any warming assistance from CO2. Their “guess” about a threefold amplification about feedbacks is bogus–water alone should be sufficient to cause runaway heat trapping and all the catastrophism the hysterical side needs to stir up the populace, remove individual freedoms, and foist a global governance through energy control onto all humanity.
But it DOESN’T. And it never will. There is no special collusion that happens between the two gasses.
It must really suck to be an AGW Control Freak right about now.
There are several other points that I feel are worth inclusion above.
1) Surface temperature monitoring prior to 1978 and the error bars thereof.
2) The silliness of ignoring ENSO(etc) during the ‘best fit’ rising portion … and blaming them during the current roughly-flat period.
3) The Little Ice Age and the widespread geographical and historical ‘anecdotes’ that are eliminated by Mann’s data-flattening method.
4) The elimination of the Medieval Warm Period.
Yes, it is only an ‘anecdote’ when you’re using information like tribal migrations, choice of crops, and ice skating announcements. But concrete information can be derived from even anecdotes – and the error bars (on one side anyway) can go well beyond the normal ‘95%’ confidence level typical of an actual experiment. The Thames just isn’t above freezing if there is an ice fair.
Elimination of the other previous, well-documented (if not well-instrumented) climactic shifts is -the- key element that allows the claims ‘worst in history’ and the crucial component of the adjective -catastrophic- for CAGW.
The silliness of fitting on the up-slope of a periodic function and claiming ‘Excellent Fit!’ and then turning around and declaiming that the subsequent deviation is mere weather is also odd. Either ENSO is ‘climate’, and should be properly predicted … -or- … ENSO is weather and the 1990-2000 period’s models should be falling short as they under-predict a ‘mere weather’ phenomena. Pick. Just don’t change your mind to suit whatever seems most convenient at the moment. Again.
CF this piece with this weeks Lindzen address at the house of commons – link thru
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/2/23/independent-on-lindzen.html
His 58 page presentation concludes : ( Be sure to read the whole thing)
“Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating.
In the meantime, while I avoid making forecasts for tenths of a degree change in globally averaged temperature anomaly, I am quite willing to state that unprecedented climate catastrophes are not on the horizon though in several thousand years we may return to an ice age.”
58
“Hansen’s climate model clearly exaggerated future temperature rises.”
No, you have shown Hansen’s predictions for met stations surface temp measurement against satellite measured temperature for the lower troposphere. What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.
This chart shows the relationship between increasing CO2 and temperature. And this short paper by Dr Lance Endersbee shows the relationship between CO2, the oceans, and global warming:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Focus_0808_endersbee.pdf
Mutter, mutter, dry adiabatic lapse rate, mutter, mutter. Let’s not go there today….
Re figure 2 – This skeptic would include increased convection as offsetting part of a CO2 induced temperature increase.
William M. Connolley says:
That graph does not contradict what Connolley says. What he is saying is that temperature change depends logarithmically on CO2 level, which means that it would be linear on a plot of log(CO2 level). The plot you show does not have log(CO2 level) on the x-axis. It just has CO2 level.
If you look at the entire thread of the comment:
* Evans correctly assumed that the dependence of temperature on log(CO2) means that each doubling would produce the same increment in temperature (e.g., going from 560 ppm to 1120 ppm would produce the same temp change as going from 280 ppm to 560 ppm).
* pkirk21 incorrectly assumed that a logarithmic relationship means that each successive doubling would produce a smaller increment in temperature.
* Connolley correctly pointed out that the logarithmic relationship means the each successive doubling produces the same increment in temperature.
Nick Stokes says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:47 pm
“No, you have shown Hansen’s predictions for met stations surface temp measurement against satellite measured temperature for the lower troposphere. What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.”
But wasn’t the prediction that the troposphere should heat up faster than the surface?
“”””” Jeremy says:
February 26, 2012 at 11:51 am
The posts under David’s original blog has some good discourse also. A skeptic brings up some rubbish “slayer” arguments that are sometimes used to attack the CAGW meme but, being titally wrong, only serve to discredit the skeptics. David Evans obviously understands Physics very well and explains why these “slayer” arguments are just plain wrong. Excellent.
I realize Anthony Watts and his crew, not being Physicists, cannot be expected to correct the occasional egregious Physics errors committed from time to time on WUWT. However, WUWT is so well supported, has a large community, is uncensored, and is full of such diverse and interesting content (as well as posts) that I am quite wiling to overlook the odd articles/posts on WUWT that makes us few Physicists cringe. “””””
Well Jeremy, if you have been a practising Physicist; getting people to spend THEIR OWN MONEY in free arms length exchange for the fruits of YOUR Physics expertise, for more than 55 years, then I suppose you have cause to cringe; along with those other few Physicists out there. by the way; where can we find some of your expert Physics utterances related to the subject David Evans is presenting.
I take his data for granted, having not measured that myself. But I don’t necessarily agree with his view of what serious skeptics do believe WRT the 1.1 deg C rise in the mean global surface Temperature for any doubling of CO2 (sans ANY amplifications)… For a start, there is NO observed data supporting that, and just how in the laboratory did somebody measure the Temperature rise of some “surface” akin to earth’s surface, from doubling the CO2 (say from 280 to 560 ppm of a dry (waterless) synthetic earth atmosphere, under the influence of say a roughly black body radiator at a Temperature of about 288 Kelvins; the purported earth mean surface Temperature ?? I would accept something like an ordinary bottle of water at 15 deg C, as a suitable source of a 10 micron peaked LWIR emission spectrum, such as the mean earth surface emits. So where can we read the peer reviewed results of such laboratory experiments, confirming the official 1.1 deg C rise scenario. ??
Some of us “serious Physicists” would like to know.
[snip. On 72 hour timeout. ~dbs, mod.]
REPLY: I see that mostly what you are doing is throwing in hot button words to provoke a response, then whining about it when you get called out on it, such as you’ve recorded here: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/02/comments_elsewhere_part_ii.php
So, by your own admission it is all a game for you.
I note that you didn’t print the part today where I called you out on it.
And also note, other similar comments on Figure 3were allowed, but they didn’t call Dr. Evan’s integrity into question immediately like you did. They asked questions, you made accusations. Your comment wording was the problem.
For a person who routinely changes history at Wikipedia, and gets called out on it, and gets privileges revoked for his actions, you sure have some ego to complain when Dr. Evans makes an interpretation different than you. Your Gleickness shines brightly.
For your subterfuge word baiting game to see if you get banned here, the timeout I’m assigning you this this time is 72 hours. There won’t be a third time. Keep it civil and don’t assume this to be your sandbox, and you won’t have a problem. Your choice. – Anthony
Dessler and Davis JGR 2010 vol 115 could not find any increasing water vapour.
Water vapor is supposedly the most important feedback mechanism.
The case for (strong) feedback seems weak.
DirkH says: February 26, 2012 at 12:57 pm
“But wasn’t the prediction that the troposphere should heat up faster than the surface?”
Not the lower troposphere. But in any case, why not simply measure his prediction against what he was actually predicting?
Regarding the source of the direct effect of doubling of CO2 (with and w/o feedbacks included) here is page #3 of the 58 page presentation of Dr. Lindzen on Feb 2 2012 at the House of Commons Committee Rooms in Westminster, London: [note: bold emphasis below mine-JW]
Page 41 through 44 of Lindzen’s same 58 page presentation details the mechanism by which is the basis of his conclusion on page 44:
Hope this helps with showing another view versus Dr David M.W. Evans statement in his post that the direct effect of CO2 doubling is 1.1C.
Dr. Evans said:
As you can see the positions of Lindzen and Evans are different in that Lindzen adds that the direct effect of CO2 w/o feedbacks of about 1C is conservatively high. Whereas I do not see that conservatively high caution in Dr. Evans 1.1C.
John
Yes, doubling of CO2 for each increment involves the same rise in temperature.
For example.
386 –> 772ppm (1.1c )
772 –>1544ppm (1.1c)
The rise is the same for each doubling, but the volume of gas doubles each time to achieve the same rise.
Smokey says: February 26, 2012 at 12:48 pm
This short paper by Dr Lance Endersbee shows the relationship between CO2, the oceans, and global warming: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Focus_0808_endersbee.pdf
Thanks Smokey for fishing this out, I hadn’t seen it. I was in contact with Endersbee shortly before he died. Some stats folk here suggested that Endersbee’s graph was done over too short a period of time… and in those days I took that as gospel but now I suspect the correlation is likely statistically significant… and boy is it telling.
CO2 comes from the oceans. WMC eat your heart out.
For the sake of clarity can we split the argument into two distinct camps.
I suggest that the warministas be refered to as the Goreal warming advocacy .
Any suggestions for the reality side? Or improvements on the above
All very interesting and succinct, and I was very impressed with Dr. Evan’s bio until I got to the Stanford part…alas!
Go Bears. 🙂
I’d really like for the HI to work to distill all these data so a high school 9th grader could understand it. I’d do it myself, but hey…they’re the ones evidently trying to stop the teaching of science in American schools and they’re the ones who are getting the big bad oil bucks to do it, right?
http://www.rhinohide.org/gw/publications/ipcc/ar4/img/ts26-updated-2011.jpg
Take a close look at the graphs/charts and consider this for a moment. Is it possible they were aware of the cooling that would be caused by the actions they “ignore?” Assume that the IPCC BS had been accepted in 2000 and that CO2 had been restricted as they wanted. All of these morons would be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
Wrong! It comes from MODTRAN a computer program designed to model atmospheric propagation of electromagnetic radiation for the 100-50,000 cm-1 (0.2 to 100 um) spectral range by Spectral Sciences Inc. and the US Air Force. You do understand that there is a difference between these organisations and the IPCC?
Do we have any outputs from MODTRAN from the base state derived from the observations of 50 years ago? Do we have any recent actual data on the increased Lorentz bandwidth observed and compared them against the original data?
I have some of the books that detail the measurements from that era (including down to the individual wave numbers) but I have yet to see one to one comparisons of that data to today or even comparable recent data.
For someone who knows a person who goes to places like Durbin ( a relative of a friend of mine whom I’ve debated with over drinks ), Please help:
What are the arguments against some of these skeptic arguments made by warmists?
The hotspot.
The argo data.
Sea level non-acceleration.
choose another.
And how do they justify the fact that they declared this crisis in the late 80s after about a decade of warming, while now dismissing a decade of flat temps as irrelevant?
And, i would suggest any forced warming should cause said amplifications as ” the models ” predict, and yet no fire-ball earth in history?
Any answers to these would be much appreciated, as this guy loves to drive me into the weeds. And I am educated well on this subject, but need to know their weak ( likely ) rebuttals.
Whatever CO2 does, during forthcoming decade or two its effect is going to be very small. It is becoming apparent that the current plateau of high global temperatures is likely to turn into a downward trend reminiscent of the 1960’s.
Within a decade or even sooner the CO2 overcooked hypothesis will be held up as a grotesque example of scientific folly of the modern time.
It is time for all those who are reluctant supporters of that folly, to seriously consider bailing out and salvage at least some of their scientific credibility. Many universities and research establishments now considered as the ‘hot houses’ of the AGW agenda will require a rapid ‘U turn’ in the related sciences, it is time for the ‘reluctant’ ones to start preparing for the inevitable changeover.
higley7 says: February 26, 2012 at 12:06 pm
What a lot of the skeptic scientist generally have missed is that the 1.1 deg C rise with CO2 doubling comes from a calculation in which the IPCC brains (…) multiplied the thermodynamic factor for CO2 (…) by a whopping factor of 12, bumping the warming from 0.1 deg C to 1.1–1.2 deg C.
…It’s too bad that so many skeptics honor this falsehood, just as so many honor the false CO2 graph composed of Arctic ice core and Mauna Loa volcano data and validate it in discussions as if it was true. It’s cherry-picked and manipulated data and has to be labeled so as often as it comes up.
(1) Can you give a ref. for the 12-fold exaggerating trick?
(2) The Ice Hockey Stick gets too little mention, absolutely, thanks for mentioning it. Don’t know about this one?
What if CO2 doesn’t lead to warming ?? I really doubt if that has ever been established because it leads to creating energy from nothing. Besdies the argument supposes CO2 is a perfect insulator and this has NEVER been demonstrated !
What if increasing CO2 actually provides an extra mechanism for energy transport in the atmosphere – albeit a small one due to its concentration ?
If it does increase the efficiency of the atmosphere in reducing the surface temperature during the day – which only the most devoted refuse to acknowledge is the real case – thenincreasing CO2 levels could be more of a problem than thought.
Increasing the cooling effect of the atmosphere when solar scientists are predicting deep solar minimums as the coming scenario is not a good idea.
Now, wouldn’t that be a turnaround. Coling effect of increased CO2 due to enhanced radiative transport versus creation of energy from nothing – I think AGW is less probable !
“DirkH says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:35 pm
nomnom says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“Obviously something has been shifted up or down. What though? and why?”
Consult the footnotes.
“vi Hansen’s predictions were made in Hansen et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 93 No D8 (20 Aug 1988) Fig 3a Page 9347: pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf. In the graph here, Hansen’s three scenarios are graphed to start from the same point in mid-1987 – we are only interested in changes (anomalies).”
Also consult the vertical scale legends. Hansen’s graph is for change per annum: i.e., a RATE of change. Evans’ graph is total anomaly: SUMMED change.
Here’s another presentation (my adaptation of Warren Meyer’s) that explains the feedback issue very clearly as well. It also puts the feedback issue into perspective with all the rest of the climate gleickenspiels as I now want to call them.
Joel, my buddy
I don’t know whether you trained to be a prat or whether it was thrust upon you for whatever stick to the subject, concentrate hard on what’s being said and then try again, please.
DirkH said @ February 26, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Which is precisely why I suggested above that David explain why he chose UAH over surface air temperatures.
[snip – what part of 72 hours don’t you understand? Care to try for permanent? I’m adding you to the moderation que so that all subsequent comments get flagged for attention. That’s not a permanent ban, but since you have admitted to playing games, I find it a necessary requirement now after 94 comments you’ve made here. – Anthony]
“Millions” of weather balloons in the last 40 years?
That’s over two thousand weather balloons launched per month for just one million; about 70 launches per day (according to my calculator).
I have to say I find that to be a very large number; especially if it’s more than one million.
Regarding Brian H’s first comment:
Dr. Evans accepts and uses the “1.1 direct effect” and proceeds to demolish AGW, and thus CAGW. Brian’s lower estimate of the direct effect makes the case even more so.
One of the highly commented (Comments closed at 436) posts on WUWT was:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
Brian H. also commented there, including on the uncertainty of the pre-industrial level of CO2.
Can someone provide a link to a report explaining when and how this issue became closed, as in: “The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2.” [David Evans, this post]
I have forwarded a copy of the .pdf to “The Source”, Ezra Levant’s excellent Canadian television program. Hopefully it will aid them in continuing to take the fight to the climate fraudsters.
Excellent paper Dr Evans.
Thank-you Dr. Evans for the clear explanation of the fundamental science of AGW and the fundamental issues which determine, whether a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in benign warming (less than 1C with most of the warming occurring at high latitudes which increases the extent of the biosphere) as opposed the extreme warming 3C to 5C as predicted by the IPCC. with a significant portion of the warming occuring at low latitudes of the planet.
As you note, it there is zero feedback a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from 280ppm to 560 ppm, is predicted conservatively on the high side to result in 1.2C warming. If the planet resists the temperature change (negative feedback) the warming will be less than 1.2C, the planet must amplify the forcing change (positive feedback) to achieve the IPCC’s 1.5C to 5C predicted warming.
All of general circulation models used by the IPCC to predicted future warming due to atmospheric CO2 increases, assume the planet amplifies forcing changes (positive feedback).
Your comparison of recent temperature data to IPCC general circulation model predictions shows the planet resists a forcing change ( negative feedback, planetary cloud increases when the planet warms which reflects more sunlight off into space which resists the change) rather than amplifies the forcing (positive feedback).
Lindzen and Choi’s analysis of top of the atmosphere radiation changes (measured by satellite) vs planetary temperature changes (see this linked to paper) supports the same conclusion. The planet’s response to a change in forcing is to resist the change in temperature (negative feedback) by reflecting more or less sunlight off into space.
Negative feedback works to stabilizes systems. Positive feedback would result in an oscillatory unstable system.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
Richard S. Lindzen1 and Yong-Sang Choi2
We argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics, and the tropical feedbacks can be adjusted to account for their impact on the globe as a whole. Indeed, we show that including all CERES data (not just from the tropics) leads to results similar to what are obtained for the tropics alone – though with more noise. We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.
Jo Nova’s original booklet also relies on going for the jugular of the CAGW nonsense in a very simple, straightforward way.And of course, Jo has answered the weak attacks on the book, here.
Anthony, would you consider adding her booklet to your sidebar?
[snip. On 72 hour timeout. ~dbs, mod.]
REPLY: Yeah, that must be why WUWT and all other websites are just so darned, um, unpopular with regular folks who don’t have terminal egoblegh – Anthony.
Matt G says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Sorry I made a mistake to previous post and should read 12 doublings (CO2).
This changes the values to 13.2c compared with 3c and 1.1c compared with 0.25c per CO2 doubling.
John Douglas says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:09 pm
For the sake of clarity can we split the argument into two distinct camps.
I suggest that the warministas be refered to as the Goreal warming advocacy .
Any suggestions for the reality side? Or improvements on the above
I suggest the ‘Natureal Variability’ perception.
Ric Werme says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:49 pm
“The earth’s climate is long-lived and stable— it has never gone into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus — which strongly suggests that the feedbacks dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2.
Mutter, mutter, dry adiabatic lapse rate, mutter, mutter. Let’s not go there today….
Re figure 2 – This skeptic would include increased convection as offsetting part of a CO2 induced temperature increase.”
___________________________________________________________________________
Hooray! It took a while – nearly half an hours worth of reading in fact, – but somebody finally mentioned the “c” word – convection.
Until climate science acknowledges the key role that convection, acting alongside radiation, plays in controlling atmospheric temperatures, it will be forever thrashing around in the dark, unable to produce a correct explanation for anything.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/vef/kids/wxballoon.php
“Twice a day, every day of the year, weather balloons are released simultaneously from almost 900 locations worldwide!”
900 x 2 x365 x 40 = 2.628.0000
Matt G says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Yes, doubling of CO2 for each increment involves the same rise in temperature.
For example.
386 –> 772ppm (1.1c )
772 –>1544ppm (1.1c)
The rise is the same for each doubling, but the volume of gas doubles each time to achieve the same rise.
———————————–
Okay! Bad mathematical visualization on my part. Dr. Evans statement was correct in the figure, my brain was just seeing the doubling as 2, 4, 6, 8… instead of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32…
I would just like to say that I find Mr.Connolley’s behaviour verging on the childish, but I would request that he not be banned here. That would be , after all, the result that he is after.
Further, some points he raises are quite legitimate, it seems to me, although his style is ridiculously provocative. His own blog is quite startling in its rudeness. I appreciate moderating him might be tiresome but it seems to me that your previous tactic of requesting resubmission in an acceptable form is the preferred one.
Of course, it may be that he has “previous”, as we say in the UK, in his behaviour here so I might not have the full story.
REPLY: He’s made a lot of comments here, many legitimate and insightful, 94 up to the last one. But when I find that he’s hot-word baiting to get a desired result for publication on his blog, I have to draw the line somewhere. He’s got the same problem as Gleick, and over reaching ego steeped in a belief that he holds the moral high ground- Anthony
@joel Shore says:
“In this post, Evans basically cherrypicks data sets, time periods, and studies to arrive at the conclusion that it wants to arrive at.”
==============================
Joel, the problem with your type of reasoning is that every single independent line of evidence would have to be wrong. Yes I appreciate you can always think of possible reasons for why a particular line of evidence could be in error or misleading. But every single line of evidence suffers from flaws of one type or another? Is that plausible? Is that a rational scientific position to take? I seen the same sort of “reasoning” applied when I have debated Creationist proponents in the past.
JMF says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:16 pm
“For someone who knows a person who goes to places like Durbin ( a relative of a friend of mine whom I’ve debated with over drinks ), Please help:
What are the arguments against some of these skeptic arguments made by warmists?”
JMF, that’s what skepticalscience is for. They are on the warm side and have a huge collection of talking points against skeptical arguments. You find them in the sidebar under “unreliable” – they got this label after too many after-the-fact manipulations in their comment threads were discovered.
Bad Apple says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:30 pm
“Millions” of weather balloons in the last 40 years?
I don’t see a date, but —
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/vef/kids/wxballoon.php
Twice a day, every day of the year, weather balloons are released simultaneously from almost 900 locations worldwide!
@Nick Stokes says:
“Hansen’s climate model clearly exaggerated future temperature rises.”
No, you have shown Hansen’s predictions for met stations surface temp measurement against satellite measured temperature for the lower troposphere. What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.
—————————————————
OK, then let’s look at what RealClimate has to say about Hansen’s prediction:
http://www.realclimate.org/images/hansen10.jpg
As you can see, even at RC the projection is below scenario C and even then they had to cherry pick the graph at the height of the last El Nino to make it look that ‘good’. Since then temperatures have dropped further. Don’t wish to be rude here, but your statement that “[the] prediction is pretty good” seems to be a product of your imagination.
Nick Stokes > Not the lower troposphere. But in any case, why not simply measure his prediction against what he was actually predicting?
I agree. I suspect the conclusion will be similar, but it just muddies the water to have a prediction made on one basis, and graph results on another basis.
Rosco says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:21 pm
What if CO2 doesn’t lead to warming ?? I really doubt if that has ever been established because it leads to creating energy from nothing. Besdies the argument supposes CO2 is a perfect insulator and this has NEVER been demonstrated !
What if increasing CO2 actually provides an extra mechanism for energy transport in the atmosphere – albeit a small one due to its concentration ?
Now, wouldn’t that be a turnaround. Cooling effect of increased CO2 due to enhanced radiative transport versus creation of energy from nothing – I think AGW is less probable !
__________________________________________________________
Black body IR is indeed hastened by CO2 levels. When CO2 is increased it displaces other gases which reflect that band of energy transference. As levels increase so does the speed at which those areas release heat, even during the day time.
just another paradoxical event that is not fully understood.
This and the PDF are now in my bookmarks to be distributed to all who:
1. will take a serious look at it and,
2. those like my warmist co-worker,who may read it and get irritated
which is what I want. BTW he has not spoken one word about Gleick.
just looks at the floor a lot…
Oh, one other thing-with the coooling of the Oceans, if it continues and
becomes obvious to everyone,won’t there be a CO2 absorbtion?
A tank you to Dr. Evans. I will bookmark this for future use.
Regarding this sentence;
“Dr David M.W. Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change)”
Excuse me for saying so, but….”Department of Climate Change” ? Is it just me that finds this silly? Does Climate Change have it’s own department now?
hehe.
UzUrBrain >Take a close look at the graphs/charts and consider this for a moment. Is it possible they were aware of the cooling that would be caused by the actions they “ignore?” Assume that the IPCC BS had been accepted in 2000 and that CO2 had been restricted as they wanted. All of these morons would be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
That’s a very interesting observation.
You say that an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause warming which in turn will cause an increase in water vapor in the atmosphere, ( and water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.) In fact, both relative and specific humidity have been decreasing since 1948, as shown by radio sonde balloon records, as CO2 has been steadily increasing.( See Ferenc Miskolczi’s paper on the Saturated Greenhouse Effect,Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Journal, Vol III, No1, Jan-March 2007.)
Anthony – Connelly is simply [snip let’s not pile on – Anthony]
[snip- piling on – Connelley’s game playing isn’t worth discussing further here, and since he can’t respond for 72 hours, it would be inappropriate. You can take it up with him at Stoat – Anthony]
Thank you Dr Evans and Mr Watts.
Anything is possible says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Please email me, thx.
Sorry – know its off topic – feel free to delete, however, I suspect others here might be interested in Mr. Connolley’s opinion of WUWT and its participants, and his agenda here:
“It has taken me a little while, but my adventures into WUWT land have finally provoked a banning, though only temporary. The poor darling didn’tlike me pointing out the vacuousness of one of his favourites. I should add that WUWT likes to pretend that it is tolerant of dissenting voices; it is commonplace for people there to say “well at least we don’t stop people commenting here”. But of course they don’t really mean it, though the tolerance extended to the “skeptic” side is very wide.”
“The only thing that the WUWT folk have in common is denial of GW (in fact even that is being too kind; most of them are utterly clueless about what the scientific opinion is; its not as if they’ve ever read any, or the IPCC reports. They are still lost in their shadow-world of CAGW).”
[Reply: Mr Connolley knows that he was only given a “24 hour time out” for violating site Policy, which is not being “banned”. ~dbs, mod.]
“Roscoe: Increasing the cooling effect of the atmosphere when solar scientists are predicting deep solar minimums as the coming scenario is not a good idea.”
Congrats Roscoe, you may be on the forefront of the new paradigm.
I can hear it now, “we must reduce CO2 emissions to avoid runaway cooling”.
Everyone climb aboard….lots of money to be made!
Sheeesh!
JMF says:
What are the arguments against some of these skeptic arguments made by warmists?
========================
For Dr Evans’ arguments the ‘rebuttals’ I have found are:
Air Temperatures
– Warming will resume, only on hiatus. 10-15 year period too short.
– Comment: This is plausible but only just. If warming ‘caught up’ rapidly over the next few years and globally rose by around.5C, this would nullify this line of evidence.
Ocean Temperatures
– Too little data over too short a period of time, given the variability due to ENSO, etc.
– Comment: Somewhat plausible but warmists are starting to recognise the problem, hence suggesting new theories, such as the warmth transitioning to the deep ocean where we presently can’t measure it.
Hot Spot
– Argue for problems with the data measurements. And also argue it doesn’t matter if it’s not found.
– Comment: Somewhat plausible, but I cannot make any sense of the second line of argument that the missing hot spot doesn’t matter.
Outgoing Radiation
– Argues that the papers by Spencer, Lindzen/Choi are likely wrong and the period of analysis is too short. The first argument is always plausible and the 2nd argument might be valid too.
My impression here is that while each critique on it’s own merits is plausible, to have 4 different lines of evidence dismissed using the same type of argument – the data is too short, too noisy, too unreliable – seems to stretch credulity.
Excellent succinct summary. Perhaps the best I have seen. Well done David.
Ya, but…..
Facts do not tax.
Dr Evans,
Do you know about Heartland Institutes efforts to put back Normal Science and Scientific debate back in schools?
I agree with Jenn Oates says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:11 pm
“I’d really like for the HI to work to distill all these data so a high school 9th grader could understand it. ”
———————-
However, I found it very pliable 🙂
Usually due to lack of adequate explanation I have trouble understanding half the graphs in the articles these geniuses write. This article is quite the exception with the explanations gooder enough “For Kids Who Can’t Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too,…” (Zoolander)
I am very glad I didn’t have a chance to read this before the errors in the html conversion were identified and fixed. I would have been confused and not smart enough to straighten it out. LOL
I think this is an excellent paper and well documented and right on target in addressing the differences between the warmist positions and skeptics responses. But, to me, the big picture includes two other factors not covered.
One is that an ice age ended 13 thousnd years ago and there was a (all be it filled with a never ending series of minor 10 to 40 year ups and downs) steady warming throughout the 12 thousand years prior to the beginnings of our modern civilization. No one has yet to explain to me with acceptable scientific proof what causes the major swings from ice ages to interglacial periods and the steady warming during the first half of the interglacial periods when huge fields of ice melt, oceans rise and fall and life thrives or what causes the steady cooling as a new ice age approaches. Clearly these are major overwhelming natural forces and our anthropogenic warming is such a minor factor it is almost undetectable.
The second issue is one noted by a poster above, that the atmospheric CO2 has seemed to change in the past (according to paleoclimatology) after temperature changes not as a driver of temperatures changes.
I look forward to comments that answer these two questions that are so basic in my mind.
Regards to all,
Nick Stokes, there isn’t much between all of them and his reasoning is using the most accurate, which compared with surface is true. GISS is on it’s own a bit especially with some of the peaks it manages with others nowhere near them. Why not use his prediction against what he actually predicting? Another reason is to remove bias so HAD3 for surface or satellites!!!
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1995/normalise/plot/rss/from:1995/normalise/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/normalise/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1995/normalise/plot/uah/from:1995/trend/plot/rss/from:1995/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1995/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1995/normalise/plot/gistemp/from:1995/trend
[snip – more piling on on Connelley – lets’ just leave it be please – Anthony]
Nick Stokes says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:47 pm
“No, you have shown Hansen’s predictions for met stations surface temp measurement against satellite measured temperature for the lower troposphere. What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.”
___________________________________________________________________________
Nick, perhaps you ought to clarify whether the Hansen who made the prediction is actually the same Hansen who is responsible for producing the very GISS Ts index which makes the prediction look “pretty good” – or is it just an unfortunate co-incidence that they have the same surname?
You know what people – especially sceptics – are like. If they thought that the 2 Hansens were one and the same person, they may start suspecting that the index was being driven in such a way as to make the prediction look good rather than by the data itself.
People are funny like that…….
@kwik says:
Excuse me for saying so, but….”Department of Climate Change” ? Is it just me that finds this silly? Does Climate Change have it’s own department now?
==================================
Yes in Australia there is actually a department of climate change.
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/
Lucy Skywalker says: February 26, 2012 at 2:12 pm
[snip- piling on… Anthony]
Fair enough. Comes a bit close to me starting to doing the same as WMC.
Ah, but it’s this emotion that drives us! Where would this wonderful blog be if we had no Joel or WMC or Gleick to trigger our righteous reflexes!
yet, truth matters. I’m still working on a reply to Willis and all that stuff from January and refuse to bring it out until I’ve made the math path simple to tread without raising violent emotions.
Lucy Skywalker says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Anything is possible says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Please email me, thx.
____________________________
Duly sent. Can you pls confirm arrival.
I disagree that doubling CO2 will directly increase temperatures 1.1C, (leave feed backs out for now). That is because a significant part of heat loss is due to convective heat transfer. This transports heat up to the upper troposphere and even to the stratosphere. Doubling ground level CO2, a heavy gas, will not double the concentration higher up. The clouds up there are radiating to space, like they always have been. Convective heat transfer from the earth is poorly modeled, and probably explains why we have not warmed, along with negative feed backs.
“Jeremy says:
February 26, 2012 at 11:51 am
“I realize Anthony Watts and his crew, not being Physicists, cannot be expected to correct the occasional egregious Physics errors committed from time to time on WUWT. However, WUWT is so well supported, has a large community, is uncensored, and is full of such diverse and interesting content (as well as posts) that I am quite wiling to overlook the odd articles/posts on WUWT that makes us few Physicists cringe.”
And that, Sir, is the point. May we, the ordinary people, have the truth though it may have to be clarified so we can understand it. And would you be kind enough to explain the errors where they may occur – again in simple terms so that we the ordinary people who pay the researchers can again understand.
I had heard we were going to get conclusive ice core samples telling us whether c02 leads or lags warming. Anyone know what has come of that?
We have yet to attain to a Ministry for Silly Walks, but give them time…
Their foundation is not the climage change theory or the math, charts, they publish.
Their foundation is that they lie, go after the foundation and it will all fall down.
This article was recently featured on the Ludwig Von Mises Institute page
http://mises.org/daily/5892/The-Skeptics-Case
plug plug
Will Nitschke says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:40 pm
@kwik says:
Excuse me for saying so, but….”Department of Climate Change” ? Is it just me that finds this silly? Does Climate Change have it’s own department now?
==================================
Yes in Australia there is actually a department of climate change.
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/
=================================================
Also in UK – the department of Energy and Climate Change. I’ve considered putting in a request asking why they haven’t succeeded in changing the climate to something more agreeable yet.
We have the science, the models and the reality.
Science and models gives us this;
AGW + positive feedback = cAGW = alarmism
Science and reality gives us this;
AGW + negative feedback = rAGW = reality
JamesD says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:03 pm
I disagree that doubling CO2 will directly increase temperatures 1.1C
All other things remaining equal.
As you rightly pointed out….all other things would not remain equal. But that is part of ‘feedbacks’.
Will Nitschke says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:40 pm
Yes in Australia there is actually a department of climate change.”
========================
Australians aren’t silly, we also have a climate commission to make sure the “message” gets thru.
http://climatecommission.gov.au/
I’ve recently received a letter from The Director, Paul Ryan further to my request as to procedures for correction to published reports. I’m just now in the process of having them quantify their risk assessments regarding a report Professor McMichaels on dengue fever.
From their feedback to me, thus far, they appear to be the propaganda machine for the Department of Climate. Here is a example from my first foray with them, questioning the veracity of their claims about mosquito borne diseases, with regards to mosquito disease transportation factors.
=========================
I refereed them to Gething Et El. (2010) and Paaijmans et al. (2011). Paul Ryans response in part:
“Both papers refer to malaria, which is a quite different illness to dengue fever. Malaria is is spread by different mosquito’s (Anopheles) v’s ( Aedes aegypti), and is a different type of illness. The Paaijimans et al. paper presents research on a link between temperature and malaria parasite infectiousness. The papers comment regarding dengue fever is not part of the papers research, and is unusual given the differences discussed above.
“There are many variables to consider in understanding and projecting future movements of infectious disease carried by mosquito, such as temperature, mosquito behavior infectiousness and human interferences (medication, preventative action.
“How climate change will affect malaria, as well as other other mosquito-borne infectious diseases, is a complex issue and there are no easy answers. The ‘Critical Decade – Climate Change and Heath’ focuses on dengue fever, as a more quantifiable risk fo Australia.”
=========================
I’m relate here only two of my many questions of them.
1. A dengue fever epidemic was recognised in the Torres Strait Islands of Queensland in late 2003. Two fatal cases of dengue haemorrhagic fever occurred in early 2004. This severe manifestation is more common when a patient is infected a second time, with a different virus serotype to the first infection. These are the first fatalities related to dengue fever in Australia in over a century.
2. Geographic distribution Aedes aegypti in Australia;
An introduced species, currently known to exist only in Queensland and predominantly northern coastal Qld, but previously known from WA, NT, and southern NSW. It exists in low populated areas of Australia.
I do wonder how much money was spent in advising Australians of the risk caused by climate change regarding this mosquito. I know it was in the millions. I’ll let you know exactly how much soon.
Explain this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
JamesD
Your supposition would make sense if CO2 were limited to the lower portions of the atmosphere, but that does not seems to be the case. While the concentration is not exactly uniform throughout the entire vertical extent of the atmosphere, it appears that the departures [from] uniform are minor. Per the abstract at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002AGUFM.A62B0151W they observe differences of 8ppmv (relative to an average of 390 ppmv) (I didn’t read the full article to see if I misunderstood the abstract)
In contrast, this Nature article http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v221/n5185/abs/2211040a0.html suggests the assumption of constant mixing is not correct, but the abstract doesn’t quantify the differences; perhaps someone with access to Nature can summarize the conclusions.
Joel Shore says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:40 pm
I don’t see any cherry picks here, the data either only exists for the period shown or shows the prediction from the date it was originally claimed.
The data using any temperature set makes little difference as shown in my previous post and he stated what was used is the most accurate. (2 weather stations in a 1000 square mile radius versus a complete surface area coverage, no comparison)
The hot spot response makes little sense, something thats not there can’t warm the surface. If anything the surface is warming the atmosphere above it especially where the oceans are concerned over the tropics/sub-tropics. Plus if you say the hot-spot should cause a negative feedback then that would support the sceptics water vapor view. While the world was warming global cloud albedo was declining and while the globe become stable and stopped warming global cloud levels stabilized and have recently [increased]. That is not evidence supporting a positive feedback.
Looks like Nick Stokes only remembered part of the standard Hansen defense I’ve been seeing from the consensus side.
He was supposed to have said:
“And that prediction was pretty good, if you allow for the fact he got the climate sensitivity wrong.”
And besides Nick, I’ve told you before even Hansen says the proper test for his scenarios lies somewhere between the met surface station temps and the global (land + ocean) temps.
Unfortunately, in his analysis, Dr. Evans left off the largest heat sink and greatest energy storage reservoir on the planet– the deeper ocean, as well as of course, what’s been happening with Arctic sea ice volume, area, and extent over the past 30+ years. Had he included this, it would have given him another area the models have been “wrong” in (though he seems to miss the whole intention of models in general), but in this case, the models were wrong in that they didn’t estimate enough of a change in either of these areas;
1) Arctic sea ice loss has been greater (much greater) than any of the models indicated.
2) The total energy gained by the deeper ocean (down to 2000m) has been greater than any of the models indicated that it would be.
Finally, Dr. Evans really simplifies the whole issue of feedbacks by leaving out the notion of fast versus slow feedbacks, and has forgotten to discuss one of the most important of feedbacks (the cryopshere response) and the issue of Arctic amplification of the CO2 induced warming.
None of these things that Dr. Evans has left out are trivial matters.
Mike,
Compared to what?
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/PNAS_GTCh_Fig2.gif
Mike says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:39 pm
Explain this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
____
The skeptics would chalk it up to “natural variability” or perhaps, “recovery from the Little Ice Age”, or my favorite, “the sun did it all”.
To add to previous post.
Finally, there are many conclusions that never match the content in reports, so whether the data matches the often opinionated conclusion is irrelevant.
Ouch, how the heck do you have time to get six university degrees?
Oh, yeah that’s right, you don’t go above and overboard on the fanatical industrialization of printing disiformation into wikipedia.
:p
Anything is possible says: February 26, 2012 at 2:40 pm
“Nick, perhaps you ought to clarify whether the Hansen who made the prediction is actually the same Hansen who is responsible for producing the very GISS Ts index…”
Yes. He made the prediction in terms of the only index that was available at the time – the Hansen-Lebedeff index, which has been maintained as GISS Ts. You can see his original graph here. The observed that he was matching was that index.
Since then, the prediction has stayed the same. And it was predicting that index. But people have been substituting different data sets. Even RC used a somewhat cooler land/ocean index. And now David Evans is substituting the lower troposphere index, which is cooler again.
The GISS Ts index is in line with other land indices. CRUTEM3 is about the same; BEST runs warmer.
“While the world was warming global cloud albedo was declining and while the globe become stable and stopped warming global cloud levels stablized and have recently declined.”
Sorry made a mistake, please change the last word shown above in previous post from declined to increased.
Then remove this message.
First off, it’s an excellent presentation. I’ve copied the pdf to keep. There has been some bit of argument over the 1.1 deg C attribution to CO2 due to a doubling. There are some general average numbers we have that can shed a bit of light on what it must be.
Roughly put, solar flux averaged over the Earth’s surface is about 341 W/m^2 with around 70% of that number absorbed and 30% reflected/scattered out to space. That leaves about 239 W/m^2 which is absorbed by the Earth and atmosphere and which must be radiated away by thermal radiation from cloud tops, atmosphere, and from the surface for there to be radiative balance. The average surface temperature for Earth is about 288.2 K which produces about 390 W/m^2 of radiation at the surface. What must happen (for the radiative equilibrium) is that 390-239 ~= 150 W/m^2 radiated from the surface that is captured in the atmosphere above and beyond what is reradiated outbound by the atmosphere and cloud tops. Also, the true blackbody temperature required to radiate away 239 W/m^2 which amounts to about 255k, a difference of 33K. Divide the delta T by the delta P and one gets 33/239 = .22 K per W/m^2. When one uses Modtran or Hitran to determine line by line absorption between surface and the troposphere when doubling the co2 content, one finds that there is about 3.7W/m^2 of added absorption.
Applying the 0.22k per W/m^2 sensitivity, one finds that temperature increase for a 3.7W/m^2 increase in absorption should be around 0.8 K.
Alternatively, if one simply assumes that the fraction of surface radiation escaping is (390-150)/390 = 0.61 so that if a temperature increase at the surface must increase radiation by 3.7/0.61 = 6 W/m^2 so as to overcome the 3.7W/m^2 added absorption, then the surface must be increased in T from 288.2k to about 289.3k which provides us with the 1.1 k increase.
The major problem with this approach that yields 1.1k is that the 3.7W/m^2 added absorption due to a co2 doubling is only for clear skies. which amounts to substantially less than 50% of the sky over at any one time.
What the 0.8k rise does not show is any additional feedbacks which would add or subtract additional W/m^2 to the total. It is also based on pertubation concepts where we are dealing with small changes – like 1 deg C out of almost 300k so that linearity is approximated.
Since the initial numbers I used include all existing feedbacks for the starting conditions, the value of 0.8k rise for a co2 doubling indicates that there is a net negative feedback since it is less than the 1.1K rise due to the straight radiative assumption approach. Hence, one would expect the final result to be lower than 0.8k. It is also likely that the negative feedback contribution will actually be a little less than that estimated using a value of 0.8k rather than 1.1k. However, it should not affect the final total presented.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:48 pm
What are you trying to infer Gatesie, that a .3 Deg increase over 70 years is outside natural variability. Of course by 2030 there will be a null hypothesis. Eh.
These people can help you; http://www.aoa.org/
RC had a similar post not too long ago:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/02/2011-updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
I think this post is better, the author sticks to actual predictions and data, while RC makes assumptions and uses additional data not central to IPCC predictions (ie cherry picked 95% of model runs, cherry picked “adjusted data”, sea ice??)
Although this post does not use the most recent IPCC reports and the limited sea temp/heat content data (0-700m only? and only Argo) is a negative, but RC does not use accurate information here so they do not pick up any points.
At some point it would be interesting if every prediction in AR4/5 was documented and kept up with based only on the prediction made and real world data available.
Mac says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:35 pm
We have the science, the models and the reality.
Science and models gives us this;
AGW + positive feedback = cAGW = alarmism
Science and reality gives us this;
AGW + negative feedback = rAGW = reality
_____
Actually, more like this:
AGW + positive feedbacks + negative feedbacks= Likely in the range of 3C + or – 1C (at the 95% confidence level) per doubling of CO2 from preindustrial levels.
This is by far in my view the best expose of climate to this date its a must see for everyone. Well done Evans
Mike says:
“Explain this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif ”
Glad to. So sit up straight and pay attention. I promise you will learn something.
That is a zero baseline chart, which is fine for anomalies. But when charting a trend, an arbitrary baseline chart is highly deceptive.
Here is a trend line chart from the LIA in the 1600’s. You can see two things right off: Global temperatures are not accelerating, and the natural warming trend since the LIA is rising along the same trend line. Rises identical to the modern warming trend that ended about 15 years ago have happened periodically, when CO2 was very low.
There have been very similar temperature rises over the past century and a half, as even Phil Jones acknowledges.
The mild warming trend has remained within the same parameters, thus falsifying the conjecture that the rise in CO2 is causing an accelerated temperature rise. It isn’t. In fact, any warming from CO2 is so small that it can be disregarded as insignificant. It is too small to even measure.
So when you see a scary chart like the one you posted, remember to check and see if it has an arbitrary baseline. What you need is a chart that shows the trend, like this [the green line is the trend]. Or this chart, which shows how Hansen’s chart deceives the eye; it’s not real because it is a zero baseline chart. But it is scary, which is why GISS uses it. Funding would be substantially less if they weren’t alarming the public.
Also remember that the James Hansen chart you linked to has been artificially “adjusted”. There was no raw data used to construct that chart. Hansen’s adjustments are of two types: either making the past cooler, in order to show a more rapid temperature rise, or “adjusting” the current temperature higher. The most reliable records are from satellite measurements, but Hansen’s charts always show a scary rise in temperatures. But it is false. Hansen is just trying to change the temperature record, to get it closer to his failed predictions.
Stokes.. Why the hell is AMSU satellite 600mb currently -1C? What is wrong?
Naive question — so where can I find a layman-accessible response to these basic points from the perspective of the “consensus” view? Without over-emotional language or ad hominem charges against skeptics of the “consensus” view? I’d seriously like to know what the basic response is to the big picture point made by the article. There must be one, but the presentation here on its face presents a pretty powerful case.
“R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Finally, Dr. Evans really simplifies the whole issue of feedbacks by leaving out the notion of fast versus slow feedbacks, and has forgotten to discuss one of the most important of feedbacks (the cryopshere response) and the issue of Arctic amplification of the CO2 induced warming.
None of these things that Dr. Evans has left out are trivial matters.””
================
What is not trivial is the unassailable fact that if there are no AGW CO2 forcing there is no AGW feedbacks.
How did Hansen get the flux weighted ‘mean’ altitude of emissivity surface altitude at exactly 5 klms, by using a lineal saturated adiabatic lapse rate?
I’ll tell ya. He fudged it.
George E. Smith; says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:00 pm
I don’t have much more to add to Evans. I like what he has done.
All else equal, most Phsyicists agree that a doubling of CO2 is roughly equivalent to warming of 1 deg (ALL ELSE EQUAL). This is what David Evans states (he uses 1.1). David correctly shows that the real unknowns territory begins when one reflects on possible feedbacks to the system in response to more heat….that is where simple radiative physics meets the complexity of clouds and other albedo complications (changes simplistic radiative assumptions) and convection effects (which move heat around).
In the absence of convection, water vapor, sea and a whole host of other factors which dominate our complex atmosphere, Radiative physics is really quite easy. It is generally accepted if ALL ELSE IS EQUAL then more CO2 will cause more infra-red absorption and therefore it acts like another “blanket on a bed”, reducing the overall rate of heat loss to space and raising temperatures by about 1 degree per doubling of CO2. The CAGW alarmists have this part CORRECT, however, as Lindzen and others have shown (using observational data) ALL ELSE IS CERTAINLY NOT EQUAL and feedback loops appear to reduce the direct affect of CO2 by AT LEAST 50% (perhaps much more).
The very worst alarmists (like the IPCC) overstate things radically in their computer models by assuming feedbacks are POSITIVE BY A FACTOR OF UP TO THREE (for which there is NO OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE AT ALL).
Markus Fitzhenry says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:03 pm
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:48 pm
What are you trying to infer Gatesie, that a .3 Deg increase over 70 years is outside natural variability. Of course by 2030 there will be a null hypothesis. Eh
_____
Wow, didn’t know you had psychic abilities, able to predict exactly what will happen in 2030? You might want to take that show on the road.
Even though the troposphere is an excellent way to see warming in the Earth’s system over a long-term basis (many decades) because of its low thermal inertia and poor energy retention, it is not so good over shorter-periods, as natural variability will often dominate, and any longer-term signal (such as from anthropogenic CO2) can often get lost in the short-term noise. Thus, even though the past decade has been the warmest on temperature record, and 9 of the 10 warmest years have been since 2000, too much natural variability and noise still exists to clearly see the signal. Some clever scientists have found ways to filter out some of this natural variability, to see the signal but some still exists. Thus, a better place to see long-term changes in Earth’s energy balance (which is of course the true hard physical effect of increased greenhouse gases), is to look to the oceans. They are not quite so fickle as the troposphere, having a large amount of thermal inertia. Looking at this largest metric for which we have some reliable and consistent data (down to 2000m) we see a constant increase in Earth’s energy system over the past 40 years. Completely consistent with an alteration in Earth’s energy budget consistent with the external forcing expected from increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
I got educated in Australia (University) and I can guarantee that currently they have a third world class education system which accounts for the thousands if not millions of climate ignoramuses along the Gleick style, reason I left a long long time ago
Matt G says: February 26, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Yes, doubling of CO2 for each increment involves the same rise in temperature.
For example.
386 –> 772ppm (1.1c )
772 –>1544ppm (1.1c)
The rise is the same for each doubling, but the volume of gas doubles each time to achieve the same rise.
Per the IPCC, the way we double CO2 is to burn fossil fuels, in which case we are merely adding a C to an existing O2 gas molecule, so volume should remain about the same, if I follow your argument.
Since 1850, what has the global temperatures increase been (in degrees C) ?
What percentage of this number is natural factors and what percentage is human factors ?
Of the human induced climate change factor what percentage is due to petroleum CO2 emissions ?
It’s the answer to the last question (or lack thereof) that scares the warmists.
Smokey says: February 26, 2012 at 12:48 pm
This chart shows the relationship between increasing CO2 and temperature. And this short paper by Dr Lance Endersbee shows the relationship between CO2, the oceans, and global warming:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Focus_0808_endersbee.pdf
Thanks Smokey – I just scanned the subject Endersbee article and (most days) I agree with him – I wrote something similar in January 2008 at http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
I used to agree with the position in the Evans paper – we wrote something similar in 2002, at http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
Evans and our 2002 paper are OK, except they do not recognize the fact that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales. This observation may be trivial, but it is more likely a major problem for the “mainstream argument” that CO2 drives temperature, since it seems to require that the future is causing the past (I know – “phantom feedbacks” are the cause, just like “phantom aerosols” explain the lack of global warming).
R.Gates said:
Kind of like Obama’s economic success, “Building a better tomorrow……tomorrow”.
Normally when a prediction fails, the “theory” is reconsidered, but this is post normal science.
I’m still trying to understand how a 95% CI can be assigned to data that hasn’t been measured and has no past data to support it. Strange climate science is.
Smokey says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:10 pm
“Here is a trend line chart from the LIA in the 1600′s. You can see two things right off: Global temperatures are not accelerating.”
___
Uh, Smokey buddy, why would you equate “Central England Temperatures” with Global Temperatures? Completely and significantly different things. Your chart that goes back to the 1600’s says nothing at all about Global Temperatures, despite your claim otherwise. Unless of course you’ve got some proof that Central England Temperatures are a very good proxy for Global Temperatures? Love to see that if you have it…
Nick Stokes says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:47 pm
” What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.”
Oh right, Hansen’s predictions match his data after he himself is through bending, folding, spindling, mutilating and otherwise “adjusting” the data.
ROTFL
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Care to distinguish the difference between Arctic warming and AGW Arctic warming? If the feedback is not found for CAGW using the tools highlighted, it makes the Arctic and deep ocean irrelevant. Still not mentioned how longwave radiaition warms the deep ocean by bypassing the top 700m.
Mr. Watts,
I’m risking a much dreaded (and never before experienced) [SNIP] here, but I’ll take my chances. One of the things I really love about this site is when you moderate the comment threads. You can slice and dice the most odious of trolls with a sentence or two in your replies. I often chuckle. Sometimes I laugh out loud. This site might get a bit contentious from time to time but it never devolves into mud wrestling. It came close with Willis a while back (my money was on Willis), but this is a civil, cordial site visited by a lot of very intelligent, very well informed participants.
Let me preface this by saying I’m not “piling on” William Connolley. Were it not for WUWT I wouldn’t know who this obscure software designer even was (I don’t go to Wikipedia for information on climate, but I have to admit, they’re an excellent source if you need to know the atomic weight of boron or the year McKinley died). But over the years I’ve seen you yank the plug on a few of these tedious folks. I found Connolley’s comments becoming tiresome and tedious. As a regular reader I just want to thank you for giving him a time out. I just want to thank you.
Explain this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
an ideolog’s last desperate grasp at relevancy?
R. Gates says:
Smokey says:
“Here is a trend line chart from the LIA in the 1600′s. You can see two things right off: Global temperatures are not accelerating.
___
“Uh, Smokey buddy, why would you equate “Central England Temperatures” with Global Temperatures? Completely and significantly different things. Your chart that goes back to the 1600′s says nothing at all about Global Temperatures, despite your claim otherwise.”
Uh, Gates buddy, you are too quick to find fault where there is none. The chart I posted did not just have the CET record. It showed temperature trends from Washington D.C, and Berlin, and Minneapolis, and Geneva, and New York City, and Copenhagen, and St. Petersburg, too. That’s a pretty good proxy for global temperatures.
But you’re just avoiding the central issue: when charting a trend, an arbitrary, zero baseline chart is deceptive. It will show a hockey stick shape when there is no acceleration in temperatures. In other words, that kind of chart is dishonest when charting trends. It’s good for anomalies, which are deviations from a base line, but not for trends, as this chart shows.
Matt G says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:30 pm
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Care to distinguish the difference between Arctic warming and AGW Arctic warming? If the feedback is not found for CAGW using the tools highlighted, it makes the Arctic and deep ocean irrelevant. Still not mentioned how longwave radiaition warms the deep ocean by bypassing the top 700m.
_____
Arctic warming is a general term and AGW induced Arctic warming would be the specific example. The Arctic and deeper ocean can’t possibly be irrelevant to the issue of anthropogenic climate change as they are key players in Earth’s energy budget and both will be sensitive to changes in that budget.
Finally, the notion that longwave radiation has to bypass the top 700m of ocean is one of the talking points certain skeptics like to use, and that ought to be perhaps considered by neophytes studying the ocean, but then discarded by those really wanting to understand the true dynamics of the ocean and what goes on in the deeper ocean and how heat (really energy) is transported there. The vast majority of the heat coming into the deeper ocean is brought there through specific areas of downwelling around the world’s oceans. These downwelling areas are of course part of the global ocean conveyor current system. To see some of the research being done about the heat going into the deeper ocean, I suggest you read:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008JCLI2131.1
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967064511001809
ftp://soest.hawaii.edu/coastal/Climate%20Articles/Song%202011%20deep%20ocean%20warming.pdf
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2010/EGU2010-7482-2.pdf
ftp://kakapo.ucsd.edu/pub/sio_220/e03%20-%20Global%20warming/Purkey_Johnson.JClim_sub_10.pdf
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2007JCLI2238.1
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/docs/Garzoli_progressing_towards.pdf
http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/8/2197/2011/osd-8-2197-2011.pdf
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3625.1?journalCode=clim
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n7/abs/nclimate1229.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/abs/nature09043.html
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n2/full/ngeo1375.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/abs/465304a.html
It shows the 5 year mean flatlining.
scottd0317 says:
I’m not a scientist but I am a grammarian. The word “data” is the plural of “datum.” Therefore the proper usage is “the data say” not “the data says.”
My own inclination is to agree with you, but there is another consideration. Some Latin words become completely English, with subtle changes of meaning. This can lead to a Latin plural becoming an English singular.(“Agenda”, for example, is singular. In English it does not mean the plural of Latin agendum.) If we regard “data” as meaning something like “information” rather than “the given”, it is, I think, acceptable to treat it as an uncountable noun and use the singular form of the verb.
Contrary to Dr. Evans’ contention, the colored lines of his Figures 3, 4 and 5 are not “predictions” but rather, in IPCC terms, are “projections.” Though professional climatologists and climatology bloggers persistently confuse the idea that is referenced by the term “projection” with the idea that is referenced by the term “prediction” the two ideas are distinct.
One statistically tests a model by comparing the predicted to the observed outcomes of statistical events but none of the IPCC climate models make the required predictions or reference the complete set of statistical events (the so-called “statistical population”) from which the observed events would be drawn. As neither predictions nor observed events are available, one cannot test any of the IPCC models. It follows from one’s inability to test these models that the IPCC’s inquiry into AGW has not truly been a scientific inquiry. The IPCC has represented that its inquiry has been scientific but this representation has been false.
In AR4, IPCC Working Group I presents comparisons of model projections of the global surface air temperature to a global surface air temperature time series; a comparison of this type supports what the IPCC calls a model “evaluation” but the word “evaluation” is statistically meaningless and does not result either in the falsification or the validation of the model. In the Web-posted article entitled “Spinning the Climate,” the IPCC expert reviewer Vincent Gray reports that the IPCC replaced the statistically meaningful term “validation” with the statistically meaningless term “evaluation” after he pointed out that to statistically validate an IPCC model would be impossible for the lack of the required predictions and observed events.
As “projection” sounds like “prediction,” “evaluation” sounds like “validation” and a comparison of model projections of the global surface air temperature to a global surface air temperature time series looks superficially like the comparison that is made in validating a model, a number of well meaning people have wound up thinking that a model has been tested when an IPCC-style “evaluation” has been conducted. Among the people who are thusly confused, evidently, is Dr. Evans.
R. Gates,
So that humans can make choices if your correct please put into this offical record here when the warming will be “x” degrees above some known and accepted standard tempature.
Seems there is great reluctance to do so by the climate change all knowing ones.
2050
2100
2200
10,000
Your choice and lets leave a marker for all to see.
R.Gates: “None of these things that Dr. Evans has left out are trivial matters.”
justthefactswuwt recently had a post here on WUWT, “crowdsourcing” climate factors.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/19/crowdsourced-climate-complexity-compiling-the-wuwt-potential-climatic-variables-reference-page/
It should be clear that it is only possible to eliminate some as trivial only after evaluation of the whole system in a model where each can be changed independently (sensitivity), dragging they coupled factors along with the factor being changed. It is technically unfeasible to produce any scientifically useful results from such modelling. Even with the best super-computer that one can imagine.
One has to recognize that natural factors behave non-linearly and not necessarily monotonically over the range of conditions. Further, boundary condition changes can drastically alter the long-term behaviour of the “chaotic” climate system. We cannot know the state of the system in sufficient detail. If you don’t know the values precisely enough, then that can lead you to thinking that some factors are more important than they are in reality, or that they aren’t significant when they are; outside the range of model runs.
All that one can do scientifically is to observe how the total system responds to the known, measurable perturbations. Predictions are only valuable in retrospect; to assess the quality of the underlying assumptions. One can develop “Engineering” models of the climate system; but in doing so, one must heed uncertainty, based on hard-nosed analysis of how the actual system deviated from the proposed model in the past.
@R. Gates says:
Looking at this largest metric for which we have some reliable and consistent data (down to 2000m) we see a constant increase in Earth’s energy system over the past 40 years. Completely consistent with an alteration in Earth’s energy budget consistent with the external forcing expected from increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
=====================================
Yes Warmists always come back to the claim that the Earth has warmed, therefore catastrophe is imminent. Which is a non sequitur of course. For the millionth time, remember that the debate is over rate of change and not direction of change.
To always argue against a strawman is to reveal a very weak logical position.
Smokey says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:46 pm
R. Gates says:
Smokey says:
“Here is a trend line chart from the LIA in the 1600′s. You can see two things right off: Global temperatures are not accelerating.
___
“Uh, Smokey buddy, why would you equate “Central England Temperatures” with Global Temperatures? Completely and significantly different things. Your chart that goes back to the 1600′s says nothing at all about Global Temperatures, despite your claim otherwise.”
Uh, Gates buddy, you are too quick to find fault where there is none. The chart I posted did not just have the CET record. It showed temperature trends from Washington D.C, and Berlin, and Minneapolis, and Geneva, and New York City, and Copenhagen, and St. Petersburg, too. That’s a pretty goodd proxy for global temperatures.
____
Smokey, I didn’t know that Minneapolis even existed in the 1600’s. Wow, you gave me the history lesson. Really, do you not see a problem in your attempt to suggest that even this small list represents Global temperatures? Just a tiny little problem. Look closely at your list Smokey, and use both Hemispheres of your brain (big hint).
But to your point that you claim I am missing. I completely agree that one can use different baselines and time frames to cherry pick data and make things appear to be something they are not. What’s the longest time frame of actual hard, instrumental (non proxy data) Global temperatures that we have? Seems we go back to:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:19 pm
Wow, didn’t know you had psychic abilities, able to predict exactly what will happen in 2030?
===============
Well now you know.
Smokey and Lucy Skywalker,
Thanks for the very informative links!
1) Do you have a reference for a model prediction of Arctic sea ice loss? Antarctic?
2) Within the random ups and downs of the data (which suggest an error bound since I doubt the sea temperature is changing that quickly) the actual data look pretty flat to me:
http://www-argo.ucsd.edu/time_series_atlas.gif
Nick Stokes says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:47 pm
What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.
I predict Hansen will continue to adjust the GISS to match his predictions.
Sometime ago, I indulged in some curve-fitting cyclomania, to check the data against the models, and came up with formula that computes the global temperature anomaly from 3000BC to the present with a correlation of 0.990 against the 10Yr moving average.
The formula required that I add 0.0052 °C/Yr to the base cyclic curve, from 1944 onwards to maintain a good fit. This works out to 0.65 °C per CO2 doubling (300ppm in 1944 to 600ppm in ~2070), in full agreement with Dr Evans’ findings.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:49 pm
The reason why the Arctic and deep ocean are irrevelant if you can’t find the feedback is because without the feedback these could have easily warmed naturally with no/little input from AGW. The feedback depends on water vapor and behaviour on different layers in the atmosphere, especially away from poles. Without the feedback the Arctic warming or deep ocean changes can’t be distinguished from naturally occuring events.
The downwelling areas are known as are the upwelling ones,but you can’t say it only a one way thing. This is highly speculative nearly as bad as CAGW. These can take many decades to go through the circulation, so if as you say warmer water is sinking, warmer water may have been rising too from many decades ago. The data is serious lacking and restrircted so, calling bs on this one until better coverage. Also the deep ocean can store massive amounts of heat, if anything this will increasingly lower the AGW concern.
Based on my vast lack of expertise, I have two main criticisms of Evans.
First, for Fig 4, he says
“It’s 20 years now, and the average rate of increase in reality is below the lowest trend in the range predicted by the IPCC.”
But I can’t see that from the graph. I can see the wriggly black line, but not the average rate of increase. It would be better to put in a trend line showing that.
Second, Fig 7 is taken from the Lindzne and Choi paper. I understand that a number of sceptical researchers, including Spencer, have reservations about that paper. It might be helpful for Evans to take these into account.
Mike says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:39 pm
Explain this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
Please see the following. Note the flat lines for three different ten year periods that are decades apart. For the first two periods, the starting time was extended to 25 years. Note how the two lines slope down. Presently, we have had no warming according to GISS for 10 years. So if history repeats itself, if we were to draw a line from 2002 in 15 years from now, it should also slope down.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1880/plot/gistemp/from:2002/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1894.25/to:1904.25/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1937/to:1947/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1894.25/to:1919.25/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1937/to:1962/trend
Lucy Skywalker says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:28 pm
“…… It also puts the feedback issue into perspective with all the rest of the climate gleickenspiels as I now want to call them.”
Nice!
Def: Gleickenspiel – a talking schlock.
The article seems to be using logs wrongly:
– the correct formula for calculating the effect of 392ppm CO2 is:
log2(392/280) x doubling-rise
– and not:
ln(392/280) x doubling-rise
(since ln is log to base e)
– you can convert from natural log (ln) to log2 thusly:
log2(n) = ln(n) / ln(2)
the same is true for a log of any base
e.g.
log2(n) = log10(n) / log10(2)
or conversely
log4(n) = ln(n) / ln(4)
etc
Thus using natural logs, the correct formula is:
Current temp rise = doubling-rise x ln(392 / 280) / ln(2)
(i.e. we’ve had about 48% of the doubling rise already)
In Figures 1 and 2, the variable confusingly labelled the “observed temperature increase” is the non-observable “equilibrium temperature increase.” As the numerical value of the equilibrium temperature increase is not observable, neither the claim, by the government climate scientists, that this value is 3.3 Celsius nor the claim by the skeptics that this value is 0.55 Celsius is susceptible to testing. As neither claim can be tested, neither merits the descriptor “scientific.” Thus, the argument between the government scientists and the skeptics over the value of this variable is scientifically nonsensical.
R. Gates,
Seems from the time of the ice bridge (from global cooling) to current Alaska there where humans over here. The names of our towns were not on city limits signs nor in your language.
Dennis Ray Wingo says:
February 26, 2012 at 11:47 am
Dr. Evans
The exposition is marvelous, however I do have a question on the 1.1 degree direct effect of CO2. Can you provide the source for this prediction that after unraveling does not point back to Hansen’s empirical relationship?
Nir Shaviv gives a demonstration here:
http://www.sciencebits.com/OnClimateSensitivity
Another calculation is based on the theoretical calculatoin that a doubling of CO2 would increase
the surface flux by about 3.7 wats. Note that the logarithmic effect is on the wattage flux, NOT directly on temperatures.
If the earth radiated as a blackbody with a surface temp of 288 K, the wattage flux would be
390.7 watts. The addtional 3.7 watts from a doubling of CO2 would increase that to
390.7 + 3.7 = 394.4 watts.
Absolute temperature is proportional to the 4th root of the wattage flux.
(394.4./390.7)^0.25 times the oridinal 288 K = 288.7 K, or an increase of 0.7K with a doubling of CO2 and no feedbacks,
I would say the actual hard data goes back to 1979. I strongly question the graph you present, on an historical basis. In the late 1970s there was much discussion in scientific circles about catastrophic cooling. Although it wasn’t universally accepted among scientists, the fact that it was there at all shows that the temperatures at that time were anomalously cold. Yet the graph shows 1970’s temperatures comparable to the preceding decades.
Doesn’t this disagreement between GISS and history strike you as suspicious?
They fudge the numbers, they lie about the facts, they refuse to let anyone check their work, they will not allow any normal fact check methods. Then they get into these waste of time debates of how thin some line on a graph is or tell everyone the sun does not count.
Waste of ban width and fingers.
Get the information out in any way of the lies and fraud and ingnore these little word fights.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm
2) The total energy gained by the deeper ocean (down to 2000m) has been greater than any of the models indicated that it would be.
At judithcurry, you expanded this to say: shows the past decade had the largest increase in total Joules of energy of any decade in the past 40 years
…Additionally of course, we can now observe massive downwelling in areas such as the Pacific Warm pool
My response was: “If the last decade had such an increase, why was the El Nino from 2010 weaker than the one in 1998? (At least according to HadCrut3 and RSS and UAH)”
Now on the other hand, if you wish to claim that the heat from the deep ocean does not affect the El Nino, which may well be the case, then why should anyone be concerned if the deep ocean may have increased in temperature from 4.00 C to 4.01 C? That heat cannot escape anyway once it is down there. This would at least be the case until the deeper ocean reached the surface temperature.
Will Nitschke says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:02 pm
@R. Gates says:
Looking at this largest metric for which we have some reliable and consistent data (down to 2000m) we see a constant increase in Earth’s energy system over the past 40 years. Completely consistent with an alteration in Earth’s energy budget consistent with the external forcing expected from increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
=====================================
Yes Warmists always come back to the claim that the Earth has warmed, therefore catastrophe is imminent.
______
Actually, where did I ever mention that “catastrophe is imminent”? Seems that is your own straw man argument, since it was not from me.
And, though reasonable true skeptics might know the argument is one of climate sensitivity, or the degree of change, there are plenty of what I would call false-skeptics, who refuse to accept that anthropogenic CO2 can alter the climate at all. My point in bringing up the ocean heat content being the single best indicator of changes to Earth’s energy balance is to at least get them off the tropospheric temperature meme. Yes, tropospheric temps have gone up, yes, they that rise has leveled a bit in the past decade, but the troposphere has low thermal retention and inertia, is highly subject to short-term noise, and is just a fraction of Earth’s energy storage bucket. If you want to see how increasing greenhouse gases affect Earth’s energy balance– look to the bloody oceans at the greatest depth you can!
Mike and R. Gates: Please explain the strong rise in global temps. from 1910 to
1940, as shown on the graph Mike linked to. Gates, it would be hypocritical of you to “chalk it up to “natural variability” or perhaps, “recovery from the Little Ice Age”, or my favorite, “the sun did it all”.”
APACHEWHOKNOWS says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:32 pm
R. Gates,
Seems from the time of the ice bridge (from global cooling) to current Alaska there where humans over here. The names of our towns were not on city limits signs nor in your language.
____
And did the native people of North America living near what would become “Minneapolis” happen to accurately record temperatures in the 1600’s?
Why is Al Gore and Algae are so much alike when printed out on a blog post.
Some say Nikolov and Zeller are correct.
Others say the dragonslayers are correct.
Others say Dr. Evans is correct.
Others say Claes Johnson is correct.
Others say that others are correct.
I do not know who is correct, but as this post clearly shows, the IPCC is wrong. And as the following shows, which I also just posted above, we seem to be in for at least 15 years of cooling.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1880/plot/gistemp/from:2002/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1894.25/to:1904.25/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1937/to:1947/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1894.25/to:1919.25/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1937/to:1962/trend
The three scenarios have been shifted to agree in 1988, since that’s the date of Hansen’s paper. This brings up several questions:
1. Why did Hansen’s three scenarios published in 1988 disagree in value in 1988 when the CO2 levels were known at that time?
2. Why did the hindcasts disagree at all? Shouldn’t he use actual known CO2 data?
3. Why do his projections converge at times, since the only difference is projected CO2 levels? Shouldn’t the three scenario graphs show the same temporal wiggles with just a divergence due to CO2 levels?
R. Gates,
Well there was the big rocks leaning up out in Chaco Canyon that tracked the moon, sun, cycles.
Those of the time lived out under the sun and did not eat when it got to cold to grow crops.
Very motivated to know as much as possible.
They did not sit at computers and fudge numbers for poltical and money reasons under air conditioners.
The graph showing the missing hotspot has more to show if one cares to look for it.
Assume for a moment that the skeptics are correct and that there is overall negative feedback due to shading from clouds. What signature would this display? You’d expect the extra shade to reduce temperature not in the upper atmosphere, but at ground level where the sunlight which is not reflected to space gets converted to heat. And you’d expect to see a greater effect from clouds in the tropics than near the poles. So what you’d expect to see is a cool spot (or less warm spot) showing up at low altitude in the tropics. And if you look at the graph, that is pretty much what you do see. The most noticeable feature is indeed a cool spot at low altitude in the tropics.
Of course this is only a first order guesstimate. A second order guesstimate would need a climate model tuned with negative cloud feedback.
@R. Gates says:
Actually, where did I ever mention that “catastrophe is imminent”? Seems that is your own straw man argument, since it was not from me.
[…]
And, though reasonable true skeptics might know the argument is one of climate sensitivity, or the degree of change, there are plenty of what I would call false-skeptics, who refuse to accept that anthropogenic CO2 can alter the climate at all.
[…]If you want to see how increasing greenhouse gases affect Earth’s energy balance– look to the bloody oceans at the greatest depth you can!
================================
Unless you can put forward a case that there is a problem, and a serious one at that, the IPCC position has no relevance so why are you here discussing this as all, if you simply make a bunch of trivial points that most sceptics do not disagree with anyway?
It doesn’t really matter what people opinionate on; you should focus on arguing the evidence. If you’re rebuttal posts in the comments section of a blog, and not the scientific evidence presented in the main article, then this is all about wasting time with strawmen.
If the missing heat has gone to the one place where we can measure it with less reliability than anywhere else, then you’ve found yourself a powerful negative feedback. Because the deep ocean is very cold and that heat would necessarily have to diffuse in those ocean layers which would imply time frames orders of magnitude different from what the IPCC has postulated. Claiming the heat has gone into the deep ocean doesn’t help the IPCC case. The opposite in fact. And are you talking about the expected 3-4C of warming going into the deep ocean or .5-1C of warming? Because the two claims are very different.
Why does not one Warmist here want to discuss water vapour feedback which is critical to the IPCC case? If you support the IPCC position then that is the main game in town. Instead, the response is mainly red herrings and other distractions.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:36 pm
“Yes, tropospheric temps have gone up, yes, they that rise has leveled a bit in the past decade, but the troposphere has low thermal retention and inertia, is highly subject to short-term noise, and is just a fraction of Earth’s energy storage bucket. If you want to see how increasing greenhouse gases affect Earth’s energy balance– look to the bloody oceans at the greatest depth you can!”
And when we expend more billions in self-serving research grants to self-invested control-freak “scientists” and billions upon billions in power-seizing economic-strangling regulation determined to transfer wealth from the poor of the first world to the wealthy rulers of the third world, and it turns out the deep ocean ALSO IS NOT warming . . . then they’ll say, well, of course, the deep ocean is clearly an unreliable measure of the “Earth’s energy storage bucket” . . . what we REALLY need to measure is the temperature of the Earth’s molten core.
Lord knows what they’ll think up after we’ve determined, after yet more billions in research grants and more billions upon billions of power-seizing regulations, that the core is not warming. Additional dimensions storing the heat, I suppose.
Fig one lacks the all-important money feedback mechanism MFM to us crimatologists. 🙂
The super 1998 El Nino is sometimes mentioned. In the grand scheme of things, it makes little difference due to the La Ninas that followed it. See the graph below. One slope includes 1998 and the other does not. Depending on your time frame, it is possible to get a time of more than ten years with a flat slope in either case.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/plot/rss-land/from:1997.08/trend/plot/rss-land/from:2000.92/trend
Change the subject, strawman, use of the word but, move the goal post 30,000 leagues under the sea, it is settled, your not educated as much as we wise ones are, Dr. SoSmart agrees with me, I am a Serria Club member your not, the Union of Concerned Scientist support climate change,
ect. ect. ect.
Well OK, in order to get on the same page, let us see all your data.
Publish all our data,, NO.
R Gates says “Looking at this largest metric for which we have some reliable and consistent data (down to 2000m) we see a constant increase in Earth’s energy system over the past 40 years”
Gates, I seriously doubt that there is a comprehensive, world-wide database of ocean temperatures from the surface to 2000m depth covering the last 15 years, let alone the last 40 years. Argo buoys have only been in place for 9 years, & even they do not cover the entire global ocean. What sketchy dataset are you claiming gives accurate coverage of this volume of water? Roughly 335,000,000 sq km of ocean surface in the major oceans. If we say 30% is less than 2000m deep, we have 235,000,000 sq km to sample. Double that for 2000m depth & you have a volume of 470,000,000 cubic kilometers. Gates, how many samples are required to give a representative, statistically significant sample of that volume of water? And how many were done?
The fact that observations do not support positive feedbacks from CO2 is … INCONTROVERTIBLE.
Nor can logical thinking support positive feedbacks: warming causes outgassing of CO2 which causes more warming which causes more outgassing, etc. No way. If such an unstable system was possible on earth, we wouldn’t be here to discuss it.
Yes, those government scientists are always wrong. Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. Richard Lindzen get their research funding from who? What do they say climate sensitivity is?
Rosco says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:21 pm
What if CO2 doesn’t lead to warming ?? I really doubt if that has ever been established because it leads to creating energy from nothing. Besdies the argument supposes CO2 is a perfect insulator and this has NEVER been demonstrated !
What if increasing CO2 actually provides an extra mechanism for energy transport in the atmosphere – albeit a small one due to its concentration ?
I’ve been pointing out the “cooling effect” of CO2 (and all GHGs) for some time. For the most part the warming only occurs lower in the atmosphere … as one gets higher more GHGs simply speed up the heat transport where most of the energy goes to space. This works well with convected heat. The lower GHGs heat the surface which enhances latent heat and convection. The higher atmosphere GHGs transport the majority of that heat to space. A negative feedback inherent in GHGs themselves.
Never mind substantive discussion of climate issues, someone has just really got up my nose:
Real (trained/professional) grammarians are a truly rare species. Self styled grammarians, on the other hand, are quite common.
What we have here is a case of hypercorrection, which is a particularly annoying form of illiteracy:
“Data” is a collective noun. In the context of scientific data, it is important to bear in mind that an individual data point is usually meaningless. We try to tease meaning out of data sets. Insisting that “data” is treated as a plural ascribes an importance to individual data points that they do not have. It is as wrong and annoying as insisting that thermometer measurements be written with five significant digits.
For many other references google for: data datum collective noun
This is a very informative article, yet it does not tell me what I wish to know the most.
I’ll explain:
In this article above it is written: “Notice that the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2; they just disagree just about the feedbacks. The climate debate is all about the feedbacks; everything else is merely a sideshow. Yet hardly anyone knows that.”
I have noticed and know all of that – but as to why the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2 is a mystery to me.
I keep on asking as many of them (Skeptics) as I can; what the evidence for warming by CO2 is, but no one seems to have any evidence at all. – Some say, just as this article does; “The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century” – That kind of sentence needs backing up by facts.
Well, I can only assume the so called IR radiation from the ground is supposed to be emitted as Electro Magnetic (EM) waves. In other words similar to the waves that come to Earth in the form of sunlight, but at wave-band length that is longer than that of visible light. Yet they know quite well that EM IR radiation from the Sun is not, readily, being absorbed by gases in the Troposphere.
This knowledge apparently gives the “Warming by CO2 Skeptics” or the so-called “Lukewarmers” the idea that heat itself can be emitted as “radiation” – which is the only option left for as to how their CO2 theory can work.
However, physics tell me that if CO2 and water vapor (WV) molecules can absorb IR radiation from the ground/surface those molecules must increase their temperature and subsequently re-emit IR radiation, in all direction including back to the surface whence it came from in the first place. – How can that so called “Backradiation” warm the surface up any further?
I ask, because the heat/energy it is thus receiving is only – at best – one half of the energy the surface emitted in the first place.
Is the idea perhaps that the surface can emit energy without cooling down?
Furthermore if surface IR emissions can warm greenhouse gases (GHGs) then, as we know that air-parcels of all sizes – with different moisture contents ascend vertically at different rates of speed, there would be no set, or sensible lapse rates.
And then; “The effect of CO2,(have been) based on laboratory results, and known for over a century”
My question here is: “What lab. results? – And, exactly what has been known for over a century?
More,
O.H. Dahlsveen.
More, very good.
Nice one. 😉 You finally agree with the rest of us that the models are useless.
François GM:
It’s not incontrovertable. According to climatologists such as Dr. Lindzen, DeltaT = DeltaT(no feedbacks)/(1-f) where DeltaT represents the change in the equilibrium global surface air temperature, DeltaT (no feedbacks) represents the change in the equilibrium global surface air temperature without feedbacks and f represents the degree of feedback. However, neither DeltaT nor DeltaT(no feedbacks) is observable. Thus, when a person such as Dr. Lindzen asserts that f has a particular numerical value this assertion cannot be tested.
I am going to have to tweet and chrip very carefully here. The fat and sassy birds on my bird feeder[s] made me do this. while they are watching WUWT over my shoulder from their special perch outside my studio window.. I am fixing to speak about William Connolley.
Mr Watts, I rarely disagree with you about your actions, and I understand that this is your website and you rule, However Mr. Connolley is being given too much leeway. The facts of the matter are he was banned from Wicki for improper editing. Barred from that site he is frantically looking for another site that he can screw up. You won’t let him, but neither will your loyal readers and commenters if you don’t stop us from insulting and demeaning him. I completely understand that you want civlized behavior on WUWT. I submit that Mr. Connollry is beyond the pale.. He does not deserve civilazed treatment. No more then pencil necked Gleick des.
Well as I already said, David Evans has pointed to a good bit of presumably believable data, that simply does not support the IPCC party line; and I think Joel Shore is tilting at wind turbines when he accuaes Dr Evans of cherry picking. Come now Joel; I know you are better than that. why don’t you support YOUR position, by presenting (or linking to) OTHER credible data, that you feel counter’s Evan’s thesis.
There is data, that I would like to point to.
#1/ The well publicised Mauna Loa CO2 data from 1757/8 to the present; perhaps the only authoritative CO2 data (OBSERVED).
I’ve looked at that plot so often, I think I could just about draw it free hand. There are two characteristics of that plot, that are incontrovertible (a) , There is an annual roughly saw tooth cycle of about 6 ppm CO2 abundance, rising over about 7 months, and falling in just 5 months.
(b) , Since 1957/8, I believe it is true to say, that the annual CO2 maximum ( and also the annual CO2 minimum) , has NEVER EVER gone down from 1957 to 2012. The trend has ALWAYS been UPWARD. I believe there is no exception to this rule.
THE SAME CANNOT BE SAID FOR THE EARTH TEMPERATURE; whether mean surface, or lower troposphere or whatever; there has been NO MONOTONIC upward Temperature progress. It has been up and down, and all over the place since 1957.
Consequently there is simply no basis for asserting that one data set has followed the logarithm of the other data set.; they show NO CAUSAL LINKAGE whatsoever; whether logarithmic, or linear, or of the form y = exp (-1/x^2)
Dinner calls.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:36 pm
Yes, tropospheric temps have gone up, yes, they that rise has leveled a bit in the past decade, but the troposphere has low thermal retention and inertia
Fair enough. So what do the surface temperatures of the ocean tell us? They decreased over the past decade and they were completely flat for the last 15 years. (Of course, water has a high specific heat capacity.)
1997.08: slope = -0.000326788 per year (or essentially 0)
2002.08: slope = -0.00962834 per year
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.08/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002.08/trend
P.S. They do not show the deep ocean on this graphing program so I cannot show that yet.
O H Dahlsveen says:
February 26, 2012 at 6:52 pm My question here is: “What lab. results? – And, exactly what has been known for over a century? But as to why the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2 is a mystery to me.
======
Konrad Hartmann amongst others have recently stated some testing. I am also of the understanding Nikolov and Zeller are in the Lab now doing experiments.
Most sceptics don’t agree on the Earths Energy Budget as accepted by “Government Scientists”. Many sceptics think that thermodynamic laws, insolation and the force of pressure are the dominate factors regulating Earths temperature with little effect by the composition of the Atmosphere. The composition of Venus is 97% CO2, but it doesn’t cause runaway heating. Dr Evans critique relates to the statistical anomalies of projections of the the peer reviewed literature of climate science. Other dedicated physicists do not accept the theory of CO2 climatic forcing. There are many who are rejecting the IPCC theory of AGW
‘Back-radiation’ is a fact. It is simply a consequence of the fact that all matter in the universe is radiating energy in all directions all of the time. This implies that the Earth’s atmosphere is radiating in all directions too.
Radiation and conduction both occur from hot objects to cold and from cold objects to hot at the molecular level. It is quite easy to show that a cold molecule (low kinetic energy) can warm a hot molecule (high kinetic energy) through collision, further reducing the kinetic energy of the already cold molecule.
This does not violate thermodynamics, because thermodynamics does not apply at the molecular level. Thermodynamics is a statistical affect that operates on averages over many molecules.
Thus, while a “cold” molecule can warm a “hot” molecule. It is probably a lower occurrence than “hot” warms “cold.” Thus, thermodynamics tells us that as a result of statistical averaging that heat only flows from warm to cold objects. Thus, at the molecular level, radiation and conduction are two sides of the same coin.
Furthermore, because that part of the radiated energy intercepted by the warmer body is standing wave communicating information between the emitter/absorber states, on both bodies, it can do no thermodynamic work.
When the cooler body is at absolute zero, the exchange energy is zero. When the temperatures are equal, it is the same as the radiation emitted by either body.
However, it can still do no thermodynamic work and it can only be detected by blocking the energy from the warmer body to the colder body. By counting ‘back radiation’ with the energy emitted by the warmer body, Trenberth is increasing the S-B constant by a factor 1to2.
So for statistical and modelling purposes it is disingenuous to consider back-radiation as a climatic forcing.
Tom_R says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Roger Pielke Jr wrote an excellent piece on the shortcomings of Hansen’s 88 projections a year or so ago. That should answer these questions. Sorry I never kept a link, but Google should help.
If you look at the NASA plots for all available sea surface data from 2003 you will see a very regular annual pattern with a maximum in March, a dip in June, slight rise in August and a minimum around the end of November. Selected sea surface and tick all years except 2012: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
This indicates very tight control and very little random noise. It also indicates no rise over that period, but my point is that the lack of rise cannot be blamed on random noise. The plain fact is that carbon dioxide is having absolutely no effect – not just a little effect as semi-skeptics like the author would have you believe.
It is time for true skeptics to debunk statements like The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century. altogether and not to acknowledge that radiation from the atmosphere can have any thermal effect on the warmer surface. It can’t because to do so would be a breach of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You cannot “excuse” it all by saying “net” radiation is out of the surface. It isn’t on a warm sunny morning when the surface temperature is increasing, and what is happening on the other side of the World at that time does not create something called “net radiation.”. And in any event, “net radiation” is a totally meaningless expression with absolutely no physical entity matching its description.
Radiation goes “full blast” with all the power allowed in the area under the Planck curve – in each direction. But only the surplus in the higher frequencies from the warmer surface has any thermal effect, namely warming the atmosphere. All the radiation from the cooler atmosphere, and a matching amount from the warmer atmosphere merely resonates (possibly in standing waves) without transferring thermal energy.
So any radiative greenhouse effect is a physical impossibility as several, including myself, have been pointing out for a while now.
It’s time for the semi-skeptics to become full skeptics with a unified, proven message.
.
Tom_R says: February 26, 2012 at 5:47 pm
“1. Why did Hansen’s three scenarios published in 1988 disagree in value in 1988 when the CO2 levels were known at that time?
2. Why did the hindcasts disagree at all? Shouldn’t he use actual known CO2 data?
3. Why do his projections converge at times, since the only difference is projected CO2 levels? Shouldn’t the three scenario graphs show the same temporal wiggles with just a divergence due to CO2 levels?”
1. Hansen explains in his paper (p 9345, next to the forcings fig). he uses a comprehensive set of forcings, not just CO2. And scenario A included allowance some trace gases, for which they did not have recent measurements, but had to postulate values (just as scenarios postulate future values). Why only scenario A I don’t know, but that’s the reason.
2. ditto
3. Scenarios B and C postulated some volcanic explosions (one in 1995, which turned out to match Pinatubo fairly well).
These differences should not have been adjusted for. They were the prediction. If you meddle with the predictions, and then test them against a different data set than that predicted – well, what’s the point?
stan stendera says:
February 26, 2012 at 7:11 pm
(re : Connolly)
“You won’t let him, but neither will your loyal readers and commenters if you don’t stop us from insulting and demeaning him.”
____________________________________________________________________________
The best thing to do with Connolley is to ignore him completely. See his name at the top of a post? Just scroll quickly down to the next one. It’s real easy.
If you want to insult and demean him (don’t think he’s worth the effort, myself),go to his own website and do it. Sure, it won’t get posted, but somebody still has to read it first.
“Do not feed the trolls” may be a cliche, but it still works. Starved of the attention they crave, they simply go away and bother someone else.
Joel Shore @ February 26, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Joel, I only glanced through the rest of your long comment, but might do so more carefully if you were to deign to respond to some issues I raised on an earlier thread. Meanwhile, I find it appropriate to mirror your own dogmatic prose to me in return: You [Joel] frankly haven’t shown any particularly ability to learn anything that might challenge your ideologically-driven point-of-view.
Let me point out something that maybe you have not taken into consideration, which is that David Evans’ essay is short and to the point in raising the salient points. Thus, it is fairly easy for you to accuse him of not including all the possible topics or data. In the same way, I see that R. Gates has scolded him for not mentioning the “disastrous ice melt” in the Arctic.
In your case, you have criticised his observations concerning “the hotspot” and giving your own views on it. However, your own claims do not include the possibility that there is embarrassment in the “church” that the hotspot seems to be reluctant to fulfill its promises, and that various “defences” have been raised. This could be a lengthy debate that you have not touched on, so you can also be accused of cherry-picking.
John Coleman says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:35 pm
“No one has yet to explain to me with acceptable scientific proof what causes the major swings from ice ages to interglacial periods . . .”
I think this has been investigated but maybe not to your satisfaction:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/07/in-defense-of-milankovitch-by-gerard.html
The above is Luboš Motl (trf) ‘The Reference Frame’ on July 6, 2010 (and a bit more on 1/9/2012) comments on this paper . . .
In defense of Milankovitch, Geophysical Research Letters (backup), Vol. 33, L24703, doi:10.1029/2006GL027817, 2006 (full text PDF)
Find here:
http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/roe/GerardWeb/Publications_files/Roe_Milankovitch_GRL06.pdf
———————————————-
The second issue is . . .
You may need to restate this one. There are many places where the idea is put forth that as Earth warms there are increases in the processes producing or releasing (oceans) carbon dioxide. Cold water to warm water is one such. If this doesn’t help – ask again.
George E. Smith @ February 26, 7:16 pm
George, the earliest graphical model prediction of an underlying sinusoidal trend with a cycle of about 60+ years that I’m aware of was back in 2003 by two Russians, and it is remarkable that to this day it still looks good. See it with comparator stuff and a really, really silly IPCC trend graph here:
http://bobfjones.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/linear-trends-on-noisy-data/
Curiously, I invited Joel Shore after he accused me of not understanding trend analysis and error-bars, to offer his advice on it severally on an earlier thread, and Email, but he remains reluctant to do so, e.g. quoting his latest via Email:
I [Joel] am not sure if I am particularly interested in responding to [the graphics] as I have found conversations with you so far to be very frustrating.
JamesD says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:03 pm
Convection part – fine.
Convection to upper troposhpere – fine.
even to the stratosphere – problems. Big thunderstorms, sure, but I’m not so sure about weak storms.
CO2 density – sure, however, it is well mixed. In a tightly closed column I’d expect that gases would stratify, but diffusion will keep a mixed layer even there. In the general atmosphere, wind and convection is more than enough to keep things well mixed. If that were not the case, then the 1% Ar (atomic weight 40) would settle on the ground. Or at least the first few hundred feet above sea level) and we’d all asphixiate. Water vapor (atomic weight 18) would float upward, pass through the tropospause and saturate the stratosphere.
In reality there is no universal sceptic position. Sceptics are lumped together because of what they don’t believe and not united by what they do believe. Underneath the large umbrella of climate scepticism you can find many distinct subgroups who can be classified according to the reasons for their scepticism.
There is certainly a very large group that believes essentially along the lines of the article and I identify myself strongly with this group. The article speaks clearly and cogently and lays out almost exactly what I would say, only it says it better than I ever could. However as the comments have made clear, there are other sceptics whose minds run along … different … lines.
Perhaps a taxonomy of climate sceptics might be a useful idea.
@ Terry Oldenberg.
So Evans says the IPCC warming predictions have failed, and thus the theory is wrong.
You are saying that the IPCC hasn’t made any warming predictions at all, so the theory isn’t even a theory.
It’s just sciency sounding drivel.
Either way, the IPCC loses.
With regards to the Mauna Loa CO2 data, it has been said that since the rise of CO2 is exponential and since the effect on temperature is supposed to be logarithmic, the net effect is a straight line. But even this is questionable, at least since 1995. The trend in CO2 since 1995 is very linear at 1.92979 per year. See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1950/plot/esrl-co2/from:1995/trend
Thank you for your response.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but basically your answer is that Hansen’s models generated random events such as volcanic eruptions which occur at different times for the different scenarios. That seems to me to confuse the issue if the idea was to compare the effect of three different CO2-generating scenarios.
for Anything Is Possible:
You are most certainly right. [SNIP: OK, enough of the Connolley bashing. You can talk about wanting to demean him, but actually doing it is another story. Please don’t. -REP] it’s almost impossible [for me] not to want to demean Mr. Connolley.
@Nick Stokes says:
1. Hansen explains in his paper (p 9345, next to the forcings fig). he uses a comprehensive set of forcings, not just CO2. And scenario A included allowance some trace gases, for which they did not have recent measurements, but had to postulate values (just as scenarios postulate future values). Why only scenario A I don’t know, but that’s the reason.
2. ditto
3. Scenarios B and C postulated some volcanic explosions (one in 1995, which turned out to match Pinatubo fairly well).
These differences should not have been adjusted for. They were the prediction. If you meddle with the predictions, and then test them against a different data set than that predicted – well, what’s the point?
====================================
I’ve heard this excuse many times before… It comes down to this, other more minor trace gases didn’t make it into the atmosphere in the proportions that Hansen speculated on, therefore he cannot be blamed for getting his prediction wrong. OK, but since it is literally impossible to get the approximate combinations of different green house gases correct over such a stretch of time, this means there was never any hope that his prediction would be correct, except by chance. I am curious to know that if Hansen got the trend approximately correct, but the green house trace gas mix was inevitably different, would you be using this excuse to argue that Hansen was correct but only through a fluke or would you view it as vindication regardless?
The lack of volcanic eruptions since circa 95 makes Hansens look predictions worse, not better.
So back to my thought about the approved and disapproved CO2 climate linkage. I already agreed that I absolutely believe that the CO2 molecule can and does absorb photons in the 15 micron wavelength range, which excite the bending mode of molecular oscillation; and I also absolutely believe that much of this captured radiant energy is subsequently thermalized by collision with other air molecules, thereby raising the local air Temperature.
So back to my non-monotonic Temperature increase. I defy ANY statistician, mathematician, politician, or even a Physicist like Jeremy, to prove that the CO2 – ANY Global Temperature relationship, is MORE LIKELY to be logarithmic, than linear, or sinusoidal, or exponential, or the aforementioned y = exp (-1/x^2).
The cognoscenti will easily recognize this function as being maximally flat at the origin, since every single derivative of that function is exactly zero at x = 0 . So it starts out at zero, with zero velocity, and zero acceleration, and zero rate of increase of acceleration yada, yada , yada…
So how the hell does it ever get anywhere ? (other than zero), yet it does get to 1/e at x = 1 .
And it can be fiotted to the Temp/CO2 data at least as good as a logarithmic curve.
So with no experimental basis for asserting a logarithmic relationship; why then claim such ?
Aha ! here’s where De Beer’s Law comes in; to whit: – Carbon in the form of diamonds, is dug up from a “diamond pipe” in south Africa, and reburied in some ladies’ jewellery box; never to see the market light of day again. De Beers simply won’t permit it to re-appear.
Well “Beer’s Law” or the Beer Lambert Law, is the theoretical origin of the logarithmic CO2/Temperature mythology. And the key point of the Beer Law, as in the case of De Beer’s law, is that “never see the light of day again”.
Beer’s Law, from chemistry, says that the ABSORPTION by a dilute substance in solution is proportional to the logarithm of the total solute abundance ( or words to that effect). If a certain thickness of solution absorbs half of the incident radiation, another equal thickness, will absorb half of the remainder, and so on.
You can prove Beer’s law for yourself, with say a laser, and a monochromator, and a sensitive detector, like a photo-multiplier tube, and standard samples of equal thickness of the solutions.
You shine the laser through a path into which you can insert multiple thicknesses of the solution samples, and then the output is passed through the monochromator, and then on to the photo-multiplier.
So why do you need the monochromator, since the laser is a single narrow line frequency / wavelength source.
Well here’s where Beer’s law and De Beer’s law agree. The subject, diamond, or laser radiation, is absorbed; never to see the light of day again.
It is an imperitive requirement of the Beer Lambert law, that the absorption be measured strictly for the original incident source radiation.
If you do the above laser experiment, say with a blue HeCd (4416) laser, and say Schott sharp cutoff filter glasses ( long wave pass) you will confirm Beer’s Law; down to five or six orders of magnitude attenuation; well you likely have to use a double monochromator to get that far down in the mud.
But if you remove that monochromator from the system, the photomultiplier will record orders of magnitude more RADIANT ENERGY than Beer’s Law predicted. It just is not 4416 blue radiation any more, but some longer wavelength or band of wavelengths. You have violated De Beer’s law..
The ABSORBED energy predicted by Beer’s law, is required to be never re-emitted, but totally thermalized as “heat”, perhaps slightly raising the Temperature of the material, which of course would thusly radiate some roughly black body like Thermal spectrum, dependent only on the Temperature of the material, and independent of the nature of the material, so it would likely be around 10 micron peaked LWIR emission from those glasses. and of course at sigma T^4 total power.
Instead you will find that those glasses fluoresce, and emit green, yellow, orange, red/ whatever colored light at much higher intensities than the LWIR thermal emissions, and quite dependent on the doping impurities in those sharp cut filter glasses.
Well gee, who’dathunkit , the atmosphere doesn’t obey Beer’s law either, or De Beer’s law.
Beer’s law relates to the ABSORPTION of the dilute solution; it DOES NOT apply to the ENERGY TRANSMISSION of the sample; and in the atmosphere, the ABSORBING CO2, doesn’t hold onto the LWIR forever, but it re-emits a similar but not identical photon to the one that got absorbed.
In act climate scientists insist, that the ONLY way the atmosphere can cool (radiatively) is re-emission from CO2 or other GHGs.
So NO ; The Beer Lambert Law does not apply to the CO2 or other GHGs in the earth atmosphere, the captured energy IS NOT later emitted as a thermal black body spectrum dependent ONLY on the Temperature of the atmosphere.
So Pfffoooey !! there is NO theoretical basis for a Beer’s Law based logarithmic dependency on CO2 abundance.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. The absence of any significant THERMAL CONTINUUM Temperature based emission from the atmosphere is solid evidence, that Beer’s Law does not apply; and there is neither experimental nor theoretical justification for assuming this silly logarithmic CO2 / Temperature relationship.
So NO Dr Evans, serious scientists do not all believe that CO2 unamplified exhibits a 1.1 deg C per doubling of CO2 relationship.
Remeber too, that the observations are with all feedbacks fully operational (how would you disconnect them), so the 3x feedback amplification factor would be fully active in the observed Temperature measurments, which do not even support a total feedback amplified increase of 1.1 deg C per doubling, let a lone a bare bones CO2 alone effect.
Well that is just one small area of disagreement between some serious scientists, and what the IPCC claims is our doom.
But let me re-iterate, I do believe that CO2 captures 15 micron surface emitted LWIR radiation and thermalizes it to warm the nearby air. What else it might do is not so clear.
One simple question; Where is the evidence of empirical measurements of absorptivity of the surface with respect to spontaneous (blackbody) emission with frequencies in the range of those for atmospheric temperatures?
It is quite wrongly assumed in all the models that this absorptivity is comparable with that measured using visible light. It isn’t and it can’t be. In fact, absorptivity of anything has to reduce to zero when the source of the radiation is cooler than the target for which absorptivity is being measured. Unless this is the case, the Second Law of Thermodynamics would be violated. Fullstop.
“”””” Bob_FJ says:
February 26, 2012 at 8:13 pm
George E. Smith @ February 26, 7:16 pm “”””
Bob, I agree that a sixty year cycle does seem to be a good fit to the data. I’m tempted to say that it is actually three full 22 year solar magnetic cycles; but as I recall, Dr Leif Svalgaard, has not subscribed to that idea, or has not offered any solar theoretical reason for such a relationship. So maybe it is just a circumstantial similarity in time scales. But a 30 year upstroke, followed by a 30 year down stroke, such as we are now in, does seem a better fit than a log CO2 fit.
See my explanation above as to why I don’t believe the Beer’s Law basis for a theoretical log function either.
One other law of Physics, which is too often touted, and is also not applicable is the Kirchoff Law for equality of spectral absorptance, and spectral emissivity. That law ONLY applies to a closed system with the material in thermal equilibrium with the radiant energy field; ie an isothermal closed cavity system.
If Kirchoff’s law applied to the earth climate system, the oceans would be constantly radiating a bright sunlight beam, matching the solar spectrum in spectral content, and spectral radiance. The earth climate/weather system isn’t even vaguely an equilibrium system; just the earth rotation alone prohibits that.
George E. Smith; says:
February 26, 2012 at 9:06 pm
orge E. Smith @ February 26, 7:16 pm “”””
Bob, I agree that a sixty year cycle does seem to be a good fit to the data. I’m tempted to say that it is actually three full 22 year solar magnetic cycles; but as I recall, Dr Leif Svalgaard, has not subscribed to that idea, or has not offered any solar theoretical reason for such a relationship.
_________________________________________________
My first site (written early last year) http://earth-climate.com postulates possible reasons why the 60 year cycle correlates with Jupiter / Saturn resonance – these planets roughly align every 59.6 years I understand. (John Dodds could help you on anything to do with planetary orbits.)
Note also this plot: http://earth-climate.com/planetcycles.jpg which shows 60 year cycles and also shows a 934 year cycle related to the sum of the scalar angular momentum of the Sun and 9 planets. (Bit of a mystery, but I’m working on it!)
Of course there is already Scafetta’s article here on WUWT.
R. Gates @ February 26, 3:46 pm
First of all please see my comment to Joel Shore for background, since it also applies to you, and you should not insist that a deliberately short essay on the most salient issues should embrace total knowledge.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-905697
We regulars here are all familiar with your favourite “canary of disaster”, but may I point out that you seem to rely solely on recent satellite data and a still broad definition of how to describe sea ice cover. However, there is plenty of evidence that back around 1940, that the region was warmer or similar to that in recent times. For instance Jason Box co-authored a paper (in 2004?) that showed it to be warmer in Greenland back then. Strangely though in IPCC AR4, where Box was a co-author in the relevant chapter, there was zero mention of this inconvenient data.
Then there is the effect of wind patterns of course, so it all gets rather complicated, and not so simple as you seem to think.
BTW, why do you ignore what has happened in most of Antarctica?
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.
———-
That sounds sensible.
Now if climate feedbacks are so effective we would expect very little change in the Earth’s temperature over time.
But as others have pointed out here the Eocene was maybe 6-12C higher at the poles than it is today. So that contradicts the whole thesis.
In short it can get a whole lot hotter and a whole lot cooler than it is today, so large negative feedbacks are not on.
The IPCC models make use of absorptivity measurements for the Earth’s surface which were measured using visible light. But they apply them to far-IR radiation from the atmosphere, even though it is well known that absorptivity reduces very significantly for much lower temperature radiation. This is obviously important when determining the assumed warming effect of radiation from the atmosphere – which, by the way, is assumed to help the Sun with its warming every sunny morning – all quite against the Second Law of Thermodynamics which they think it isn’t because somewhere on the other side of the Earth at night some radiation is turning it all into totally unphysical “net” radiation which cannot be a physical entity. But, never mind, I diverge.
The question is Can someone link me to any empirical measurement of absorptivity by the surface of radiation in the IR bands emitted by the atmosphere?
You’d kinda think the IPCC would have got this part sorted out before spending all that money on the models. So show me where they did – anybody!
From RC:
The following is a graph of “model projections” of global temperatures as depicted in the IPCC AR4.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-ts-26.html
And here is the same chart with updated observations.
http://www.rhinohide.org/gw/publications/ipcc/ar4/img/ts26-updated-2011.jpg
The added observations are HadCRUTv3 and are only ‘hand-fitted’ to the chart via an image editor.
(Comment by Ron Broberg — 25 Feb 2012 @ 2:53 PM)
Werner Brozek says:
February 26, 2012 at 7:18 pm
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:36 pm
Yes, tropospheric temps have gone up, yes, they that rise has leveled a bit in the past decade, but the troposphere has low thermal retention and inertia
Fair enough. So what do the surface temperatures of the ocean tell us? They decreased over the past decade and they were completely flat for the last 15 years. (Of course, water has a high specific heat capacity.)
1997.08: slope = -0.000326788 per year (or essentially 0)
2002.08: slope = -0.00962834 per year
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.08/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002.08/trend
P.S. They do not show the deep ocean on this graphing program so I cannot show that yet.
———-
Werner, surface tempertures of the ocean tell us how much energy is leaving the ocean. Heat at the surface of th ocean is heat headed to the troposphere. The next most fickle and highly variable thing to topospheric temperatures are sea surface temperatures– in fact they are closely coupled and (with some time delay) subject to the same natural variations. Deeper oceans however, are the biggest, most stable energy reservoirs on the planet, and heat in the deeper ocean tells you much more about longer term climate forcing.
Don’t know what graphing program you are using, but the data for deeper ocean heat content (down to 2000 meters) is readily available at:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Ocean heat content has increased steadily for the past 40 years, with this largest energy storage battery on the planet showing no let up in gaining heat this past ten years when some would try to tell you the planet was no longer warming, when in fact the most they can say is the troposphere has not warmed.
Until such time as ocean heat content shows some significant declines over decadal time frames, no one can honestly and accurately say the planet is not warming.
The climate models predict that when the surface of the earth warms, less heat is radiated from the earth into space (on a weekly or monthly time scale).
———–
I would not have thought so.
The amount of heat emitted should match the amount of heat absorbed apart from heat that is being transiently absorbed or released from, most importantly, the oceans.
As far as I am aware the satellites don’t have enough measurement accuracy to pin down the difference properly and therefore are unable to reliably distinguish transient changes.
David’s graphs look suspiciously like overly positive conclusions being drawn in the face of to much signal noise.
LazyTeenager says:
Now if climate feedbacks are so effective we would expect very little change in the Earth’s temperature over time.
But as others have pointed out here the Eocene was maybe 6-12C higher at the poles than it is today. So that contradicts the whole thesis.
In short it can get a whole lot hotter and a whole lot cooler than it is today, so large negative feedbacks are not on.
===========================
“At the beginning of the period, Australia and Antarctica remained connected, and warm equatorial currents mixed with colder Antarctic waters, distributing the heat around the planet and keeping global temperatures high”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene
Facepalm moment I guess. (sigh)
Doug Cotton @ February 26, 9:35 pm
Doug,
Without having had time to read your links, I think that most discussions on the ~60-year cycle put it a tad longer, perhaps even 64 years as per those Russians back in 2003. However without being able to nail the cause, it’s all a bit speculative. I have a leaning to there being a linkage with various oceanic cycles particularly the PDO, and even ENSO if it is smoothed. This is purely intuitive on my part, and who knows what drives the oceanic cycles; something gravitationally planetary + solar stuff maybe, that you touch on?
Nick Stokes says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:57 pm
Anything is possible says: February 26, 2012 at 2:40 pm
“Nick, perhaps you ought to clarify whether the Hansen who made the prediction is actually the same Hansen who is responsible for producing the very GISS Ts index…”
Yes. He made the prediction in terms of the only index that was available at the time – the Hansen-Lebedeff index, which has been maintained as GISS Ts. You can see his original graph here. The observed that he was matching was that index.
Since then, the prediction has stayed the same. And it was predicting that index. But people have been substituting different data sets. Even RC used a somewhat cooler land/ocean index. And now David Evans is substituting the lower troposphere index, which is cooler again.
The GISS Ts index is in line with other land indices. CRUTEM3 is about the same; BEST runs warmer.
===================================================
The GISS Ts index, run by Hansen, was mostly in sync with the other indexes, including the satelties and weather ballon, but in the last ten years has started to depart more and more from their trend. Hansen does numerous of these http://www.real-science.com/new-giss-data-set-heating-arctic adjustments, which always seem to help his self-fulfilling predictions,
Also, even with adjustments his own data is still falling very low…http://www.real-science.com/giss-november-anomaly-0-48c-emissions-scenario
LazyTeenager says:
February 26, 2012 at 9:59 pm
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.
———-
That sounds sensible.
Now if climate feedbacks are so effective we would expect very little change in the Earth’s temperature over time.
But as others have pointed out here the Eocene was maybe 6-12C higher at the poles than it is today. So that contradicts the whole thesis.
In short it can get a whole lot hotter and a whole lot cooler than it is today, so large negative feedbacks are not on.
==========================
Lazy, have you ever thought that different feedbacks apply and change at different average mean T, (there may be more negative feedbacks a increasing as T rises) as well as on different time scales with different land mass parameters?
Bob_FJ I feel Scafetta is the best reference on the 60 year cycle http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/scafettas-solar-lunar-cycle-forecast-vs-global-temperature/ Generally the recent peaks are considered to be around 1880, 1940, 1998-99.
I have also read cogent reasons for believing that PDO and ENSO cycles are a result of climate change rather than a cause.
commieBob says:
February 26, 2012 at 7:04 pm
R. Gates says:
1) Arctic sea ice loss has been greater (much greater) than any of the models indicated.
2) The total energy gained by the deeper ocean (down to 2000m) has been greater than any of the models indicated that it would be.
Nice one. 😉 You finally agree with the rest of us that the models are useless.
———-
Models are maps…they are never true as being exact representations of reality, but they can tell you enough to be useful.
I love how you bring it all down to a simple and easy to understand point:
——————–
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.
——————–
Pity the News Media always hides that point from the public. From their viewpoint, skeptical scientists are “deniers”. Looking at how the data played out over the years, it looks like the Extreme AGW Believers are the real “Deniers”, they keep deny what the real world data is showing and keep believing in flawed computer models.
Concerning and adding to my post here…David says: February 26, 2012 at 10:40 pm,
consider how Hansen’s adjustment have been far more regional then one or two stations, check out his US adjustments in the second graphic here… http://www.real-science.com/hansen-time-began-1970-worm-hole-2000-ended
‘Models are maps…they are never true as being exact representations of reality, but they can tell you enough to be useful.’
Ah come on Gatesie stop do it in our pockets.
Get used to it GCM’s are a failure, couldn’t find the way around a barn with one. They say up when it goes down, in when it’s out.
Joel Shore says:
However, Held argues that the effect in the models of (2) is actually larger than (1), so that the net effect of the “hot spot” is likely to lower the amount of surface warming…and, thus, the absence of the “hot spot”, if real, would…if anything…increase the surface warming.
Which makes the observed deficit in warming that much worse.
Alan
Thanks for that link but it opens questions. Heat can only flow from higher temperature to a lower temperature, basic thermodynamics. Since any part of the Earth absorbing body that points at the sun cannot by definition radiate toward the sun, the Earth averaged emitter model fails. On the other paw, when the Earth radiates toward space on the night side, the temperature differential is several hundred degrees K as the planet radiates toward the 4 degree K universal background. Thus this model that is used cannot work in the manner stated from basic thermodynamic relations.
LazyTeenager says:
February 26, 2012 at 10:11 pm
From another source Lazy quotes “A”The climate models predict that when the surface of the earth warms, less heat is radiated from the earth into space (on a weekly or monthly time scale).
———–
Lazy responds…”I would not have thought so. The amount of heat emitted should match the amount of heat absorbed apart from heat that is being transiently absorbed or released from, most importantly, the oceans.
——————————————————————————————
Lazy, is “A” not refering to GHGs increasing, unbalancing an equalibrium, further warming the surface and the energy not balancing until the new equalibrium is reached.
———————————————————
Lazy cont…
“As far as I am aware the satellites don’t have enough measurement accuracy to pin down the difference properly and therefore are unable to reliably distinguish transient changes.
David’s graphs look suspiciously like overly positive conclusions being drawn in the face of to much signal noise.”
===============================================
Well, the satellites along with the radioscone and the surface T used to move pretty close together so I dont think one can claim the satellites are anything but consistent.
As far as TOA measurements, if it is adequat for the warmist missing heat, it is adequat here as well. BTW concerning Joel Shore’s assertion of warming in the troposphere, yes there is some with the metric he supplies, however, using IPCC projections on the exact tropical troposphere within the IPCC, the observations are 1/2 to 1/4 of what the IPCC predicts, so yes Joel, some warming, but a failed prediction.
George E. Smith; says: February 26, 2012 at 7:16 pm
There is data, that I would like to point to.
The well publicised Mauna Loa CO2 data from 1957/8 to the present; perhaps the only authoritative CO2 data (OBSERVED).
I’ve looked at that plot so often, I think I could just about draw it free hand. There are two characteristics of that plot, that are incontrovertible (a) , There is an annual roughly saw tooth cycle of about 6 ppm CO2 abundance, rising over about 7 months, and falling in just 5 months.
(b) , Since 1957/8, I believe it is true to say, that the annual CO2 maximum ( and also the annual CO2 minimum) , has NEVER EVER gone down from 1957 to 2012. The trend has ALWAYS been UPWARD. I believe there is no exception to this rule.
___________________________
Hello George,
Regarding our point b):
Despite the huge quantities of manmade CO2 emissions, atmospheric CO2 did decrease year-over-year in some of the global cooling years from 1959-1974*.
My question:
Has this not happened recently because of increased humanmade CO2 emissions, or because the world has, until recently, been getting warmer?
Regards, Allan
______________________
Annualized Mauna Loa dCO2/dt has “gone negative” a few times in the past (calculating dCO2/dt from monthly data, by taking CO2MonthX (year n+1) minus CO2MonthX (year n) to minimize the seasonal CO2 “sawtooth”.)
These 12-month periods when CO2 decreased are (Year and Month ending in):
1959-8
1963-9
1964-5
1965-1
1965-5
1965-6
1971-4
1974-6
1974-8
1974-9
Modern CO2 data collection at Mauna Loa started in ~1958.
Nick Stokes says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:05 pm
DirkH says: February 26, 2012 at 12:57 pm
“But wasn’t the prediction that the troposphere should heat up faster than the surface?”
Not the lower troposphere. But in any case, why not simply measure his prediction against what he was actually predicting?
————————————————————
A search for “giss temperature records hansen connection” would give many reasons why Dr Evans may not have chosen GISS Surface Temps.
Good summary, thank you, apart from treatment of the ‘hotspot’. I follow Richard Lindzen in considering that the absence of the hotspot in the tropical upper troposphere means that there’s a problem with the data, most likely because the surface temperature is being overestimated:
That’s from WUWT on 17th January 2011. I realise that many sceptics, including Jo Nova in her own introduction for the outsider, have argued the way David Evans does here but I think Lindzen’s approach is the more credible. Lindzen agrees with Evans and other sceptics that climate sensitivity is low. But I think it’s important to realise that he thinks the absence of a hotspot in the data is as much a problem for us as high sensitivity advocates.
R Gates said;
Even though the troposphere is an excellent way to see warming in the Earth’s system over a long-term basis (many decades) because of its low thermal inertia and poor energy retention, it is not so good over shorter-periods, as natural variability will often dominate, and any longer-term signal (such as from anthropogenic CO2) can often get lost in the short-term noise.
Nonsense.
The troposphere’s low thermal inertia and poor energy retention is precisely the reason it must respond to short term changes in forcings. Assuming the Forcings Model is correct, and you argue it is, a priori.
The noise argument annoys me. Noise is unwanted signal. What is this claimed noise?
The only possible source of significant noise (if the Forcings Model is correct) is the oceans.
So where is the evidence that the oceans are accumulating heat consistent with the lack of tropospheric warming over the last decade?
Answer: The oceans aren’t accumulating heat at an increasing rate. They show the same flatlining of temperatures as the troposphere – Argo down to 2,000 meters.
Which is where the deep oceans warming nonsense comes in.
So, magically around 2000 sunlight entering the oceans rather than going up into the atmosphere and from there to space, suddenly goes in the opposite direction down into the deep oceans.
If you put that in a movie, the audience would laugh out loud its so ridiculous.
I’ll spare you a lecture on how this is typical of failing scientific theories. Read Kuhn.
The alarmists’ predictions compared to observations is quite frankly embarrassing. Below is Dr. Roy Spencer on clouds which seems to be the key to the whole debate.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/04/clouds-cool-the-climate-system%E2%80%A6but-amplify-global-warming/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/09/a-primer-on-our-claim-that-clouds-cause-temperature-change/
Does anyone know what happened when Co2 levels in the atmosphere was far higher than today?
It is cAGW v rAGW
Catastrophic man-made climate change (cAGW) versus reduced man-made climate change or realistic climate change (rAGW).
Politically correct science versus empirical science. Tricks versus sound measurements. Fakes versus sound arguements. Ideology versus the scientific method.
Julian Braggins says: February 27, 2012 at 12:48 am
“A search for “giss temperature records hansen connection” would give many reasons why Dr Evans may not have chosen GISS Surface Temps.”
ferd berple says: February 26, 2012 at 5:12 pm
“I predict Hansen will continue to adjust the GISS to match his predictions.”
OK, and other variants. It’s pretty paranoid. But the answer isn’t to just go and plot a quite different quantity. That’s completely useless. There are other people, not Hansen, who calculate indices – you can compare with those. And in the process see that this alleged fiddling by Hansen does not have the effect claimed.
I’ve written a post with a Javascript gadget. It shows Hansen’s original plot, and you can superimpose on it plots of any of about eleven indices, to see how they fare. There’s currently a glitch in that the picture seems to often not show initially; there is a clear button that will make it appear.
I suggest that this paper by Dr. Evans would be a good basis for Dr. David Wojick and the Heartland Institute to develop their proposed series of lectures and seminars for schools.
Tom_R says: February 26, 2012 at 8:29 pm
“Thank you for your response.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but basically your answer is that Hansen’s models generated random events such as volcanic eruptions which occur at different times for the different scenarios. That seems to me to confuse the issue if the idea was to compare the effect of three different CO2-generating scenarios.”
Volcanoes are bound to cause problems in any prediction. Hansen was trying to predict the time course of GMST taking account of all assessable forcings. making a guess about them is unsatisfactory, but it’s better than assuming there won’t be any.
I think the practical reason for the difference between the treatment of these things in the A and the B/C scenarios is that he had already published the Scen A results in about 1985. I think B and C were done after further thought.
Will Nitschke says: February 26, 2012 at 8:35 pm
“I’ve heard this excuse many times before… It comes down to this, other more minor trace gases didn’t make it into the atmosphere in the proportions that Hansen speculated on, therefore he cannot be blamed for getting his prediction wrong.”
No, it’s not about the predictions – it’s an explanation of the minor discrepancies that show between scenarios before 1988. There’s no reason to expect that they have any major effect.
I’ll repeat my claim – if you assess H’s prediction against the land-only indices he was using, they look pretty good. They fall lower relative to Land/Sea, but that is in the nature of those indices. Even then, the divergence is short-term – basically since 2005.
Surface evapouration needs heat. This evapourated water, carrying the latent heat of evapouration with it, will convect to higher levels of the atmosphere cooling as it goes. when the dew point is reached at height clouds form releasing the latent heat which will leach into space causing heat loss not heat gain at the surface.
We know virtually nothing about cloud and their part in climate but are willing to make wild claims about tipping points and unstoppable temperature increases wiping out all life on earth. these claims are totally alarmist and display a total lack of knowledge about our geological past.
Ocean Heat Content does show an increase so long as you don’t cherry pick just the first 700 meters. Data going down deeper to Argo’s 2000 meter range shows that the heat has been accumulating despite the short timeframe for which data is being collected.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
I think it’s deceptive of the author to talk about Argo buoys going down to 2,000 meters, then only show a graph with data to 700 meters.
scottd0317 says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:03 pm
“I’m not a scientist but I am a grammarian. The word “data” is the plural of “datum.” Therefore the proper usage is “the data say” not “the data says.”
I am neither one of those. but I do manage to speak English. Data is not only the plural form of datum, it is also the singular for a body of information made up of more than a very few items of data. The real life opportunities to use the word as a plural are so very rare that giving the word plural modifiers is almost always wrong. Almost every time that you see those plural modifiers on this site following the word ‘data’ they are misguided owing to the pedantry of publishers.
“The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.”
Those of us who are unable to accept that there is any direct warming effect whatever from CO2 are thus dismissed. We may be few, but we are indeed most serious.
On rereading my comment above my treatment of “serious skeptical scientists” could be taken as a claim by me to be a scientist and I claim no such thing. That does not prevent me from having a considered opinion as to matters scientific and I can make the claim that my opinions are all honest. In that respect I can claim with justification that my opinions are better than some. The name Glieck springs most immediately to mind and there are plenty more..
“The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century.”
While it is quite plausible to challenge some of the unvalidated assumptions and predictions of climate models there is, nevertheless, a basic underlying science upon which all scientists agree. It is disheartening, therefore, to see so many commentors here who ‘deny’ established science.
It is necessary to distinguish between science based on empirical observation and careful experiment from that based on computer models and conjecture. The former can only be challenged from a position of ignorance – and in these columns it is.
David Evans is perfectly correct; the argument comes down ‘feedbacks’. This is the Achilles heal of the CAGW theory.
Some people ask questions of the basic science, but I doubt whether they really want answers.
Doug Cotton says:
February 26, 2012 at 10:00 pm
Can someone link me to any empirical measurement of absorptivity by the surface of radiation in the IR bands emitted by the atmosphere?
Doug, measurements are not made for visible light and then appled to IR bands. I do not know how that would be possible. You can see measurements of emissivity (which you know equals absorptivity) here for various substances.
http://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/emissivity-vs-wavelength-various-substances2.png
You say, “it is well known that absorptivity reduces very significantly for much lower temperature radiation”. You can see from the graphs that this is the opposite of the truth – so I don’t know in what circles that is well known. Moreover, you can see that snow, which has very low absoptivity/emissivity in the visible behaves almost like a blackbody in the infrared. In fact most of the Earth’s surface approximates to a blackbody in the long wave infrared.
“You’d kinda think the IPCC would have got this part sorted out before spending all that money on the models”. Yes you would – and it looks like they did.
O H Dahlsveen says:
February 26, 2012 at 6:52 pm
” How can that so called “Backradiation” warm the surface up any further?”
If you really want to know then there are plenty of articles describing this mechanism. Here are two of the best
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/20/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-a-physical-analogy/
Dennis Ray Wingo says:
February 26, 2012 at 11:53 pm
“Since any part of the Earth absorbing body that points at the sun cannot by definition radiate toward the sun”.
By definition? Rubbish! How does any part of the Earth know where it is ‘pointing’? And since the Sun only subtends a very small angle in the sky when it is present, what about all the outgoing radiation from the Earth which will miss it? – can that still go out? What absolute Claes Johnson sort of nonsense is this? What about nighttime? There are lots of stars out there, all hotter than the Earth (an infinite number?). Does the outgoing radiation know that it is going to miss them?
James Ard says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:08 pm
“I had heard we were going to get conclusive ice core samples telling us whether c02 leads or lags warming. Anyone know what has come of that?”
Yes, James. ice core samples show that CO2 lags warming by about 800 years. All scientists now agree about that – except Nobel prize winner Al Gore.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
Just how ridiculous the argument put forward here by Dr David Evans can be seen by the fact that the claimed rise of ~1 degC from a doubling of CO2 alone without the feedbacks has ALLREADY occurred with just about a 30% increase in CO2 over the last century.
So the claim that a doubling will NOT cause a ~3degC rise looks dubious when a 30% rise has caused a ~1degC rise.
If you haven’t noticed, it is interesting that pro-AGW people have a really hard time accepting the fact that temperatures are not increasing the way their theory predicts. They seem to be able to consciously ignore it and/or suggest that some other data/supposition should be used to assess temperatures instead.
Now this extends to not just the pro-AGW posters here, but to almost all of the key climate scientists in the business. The ones that are in charge of the data itself. Even more interesting.
In January 2012, the mean projections of:
– Hansen is +1.025C;
– IPCC FAR business-as-usual is +0.86C;
– IPCC TAR is +0.65C; and,
– IPCC AR4 is +0.714C.
On the same baseline, GISTemp is +0.29C in January 2012, Hadcrut3 will be under +0.200C (if it is ever released) and the lower troposphere temperatures would be about +0.100C.
So, one can ignore the actual data if one chooses but it clearly indicates that the models are very wrong about something very important.
izen says:
“Just how ridiculous the argument put forward here by Dr David Evans can be seen by the fact that the claimed rise of ~1 degC from a doubling of CO2 alone without the feedbacks has ALLREADY occurred with just about a 30% increase in CO2 over the last century. So the claim that a doubling will NOT cause a ~3degC rise looks dubious…”
As usual, Izen is wrong. Real world observations are falsifying the 3°C per 2xCO2 belief. So who should we believe? Planet earth? Or Izen?
Stokes,
from RC itself: “how well did Hansen do?”
http://www.realclimate.org/images/hansen11.jpg
Why? Because each group has it’s own self-interest that it is seeking to further. Each has seized onto the promotion of CAGW as a way to do that.
The national leadership wants to reduce oil imports. Less oil consumption is one way to achieve that. Environmental groups want to protect the environment. Less of everything is their way to go. The media just love a good scary story. And curiously the oil companies want us to pay more for their oil, restricting supply helps that along.
The bottom line is that virtually no-one, least of all the scientists, has a interest in questioning the story.
Mike.
Nick Stokes says,,,,”I’ll repeat my claim – if you assess H’s prediction against the land-only indices he was using, they look pretty good. They fall lower relative to Land/Sea, but that is in the nature of those indices. Even then, the divergence is short-term – basically since 2005.”
—————————————————————————————————
Nope
http://www.real-science.com/giss-november-anomaly-0-48c-emissions-scenario
And this is after his adjustments to individal stations
http://www.real-science.com/new-giss-data-set-heating-arctic
Which affect large geographic areas like this…
http://www.real-science.com/hansen-time-began-1970-worm-ZERhole-2000-ended
And then Nick wants land only, using Hansens cherry picked adjustment to past historical records, and his inadequat UHI adjustment, ignoring the land only is moving further and further from the data sets. There is a REASON Hansen’s “disaster” such as Manhatten flooding is showing ZERO signs of happening. Besides the fact that, although EVEN Hansens own data set falls WELL short, the earths average T is what matters, and it is far below his “stop all emissions” senario, and even with the minor warming shown by Nick Stoke’s, talking about exactly the IPCC portion of the tropical trophsphere suppose to dramatically warm, it has only warmed by 1/2 to 1/4 of what the IPCC models say, as shown by Ross Mckitrick.
Nope alarmists, this is a good post by Mr Evans, and it shows climate disaster prediction is an utter fail. You can pick your data set, (by mendacious scientist as shown in climate gate one and two) we can pick ours, does not matter. Even in land only we are seeing at most , a little over 1C per doubling, remembering that each additional increase in CO2 has LESS WARMING affect then the preceeding one, but the BENEFITS to plant growth CONTINUE to grow with each increase in CO2, We have DISASTER prediction fail, be it how rapidly the earths average atmospheric T is rising, or how rapidly oceans are rising, CAGW is all a BIG fail, a TRILLION dollar plus fail, an EPIC FAIL. HURRICANES, TORNADOS, SEA LEVELS, AVERAGE T RISE, DROUGHTS, FLOODS ETC, NONE OF THESE are increasingly occuring like the warmist scientific literature, advocate rag journals, and Hansen type scientist predict.
It is all a big FAT FAIL, except in one area, that is the money wasting stealing scam of the politicians they are in bed with, the are good at that, they are good at STEALING MONEY, and their economic policy is the only real DISASTER, just ask Germany, no ask all of Europe, ask the person on a fixed income buying gas today in the US, paying inflated prices for every item because energy is the life blood of EVERY economy, and under the Green/red pledge, “energy prices will NECESSARILY SKYROCKET”
APACHEWHOKNOWS says:
February 26, 2012 at 6:58 pm
“More, O.H. Dahlsveen. More, very good.”
I’ll second that. Would also be interested in what Alan Siddons has to say on this.
@- Smokey
“As usual, Izen is wrong. Real world observations are falsifying the 3°C per 2xCO2 belief. So who should we believe? Planet earth? Or Izen?”
Believe the real world.
It has warmed around 1 degC for a 30% increase in CO2.
How that ‘falsifies’ a projection of 3 degC for a doubling, 100% increase in CO2 I am not sure, perhaps you could explain….
A do have to quibble about the title — There is not one definitive Skeptics Case; perhaps A Skeptics Case is better? More accurately, it could be titled The Skeptics Case Against Runaway Global Warming from Imaginary Feedbacks, but that does lack zing.
BTW: Does anybody know why the climate models show all those feedbacks? They were programmed that way.
izen says:
Just how ridiculous the argument put forward here by Dr David Evans can be seen by the fact that the claimed rise of ~1 degC from a doubling of CO2 alone without the feedbacks has ALLREADY occurred with just about a 30% increase in CO2 over the last century.
Don’t be silly. CO2 has gone up 35% since 1950 or so. Temp over the same period, if you believe data published by documented liars, is up 0.7C. To make your point, you are understating the co2 rise, overstating the temp rise, extending the period to a time before co2 ramped up, and assuming that the entire temp increase was caused by co2 despite the fact that temp has been rising for longer than co2 has been rising.
These are exactly the sort of data massaging exercises that drive CAGW. Raise this a little, lower that a little, push this around a bit, throw in a convenient error band here, for gawds sake dont admit to the true error band there, top with a dollop of fudge … there, it fits the scary story.
Dr. Evans says his understanding of the effect of CO2 is “based on laboratory results and known for over a century”.
His reference does not lead me to these results. What are they?
Dr. Evans then comments about the effect of doubling CO2 levels.
But if there is no effect of Co2, as I and many others I believe, then doubling CO2 it will not change that.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:39 pm
And did the native people of North America living near what would become “Minneapolis” happen to accurately record temperatures in the 1600′s?
More accurately than has been done over the last 2 decades, you can be sure. The difference is that for the native people, their lives depended on an accurate record, passed through oral tradition from generation to generation. Modern climate science relies on an exaggerated record to generate their livelihood, which is a threat to the rest of us.
And we’re just supposed to take your (smug) word for it that it’s not (natural)? Seriously, what (actually) evidence do you have that it’s not natural (climate change)?
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 10:10 pm
Don’t know what graphing program you are using
It was right above this line in what you quoted back to me:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.08/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002.08/trend
I question how reliable the information is for all of the deep ocean going back 40 years. But let us assume just for argument sake that all of the deep oceans did indeed warm up as much as they say, why should we be concerned about it? Deeper parts of the earth is still much, much warmer. If that heat never reaches the surface, other than via the odd volcano, why should we spend billions to prevent an extremely slight warming of the deep ocean? It is not as if the extra 0.01 C over the whole deep ocean will suddenly accumulate in one place and blast us and fry us.
Anthony’s neologism “Gleickness” made my day.
Anyway, to the point: the expected tropical hotspot is presented here with no acknowledgement whatsoever of the rebuttals that are fairly abundant around the warmist web, stating that
1.the balloon measurements are fairly problematic so no conclusion can be inferred; that
2.in other graphs the hotspot is indeed right there, fairly visible; and
3. that it’s just caused by any form of warming=>evaporation, not just a proposed CO2 warming effect, so it’s pretty pointless to descrlbe such hotspots as significant in a debate over the _causes_ of warming.
Please, Dr.Evans!
Until those objections have been convincingly answered, it’s unprofessional and detrimental to your credibility to simply insist on repeating the original point about the absence of the hotspot.
Alessandro,
Those false talking points have been repeatedly deconstructed.
The radiosonde balloons are extremely accurate. The predicted tropospheric hotspot simply does not exist, no matter what claims are made to the contrary. And all “causes of warming” have not been idententified. But CO2 can be only a very minor cause, as rising CO2 over the past 15 years shows: there has been no corresponding rise in temperature. Further, rises in CO2 are an effect of rising temperature.
litsnotnova says:
February 27, 2012 at 3:01 am
The three possible mechanisms of heat transfer are convection, conduction, and radiation.
How does heat accumulate down at 2000m without first warming the 2000m above?
izen says:
February 27, 2012 at 6:52 am
It has warmed around 1 degC for a 30% increase in CO2.
We have had several nearly identical warming spells over the last 150 years. See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
Here are the trends and significances for each period:
Period Length Trend
(Degrees C per decade) Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes
So if the first two had nothing to do with CO2, why should the ones after 1940 have anything to do with CO2?
Alessandro says:
February 27, 2012 at 7:46 am
Please, Dr.Evans!
Until those objections have been convincingly answered, it’s unprofessional and detrimental to your credibility to simply insist on repeating the original point about the absence of the hotspot.
If you would like to read a 26 page article by Dr. Evans on the lack of a hot spot, see:
The Missing Hotspot – Science Speak
Look we’re at neutral POI
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_daily.php?plot=ssa&inv=0&t=cur&expanddiv=hide_bar
Temps are really shooting down. There is NO WARMING!
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ 600 or 400mb
so its all gibberish. I reckon C02 has NIL effect on atmospheric temps ALL extra heat caused by any gas on earth is probably dissipated through vapour negative feedback effects. You might as well say 2 much Oxygen causes Global warming
Alessandro says:
February 27, 2012 at 7:46 am
—————————————————
Alessandro, there has been some warming in the “hotspot” region as predicted by the models. Ross Mckitrick clearly showed that the warming observed was 1/2 to 1/4 of the predictied warming of the models. In other words, like sea level rise, like atmospheric T, like hurricanes, droughts etc, etc, it just aint there.
Where is the predicted “hot spot”?
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hot-spot/mckitrick-models-observations-rss-msu-uah-radiosondes-flat.jpg
I have some questions that perhaps a more knowledgeable person could answer.
After looking at a climate skeptic-skeptic page (yes double negative, so they actually believe in AGW while denying AGW skeptics) they referenced that the deap oceans are now taking on more heat and then showed pretty 50 year graphs with comments about ARGO doing the measuring. What bugged me was that they had data doing back to 1960 in this graph while admiting that the ARGO bouys are from post 2000. So is there any data on ocean temps going back to the 1960’s? how good is it, etc? If all we have is ARGO from 2000+ then I’m inclined to think we need more data points.
Second – is there any idea what the ocean is doing with the heat? again the skeptic-skeptic site basically said that the ocean held about 90% of our heat mass. Is that right (within order of magnitude)? Depending on rate of ocean heating I can see how that would create some intertia in GCC (up or down).
BTW the point in the OP’s article about increased radiation with increased surface temp makes sense all things being equal. I suppose the point of AGW is that CO2 changes that ‘equilibrium’
izen says:
February 27, 2012 at 6:52 am
@- Smokey
“As usual, Izen is wrong. Real world observations are falsifying the 3°C per 2xCO2 belief. So who should we believe? Planet earth? Or Izen?”
izen says…Believe the real world.
It has warmed around 1 degC for a 30% increase in CO2.
How that ‘falsifies’ a projection of 3 degC for a doubling, 100% increase in CO2 I am not sure, perhaps you could explain….
=========================================
Izen, nice try, but is it not fair, when you copy a posters coment to include the link they gave with that comment? You did not engage with Smokey’s assertion and left out his link, it stands, your comments are not cogent. http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5721/newhadcrut3warming.png
RockyRoad:February 26, 2012 at 12:41 pm sais:
“….If water is THE predominant greenhouse gas, it doesn’t need any warming assistance from CO2….”
You know, Rocky makes a helluva point there…
Should not ANY sudden increase in temperature lead to an increase of water in the atmosphere leading to a runaway greenhouse effect?
Does the system really care if an increased level of atmospheric water is heated by CO2 or by other atmospheric water?
I’d love to hear some learned opinion on this.
It sounds to that you are deliberately (falsely) equating warming with AGW. (Again) totally ignoring natural processes.
(Once again) you discard the null hypothesis, (something) you repeatedly do, regardless of being called out on each time.
This is a keeper. Thanks!
scepticalwombat says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:09 pm
It takes 14 years for temperature to return to the trend line????
“what’s been happening with Arctic sea ice volume, area, and extent over the past 30+ years”
Would that be the 30 years since the PDO switched to it’s warm phase?
Interestingly enough, since the PDO switched back a few years ago, Artic sea ice has been rebuilding.
“Why is Al Gore and Algae are so much alike when printed out on a blog post.”
Seperated at birth?
David says: February 27, 2012 at 6:00 am
“And then Nick wants land only, using Hansens cherry picked adjustment to past historical records, and his inadequat UHI adjustment…”
Land only surface temperature, because that is what he was predicting. Not lower troposphere. But you don’t have to use the GISS index. BEST, for example, matches better than GISS, and NOAA about the same. You can check that here.
On the other hand – lets simply compare the 2007 IPCC predictions directly with HADRUT3 data updated since the report was published. The trend is well down on actual CO2 level predictions and even well below that fixed at 2000 CO2 levels.
graph here
My guess is that 2012 will resolve this argument one way or the other.
LazyTeenager says:
February 26, 2012 at 9:59 pm
You don’t need large feedbacks to cause CO2 as a climate forcer to pale into insignificance.
Absent feedbacks, CO2 doubling is only predicted to create 1.1C of warming. That’s nothing. A negative feedback that reduced that by half would not be a strong feedback, yet CO2 forcing is reduced to half of nothing.
PS: Not all forcings trigger the same feedbacks.
I’m getting a trifle confused here! There seems to be evidence that in the past CO2 levels have increased only following a temperature rise which warms the oceans. Even David Attenborough was convinced by paleoclimatologists’ evidence that 3 million years ago the CO2 level was 11%, and evolution continued apace. Also that CO2 levels have been still higher than that but these rises also occur after many centuries of ‘warming’. Even Al Gore agreed with the rises and falls – but misrepresented them …..very carefully. This would make the tiny rises in CO2 be due to changes in the oceans some time ago.
Thus a rise of a few hundredths of 1% of CO2 would not only be un-catastrophic but not even due to our tiny emissions. Can these two ‘sceptical’ positions be reconciled in a way that I can understand, please?
Also (off topic, I know), is it true that carbon in CO2 emitted from burning fossel fuels has a different atomic weight from other sources, such as dying vegetation?
Science as Organized Skepticism
by Lord May of Oxford, Past President of the Royal Society
source: http://downloads.royalsociety.org/audio/DM/DM2010_03/May.mp3
There is another way to look at all this — the notion of “consensus”.
I recommend Lord May’s presentation though I don’t agree with his view of consensus as well as many of his other assertions.
Lord May basically states that those who blindly affirm the IPCC and those who “deny” the fundamental aspects of the science should simply be ignored. All others are, in his view, skeptics which he feels is appropriate until a scientific consensus is reached. He feels skepticism is counter productive at the point of scientific consensus.
He states that climate science is at the edge of the scientific frontier and requires problematic forecasting (aka: educated guesses).
He implies, even though the science isn’t settled (never likely to be), a consensus has been reached.
Thus, disprove the notion of a consensus of scientific opinion and skepticism becomes appropriate.
izen says:
February 27, 2012 at 4:22 am
Has it, there’s no possibility that the number has been contaminated by other factors? Even the IPCC has admitted that at least part of that increase was due to an increase in TSI.
Then we have to factor out UHI and microsite contamination as documented by our own Anthony.
izen says:
February 27, 2012 at 4:22 am
Let’s not forget that for 15 years, CO2 has been going up, but temperature hasn’t.
John from CA says:
February 27, 2012 at 10:55 am
problematic forecasting s/b problemistic forecasting
Dr.Evans says we can understand the atmosphere from lab experiments.
It is not possible to copy such properties as 30 000 feet of height and the lapse rate in a lab on Earth.
The only lab for atmospheres is the solar system.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/
Nick Stokes says:
February 27, 2012 at 2:06 am
Julian Braggins says: February 27, 2012 at 12:48 am
“A search for “giss temperature records hansen connection” would give many reasons why Dr Evans may not have chosen GISS Surface Temps.”
ferd berple says: February 26, 2012 at 5:12 pm
“I predict Hansen will continue to adjust the GISS to match his predictions.”
OK, and other variants. It’s pretty paranoid.
_________________________________________________________________________
To paraphrase my all-time favourite line from the movies :
Just because we’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get us. (:-
LazyTeenager says:
Now if climate feedbacks are so effective we would expect very little change in the Earth’s temperature over time.
So, your new argument is that climate feedbacks are not effective? You might want to note that is the thesis of the post to which you are responding …
But as others have pointed out here the Eocene was maybe 6-12C higher at the poles than it is today. So that contradicts the whole thesis.
No it doesn’t.
In short it can get a whole lot hotter and a whole lot cooler than it is today, so large negative feedbacks are not on.
And by that … uh … “reasoning” … large positive feedbacks are not on, either.
The problem with duplicitous reasoning is that it eventually becomes obvious.
George E. Smith : But let me re-iterate, I do believe that CO2 captures 15 micron surface emitted LWIR radiation and thermalizes it to warm the nearby air. What else it might do is not so clear.
Well, one thing it does is emit radiation from the atmosphere. In fact, due to Kirchhoff’s Law that emission property is the same as the thermalization you referred to. In any local space that thermalization should be offset by the exact same amount of cooling. Hence, adding more GHGs to that atmosphere does not heat it directly.
The way I see it, the only warming occurs at the surface (reduced cooling). This does lead to a warmer atmosphere via conduction, convection and additional latent heat. However, the increased heat flow brought about by increased GHGs also allows the atmosphere to cool faster.
I’m still waiting to hear a climate scientist discuss all of these effects as a complete picture.
BTW, I suspect the absence of the hot spot may be partially due to the increased heat transport through GHGs. I actually consider that as validation of the cooling effect of GHGs. Now, if only the alarmists would think about the whole instead of just the physics that supports their dogma.
Question, so when people mention “a doubling of CO2” is this magically coming out of nowhere and adding to the overall mass of the atmosphere, or is this “shuffling net molecular composition around” so that the mass is the same, just the composition slightly different?
It doesnt seem to me that we’re substantially affecting the mass of the atmosphere – what’s the “mass difference” in the atmosphere for 350ppm vs 450ppm, for example?
izen says:
February 27, 2012 at 4:22 am
No, CO2 levels have increased since the 1840’s from around 285 ppm until 405 ppm now. That is a 42 percent increase in CO2 gases from (shown below) a 0.7c increase in global temperatures.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/normalise/offset:0.139/plot/gistemp/normalise/offset:0.171/plot/esrl-co2/normalise/plot/hadcrut3gl/trend/offset:0.33
If the rate continued until a doubling of CO2= 1.67c.
MarkW says:
February 27, 2012 at 11:00 am
izen says:
February 27, 2012 at 4:22 am
Let’s not forget that for 15 years, CO2 has been going up, but temperature hasn’t.
—————-
Much longer than that and the graph below doesn’t show early CO2 levels which increased throughout the period below. Therefore with this taken into account shows a further 40 year period of increasing CO2 levels with no warming.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1998/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:1998/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1934/to:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1934/to:1980/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1955/normalise
“”””” Typhoon says:
February 27, 2012 at 7:59 am
litsnotnova says:
February 27, 2012 at 3:01 am
Ocean Heat Content does show an increase so long as you don’t cherry pick just the first 700 meters. Data going down deeper to Argo’s 2000 meter range shows that the heat has been accumulating despite the short timeframe for which data is being collected.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
I think it’s deceptive of the author to talk about Argo buoys going down to 2,000 meters, then only show a graph with data to 700 meters.
The three possible mechanisms of heat transfer are convection, conduction, and radiation.
How does heat accumulate down at 2000m without first warming the 2000m above? “””””
How many times do we have to go through this; HEAT is a PROCESS, which involves increasing the mean kinetic energy per particle of a large assemblage of real Physical matter particles made out of one or more of the known chemical elements. If you are going to use “heat” as a noun, then it is that mean kinetic energy of real particles or molecules.
Without MATTER there is NO “heat”.
Electromagnetic RADIATION contains NO chemical elements; NO matter.
Consequently RADIATION is NOT a process for transporting “heat”.
Conduction and Convection are the two mechanisms for the transport of “heat”; RADIATION is a means of transport of “”””” ENERGY “””””.
RADIATION is effectively the ONLY mechanism for transporting ENERGY from the SUN to the EARTH. We get NO “heat” from the sun; because there is NO physical medium between those two bodies to transport any heat. And if the space between the sun and the earth was completely filled with the very best known conductor of “heat”; namely type II-a diamond, the amount of heat conducted to the earth would be totally inconsequential, and we truly would be a frozen ice ball, with the oceans frozen solid to the bottom.
WE make ALL of our “heat” on earth (other than what is in the earth itself) by simply wasting most of the good quality RADIANT ENERGY that we get from the sun.
Since RADIATION is NOT “heat”, much of it is able to penetrate the deep oceans, at least down to 700 metres. Allegedly it has been detected (radiation that is) down to 3,000 feet.
Radiation will not HEAT the overlying ocean layers, unless they too absorb some of the radiation and waste it as heat.
If we covered the earth with solar cells instead of nothing much, then we wouldn’t waste so much solar energy as heat, and the oceans would get colder. Well fortunately we don’t have any way to store that much electricity, so we eventually waste most of it anyway; making stuff. Some of it gets turned into light and escapes from this den of energy wastrels.
I don’t care how many revisionist issues of wikileaks, you read, RADIATION is NOT a method of transporting “heat”.
And along the same lines; E = R x I is NOT Ohm’s Law; R = const , IS Ohm’s Law.
Nick Stokes says:
Land only surface temperature, because that is what he was predicting.
Nope. Land and water. Not land only. That is what he was predicting.
But you don’t have to use the GISS index. BEST, for example, matches better than GISS,
BEST is land only. BEST matches better because land only greatly exceeds land and water, and Hansen’s prediction greatly overestimates land and water.
If the rate continued until a doubling of CO2= 1.67c. (but we know that not all this is from AGW)
Just to add that means another warming of 0.97c from now until global CO2 levels reach 570ppm. Taking the rate current CO2 levels are trending that would take about another 75 years. (2087)
“scottd0317 says: February 26, 2012 at 12:03 pm
I’m not a scientist but I am a grammarian. The word “data” is the plural of “datum.” Therefore the proper usage is “the data say” not “the data says.””
Maybe so Scott, but over time common usage trumps grammar and common usage is “the data say”, and it has been common usage for a long, long time. Almost no one, except the occasional grammarian, uses “datum” anymore.
“”””” Allan MacRae says:
February 27, 2012 at 12:02 am “””””
Well there you go; the exception that proves the rule.
I went back to an official NOAA / NASA graph; and lo and behold, I DID find ONE year, 1965, in which the CO2 high was lower than for the previous 1964 year, and I also DID find ONE year, namely 1975, where the CO2 low was lower than for the previous year 1974.
In both cases, the other extrema continued its upward shift.
So without the actual numbers, I can’t say whether the average for the year went up or down. But there is one case each of a subsequent lower low, and a subsequent lower high; so I stand corrected; and will remember those two years forever; unless the universe doesn’t last that long.
“”””” Doug Cotton says:
February 26, 2012 at 9:06 pm
One simple question; Where is the evidence of empirical measurements of absorptivity of the surface with respect to spontaneous (blackbody) emission with frequencies in the range of those for atmospheric temperatures?
It is quite wrongly assumed in all the models that this absorptivity is comparable with that measured using visible light. It isn’t and it can’t be. In fact, absorptivity of anything has to reduce to zero when the source of the radiation is cooler than the target for which absorptivity is being measured. Unless this is the case, the Second Law of Thermodynamics would be violated. Fullstop. “””””
Well Doug, EM radiation carries with it NO INFORMATION as to the Temperature of the source. In particular ANY photon is emitted from precisely ONE molecule, and no one molecule at any instant, such as when it emits a photon, even HAS a Temperature.
So your statement is quite erroneous. Any photon can be absorbed by anything, at any Temperature whatsoever. The second law does not come into play; which doesn’t mean the second law doesn’t apply; your case is simply not an example of any second law violation.
The laws of thermodynamics are laws of macro systems; not molecules or individual photons.
Any HOT body which is in the “line of sight” of a cold body, so that it may even receive a photon from such cold body; has that poor sad cold body firmly in its sights, and will blast the cold body with a deluge of photons, that the cold body will never forget.
Read the Clausius form of the second law; it is a property of CYCLIC MACHINES, so energy and “heat” can flow both ways ( a necessity for cyclic machines); but the NET flow of “heat” IS from hot to cold IN THE ABSENCE OF SOME OTHER EFFECT; like work being done.
John Coleman says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:35 pm
The second issue is one noted by a poster above, that the atmospheric CO2 has seemed to change in the past (according to paleoclimatology) after temperature changes not as a driver of temperatures changes.
==========
Hi John,
See Frank Lansner’s posts related to the Vostok Ice Cores:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/12/where-is-the-positive-feedback-not-in-the-icecores/
Peridot says:
February 27, 2012 at 10:50 am
Thus a rise of a few hundredths of 1% of CO2 would not only be un-catastrophic but not even due to our tiny emissions. Can these two ‘sceptical’ positions be reconciled in a way that I can understand, please?
In the distant past, things were different. However around 1750, the CO2 was around 280 ppm and now it is around 390 ppm. About half of the CO2 that we put into the air ends up increasing the CO2 in the air. The other half goes into more photosynthesis or gets dissolved into the ocean. After all, the CO2 we humans emit has to go somewhere and for people to say we have no effect on atmospheric CO2 just defies basic science. But that is not the point of the debate which is how much warming this causes. And many people say the warming and feedbacks are nothing to worry about.
By the way, almost 99% of all carbon is carbon-12, regardless where it is coming from.
I believe I have read this entire thread.
One minor point to consider.
Absolutely nobody, has EVER observed on planet earth, the warming effects due to CO2 sans feedback amplifications; so any and all speculations about the direct CO2 effect, are just that; wild speculations.
All the operable feedbacks are and have always been completely intact and fully functional.
What CO2 may or may not do in some laboratory environment is not an experimental observation of what it does in the atmosphere.
So it absorbs some LWIR whoop de do, that plus 47 cents will get you a senior coffee at MacDonalds.
Dan says:
February 27, 2012 at 11:46 am
It doesn’t seem to me that we’re substantially affecting the mass of the atmosphere – what’s the “mass difference” in the atmosphere for 350ppm vs 450ppm, for example?
The basic equation is C + O2 –> CO2. So if the CO2 increases by 0.01% from 0.035% to 0.045%, then the O2 decreases by 0.01% from 20.96% to 20.95%. So from this, you could argue the mass increases since CO2 is heavier than O2.
However it is more complicated than that since some CO2 gets dissolved in the oceans, which makes the air lighter. In the end, the mass difference and oxygen change is totally negligible.
John Coleman says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:35 pm
No one has yet to explain to me with acceptable scientific proof what causes the major swings from ice ages to interglacial periods and the steady warming during the first half of the interglacial periods when huge fields of ice melt, oceans rise and fall and life thrives or what causes the steady cooling as a new ice age approaches.
===========
Milankovitch cycles partially answer your first question.
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MilankovitchCyclesOrbitandCores.png
Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/194/4270/1121
“6) It is concluded that changes in the earth’s orbital geometry are the fundamental cause of the succession of Quaternary ice ages.”
“7) A model of future climate based on the observed orbital-climate relationships, but ignoring anthropogenic effects, predicts that the long-term trend over the next sevem thousand years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.”
Has anybody detected a corresponding decrease in atmospheric oxygen levels?
Nick Stokes says:
February 27, 2012 at 10:37 am
David says: February 27, 2012 at 6:00 am
“And then Nick wants land only, using Hansens cherry picked adjustment to past historical records, and his inadequat UHI adjustment…”
Land only surface temperature, because that is what he was predicting. Not lower troposphere. But you don’t have to use the GISS index. BEST, for example, matches better than GISS, and NOAA about the same. You can check that here.
======================================
Nick, I do not agree. What ever data set Hansen was using at the time (the one he had available) is not relevant. He was talking about and indicating global, CO2 induced, catestrophic warming, the earths mean atmospheric T; and it would melt the ice caps and flood Manhatten in forty years, blah blah blah. Also Hansens unexplained manipulations are well known as I showed.
Here is Hansen’s numbers, still low, way low
http://www.real-science.com/giss-november-anomaly-0-48c-emissions-scenario
And this is after his adjustments to individal stations
http://www.real-science.com/new-giss-data-set-heating-arctic
Which affect large geographic areas like this…
http://www.real-science.com/hansen-time-began-1970-worm-ZERhole-2000-ended
And here is the models hotspot verses observations, some warming as you point out, but 1/2 to 1/4 of the IPCC predictions.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hot-spot/mckitrick-models-observations-rss-msu-uah-radiosondes-flat.jpg
Typhoon says: “How does heat accumulate down at 2000m without first warming the 2000m above?”
I’ll assume you mean “How does the heat accumulate between 700-2000m without warming the 700m first?”. I’m not trying to be pedantic, just wanting to clarify what I suspect is just a typo on your behalf.
The data shows that the heat is accumulating at lower depths and that should NOT be ignored, as Evans does, simply because he can’t explain the mechanism.
Unfortunately we don’t monitor the ocean closely enough to answer exactly why the first 700m has remained relatively stable whilst the next 1300m has increased in heat, but as you say, there are several different explanations for transfer of energy.
Personally I look at the flow of energy in the profile of the 450m ENSO ( http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/wkxzteq.shtml ) and wonder why people are stuck thinking that the upper layer anomalies should always remain warmer.
Lastly, for fun, energy can transfer from one end to another without accumulating in the layers between. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LnbyjOyEQ8
And when we pay for deployment of deep ocean buoys they will say the heat went to the trenches or to deep sea volcanoes, etc, etc. Sounds like tobacco company tactics up till the nicotine research leak got out in the 1990s. Follow the money as usual.
If the AGW conjecture is to be overturned the truth must be proven empirically and promulgated emphatically. I suggest it runs along these lines …
The reason radiation from a cooler object slows down the radiated heat transfer to itself from a warmer body is not because there is a compensating transfer of thermal energy back to the warmer body, because such would violate the Second Law. Rather it is because a standing wave is established which is represented by all the area under the Planck curve for the cooler body. This area represents the frequencies and intensities that are common to both the warm and cool objects.
The atmosphere (with over 50 gases and water vapour) does not radiate everything that a true blackbody would, but water vapour does help fill the area under that curve. So there is a standing wave, but its total power is not as much as a true blackbody. This is why some radiation escapes directly through the atmospheric window.
The standing wave has no thermal effect because none of its energy is ever converted to thermal energy. It just sends information back to the warmer body and a part of the warmer body’s radiation goes into the standing wave. The energy radiated by the warmer body which is represented by the area between the curves does get converted to thermal energy because it cannot resonate and thus contribute to the standing wave. The calculations of course agree with accepted physics, but the mechanism is not a two-way transfer of heat, as many appear to have supposed.
But there is no build up of the effect of carbon dioxide due to multiple repetitions of the capturing and re-emitting process envisaged in the IPCC energy diagrams and models. Each carbon dioxide molecule can only play a single role in a very limited sub-section of the total standing wave. Its contribution per molecule would be no more than a molecule of water, and so its total overall effect is comparable with its relative proportion to WV and other emitters in the atmosphere – insignificant.
Furthermore, there must be a compensating effect for reduced radiation by way of additional evaporation, diffusion etc because the very stable temperatures not far underground will be reflected in the close thermal equilibrium at the surface / atmosphere interface.
itsnotnova says:
February 27, 2012 at 2:13 pm
“The data shows that the heat is accumulating at lower depths and that should NOT be ignored, as Evans does, simply because he can’t explain the mechanism.”
Funny, because the whole AGW argument is founded on the proposition that obvious regularities in the data for which there is no known (or, at least, universally agreed upon) causal mechanism (e.g., the ~60 year cycle in the average global temperature metric) cannot be considered in explaining the observations.
So, you can put forth evidence in support of the AGW hypothesis without a known mechanism, but you cannot do the same for evidence which contradicts it. Got it.
More Soylent Green! says:
February 27, 2012 at 1:57 pm
Has anybody detected a corresponding decrease in atmospheric oxygen levels?
Yes, see
http://www.disclose.tv/forum/atmospheric-oxygen-levels-fall-as-carbon-dioxide-rises-t29534.html
Bart says: “Funny, because the whole AGW argument is founded on the proposition that obvious regularities in the data for which there is no known … causal mechanism … cannot be considered in explaining the observations.”
I disagree. AGW is fundamentally based upon the laws of physics that demonstrate how GHG’s trap heat.
Bart says: “So, you can put forth evidence in support of the AGW hypothesis without a known mechanism, but you cannot do the same for evidence which contradicts it. Got it.”
No. I say we should not be throwing out evidence just because it doesn’t suit your argument. That is what Evans has done.
itsnotnova says:
February 27, 2012 at 2:13 pm
Personally I look at the flow of energy in the profile of the 450m ENSO ( http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/wkxzteq.shtml ) and wonder why people are stuck thinking that the upper layer anomalies should always remain warmer.
I do not think anomalies always have to be higher at the top, as long as the temperature is not higher lower down. For example, you would not have a large pocket of warm water at 25 C go down to great depths of water that is at 4 C due to buoyancy factors.
As for:
Lastly, for fun, energy can transfer from one end to another without accumulating in the layers between. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LnbyjOyEQ8
This works the way it does because both momentum and kinetic energy are more or less conserved during the time of the run. I know you did not say so, but just to be clear, it does NOT mean a pocket of warm water can all of a sudden go from the surface to the bottom of the ocean.
Re: Lindzen and Choi.
Now that I look at Evan’s footnotes, I see he has used a revised 2011 paper which takes the criticisms into account.
Regarding the deep ocean warming it tells us nothing about what caused it, so automatically cherry picking AGW is an assumption not based on scientific evidence. Bob Tisdale has demonstrated that most of the ocean warming is caused by just the process of ENSO, therefore the warming in the deep ocean may actually be linked with this.
Someone please quantify the deep ocean warming, I understand it is very small, likely not significant.
@Werner Brozek, I’ve draw a quick pick that shows how the deeper layers could warm, whilst the upper layers stayed the same. This doesn’t necessarily mean that pockets of warm water beneath cooler water are created. (Note: this is by no means suggesting things happen exactly this way – I just wanted to show that deeper warming doesn’t necessarily mean “pockets” of warmer water under cooler water.)
http://tinypic.com?ref=t6tdsi
@Matt G, I agree that it doesn’t tell us what is warming it. That’s not my point. David Evans is showing a graph of just the first 700m and comparing that to a model projection. If he used the graph of all available Argo data down to 2000m, then his argument would no longer stand.
@Werner Brozek, sorry I think I had the wrong link … http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=t6tdsi&s=5
itsnotnova says:
February 27, 2012 at 4:35 pm
@Matt G, I agree that it doesn’t tell us what is warming it. That’s not my point. David Evans is showing a graph of just the first 700m and comparing that to a model projection. If he used the graph of all available Argo data down to 2000m, then his argument would no longer stand.
——–
Exactly. Evan down to 1500 meters (which has a lot more ARGO coverage than 2000 meters)
His argument does not stand.
itsnotnova says:
February 27, 2012 at 2:13 pm
Typhoon says: “How does heat accumulate down at 2000m without first warming the 2000m above?”
I’ll assume you mean “How does the heat accumulate between 700-2000m without warming the 700m first?”. I’m not trying to be pedantic, just wanting to clarify what I suspect is just a typo on your behalf.
The data shows that the heat is accumulating at lower depths and that should NOT be ignored, as Evans does, simply because he can’t explain the mechanism.
Unfortunately we don’t monitor the ocean closely enough to answer exactly why the first 700m has remained relatively stable whilst the next 1300m has increased in heat, but as you say, there are several different explanations for transfer of energy.
———
There is absolutely no mystery how heat can get to lower levels of the ocean without warming the entire upper layers first. It is called downwelling and it is well understood and occurs in many places in the global ocean on a massive scale. Volumes of water similar to that which is moving down the Mississippi at peak flow are downwelling in many areas all over the global ocean constantly. This downwelling is part of the global ocean conveyor system and is the prime method that heat moves though the surface layer to deeper layers, and those surface layers can be relatively unaffected as the flow moves through them in very tightly channeled downwelling spots.
itsnotnova says:
February 27, 2012 at 3:21 pm
“I disagree. AGW is fundamentally based upon the laws of physics that demonstrate how GHG’s trap heat.”
In the same way spherical cows give milk.Models should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
“I say we should not be throwing out evidence just because it doesn’t suit your argument. That is what Evans has done.”
And, what the IPCC has done for over two decades now. The ~60 year cycle in temperature data is beyond obvious by now. You have to not want to see it to miss it.
Typhoon says:
February 27, 2012 at 7:59 am
The three possible mechanisms of heat transfer are convection, conduction, and radiation.
——-
When I see nonsense like this written I just want to cry. I hope you are not a science student at an American College or university, but rather, just another skeptic parroting nonsense they picked up on some website or blog.
Please go read about advection– an extremely important way that energy (yes, including heat) is transferred around to various locations, both vertically and horizontally, on this planet.
R. Gates says:
February 27, 2012 at 5:02 pm
“This downwelling is part of the global ocean conveyor system and is the prime method that heat moves though the surface layer to deeper layers, and those surface layers can be relatively unaffected as the flow moves through them in very tightly channeled downwelling spots.”
What goes down, must come up. This is a monumental flail.
Bart says:
February 27, 2012 at 5:19 pm
R. Gates says:
February 27, 2012 at 5:02 pm
“This downwelling is part of the global ocean conveyor system and is the prime method that heat moves though the surface layer to deeper layers, and those surface layers can be relatively unaffected as the flow moves through them in very tightly channeled downwelling spots.”
What goes down, must come up. This is a monumental flail.
——–
You seem to have no idea what you are talking about. I suggest you do a bit of reading about the THC and the cycles times for water being pushed to deeper levels. Yes, what goes down will eventually come up, but do you know long before it might come back to the surface?
Another gatesian hijack in progress I see.
Mike Bromley the Canucklehead says:
February 27, 2012 at 5:42 pm
Another gatesian hijack in progress I see.
——–
You consider it a hijack to correct some obviously incorrect and muddle-headed thinking? So be it…
For R. Gates to resurface, about 24 hours.
So, we find a way to tag a gallon of water of say a 20% data set of the sea water at the bottom of all the seas. Then we wait until that tagged sea water comes to the surface of the seas. We collect it and put together a graph of the time it took.
Then what?
Very interesting posting.
It may seem curmudgeonly, therefore, for me to make the following observation, but such a good posting deserves to be correct in even the most minor detail…..
There is a difference between the verbs “damp” and “dampen”. What you discuss in this posting is a case of damping (attenuating, for lack of a better synonym), not dampening (wetting). Remember that a stove pipe has a damper, not a dampener. Also, UK cars are fitted with shock dampers, which is a better term than “shock absorber”.
Some day I’ll check the etymology.
IanM
APACHEWHOKNOWS says:
February 27, 2012 at 5:52 pm
For R. Gates to resurface, about 24 hours.
So, we find a way to tag a gallon of water of say a 20% data set of the sea water at the bottom of all the seas. Then we wait until that tagged sea water comes to the surface of the seas. We collect it and put together a graph of the time it took.
Then what?
——–
Your logic is in the right direction. What we’d really like to do is “tag” a certain parcel of thermal energy and follow it as it flows from atmosphere to ocean surface and is then brought to the deeper ocean layers through downwelling. If would could quantify this throughout all the downwelling locations around the world, we’d have a good idea how much heat was going into the deeper ocean, and thus, a good idea of a major missing term in Earth’s energy balance. How soon this heat might start to return to the surface would be a secondary issue.
Hide the Time.
R. Gates says:
February 27, 2012 at 5:36 pm
“You seem to have no idea what you are talking about.”
I’m not the one arguing that heat cannot escape a fluid flow. I suggest you take a first year course in fluid mechanics.
Don’t you see that you are grasping? At the very least, this dubious phenomenon was not anticipated. How many other phenomena do the AGW camp not anticipate? Why are unexpected WAGS which support the hypothesis on a stronger footing than those which do not?
Advection. Interesting. Not a term I am all that familiar with. So having followed your advice and looked it up, what is the first thing I read.
So to sum up “advection” is an aspect of “convection”. Convection consists of advection combined with heat diffusion in fluids. Typhoons description therefore seems to be both comprehensive and complete. Adding “advection” to his list as you propose would seem to be both unnecessary and redundant.
R Gates, if this is the kind of thing that “makes you want to cry” then I suggest you seek counselling for emotional instability.
The elephant in the room which is central to the sceptical case, is the missing water vapour feedback. Without it, best estimates are around 1C of warming.
It’s telling that not one defender of AGW wants to discuss the central issue. This is one of the reasons why I have no faith in climatism.
Anything is possible says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Until climate science acknowledges the key role that convection, acting alongside radiation, plays in controlling atmospheric temperatures, it will be forever thrashing around in the dark, unable to produce a correct explanation for anything.
;——————————————————————————
Convection determines the temperature lapse rate of the atmosphere, namely, dT/dz.
R. Gates @ your various wisdoms on ocean heat content.
The oceans cover over 70% of the Earth’s surface and vary a great deal in depth and in thermohaline circulation, solar insolation, and stuff. Seawater has a very much higher specific heat than that of the soup of the lower troposphere; the surface temperature in which has reportedly risen globally averaged some 0.7 C over the past 150 years or so.
I don’t know why you are so enraptured by an ocean depth of up to 2000 m, or its gradation, and what trends in temperature might be revealed, but could you explain more quantitatively? Like; what are the sampling sizes and the time-span significances? What is the alleged meaningful temperature increase over what spacial and temporal considerations? Does it meet the statistical significance of some CAGW experts that demand a 30-year timespan for there to be any significance, even if straight linear trending may be a rather dubious concept?
(BTW, do you think that you have found Trenberth’s missing heat?)
If scientists on the alarmist side really do understand the climate as well as we should in order to justify expending trillions of dollars in resources, perhaps someone can answer a simple question on the mechanics of the ancient climate.
At the onset of the ice age, as the climate cooled, why did the oceans not simply freeze in place?
We’re arguing about relatively tiny details, and we don’t understand anything about the basic mechanics of significant effects.
Bill H says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:05 pm
Black body IR is indeed hastened by CO2 levels.
;————————————————————–
False.
IR is electromagnetic radiation or heat. It’s not hastened by CO2 and it doesn’t matter whether you model it as a black body or not.
Gases do not cause heating – heat causes heating.
Dave Worley says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Congrats Roscoe, you may be on the forefront of the new paradigm.
I can hear it now, “we must reduce CO2 emissions to avoid runaway cooling”.
Everyone climb aboard….lots of money to be made!
Sheeesh!
;—————————————————————————————————————-
Actually, it’s an old paradigm – it’s the one from the 70’s.
And for the same reasons, namely, CO2 was cause of the cooling.
The meme that CO2 is evil can be traced to Thatcher who needed a reason to sell the British public nuclear power plants.
Hence the CRU was born based on money from British Petroleum, Dutch Shell, and the nuclear power industry.
Ian H.,
Glad to see you learned a new very important term (i.e. advection), but I highly suggest you go beyond the wiki article you quoted from. But since you decided to interject, let’s look at the full post that prompted my introduction of the notion of advection. The discussion was related to how heat could get into the deeper ocean without first warming the whole upper layer. Here’s the post:
—–
Typhoon says:
February 27, 2012 at 7:59 am
litsnotnova says:February 27, 2012 at 3:01 am
Ocean Heat Content does show an increase so long as you don’t cherry pick just the first 700 meters. Data going down deeper to Argo’s 2000 meter range shows that the heat has been accumulating despite the short timeframe for which data is being collected.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
I think it’s deceptive of the author to talk about Argo buoys going down to 2,000 meters, then only show a graph with data to 700 meters.
The three possible mechanisms of heat transfer are convection, conduction, and radiation.
How does heat accumulate down at 2000m without first warming the 2000m above?
——
So you see, without Typhoon understanding the notion of advection, he couldm’t understand how heat could flow into the deeper ocean via the Thermalhaline current, for that is exactly what the THC is, an advective transport of mass, heat, and salinity throughout the worlds oceans. It is like the river or pipeline of the ocean. In fact, had you read a bit further in your wiki article you would have found this little tidbit:
“Occasionally, the term advection is used as synonymous with convection. However, many engineers prefer to use the term convection to describe transport by combined molecular and eddy diffusion, and reserve the usage of the term advection to describe transport with a general (net) flow of the fluid (like in river or pipeline).”
So only understanding the very general case of convection, does not allow you understand the nature and dynamics of advection as it relates to one of the most important advective processes involving both weather and climate– the THC, and in how heat, mass, and salinity can be transported to the deeper ocean without warming or diffusing out in upper layers. In the case of the upper layers of the ocean, an advective “river runs through it” and it is called the THC.
Mike says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:39 pm
Explain this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
;—————————————————————————-
Hansen is not only cooking the data, since the mean of the residue is not zero, he’s cooking the calculation.
R. Gates blathered:
There is absolutely no mystery how heat can get to lower levels of the ocean without warming the entire upper layers first.
Straw man. The question isnt how the heat gets low without heating the entire upper layer. The question is, how does the heat get low without heating any of the upper layer first. The heat pipe you claim is not to be found in current data. Substantial heating of the entire 700-2000m layer (or the average thereof) without showing up in the 0-700m layer would require a very large quantity of heat transiting a very small area. Given that your personal clairvoyance can see past this mystery, perhaps you should point out on the map where this is occurring.
When I see nonsense like this written I just want to cry. I hope you are not a science student at an American College or university, but rather, just another skeptic parroting nonsense they picked up on some website or blog.
Please go read about advection–…
Well, if you are going to be an ignorant little #$%^, it is probably a necessary part of the plan to be an arrogantand condescending little #$%^ while you’re at it, huh?
Convection subsumes advection. Please go read about it. In your room. The adults are trying to have a conversation.
Doug Cotton says:
February 26, 2012 at 9:06 pm
One simple question; Where is the evidence of empirical measurements of absorptivity of the surface with respect to spontaneous (blackbody) emission with frequencies in the range of those for atmospheric temperatures?
;——————————————————————————
Evidence in science is an empirical measurement.
By absorptivity of the surface – are you referring to horizontal direction?
Or are you interested in the heat capacity of the ground?
For “spontaneous (blackbody) emission” – I can’t parse the phrase.
And the “frequencies in the range of those for atmospheric temperatures” is all of them – they all are important.
For what it’s worth, this article was first published on Jan 25 on my site with 487 comments.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/
With respect to the heat accumulating under 700m but not above, sure it’s possible that giant Mississippi rivers of warm water are channeling the surface (which doesn’t seem to be getting warmer) down to 2000m, but it’s more likely that if the water is warming at that depth it’s due to geothermal changes, not changes in a trace gas in the atmosphere.
In any case, remember that there is No Debate, that Skeptics are Deniers, There IS No Controversy,
we know the world is warming due to CO2 absolutely, but the hot spot is missing, the models are wrong, and instead all that certainty rests solely on evidence is that water below 700m is heating due to mysterious currents. What could possibly go wrong?
JJ says:
“Substantial heating of the entire 700-2000m layer (or the average thereof) without showing up in the 0-700m layer would require a very large quantity of heat transiting a very small area. Given that your personal clairvoyance can see past this mystery, perhaps you should point out on the map where this is occurring.”
——-
Yes, a very large quantity heat, mass, and salinity does transit relatively small area in the THC. Perhaps if you really understood the advection you understand how such relatively narrow pipeline in the ocean is possible and how simply thinking in terms of general convection doesn’t allow the insights to understand advection.
I will not do your home work for you JJ. You can find your own maps of the THC that are readily available on he web and they’ll show you the many locations around the world’s oceans where advective driven downwelling is occurring. But I would imagine that your mind is closed to the idea that advection could be a reasonable and likely way that heat could be transported to the deeper ocean.
Bart says:
February 27, 2012 at 6:16 pm
R. Gates says:
February 27, 2012 at 5:36 pm
“You seem to have no idea what you are talking about.”
I’m not the one arguing that heat cannot escape a fluid flow. I suggest you take a first year course in fluid mechanics.
Don’t you see that you are grasping? At the very least, this dubious phenomenon was not anticipated. How many other phenomena do the AGW camp not anticipate? Why are unexpected WAGS which support the hypothesis on a stronger footing than those which do not?
——–
I never said heat could not escape a fluid flow. This is taking the argument to an absurd extreme.
I hardly think that looking a primary way that energy is tranported into and around the deepest parts of Earth’s largest energy storage battery is “grasping at straws”. Also the notion (supported by models of course) that the majority of the warming from greenhouse gas increases will go into the oceans is hardly a WAG– though skeptics would like to paint it as such. It has been stated as the expectation for many many years and shown consistently in the data. Skeptics can simply get more traction by focusing on the natural variabilty of the much weaker and smaller heat storage container called the troposphere.
After posting that there has been around a 1degC rise for a 30% rise in CO2 various posters have ‘corrected’ this claim by stating that it is only a 0.7degC for a 45% rise in CO2. And that some of the rise is due to an increase in solar output or the PDO cycle.
Well Leif has shown that the supposed rise in solar output may be an artifact of changing observational methods. I challenge any of the PDO fans to show more than a 0.2degC change between peak and trough of this hypothetical ‘cycle’. Actually I challenge anyone to name the peak and trough years and show that there IS a regular 60 year cycle from any temperature data.
But even given all these caveats we still end up with ~0.5degC for a ~40% CO2 rise as the transient sensitivity of the climate.
And given the ongoing loss of ice and snow cover in the spring and summer changing the albedo and absorption of solar energy and the measured increase in water vapour in the atmosphere there is clearly more warming in the ‘pipeline’.
It is surprising to still see some posters refusing to accept that CO2 has ANY effect on the energy flows in the climate when there are direct measurement in the change in the spectrum of downwelling radiation and the energy emitted to space.
Perhaps the enthusiasm for rejecting the CO2 effect on climate makes them impervious to direct physical evidence ?
Rgates spewed:
I will not do your home work for you JJ.
Sweetie, it isnt my homework. You are the one claiming this mechanism. It is up to you to demonstrate it. Point out on the map where this extra downwelling is occuring. Extra, because THC is not new. You have to demonstrate that it has increased by an amount sufficient to heat the lower part of the upper half of the entire ocean to a degree that replaces the heat that is currently missing from both the upper ocean and the atmosphere, wrt model prediction. You haven’t done that work. You are just making stuff up, and chiding others with your misunderstanding of the concepts whose names you have only recently been introduced to.
.But I would imagine that your mind is closed to the idea that advection could be a reasonable and likely way that heat could be transported to the deeper ocean.
Not at all. I’d love to see a mechanism that can put global warming quantities of heat into the lower ocean. Such a mechanism can also bring it back. Lets see it. Show your work.
And you owe Typhoon an apology. He was right. You were worng. Very egregiously and smarmily wrong.
George E. Smith; says:
February 27, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Consequently RADIATION is NOT a process for transporting “heat”.
Conduction and Convection are the two mechanisms for the transport of “heat”; RADIATION is a means of transport of “”””” ENERGY “””””.
;———————————————————————————————————————–
Both statements are false.
Thermal radiation is heat or energy. And all thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation.
Conduction and convection are bulk transfers of thermal radiation. It doesn’t matter if it’s a gas, a liquid or a solid – if the electron density of the atoms or molecules changes, it will radiate as long as the matter is above absolute zero.
For conduction and convection, it’s much easier to deal with bulk heat capacities.
If one heats Tungsten to around 3300 C by conduction, then pass the emitted heat through a prism, it produces a continuous frequency distribution.
See the the Stefan-Boltzmann equation which relates radiation to temperature (and indirectly into heat if one knows the heat capacities.)
Even matter can be converted to heat or energy.
George E. Smith; says:
February 27, 2012 at 12:10 pm
The thermal radiation being emitted by your body peaks at 10 microns.
R. Gates says:
February 27, 2012 at 11:16 pm
I hardly think that looking a primary way that energy is tranported into and around the deepest parts of Earth’s largest energy storage battery is “grasping at straws”.’
It’s a complete and total flail. How does the THC get started? Warm water flows to the poles, where it cools from evaporation and becomes more saline. The increased density makes it sink into the warmer water below. You are claiming this denser, colder water is transporting heat to a warmer place. Or, you are claiming greater salinity resulting from, perhaps, increased evaporation, resulting in sufficient density for the water to sink with greater heat content. But, can increased evaporation from warmer water result in greater salinity so that the water sinks at greater temperature? No, because the upper ocean shows no heating.
The conveyor still exists at the surface all the way from the tropics to the poles. So, there is absolutely no way for heat to be transported to the depths in this way without observable heating of the surface.
You’re right. It is not grasping at straws. It is grasping at thin air.
“It has been stated as the expectation for many many years and shown consistently in the data.”
What has been shown consistently in the data? WHAT??? From 0-700m, there is no heating since accurate measurements started. Below that, the measurements showing supposed heating are within the error bars. We cannot have any confidence AT ALL that there is any heating at depth.
You’re not even grasping at air. You are grasping at the vacuum of space. This is ridiculous.
Gatesie
‘So only understanding the very general case of convection, does not allow you understand the nature and dynamics of advection as it relates to one of the most important advective processes involving both weather and climate– the THC, and in how heat, mass, and salinity can be transported to the deeper ocean without warming or diffusing out in upper layers. In the case of the upper layers of the ocean, an advective “river runs through it” and it is called the THC.’
Your are equating heat with energy. Probably not a good idea in explaining in the properties of advection.
izen says:
I challenge any of the PDO fans to show more than a 0.2degC change between peak and trough of this hypothetical ‘cycle’. Actually I challenge anyone to name the peak and trough years and show that there IS a regular 60 year cycle from any temperature data.
==============================================
You mean like E. Davis and Michael Mann’s paper: “A Distinctly Interdecadal Signal of Pacific Ocean–Atmosphere Interaction”, published in the Journal of Climate.
I.e.,
“Long-term records of an index of spatial SST patterns called the Pacific (inter) decadal oscillation
(PDO) capture this abrupt state shift and also demonstrate a strong tendency for multiyear and multidecadal persistence (Mantua et al. 1997; Mantua and Hare 2002). Given the persistence of these temperature anomaly fields and the significant influence of the Pacific Basin on global climate, changes in oceanic conditions like those characterized by the PDO could have a
major impact on climate forecasting.”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI3367.1
Another facepalm moment…
izen.
You may wish to check out the plot at the foot of my Home page. http://climate-change-theory.com and note the comment below it.
Agile http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-907118
This post and all of yours I have noticed display a serious lack of knowledge of physics which makes it quite clear that you could not pass exams for a B.Sc. in physics. Correct me if you once did, but you must never have understood the difference between radiation, energy and heat, for starters. What does UV radiation do, for example?
@- will nitschke
You reference a study on less than 60 years of data to justify a claim that there is a 60 year cycle???
It needs at least three cycles to identify a cyclic system as any rule nose.
Facepalm indeed!
R. Gates says:
February 27, 2012 at 6:06 pm
What we’d really like to do is “tag” a certain parcel of thermal energy and follow it as it flows from atmosphere to ocean surface
_________________________________________
Yes well, what I’d like to see is it even get from somewhere up in the atmosphere to the ocean surface. Warm air normally rises, but I guess you may live on the opposite side of the World to me. And I hope you aren’t banking on your parcel of “thermal energy” remaining the same as its potential energy increases or decreases – whichever way your magic wand is going to control it to go – up, down or perhaps sideways – maybe by diffusion, convection or radiation – just so long as you manage to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, you’ll be right.
http://climate-change-theory.com/RadiationAbsorption.html
If you want to see how global warming’s temperature predictions are doing so far, here are Hansen’s and the IPCC’s forecasts starting at the time they were made versus Hadcrut3 and RSS/UAH satellite observations to date.
The pro-AGW posters should start asking questions of their own pro-AGW scientists because the predictions are too far off to be useful. Something is very wrong.
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/3136/ipccforecastsobsjan2012.png
Larger.
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/3136/ipccforecastsobsjan2012.png
izen says:
February 27, 2012 at 11:25 pm
There are more things under the sun than Leif is willing to admit.
Regardless, you are assuming that the entirety of the 0.5C is real, and not the result of faulty measurements.
….Oops sorry, I thought I had stumbled upon another ridicule blog, …and I thought cat fights were bad, not a patch on scientists. Sorry for the interruption Gentlemen….. and Ladies, it’s back to the Gleick Tragedy pages for me….New Balls Please!
George E. Smith; says:
February 27, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Your assertions, as far as any sense may be made of them, are not even wrong.
The three possible mechanisms of heat transfer are convection, conduction, and radiation:
Caltech: “How does heat travel?”
http://goo.gl/UxXl0
Also,
“Distinction between advection and convection
Occasionally, the term advection is used as synonymous with convection. However, many engineers prefer to use the term convection to describe transport by combined molecular and eddy diffusion, and reserve the usage of the term advection to describe transport with a general (net) flow of the fluid (like in river or pipeline).[1][2] An example of convection is flow over a hot plate or below a chilled water surface in a lake. In the ocean and atmospheric sciences, advection is understood as horizontal movement resulting in transport “from place to place”, while convection is vertical “mixing”. [3][4] Another view is that advection occurs with fluid transport of a point, while convection may be considered as fluid transport of a vector.”
So my question remains: what is [are] the mechanism[s] by which heat is transported down to 2000m, without warming the upper levels above, and how is this energy [heat] gradient maintained?
Convective heat transfer:
http://goo.gl/BjIqF
I don’t see a mechanism in the global thermohaline ocean circulation for heat transport into the lower depths
http://goo.gl/uPnQV
Rather the opposite,
“Warm seawater expands and is thus less dense than cooler seawater. Saltier water is denser than fresher water because the dissolved salts fill interstices between water molecules, resulting in more mass per unit volume. Lighter water masses float over denser ones (just as a piece of wood or ice will float on water, see buoyancy). This is known as “stable stratification”. When dense water masses are first formed, they are not stably stratified. In order to take up their most stable positions, water masses of different densities must flow, providing a driving force for deep currents.
The thermohaline circulation is mainly triggered by the formation of deep water masses in the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean and Haline forcing caused by differences in temperature and salinity of the water.”
“The out-flowing undersea of cold and salty water makes the sea level of the Atlantic slightly lower than the Pacific and salinity or halinity of water at the Atlantic higher than the Pacific. This generates a large but slow flow of warmer and fresher upper ocean water from the tropical Pacific to the Indian Ocean through the Indonesian Archipelago to replace the cold and salty Antarctic Bottom Water. This is also known as ‘Haline forcing’ (net high latitude freshwater gain and low latitude evaporation). This warmer, fresher water from the Pacific flows up through the South Atlantic to Greenland, where it cools off and undergoes evaporative cooling and sinks to the ocean floor, providing a continuous thermohaline circulation.[3]
Hence, a recent and popular name for the thermohaline circulation, emphasizing the vertical nature and pole-to-pole character of this kind of ocean circulation, is the meridional overturning circulation.”
stan stendera
> Mr Watts, I rarely disagree with you about your actions, and I understand that this is your website and you rule, However Mr. Connolley is being given too much leeway. The facts of the matter are he was banned from Wicki for improper editing.
First, he is not currently banned from Wikipedia. He received the equivalent of a long timeout, with respect to climate articles. That time out was roughly a year (He still must refrain from editing biographies). He was found violating some of the rules for participation, but in no instance was he found guilty of improper edits to the science facts.
> He does not deserve civilazed treatment.
Of course he does.
Doug Cotton says:
February 28, 2012 at 3:25 am
Agile http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-907118
This post and all of yours I have noticed display a serious lack of knowledge of physics which makes it quite clear that you could not pass exams for a B.Sc. in physics. Correct me if you once did, but you must never have understood the difference between radiation, energy and heat, for starters. What does UV radiation do, for example?
[My tuppence worth on UV, Agile, I’ve just been discussing it, and because he always distracts by UV tangent.]
Doug, please see my post here which has some links: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/22/omitted-variable-fraud-vast-evidence-for-solar-climate-driver-rates-one-oblique-sentence-in-ar5/#comment-906341
See the Lake Tahoe piece, water is a transparent medium for UV just as it is for Visible, (it is Light not Heat and works on the same electronic transitions as Visible), and because of it UV can travel through water to effectively kill bacteria – which it does by messing with the DNA. Used in countless apllications world wide for this very ability. It doesn’t cook the bacteria.
UV is a wonderful energy in that it is the main provider of the essential vitamin D. [How Sunlight Can Save Your Life: http://www.rense.com/general48/sunlight1.htm ]
As before, UV works on the DNA level, a sun tan is what you get when your body produces malanin to absorb the UV to stop it damaging the DNA, sun burn is what you get if you don’t acclimatise to the Sun and your melanin production can’t cope with the amount of high speed drilling. It is not a thermal energy, it doesn’t move the molecules into vibration, you can’t even feel it, it is not hot, it is Light, and, here’s how the skin recognises it, with photo (light) receptors: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111103132245.htm
From which: “ScienceDaily (Nov. 3, 2011) — In a new study, biologists report that melanocyte skin cells detect ultraviolet light using a photosensitive receptor previously thought to exist only in the eye. This eye-like ability of skin to sense light triggers the production of melanin within hours, more quickly than previously thought, in an apparent rush to protect against damage to DNA.”
UV isn’t capable of heating land and oceans as claimed in the AGWSF comic cartoon energy budget (KT97 and variations).
@- MarkW says: February 28, 2012 at 4:38 am
“Regardless, you are assuming that the entirety of the 0.5C is real, and not the result of faulty measurements.”
No, I am not assuming ANY measurement is ‘real’ and non-faulty.
But it seems impossible to reject SOME degree of warming given –
the instrumental temperature record,
The sattellite record,
the icecaps melting,
the arctic sea ice loss,
the glacier mass balance,
the movement of growing regions,
the reduced number of frost days,
the increased droughts,
the thermal expansion of the oceans causing sea level rise,
the increase in humidity/water vapour content of the troposphere,
the measured change in the spectrum of downwelling and outgoing radiation,
etc….
There is a, … consilience of evidence that whatever the uncertainty in one set of data indicates a degree or warming not seen in any historical or proxy record since the Holocene optimum around 8000 years ago.
What magnitude of warming do YOU think has occurred given the wide range of evidence for significant warming ?
@ John Bills
It is interesting that there are those such as you who feel compelled to quote me while dropping the lead sentence of my RC comment: “Be careful of binary positions regarding IPCC modeling”
The full comment is here: http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=11066#comment-228926
The comment was phrased deliberately. Modeling is not a “Pass | Fail” affair. Modeling is a simplification of a complex system as constrained by computing resources. The question of utility should be phrased “Good Enough | Not Good Enough”. “Good Enough” for a particular purpose depends on the purpose.
Beware the motives of individuals who feel compelled to selectively quote me.
R. Gates says:
February 27, 2012 at 11:16 pm
Also the notion (supported by models of course) that the majority of the warming from greenhouse gas increases will go into the oceans is hardly a WAG– though skeptics would like to paint it as such. It has been stated as the expectation for many many years and shown consistently in the data.
Trenberth’s email says this (October 2009 I believe):
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
So are you suggesting that you (and perhaps Trenberth) know something now that Trenberth did not know in October 2009? After all, you do show graphs showing the oceans gaining heat over 40 years. So your whole arguments make Trenberth’s comment all the more puzzling. Did you share what you know with him?
Izen says:
February 28, 2012 at 3:28 am
“It needs at least three cycles to identify a cyclic system as any rule nose.”
Absurd. Two cycles is more than enough.
Doug Cotton says:
February 28, 2012 at 3:25 am
“This post and all of yours I have noticed display a serious lack of knowledge of physics which makes it quite clear that you could not pass exams for a B.Sc. in physics.”
Just to be clear, Doug Cotton does not speak for most skeptics, and he does not speak for me here. The graph at the bottom of his page here does, however, neatly show the ~60 year temperature cycle.
myrrh says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:21 am
Ditto for Myrrh.
Typhoon says:
February 28, 2012 at 5:39 am
“So my question remains: what is [are] the mechanism[s] by which heat is transported down to 2000m, without warming the upper levels above, and how is this energy [heat] gradient maintained?”
Typhoon and I are on the same page. This transport of heat to the deep oceans without an observable signature in the upper waters requires a Star Trek teleportation device.
The purported heating of the depths is within the error bars, i.e., indistinguishable from correlated random error. The storage-of-excess-heat-in-the-ocean-depths narrative has no supporting evidence.
izen says:
February 27, 2012 at 11:25 pm
Actually I challenge anyone to name the peak and trough years and show that there IS a regular 60 year cycle from any temperature data.
Perhaps the enthusiasm for rejecting the CO2 effect on climate makes them impervious to direct physical evidence ?
First of all, see the first jpg that shows the 60 year cycle very clearly. Note that we are over the top part of the sine wave at this time and are going down. The second graphic shows this going down (“direct physical evidence “) over the last 10 years much more clearly using sea surface temperature data since 2002.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1995/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/trend
@izen, Werner Brozek
“izen says: February 27, 2012 at 11:25 pm Actually I challenge anyone to name the peak and trough years and show that there IS a regular 60 year cycle from any temperature data. Perhaps the enthusiasm for rejecting the CO2 effect on climate makes them impervious to direct physical evidence ?”
There is rather good empirical evidence of a 60 year cycle with a logarithmic CO2 dependence. This can even be extrapolated forward to the end of the century under different CO2 emission scenarios. The result is rather moderate net warming – below IPCC predictions.
izen says:
February 27, 2012 at 11:25 pm
“I challenge any of the PDO fans to show more than a 0.2degC change between peak and trough of this hypothetical ‘cycle’. Actually I challenge anyone to name the peak and trough years and show that there IS a regular 60 year cycle from any temperature data.”
Peak to peak, it is about 0.8 degC. Trough years are roughly 1910 and 1970. Peak years are roughly 1940 and 2000.
But even given all these caveats we still end up with ~0.5degC for a ~40% CO2 rise as the transient sensitivity of the climate.”
There is, as yet, no way to cleanly separate the natural trend and ~60 year cycle from any anthropogenic forcing. But, it is apparent that the anthropogenic impact is small relative to these.
“It is surprising to still see some posters refusing to accept that CO2 has ANY effect on the energy flows in the climate when there are direct measurement in the change in the spectrum of downwelling radiation and the energy emitted to space.”
It is muddled because some skeptics (ahem, Doug Cotton, Myrrh) are very vocal in declaiming that there is any effect. There clearly is an effect but, contrary to the GCMs, the positive feedback from water vapor is more than offset by other processes (e.g., cloud formation) which have been shown to induce negative overall feedback. As a result, the estimate of CO2 sensitivity from basic principles is an upper bound on the actual complete effect which is overall negligible.
notnova says:
February 27, 2012 at 4:35 pm
I do agree that he should have included deeper data too and cloud albedo trends, but deeper ocean data is only realiable since 2003 also. The general view that feedback has no amplication still applies either way.
@- Bart says: February 28, 2012 at 9:59 am
“Peak to peak, it is about 0.8 degC. Trough years are roughly 1910 and 1970. Peak years are roughly 1940 and 2000.
-LINK- http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1900/mean:120/detrend:0.7/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1900/mean:120
-LINK-
There is, as yet, no way to cleanly separate the natural trend and ~60 year cycle from any anthropogenic forcing. But, it is apparent that the anthropogenic impact is small relative to these.”
What a strange reply.
I have included the embedded link you gave because it directly contradicts the claim you make.
The graph shows a peak to trough amplitude of a little under 0.3degC with the data detrended by 0.7degC. So you are showing that the data CAN be separated into a trend of 0.7 degC with the much smaller putative PDO changing by around 0.3 degC.
If the peaks were in 1940 and 2000 then we should be at the same stage of the PDO cycle as we were in the early 1950s. Well it certainly cooled then after the peak in the 40s, in fact it was colder a decade after the supposed PDO peak than it was in the 1970s during the supposed minimum!
It was also much cooler than the present, so the difference between the temperature in the early 1950s and now would be the anthropogenic component as we are presumably at the same phase of the PDO. About 0.5degC in 50 years.
Although as yet there is no sign of the same amount of cooling after the 2000 ‘peak’ as there was after the 1940s ‘peak’.
Its not a very regular or cyclic cycle is it ?
Werner Brozek says:
February 28, 2012 at 9:29 am
R. Gates says:
February 27, 2012 at 11:16 pm
Also the notion (supported by models of course) that the majority of the warming from greenhouse gas increases will go into the oceans is hardly a WAG– though skeptics would like to paint it as such. It has been stated as the expectation for many many years and shown consistently in the data.
Trenberth’s email says this (October 2009 I believe):
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
So are you suggesting that you (and perhaps Trenberth) know something now that Trenberth did not know in October 2009? After all, you do show graphs showing the oceans gaining heat over 40 years. So your whole arguments make Trenberth’s comment all the more puzzling. Did you share what you know with him?
_____
Best to let Dr. Trenberth speak for himself as far as what he knows now and didn’t know then related to this issue. See:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/statement.html
However, I do know that there have been several studies since 2009 that show warming at abyssal levels in the ocean at several locations around the global ocean, which gives hints that some of the “missing heat” certainly is going deeper than the range of ARGO standard monitoring. The travesty lies in the fact that we don’t have the means in place to monitor this heat flux into the deeper ocean on a more widespread and consistent basis.
Finally, I know that ocean heat content is a key topic of interest with Dr. Trenberth, as it is so integral to understanding changes in Earth’s energy balance. I’m sure that there is nothing I know about the subject that he is not vastly more familiar with.
Bart says:
February 28, 2012 at 9:59 am
izen says:
February 27, 2012 at 11:25 pm
“It is surprising to still see some posters refusing to accept that CO2 has ANY effect on the energy flows in the climate when there are direct measurement in the change in the spectrum of downwelling radiation and the energy emitted to space.”
It is muddled because some skeptics (ahem, Doug Cotton, Myrrh) are very vocal in declaiming that there is any effect. There clearly is an effect but, contrary to the GCMs, the positive feedback from water vapor is more than offset by other processes (e.g., cloud formation) which have been shown to induce negative overall feedback. As a result, the estimate of CO2 sensitivity from basic principles is an upper bound on the actual complete effect which is overall negligible.
Try putting back the whole of the Water Cycle first – carbon dioxide is fully part of that. All pure clean rain is carbonic acid – what possible effect on driving global ‘warming’ temperatures do you really think the trace gas carbon dioxide could manage against the 52°C cooling of water?
And while you’re at it, put back in the Sun’s thermal energy, heat, thermal infrared – which the comic cartoon energy budget says doesn’t reach the Earth’s surface..
Izen claims to be able to see the human fingerprint of CO2. But all he is doing is demonstrating his version of the argumentum ad ignorantium fallacy [“I just can’t think of what else it could be besides CO2”.]
But there is no empirical evidence that “carbon” is causing any measurable rise in temperature, which has not been rising for ≈15 years now, while CO2 has been rising steadily.
Maybe Izen can put on his witch doctor’s hat, look at this chart, and tell us which part shows the “human fingerprint of global warming”.
There is no difference between the current rising trend line from the LIA, and the same rising trend line from before CO2 began to rise. The trend is exactly the same. That tells us that the effect of CO2 is so small that it is unmeasurable. It may or may not exist, but there is certainly no testable, measurable evidence that it does.
Matt G says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:07 am
“I do agree that he should have included deeper data too and cloud albedo trends, but deeper ocean data is only realiable since 2003 also.”
And, even then, not very reliable. The error bars are huge (chart 2, and the reduced error bars on chart 4 obviously assume the error is uncorrelated so that the average reduces the uncertainty, but that is begging the question).
izen says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:16 am
Yes, I was hasty, and added when I should have subtracted. So, peak to peak is 0.3 degC. It accounts for the lion’s share of the run-up in temperatures in the latter third of the 20th century, which is almost identical to the run-up in the 1910-1940 era in the un-detrended data.
“Well it certainly cooled then after the peak in the 40s, in fact it was colder a decade after the supposed PDO peak than it was in the 1970s during the supposed minimum!”
It is a ~60 year cycle superimposed on a secular (in the current timeline) trend of about 0.7 degC/century. Please stop being purposefully dense.
Bart says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:51 am
“Please stop being purposefully dense.”
There are, of course, other components in the data which interfere either constructively or destructively to cause short term variation. But, the most significant components are the long term trend and the ~60 year cycle.
Why am I having to explain such basic time series analysis principles to you, izen?
izen says:
What a strange reply.
Only thru your filter.
I have included the embedded link you gave because it directly contradicts the claim you make.
The graph shows a peak to trough amplitude of a little under 0.3degC with the data detrended by 0.7degC. So you are showing that the data CAN be separated into a trend of 0.7 degC with the much smaller putative PDO changing by around 0.3 degC.
It is a detrended peak to trough of a bit more than 0.35C, which is a peak to peak of around 0.8C prior to detrending. It can be detrended by 0.7C, but that 0.7C is approximate and one cannot (with information to date) separate out the natural trend from whatever anthro component there may (or may not) be. That is what Bart said.
If the peaks were in 1940 and 2000 then we should be at the same stage of the PDO cycle as we were in the early 1950s.
Plus the trend.
Although as yet there is no sign of the same amount of cooling after the 2000 ‘peak’ as there was after the 1940s ‘peak’.
Look again.
Its not a very regular or cyclic cycle is it ?
Appears to be.
JJ says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:20 pm
“That is what Bart said.”
Well, in honesty, izen caught me in a moment of distraction. I did mean the peak-to-peak (common parlance, more accurately peak-to-trough) excursion in the detrended data. I’ve known the trend was a little less than 1 degC/century and the ~60 year cyclic component was roughly 0.2 degC in amplitude for some time. I just momentarily forgot and slipped a minus sign to report 0.8 degC.
It is immaterial to the point, which is that the cyclic component is readily apparent, and it explains the lion’s share of warming (i.e., increased slope in the global average temperature metric, whatever it means) in the latter third of the 20th century.
I’ve recently learned, on another thread, about Rossby Waves. I think this cyclic component may be a manifestation of such a phenomenon (see slide 18 at the link).
R. Gates says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:30 am
See:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/statement.html
A quote from here is: “It does NOT mean that global warming is not happening, on the contrary, it suggests that we simply can’t fully explain why 2008 was as cool as it was, but with an implication that warming will come back, as it has. A major La Niña was underway in 2008, since June 2009 we have gone into an El Niño and the highest sea surface temperatures on record have been recorded in July 2009.”
I kind of feel sorry for Dr. Trenberth. He is so desperate for good news that he singles out a single month, July 2009. Yes, it was high, but even then, the slope for sea surface temperatures since 2002 was negative. As for warming coming back with him saying “it has”, looking back, his hoped for warming did not materialize. As can be seen from the slope lines in the graphs below, the El Nino merely slowed the cooling down.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2009.67/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2010.58/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/trend
You talk about warming at abyssal levels in the ocean at several locations around the global ocean, which gives hints that some of the “missing heat”
To me, it gives hints of volcanic activity at “abyssal levels in the ocean”.
Werner Brozek says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:57 pm
I tracked down where this recored month for July 2009 come from and found that is was for NINO4 ERSSTv3b. (nothing else showed a record for that month)
The most striking thing about the Warmist case, which didn’t not occur to me before is that the model which incorporates 3x temperature increase for every octave increase in atmospheric CO2, is a positive feedback system. Is it my mistake, or am I correct that no such thing could exist in nature? Otherwise, the planet would have burned up long ago in geologic time.
Just an observation.
@Nason Yes you are exactly correct. If positive feedback from water vapor was true then we would not be here discussing it. Life on Earth would have long ago been extinguished.
There is geological evidence that liquid oceans have existed on Earth for 4.5 billion years. The sun has brightened 30% over the last 4 billion years and current average solar radiation is 342 watts/m2. Assuming a slow linear increase of solar radiation with time gives a net forcing of 0.02 watts/m2 every 1 million years. The calculation for the temperature response to this forcing using any positive or even zero value of feedback leads to the oceans boiling away long ago. The only consistent picture is a net negative climate feedback for water.
I have published in my website, Observatorio ARVAL, most of this excellent article. The English version is at http://www.oarval.org/ClimateChangeBW.htm and “El Caso de los Escépticos”, the Spanish version, is at http://www.oarval.org/CambioClimaBW.htm
Nason says:
February 28, 2012 at 3:50 pm
Alas, it is not so simple. The idea is that it is a positive feedback mechanism embedded in a stronger negative feedback loop. Radiation of heat energy out with quartic temperature, in particular, is very strong negative feedback. Internal positive feedback like that tends to amplify, rather than destabilize, the output.
A lot of people new to the debate often make the same mistake. I did. The AGW advocates are not quite so incompetent, though, as to make such an obvious mistake. It is a good idea to search for more information before you believe you have found an elementary error that would bring the house of cards tumbling down with a symbolic puff of air.
The argument against overall positive feedback of the water vapor/cloud/.etc. subsystem is not that interval positive feedback cannot exist, but that the empirical evidence demonstrates that the feedback is, in fact, overall negative.
Smokey says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:41 am
But there is no empirical evidence that “carbon” is causing any measurable rise in temperature, which has not been rising for ≈15 years now, while CO2 has been rising steadily.
______
9 of the 10 warmest years on instrument record have occurred since 2000. 2011 was the warmest year during which a La Nina was taking place. The ocean heat content, being the largest reservoir of energy stored in the Earth system and as measured down to 2000m, rose twice as much in the past 10 years than in the previous 20. The approximately 10 x 10^22 Joules stored in the ocean down to 2000 meters over the past 10 years dwarfs the troposphere’s potential storage by many factors. For anyone to take a single (and rather weak) metric of tropospheric temperature over a short-time spane (which represents a miniscule part of Earth’s energy storage) and make any claim as to what has been happening overall in Earth’s energy budget is absurd–completely absurd.
The overall rise in energy in Earth’s system over the past 40 years has been extremely consistent with the rise in greenhouse gas concentrations. The fact that tropospheric temperatures are far more subject to natural variability due to their low thermal inertia has absolutely no bearing on whether or not increasing greenhouse gases tip the Earth energy system into an accumulation mode. They do, and the most broad metric by which we can gauge this tip to accumulation of energy (ocean heat content) displays this quite readily. The fact that over longer time scales the troposphere and cryosphere are also displaying the effects of this energy accumulation is simply strong confirmatory evidence.
“”””” Agile Aspect says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:14 am
George E. Smith; says:
February 27, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Consequently RADIATION is NOT a process for transporting “heat”.
Conduction and Convection are the two mechanisms for the transport of “heat”; RADIATION is a means of transport of “”””” ENERGY “””””.
;———————————————————————————————————————–
Both statements are false.
Thermal radiation is heat or energy. And all thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation.
Conduction and convection are bulk transfers of thermal radiation. It doesn’t matter if it’s a gas, a liquid or a solid – if the electron density of the atoms or molecules changes, it will radiate as long as the matter is above absolute zero “”””
I’m not even going to waste my time commenting on such inane drivel.
I have a rule about getting between suicidal people and the cliff they are racing to jump off.
So be my guest; go ahead and jump; the world will be a lot safer without such ignorance running loose.
R. Gates says:
February 28, 2012 at 4:34 pm
“…9 of the 10 warmest years on instrument record have occurred since 2000.”
This is getting monotonous. That meme was DOA from the first time it was uttered. If that is the best you can do, you need to go back to the minors. Even a grade schooler would know that a quantity at a plateau would tend to be higher than those before it. It means precisely nothing beyond that the global average temperature metric has stagnated for the last 15 years.
R. Gates says:
For anyone to take a single (and rather weak) metric of tropospheric temperature over a short-time spane (which represents a miniscule part of Earth’s energy storage) and make any claim as to what has been happening overall in Earth’s energy budget is absurd–completely absurd.
Sweetheart, the entire AGW house of cards is built upon precisely that.
The whole entrerprise was conceived, developed, sold to the public, “settled” and declared “incontrovertable” based upon global average surface temperature. And yes, that is completely absurd.
As is your mindless repetition of warmist talking points.
And you still owe Typhoon an apology for making an ass of yourself at his expense.
REPLY: As I’ve told Mr. “Gates” he should just walk away. He is indeed making an ass of himself. – Anthony
JJ says:
February 28, 2012 at 5:17 pm
R. Gates says:
For anyone to take a single (and rather weak) metric of tropospheric temperature over a short-time spane (which represents a miniscule part of Earth’s energy storage) and make any claim as to what has been happening overall in Earth’s energy budget is absurd–completely absurd.
Sweetheart, the entire AGW house of cards is built upon precisely that.
______
Oh, the troposphere will warm over the long haul, but it is also subject to more short-term noise from natural variability, allowing for of course, during periods of flattening, for skeptics to make the very most of that variability. Because no climate model can possibly anticipate every little wiggle from natural variability, skeptics will wrongly point out the inaccuracies in the models as a suggestion that AGW is somehow proven as false. But these are two distinct issues. The models are always going to be wrong in one way or another, but that inaccuracy says nothing about whether AGW is a happening. The models have been poor at showing the Arctic sea ice declining as fast as it has. Does this mean that AGW is not happening, or simply that the models have not captured feedback processes? Same with deep ocean warming. The models have consistently not shown as much heat going into the deeper ocean as has actually been measured. Does this mean that AGW is not happening, or simply that the models are not capturing some essential dynamics of heat exchange between atmosphere and ocean?
Anthony said:
As I’ve told Mr. “Gates” he should just walk away. He is indeed making an ass of himself. –
___
This is your house Anthony. If you prefer I no longer post here, I will graciously comply. Perhaps your goal is to drive all we warmists out.
In terms of me making an ass of myself, I would suppose that is my business. I’ve had no one who has been able to intelligently refute my contention related to the bulk of the the warming from excess greenhouse gases going into the deeper ocean. Not sure how stating this point related a major element of Earth’s energy balance makes me an ass, but you are entitled to your opinion in the matter.
REPLY: My goal is to get people like yourself who continuously attack us to man up and put their names to their words. As Dr. Gleick has so aptly demonstrated, there seems to be little integrity anymore on your side of the debate. Here’s your chance to step into the light and argue on your own terms instead of some made up bullshit name. I’ve taken lots of hits personally, professionally, and to my livelihood from people like yourself who don’t even have the courage to put their names behind their own opinions, and I’m growing weary of it. Step into the light my friend, embrace honesty. – Anthony
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 4:47 pm
“”””” Agile Aspect says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:14 am
George E. Smith; says:
February 27, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Consequently RADIATION is NOT a process for transporting “heat”.
Conduction and Convection are the two mechanisms for the transport of “heat”; RADIATION is a means of transport of “”””” ENERGY “””””.
;———————————————————————————————————————–
Both statements are false.
Thermal radiation is heat or energy. And all thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation.
Conduction and convection are bulk transfers of thermal radiation. It doesn’t matter if it’s a gas, a liquid or a solid – if the electron density of the atoms or molecules changes, it will radiate as long as the matter is above absolute zero “”””
I’m not even going to waste my time commenting on such inane drivel.
I have a rule about getting between suicidal people and the cliff they are racing to jump off.
So be my guest; go ahead and jump; the world will be a lot safer without such ignorance running loose.
============
You really can’t leave it like that. What you are saying, “Conduction and Convection are the two mechanisms for the transport of “heat”; RADIATION is a means of transport of “”””” ENERGY “”””””
Is completely and utterly contrary to all of traditional teaching about heat transfer, always giving the three ways that heat can be transferred – conduction, convection and radiation.
Where do you get the teaching that radiation is no longer a method of transferring heat?
Anthony,
A few points, and then I will take a self-imposed “time out” from WUWT to reflect a bit more deeply at the points you make.
1) I generally stick to the facts and to the basic science here, and believe I have certainly suffered far more personal insults over the years here than I’ve dished out here on
WUWT– most recently being called an ass.
2) You know who I am in great detail, and when I worked very hard to honestly set up a meeting between you and others in Boulder to meet with Dr. Trenberth face to face, even willing to pick you up at the Denver airport and drive you to Boulder, I was accused by some very paranoid people of some setting some kind “trap”. If that event had taken place, anyone from WUWT would have been able to meet me face to face. I have nothing to hide, but honestly, that level of paranoia when I know I was acting as an honest broker gives me a bit of concern.
3) You say you’ve taken a lot of “hits” from people “like” me, and yet, if you go back and check posts when I refer to this site or to you, I am always very (and honestly) complimentary. I have even told you on the phone what a great service you provide for an honest discussion of the issues. How this is amounts to giving you a “hit”, I can’t possibly imagine. You see, people “like” me are honest, care more about the facts than about the politics, and will even spend our own money to see interesting and meaningful dialog on these issues advanced (i.e. offering to transport you to Boulder on my own dime for example).
4) Finally, (even though I was certainly willing to meet face to face with anyone from WUWT who came to Boulder), I honestly don’t see how it matters who I am. This is a forum of ideas isn’t it? Not every person who posts here reveals themselves for multiple personal reasons. But, if you can give a good argument why it matters that I reveal my identity in regards to the ideas that I present here, I am certainly open to listening.
In the meantime, this ass will retreat to his stable for a self-imposed time out, to chew on some hay and consider his options…
REPLY: And the paranoia you speak of was personified in Gleick’s actions, and I have directly suffered for it. As you know, people who have represented themselves to me as “honest” have in fact burned me when given the opportunity.
I’ve never said you were rude, only that you aren’t being honest with yourself and others by hiding behind a facade. I’m here to ask you to step into the light. Show us that at least ONE person on the warming side of the debate has the courage to put his name to his words where they did not before. Thank you for your consideration – Anthony
R. Gates says:
February 28, 2012 at 5:53 pm
” I’ve had no one who has been able to intelligently refute my contention related to the bulk of the the warming from excess greenhouse gases going into the deeper ocean.”
There really is nothing to refute. You have identified no path by which the heat can reach the depths of the ocean without leaving a trace of how it got there. You have done nothing to answer Typhoon’s questions:
You haven’t a leg to stand on, and you appear to know it, as you refuse to engage on this issue, preferring instead to chant market tested mantras which, in this forum, have served only to diminish your credibility.
Basically, R. Gates’ argument for heating of the ocean depths is along the lines of the underpants gnomes’ marketing plan:
1) We have thermohaline circulation from the surface to the depths
2) ?
3) ocean depths warm
Never mind that the THC is established by cooler water sinking at the poles. That’s all worked out somewhere in step #2.
Gates says:
“The overall rise in energy in Earth’s system over the past 40 years has been extremely consistent with the rise in greenhouse gas concentrations… Does this mean that AGW is not happening, or simply that the models are not capturing some essential dynamics of heat exchange between atmosphere and ocean?”
Gates refuses to address my point that there is no difference in the rising trend line since the LIA, from both before and after the industrial revolution and the rise in CO2. The trend line is the same, whether CO2 was low or high. That conclusively deconstructs the endlessly repeated claims of CO2=CAGW. Whatever effect CO2 may have, it is negligible regarding temperature. [Of course, the biosphere is benefitting greatly from the added CO2, and will contiue to do so as CO2 levels rise.]
All of Gates’ speculation is mere conjecture; his opinion. That nasty ol’ heat is hiding just out of reach, as usual. But until we find it, and until it pushes temperatures beyond the parameters of the Holocene, the null hypothesis remains unfalsified, and the alternate hypotheses, CO2=CAGW and CO2=AGW, fail. The spurious and occasional correlation between a short term warming trend like the Modern Warm Period, and the even shorter term rise in harmless CO2, is merely coincidental. If Gates could prove otherwise, he would have by now.
Occam’s Razor states that the simplest explanation is almost always the correct explanation. The simplest explanation is that CO2 is such a minor bit player that it can be disregarded. Its effect, if any, is too small to measure. Natural climate variability is sufficient to explain all global warming and cooling. CO2 has never caused temperature changes in the geologic past. Why would it now?
Nason says:
February 28, 2012 at 3:50 pm
….a positive feedback system. Is it my mistake, or am I correct that no such thing could exist in nature?
I asked a related question a while back on a different thread where I alluded to Le Chatelier’s Principle.
Here is Lord Monckton’s reply to me:
Werner Brozek asks whether the quite small variations in global surface temperature either side of the billion-year mean indicate that “tipping-points” do not exist. In mathematics and physics the term “tipping-point” is really only used by those wanting to make a political point, usually from a climate-extremist position. The old mathematical term of art, still used by many, was “phase-transition”: now we should usually talk of a “bifurcation” in the evolution of the object under consideration. Since the climate object is mathematically-chaotic (IPCC, 2001, para. 14.2.2.2; Giorgi, 2005; Lorenz, 1963), bifurcations will of course occur: indeed any sufficiently rare extreme-weather event may be a bifurcation. We know that very extreme things can suddenly happen in the climate. For instance, at the end of the Younger Dryas cooling period that brought the last Ice Age to an end, temperatures in Antarctica as inferred from variations in the ratios of different isotopes of oxygen in air trapped in layers under the ice, rose by 5 K (9 F) in just three years. “Now, that,” as Ian Plimer likes to say in his lectures, “is climate change!”
But the idea that our very small perturbation in temperature will somehow cause more bifurcations is not warranted by the underlying mathematics of chaos theory. In my own lectures I often illustrate this with a spectacular picture drawn on the Argand plane by a very simple chaotic function, the Mandelbrot fractal function. The starting and ending values for the pixels at top right and bottom left respectively are identical to 12 digits of precision; yet the digits beyond 12 are enough to produce multiple highly-visible bifurcations.
And we know that some forms of extreme weather are likely to become rarer if the world warms. Much – though not all – extreme weather depends not upon absolute temperature but upon differentials in temperature between one altitude or latitude and another. These differentials tend to get smaller as the world warms, so that outside the tropics (and arguably in the tropics too) there will probably be fewer storms.
O.K. Since my scientific reputation is 0, I have nothing to lose by playing devil’s advocate and suggesting how the deep oceans can warm up without much warming being evident at the surface. When I was at school (back when textbooks were written on clay tablets) we were taught that water was at its densest at 4 degrees. This suggests that the deepest bit of the ocean is a layer at that temperature, with water at 3,5,1,2,and 6 degrees arguing about who comes next.
Now suppose that surface water at the 0/1 transition point (near the poles) gets warmed up a bit to 4. When no-one is looking it sneaks around behind the bike-sheds and sinks down to the bottom to make the bottom layer a bit thicker. Would this be noticeable in the upper layers?
R.Gates @ February 28, 6:35 pm
You responded to Anthony’s critique with:
Hey R.G., I for one will be disappointed if you take a hiatus, because I was hoping you would respond to two of my enquiries to you thus:
Arctic sea-ice: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-905836
Deep ocean warming: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-907059
I don’t know why you got so upset with being called an ass. Willis Eschenbach has called me various things worse than that, my favourite being gerbil, that being a small rodent not even indiginous to my country. He does that sometimes when critiqued, but it doesn’t upset me, so follow me and take it on the chin. (please).
R Gates
While the advection heat pipe theory is plausible there is no real evidence at this time. The amount of heat claimed disappearing into the depths is much larger than the Mississippi River, something on the order of nearly half or a third of the Gulf Stream current assuming the quantity referenced in the recent Meehle paper. Wouldn’t those Argo floats show where this massive THC disruption is occurring? Why do they use modeled data in their paper if measurements support this conclusion. Perhaps this alleged increased deeper ocean heat is an artifact of improved sampling method as the data stream is short?
“”””” Myrrh says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:18 pm
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 4:47 pm
“”””” Agile Aspect says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:14 am
George E. Smith; says:
February 27, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Consequently RADIATION is NOT a process for transporting “heat”.
Is completely and utterly contrary to all of traditional teaching about heat transfer, always giving the three ways that heat can be transferred – conduction, convection and radiation.
Where do you get the teaching that radiation is no longer a method of transferring heat?
Let’s try it this way Myrrh, in the hope that somehow you catch on.
Test #1 I have a photon; maybe many of them. They happen to have a wavelength of 10.6 microns, all of them in this bunch. So that is what we often will call LWIR.
Question: how do I know (or you) whether these photons were emitted by a bottle of ordinary water at some cool Temperature between zero deg C and certainly +15 deg C, or whther they were emitted by some 10.6 micron CO2 Industrial laser ?
Well there’s no way to know, those two sources of 10.6 micron photons emit exactly the same photons, indistinguishable from each other in all of their properties. One of them is a consequence of a molecular energy level transition in CO2, and the other is a result of the Temperature of the bottle of water; and would commonly be called “thermal radiation” (not meaning it is “heat”) but that it is emitted possibly by any material at all perhaps containing NO CO2 or even no C or O.
Test #2 I have a stream of photons, each having a wavelength of 1.0 microns; now you would describe those 1.0 micron photons as “heat”.
I can impinge those 1.0 micron photons onto a photo-diode made out of Gallium Arsenide; literally a solar cell, and I can turn those photons, with almost 100% efficiency, into ELECTRICITY. For narrow band sources, modern photo-diodes have a internal quantum efficiency very close to 100%. Same goes in reverse; the very same junction can turn electricity into photons, with near 100% internal quantum efficiency (one photon per electron). The losses are primarily optical losses due to Total Internal Reflection trapping in the diode medium.
But the point is that those 1.0 micron photons can be near 100% be converted into electrons (crossing the junction)
Now it is well known that heat engines CANNOT convert heat into ANY other form of energy such as electricity for example, with any higher efficiency than the Carnot efficiency 1-Tsnk/Tsrc
So if 1.0 micron photons can be converted virtually 100% into electricity, meaning that the sink Temperature would have to be close to zero (kelvins), which is ridiculous in the photo-diode case, then perhaps there is something wrong with the notion that 1.0 micron photons ARE heat.
Photons of ANY wavelength can be converted into “heat”; that’s the most common outcome, and photons of many wavelengths can be turned into electricity with near 100% efficiency; but not all with the same band gap photodiode. And as I stated above, any photon is emitted by precisely one particle, molecule or atom, and no single particle can have any Temperature assigned to it, so the photon knows nothing of any source Temperature.
Heat requires physical material having a mass so that it can exhibit a mechanical vibratory or other oscillatory energy; which is the measure of the Temperature.
Now I have in my hand, a very well regarded, modern Physics “handbook”, and in this book, they also say that “heat” can be transported by radiation. They even call it “heat radiation”, which gets us back to Test # 1, How does this Physics handbook distinguish the 10.6 micron “heat radiation” from the bottle of cold water, from the 10.6 micron photons emitted as a result of electrons shifting energy levels in a CO2 laser. So it’s a good handbook; but it is also wrong at times. They should have used the term “Thermal Radiation”, and not “heat radiation”
Thermal radiation can be emitted by particles that are at 2.7 Kelvins Temperature, which would not constitute heat in your view (or mine).
Modern triple junction triple bandgap solar cells, have achieved broad solar spectrum conversion efficiencies from solar radiant energy to electricity of 43.5%, and researchers in that field (at UC Santa Barbara) believe they can get that up to better than 60%. My bet is they will achieve that within the next 5 years That is for the complete ground level solar spectrum. For individual wavelengths over much of that range, the internal quantum efficiency is near 100% Much of that loss in efficiency is attributable to the inverse of the “Stokes shift”. Absorbing a photon with energy slightly higher than the bandgap energy, results in near 100% photon to electron conversion, but if the photon energy is somewhat higher than the bandgap, the extra energy from that photon manifests itself in the kinetic energy of the resulting electron, which ultimately becomes an Ohmic heat loss. Which is why the multibandgap approach is used, to capture a smaller range of photon energies in any one junction, so as to reduce this reverse Stokes loss.
Heat cannot be converted with near 100% efficiency, into any other energy form; it is the lowest from of energy life.
RoHa @ February 28, 8:37 pm
You pose an interesting question RoHa, as I quote in part, that perhaps should be studied;
However there are some complexities that I may not have time to properly think through. But, for instance, within the thermohaline circulation (AKA ocean conveyor belt) the density of water is not just affected by varying temperature, but also by varying salinity, particularly around the bike-sheds. Another thingy; in the area of sea-ice I think the rule of thumb is that the freezing point of the water regionally is about minus 2C.
Again, without doing investigation to confirm my recollections, I recall that the cycle-time for the thermohaline circulation is generally thought to be between 800 – 1000 years. Thus the interval from deployment of a significant distribution of ARGO floats down to 2000m, (at less than ten years), is a bit like discussing what might happen with a newly germinated climbing-fig seedling in the rainforest.
RoHa,
Sorry, but further to my post to you just above, I forgot to add; one thing that puzzles me about the travesty of the missing heat over the past decade or so, is the validity of the claim that the “CO2 heating effect” has somehow changed direction from heating the near surface troposphere and ocean surface to instead heating the depths of the ocean.
Hopefully Joel Shore, Tim Folkerts, or R. Gates or their ilk, can elucidate on this strange thingy, but does it mean that CO2 possesses intelligence and an agenda?
Bob_FJ says:
February 28, 2012 at 10:11 pm
Thank you. You have expressed my question to R Gates much more clearly. I am eagerly awaiting a response.
RoHa says:
February 28, 2012 at 8:37 pm
“When I was at school (back when textbooks were written on clay tablets) we were taught that water was at its densest at 4 degrees.”
That’s fresh water. Salt water keeps getting denser and denser as it cools.
dalyplanet says:
February 28, 2012 at 9:07 pm
“While the advection heat pipe theory is plausible …
Only superficially, but it just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. The THC is set up by cooler and denser water at the surface sinking. You can’t heat up something warmer with something colder. Density is also influenced by salinity, but there is no reason the water should be substantially saltier, and it would have to be A LOT saltier:
And, part of the “pipe” lies at the surface, where the warm water from the tropics flows to the poles, yet there is observationally no warming there.
Furthermore, there is no insulating pipe. The excess heat energy, if it were there, which it isn’t, would leak out all the way down, and rise from below when it got down there and as it got down there, and the effects would be observed at lesser depths. It’s not like this stream is driven by a firehose gushing into still water so rapidly that it doesn’t have time to give up its heat to its surroundings. This is a very slow process.
Bob_FJ says:
February 28, 2012 at 9:50 pm
“… the density of water is not just affected by varying temperature, but also by varying salinity, particularly around the bike-sheds.”
True enough. But, how is the water sinking at the poles going to get saltier? Would increased heat at the surface lead to greater evaporation before the plunge? From, what is it, a fraction of a degree extra temperature? Surely the extra salinity from such a process, were it to occur, would be negligible.
You see, the idea that the THC is carrying greater heat to the depths would require it to sink at the poles carrying greater heat with it. The sinking is dependent on the increased density due to evaporative cooling. When the water gets cool and salty enough, it sinks. So, to carry greater heat down, it must be a lot saltier. How does it get that way?
Anyway, the question is moot, because the surface water isn’t getting warmer, so there’s no extra heat to carry down anyway. The very notion reeks of desperation.
Here’s another wrench in the notion that the THC is carrying extra heat to the depths:
Such a change in circulation due to influx of freshwater is believed to have been the causative factor behind the Younger Dryas.
So, increased salinity allowing warmer water to sink and drive the THC is definitely not an option (not that it was anyway), forestalled by the dreaded retreat of arctic sea ice.
Thus, the water must cool to at least the same level as always in order for it to sink. It simply will not sink until it is cold enough. Thus, the THC cannot be transporting additional heat to the depths even if there were excess heat to be transported, which there isn’t.
Note my wee clarification above.
Sea or other saline solutions get denser all the way down. With pressure changes to freezing point, etc., that’s down to about -2°C at the bottom.
@Bob_FJ, I’ve documented some thoughts on that under the section “An Even Deeper Look”
http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/the-nova-travesty-cherry-picker-ahoy/
“Thus a rise of a few hundredths of 1% of CO2 would not only be un-catastrophic but not even due to our tiny emissions. Can these two ‘sceptical’ positions be reconciled in a way that I can understand, please?”
“In the distant past, things were different. However around 1750, the CO2 was around 280 ppm and now it is around 390 ppm. About half of the CO2 that we put into the air ends up increasing the CO2 in the air. The other half goes into more photosynthesis or gets dissolved into the ocean. After all, the CO2 we humans emit has to go somewhere and for people to say we have no effect on atmospheric CO2 just defies basic science. But that is not the point of the debate which is how much warming this causes. And many people say the warming and feedbacks are nothing to worry about”.
Things were different? In what way, please? Life was pretty similar, CO2 is CO2 and the sun’s radiation must have been also similar. Forget the ‘distant’ past just 8 thousand years ago the CO2 concentration was higher, much higher so why no catastrophe then?
Perhaps it’s because there were no climate alarmists then ….
A genuine answer would be appreciated as I have a genuine problem with this.
Phil asked (on JoNova) whether anyone had written a rebuttal of the Skeptical Science rebuttal of David Evan’s article.
So I wrote a quick one of both, which SkS will probably delete as they usually do because they have no valid response. Anyway, I kept a screen capture which you can see at the foot of this page – click the small version to enlarge http://www.climate-change-theory.com/SkS_errors.html
As expected SkS deleted my posts (3 in total) and then banned me once again. As usual they tried to say I was off topic, but how can a direct rebuttal be off topic?
Here’s the final reply I wrote which was blocked automatically …
I was pointing out exactly where and why both your own article and his were incorrect in (both) your conjectures that water vapour would have the imagined feedback effect and that carbon dioxide or water vapour would have any effect other than possibly slowing radiative heat loss from the surface – but no direct warming of the surface.
I trust that, if you attempt to rebut any article I have published, that you will give me right of reply. That would seem to be what it is all about. In my mind, comments like “tragically flawed misunderstandings of physics” actually apply quite well to the greenhouse conjecture, and I can prove why they are such with standard physics which I have studied for over 50 years. How long have you studied it?
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 9:46 pm
“”””” Myrrh says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:18 pm
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 4:47 pm
“”””” Agile Aspect says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:14 am
George E. Smith; says:
February 27, 2012 at 12:10 pm
“Consequently RADIATION is NOT a process for transporting “heat”.
Is completely and utterly contrary to all of traditional teaching about heat transfer, always giving the three ways that heat can be transferred – conduction, convection and radiation.
Where do you get the teaching that radiation is no longer a method of transferring heat?
==================
Let’s try it this way Myrrh, in the hope that somehow you catch on.
Gosh, how exciting, thank you.
But having just read through it, I have some immediate problems. As the great man said, “if one fool can understand it, so can another”, but, I start with a disadvantage. I don’t have easy familiarity with most of the terms you’re mixing and matching, as it appears to me, I can’t be everyfool, I should be grateful if you would bear that in mind.
So let me first start with the problem I want to solve. The claim that shortwave light direct from the Sun actually heats the land and oceans of our good Earth. (Direct being the technical term for this, also known as beam.) As here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
“Solar radiation at the high frequencies of visible light passes through the atmosphere to warm the planetary surface, which then emits this energy at the lower frequencies of infrared thermal radiation.”
This is where I get totally flummoxed. That sends my head into a spin. How?!, I ask. How can visible light heat land and oceans?! And the claim that thermal infrared, heat, direct from the Sun doesn’t reach the Earth’s surface, so it’s visible light from the Sun heating the Earth and heat from the Sun not.. So, I should be grateful if you would direct all your explanations to be relevant to this particular question I’m looking to be answered; so far no one claiming this has managed to give me an answer that makes sense to me. And to this end: “Where do you get the teaching that radiation is no longer a method of transferring heat?”
Test #1 I have a photon; maybe many of them. They happen to have a wavelength of 10.6 microns, all of them in this bunch. So that is what we often will call LWIR.
Question: how do I know (or you) whether these photons were emitted by a bottle of ordinary water at some cool Temperature between zero deg C and certainly +15 deg C, or whther they were emitted by some 10.6 micron CO2 Industrial laser ?
Well there’s no way to know, those two sources of 10.6 micron photons emit exactly the same photons, indistinguishable from each other in all of their properties. One of them is a consequence of a molecular energy level transition in CO2, and the other is a result of the Temperature of the bottle of water; and would commonly be called “thermal radiation” (not meaning it is “heat”) but that it is emitted possibly by any material at all perhaps containing NO CO2 or even no C or O.
Well, here my first stumbling block. I haven’t the faintest idea what this means, you have brought in things which I can’t agree with and things which just seem weird.
As far as I would understand it, they are both thermal radiation. You are the one proposing that thermal radiation isn’t heat, contrary to all traditional physics. If one makes such a claim, against all traditional understanding, then one first has to prove it, doesn’t one? Until you can prove such a thing, that ‘heat isn’t thermal radiation, that thermal radiation isn’t heat’, wouldn’t it be better to go with traditional explanations?
Here is the traditional understanding of Heat and Heat Transfer. You cannot claim it is not this without something better than your say so that, ‘it’s not heat, it’s energy’ and ‘heat isn’t transferred by radiation’.
*******
http://thermalenergy.org/
Thermal Energy Explained
“What is thermal energy ?
Thermal Energy: A specialized term that refers to the part of the internal energy of a system which is the total present kinetic energy resulting from the random movements of atoms and molecules.
The ultimate source of thermal energy available to mankind is the sun, the huge thermo-nuclear furnace that supplies the earth with the heat and light that are essential to life. The nuclear fusion in the sun increases the sun’s thermal energy. Once the thermal energy leaves the sun (in the form of radiation) it is called heat. Heat is thermal energy in transfer. Thermal energy is part of the overall internal energy of a system.
At a more basic level, thermal energy comes form the movement of atoms and molecules in matter. It is a form of kinetic energy produced from the random movements of those molecules. Thermal energy of a system can be increased or decreased.
When you put your hand over a hot stove you can feel the heat. You are feeling thermal energy in transfer. The atoms and molecules in the metal of the burner are moving very rapidly because the electrical energy from the wall outlet has increased the thermal energy in the burner. We all know what happens when we rub our hands together. Our mechanical energy increases the thermal energy content of the atoms in our hands and skin. We then feel the consequence of this – heat.”
&
http://thermalenergy.org/heattransfer.php
Heat Transfer
Thermal energy and heat are often confused. Rightly so because they are physically the same thing. Heat is always the thermal energy of some system. Using the word heat helps physicists to make a distinction relative to the system they are talking about.
Heat: Term used to describe the transfer of thermal energy between two thermodynamic systems at different temperatures.
Take a small piece of ice out of your fridge and hold it in your hand. The thermal energy content of your hand is higher then the thermal energy content of the ice cube.
The atoms that comprise your hand are moving more rapidly then the atoms that make up the ice cube. Therefore, there will be a transfer of thermal energy from your hand to the ice cube. While this thermal energy is in transfer, it is called heat. This will cause the atoms in the ice cube to speed up while the atoms in your hand slow down.
The increase in speed of the ice cube atoms changes the state of water from solid to liquid. This transfer of thermal energy will continue until an equilibrium is reached between your hand, the ice (now water), and the air in the room.
When you put your hand over a hot stove you can feel the heat. You are feeling thermal energy in transfer. The atoms and molecules in the metal of the burner are moving very rapidly because the electrical energy from the wall outlet has increased the thermal energy in the burner. We all know what happens when we rub our hands together. Our mechanical energy increases the thermal energy content of the atoms in our hands and skin. We then feel the consequence of this – heat.
*******
Italics as in the original.
That is the traditional, well established, well understood in all fields working in heat, thermodynamics. So in a nutshell:
“Thermal energy and heat are often confused. Rightly so because they are physically the same thing. Heat is always the thermal energy of some system. Heat is thermal energy in transfer. Thermal energy is part of the overall internal energy of a system.”
My bold.
Heat is thermal energy energy of some system, as in the Sun, thermal energy in transfer is heat, heat is transferred by radiation, radiation is thermal energy in transfer, the radiation tranferring heat is thermal infrared, thermal infrared is thermal energy in transfer, thermal infrared is heat.
The heat we feel direct from the Sun, the heat we feel radiating out from a stove, is thermal infrared.
So, as I gave my answer, I say they are both heat, thermal energy, I don’t care, in this context, what generated that heat.
[Question: how do I know (or you) whether these photons were emitted by a bottle of ordinary water at some cool Temperature between zero deg C and certainly +15 deg C, or whther they were emitted by some 10.6 micron CO2 Industrial laser ?]
Further you say:
Now I have in my hand, a very well regarded, modern Physics “handbook”, and in this book, they also say that “heat” can be transported by radiation. They even call it “heat radiation”, which gets us back to Test # 1, How does this Physics handbook distinguish the 10.6 micron “heat radiation” from the bottle of cold water, from the 10.6 micron photons emitted as a result of electrons shifting energy levels in a CO2 laser. So it’s a good handbook; but it is also wrong at times. They should have used the term “Thermal Radiation”, and not “heat radiation”
Thermal radiation can be emitted by particles that are at 2.7 Kelvins Temperature, which would not constitute heat in your view (or mine).
Rather than they being wrong, I suggest you adjust your understanding to it and use the terms as they are using them, not as you would like them to be, which is what I am finding confusing, because you don’t explain how your terms are different. As the explanation I gave above:
“Thermal energy and heat are often confused. Rightly so because they are physically the same thing.”
So, I hope you can understand why I’m having a problem with your explanation. You are using these terms idiosyncratically, I can’t follow your reasoning, well, you haven’t actually given any reasoning, you’re just saying they’re different. So this:
One of them is a consequence of a molecular energy level transition in CO2, and the other is a result of the Temperature of the bottle of water; and would commonly be called “thermal radiation” (not meaning it is “heat”) but that it is emitted possibly by any material at all perhaps containing NO CO2 or even no C or O.
just doesn’t make any sense as anything to me. Please, stick with traditional physics as I’ve given, you’re creating differences where there is none.
Test #2 I have a stream of photons, each having a wavelength of 1.0 microns; now you would describe those 1.0 micron photons as “heat”.
No I wouldn’t! That is a Light energy, not a Heat energy. Heat energy begins in mid infrared, only mid and longwave infrared are thermal. Near infrared is not hot, it is not a thermal energy, it belongs in the category Light, not Heat. You can’t feel it. It is microscopic compared with longwave thermal infrared which is the size of a pin head.* It is reflective as is visible light; think near infrared cameras which capture the invisible near infrared light bouncing off a subject just as visible light cameras capture the visible light bouncing off the subject. Bouncing not a technical term.., in optics this would reflection/scattering. These cameras are different from the thermal infrared cameras which measure the heat emanating from a subject.
The “Solar” energies of the ‘energy budget’, are Visible and and the two shortwaves either side of UV and Near Infrared – these are Light energies.
This is why I have a problem with the ‘energy budget’ which claims that visible, a Light energy, heats land and oceans. How?!
I’m going to have to leave this for a while, I’ll post what I have so far and continue later.
* Some differences between near and longwave infrared: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/spencer-and-braswell-on-slashdot/#comment-711886
itsnotnova says:
February 29, 2012 at 3:07 am
@Bob_FJ, I’ve documented some thoughts on that under the section “An Even Deeper Look”
I read the article and even IF we assume for discussion sake that everything in there is true regarding how fast the deep oceans can heat up due to heating of the air above it, then it would seem that we have nothing to worry about. All the presumed excess heat from CO2 would just dissipate into the deep ocean, never to return until the deep ocean reached a higher temperature than the atmosphere. How many tens of thousands of years would that take? In the meantime, we have more urgent things to concentrate on.
Peridot says:
February 29, 2012 at 4:18 am
Things were different? In what way, please? Life was pretty similar…
Life was similar from the beginnings of life until around 1750. But then the industrial revolution began and man, due to burning of fossil fuels, added much more CO2 into the air than ordinary respiration would account for. So before 1750, increases in atmospheric CO2 had all natural causes such as oceans heating up due to Milankovitch cycles or volcanoes emitting CO2. But now mankind is adding to the natural balance by driving cars and heating homes, etc. However our net additions are not harming the planet in any way.
Why do warmists like Gates ignore the more obvious reasons behind changes in ocean temperatures. Even if we agree that the deep oceans are getting warmer there’s a obvious scenario they ignore.
The oceans warmed during the MWP. The warmth went into the deep oceans during the LIA. The modern warm period is just a return of that warmth to the surface. Now, we are seeing some of that warmth cycling back to the deep oceans. Occam’s razor comes to mind.
Dr. Spencer discusses some things mentioned here at:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/ten-years-after-the-warming/
Point 3 seems of particular interest here.
There are 5 possibilities for the recent cessation of warming which are most discussed:
1) cooling from anthropogenic aerosols has been cancelling out warming from more greenhouse gases
2) natural cooling from internal climate fluctuations or the sun is cancelling out the GHG warming
3) increased ocean mixing is causing the extra energy to be distributed into the deep ocean
4) the temperature ’sensitivity’ of the climate system is not as large as the IPCC assumes.
5) there is something fundamentally wrong with the GHG warming theory itself
R. Gates says:
February 27, 2012 at 5:18 pm
One has to wonder what you expect to accomplish here by repeatedly and so pompously demonstrating your non-existent understanding of basic physics.
As I’m anonymous, my claiming any qualifications is meaningless, so I’ll leave it up to the guys at NASA and Caltech to inform you
Heat Transfer: how does heat
http://goo.gl/UxXl0
As for advection,
“Occasionally, the term advection is used as synonymous with convection. However, many engineers prefer to use the term convection to describe transport by combined molecular and eddy diffusion, and reserve the usage of the term advection to describe transport with a general (net) flow of the fluid (like in river or pipeline).[1][2] An example of convection is flow over a hot plate or below a chilled water surface in a lake. In the ocean and atmospheric sciences, advection is understood as horizontal movement resulting in transport “from place to place”, while convection is vertical “mixing”. [3][4] Another view is that advection occurs with fluid transport of a point, while convection may be considered as fluid transport of a vector.”
http://goo.gl/ErPQp
Don’t understand how you believe that you’re helping the warmist “cause” by continually demonstrating that not only do you not have no clue, but that you have no clue that you have no clue.
_____
So my question remains: what is [are] the mechanism[s] by which heat is transported down to 2000m, without warming the upper levels above, and how is this energy [heat] gradient maintained?
“Bart”‘s follow-up posts above on this question are certainly worth a read, unlike yours.
Werner Brozek says:
February 29, 2012 at 8:14 am
Dr. Spencer discusses some things mentioned here at:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/ten-years-after-the-warming/
…
4) the temperature ’sensitivity’ of the climate system is not as large as the IPCC assumes.
5) there is something fundamentally wrong with the GHG warming theory itself.
Personally, I think the last two are the most important. I also think they are related. The biggest reason the temperature is not sensitive to increased GHGs is that the GHGs themselves have an inherent balancing effect.
The initial influx of GHGs have a substantial warming effect. No doubt about it. However, once you start getting reasonable saturation the balancing effect takes over. A small warming is now balanced by the cooling effect of increased heat flow through the system. The GHGs actually work as little thermostats that keep our atmosphere quite stable.
Doug Cotton says:
February 29, 2012 at 6:19 am
Doug, you can’t even get people here, in what should be a sympathetic forum, to agree with you. You are just giving SKS ammo to say “see, this is the kind of dreck we are censoring” and justify it to their true believers. Please… stop helping us.
itsnotnova says:
February 29, 2012 at 3:07 am
“@Bob_FJ, I’ve documented some thoughts on that under the section “An Even Deeper Look”
From your post:
“Nova’s graph (she says it’s from Douglass and Keen 2010, but she’s wrong, it’s from Douglas and Knox) only plots a trend on “filtered” data between 2004 and 2008 and doesn’t consider more recent data.”
ONE of her graphs, the one from a cited source. The next graph she displays goes to 2012.
“Nova wants you to discard the XBT data too. I’m betting that would be the case if it showed a downward trend.”
And, you would then be arguing FOR discarding it. This is just being tendentious.
“Science is about using all of the data, regardless of whether it supports your personal political view or not.”
But, those XBT data are old and irrelevant. The question is, if GHG heating is ongoing, where is the heat going right now.
“Scientists know there is uncertainty in short term data, that’s why they look at long term data for real climate trends.”
Yet, you are certain that the data down to 2000m is significant?
“XBT and Argo data both show the ocean heat content is increasing.”
No, they don’t. There is no apparent heating at all in the 0-700m range in the past decade or more.
Look, you cannot get away from the facts. ARGO data was intended to show the heating of the ocean in line with atmospheric warming. What it instead showed was what we see in the atmospheric data as well: there has been no net warming since the ARGO array came on line. The only thing you have to hang your hat on is an apparent warming of the depths. And, here, you shot yourself in the foot, as the six “Basic Argo Facts” you list at the very beginning argue that there are reasons to suspect the data may not be representative.
I do not know why the deeper ocean measurements seem to indicate increasing heat content. It may be a statistical artifact, or mismodeling of some sort for the derived measurement (the bouys measure temperature and other variables, and these have to be converted to a heat measurement) at high pressure and depth. It may be due to underappreciated volcanic activity on the ocean floor.
But, it is not due to any recent (in the past decade or more) surface heating. There is no storage of latent GHG warming happening. We would see indications of the flux in the upper levels, and we don’t.
For a short period of time, such as our history of CO2 measurement, it appears as linear, but on the larger scale, not so much. – Anthony
Not correct, to show that it’s a linear function of ln(CO2) then the plot should be of ln(CO2) vs ΔT which would be linear, what’s been plotted is what a ln function looks like when plotted in lin-lin space. Constant doubling values is characteristic of a log curve, those curves are the ln functions indicated on the fig..
For CO2 the expectation is at low concentration a linear function trending to a log function at values around today’s concentration and ultimately a square root function at high concentration.
Werner Brozek says:
“All the presumed excess heat from CO2 would just dissipate into the deep ocean, never to return until the deep ocean reached a higher temperature than the atmosphere. “
Physics disagrees with you. The heat transfer rate depends on the temperature of both bodies. A warmer lower body (lower ocean) reduces the amount of heat transferring from above.
The one post by Nova I do agree with … http://joannenova.com.au/2011/05/why-greenhouse-gas-warming-doesnt-break-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/
@Climate-Change-Theory, you should probably look at the above link too. You seems to be at odds with climate science as well as David Evans and his wife Joanne Nova (both “skeptics”).
Doug Cotton says:
February 28, 2012 at 3:25 am
“Agile http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-907118
This post and all of yours I have noticed display a serious lack of knowledge of physics which makes it quite clear that you could not pass exams for a B.Sc. in physics. Correct me if you once did, but you must never have understood the difference between radiation, energy and heat, for starters.”
An Ad Hominem reply – I accept your concession.
“What does UV radiation do, for example?”
In a vacuum, UV travels at the speed of light with frequencies in the range of roughly 100 nm and 400 nm.
These energies are high enough to cause electronic transitions in matter.
The Sun’s UV has it’s greatest impact is in the mesosphere and stratosphere where the high energy UV blows apart nitrogen in the mesosphere and the low energy UV blows apart oxygen where ever it can find it.
I leave it to you to figure out how the resulting chemistry impacts the mesosphere and the stratosphere.
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 4:47 pm
I’m not even going to waste my time commenting on such inane drivel.
I have a rule about getting between suicidal people and the cliff they are racing to jump off.
So be my guest; go ahead and jump; the world will be a lot safer without such ignorance running loose.
;————————————————————————————————————-
This is the second Ad Hominem reply – I’m on a roll.
I accept your concession.
“”””” Myrrh says:
February 29, 2012 at 6:24 am
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 9:46 pm
“”””” Myrrh says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:18 pm
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 4:47 pm
“”””” Agile Aspect says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:14 am
George E. Smith; says:
February 27, 2012 at 12:10 pm
“Consequently RADIATION is NOT a process for transporting “heat”. “””””
Well Myrrh, I am NOT going to try to compete with the learned teachers who have instructed you in “The Traditional Physics” such as dubdubdubThermalenergy.org/
My own learning process, was far from traditional, since I actually got five full years of Physics study; and that was just while I was in “high school” (not likely the same as YOUR high school) and then I did another 6 years at a University); so I figured I could probably teach some of it; at least at an elementary level; such as Optics, and Atomic Physics. Well 150 of the 200 students I had in my class, the first year got good passing grades, so, somehow I muddled by; before deciding, that pulling teeth is easier than teaching Physics.
So then I went on to trying to use Physics to actually make some money for employers in industry; and so far I have been doing that for 51 years, without any of them discovering, that I don’t know what the hell I am talking about.
But I took a quick look at your “Thermalenergy.com ” University, and their two paragraphs of thermal physics, so maybe I can finally learn something from them.
I did think about getting a PhD; perhaps in ice cream making; Dr Laura has a PhD, and I don’t think she knows any Physics.
So maybe you should stick to Mr Connolley’s wikileaks or thermalenergy.com, as I clearly can’t teach you anything.
But perhaps Doug Cotton could help you to understand some of these things.
@Myrrh
Maybe this can help you.
“HEAT” is transported by RADIATION, in exactly the same manner, as the dearly departed are transported to their afterlife, by coffins.
DirkH says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:35 pm
nomnom says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“Obviously something has been shifted up or down. What though? and why?”
Consult the footnotes.
“vi Hansen’s predictions were made in Hansen et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 93 No D8 (20 Aug 1988) Fig 3a Page 9347: pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf. In the graph here, Hansen’s three scenarios are graphed to start from the same point in mid-1987 – we are only interested in changes (anomalies).”
Which leads one to wonder why the common zero wasn’t used for the ‘subsequent reality’ which it should have been if a fair comparison was being attempted?
Also why is Scenario A mislabelled, it was for a growth in emissions of 1.5%/year which way exceeds actuality as far as I can tell, (as Hansen said it would eventually).
Finally re-zeroing calculations of this type produces a plot which shows Scenario C warmer than B warmer than C which is not what the original calculations showed. Different assumptions about volcanic activity in the three scenarios also make this comparison inappropriate.
Bart says:
“ONE of her graphs, the one from a cited source. The next graph she displays goes to 2012.”
Correct. It ends at 2008 and doesn’t include more recent data.
“And, you would then be arguing FOR discarding it. This is just being tendentious.”
No, I maintain a consistent approach of including all available data.
“But, those XBT data are old and irrelevant. The question is, if GHG heating is ongoing, where is the heat going right now.”
Old data is by it’s nature, old. That doesn’t make it irrelevant. How would you ever see a long term trend if you kept throwing out old data?
“Where is the heat going right now” is a different question – we simply don’t monitor the planet well enough to track it’s flow in minute detail hence why there is much variation in short term data. Evans/Nova use of the Argo data to suggest the oceans are not accumulating heat is incorrect for a number of reasons as outlined before http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/the-nova-travesty-cherry-picker-ahoy/ .
“Yet, you are certain that the data down to 2000m is significant?”
I am certain the current trend is upward for both 700m and 2,000m – significant or not it does not support Evans/Nova’s claim that the oceans are not warming.
Here’s the latest data plotted for you.
http://itsnotnova.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/ocean-heat-content-700-vs-2000.gif
I used the exact same source as David Evan’s graph.
“No, they don’t. There is no apparent heating at all in the 0-700m range in the past decade or more. … there has been no net warming since the ARGO array came on line.”
The data disagrees with you – please see previous graph. As climate scientists repeat, the long term warming trend eventually wins over short term fluctuations.
“I do not know why the deeper ocean measurements seem to indicate increasing heat content. It may be …”
Good luck trying to support your theories with actual evidence. Report back when you have something substantial.
It also seems strange that you accept the data quite readily when short term cooling is observed, but when warming return you have problems accepting the data even though it fits in well with the laws of physics.
“But, it is not due to any recent (in the past decade or more) surface heating. There is no storage of latent GHG warming happening.”
Again the data disagrees with you.
http://itsnotnova.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/ocean-heat-content-700-vs-2000.gif
“We would see indications of the flux in the upper levels, and we don’t.”
Now you gained great confidence in the data and you’ve got your own ideas about how impossible it is. Astounding!
Tom_R says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:35 pm
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:02 pm
What’s the longest time frame of actual hard, instrumental (non proxy data) Global temperatures that we have? Seems we go back to:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
I would say the actual hard data goes back to 1979. I strongly question the graph you present, on an historical basis. In the late 1970s there was much discussion in scientific circles about catastrophic cooling. Although it wasn’t universally accepted among scientists, the fact that it was there at all shows that the temperatures at that time were anomalously cold. Yet the graph shows 1970′s temperatures comparable to the preceding decades.
Doesn’t this disagreement between GISS and history strike you as suspicious?
No, the data presented is global, the NH data from the same source shows the drop you mention, the SH data does not so the global data is flat. The discussion you refer to was mostly in the press and media and reflects their NH bias (Aussies on here won’t be surprised).
George E. Smith; says:
February 26, 2012 at 8:43 pm
So Pfffoooey !! there is NO theoretical basis for a Beer’s Law based logarithmic dependency on CO2 abundance.
Quite so George, it has nothing to do with Beer’s Law. Check out the ‘Curve of Growth’, a place to start is http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys440/lectures/curve/curve.html
For the ‘pay off line’ drag down to Fig 9.22 near the bottom, for CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere we should be in the central portion for the 15 micron lines. For that region a log function is a good match, for Freons the early part (~linear) is applicable.
itsnotnova says:
February 29, 2012 at 3:28 pm
“Correct. It ends at 2008 and doesn’t include more recent data.”
Correct. And, the graph after it goes until 2012. What is your point?
“No, I maintain a consistent approach of including all available data.”
So you claim. But, you don’t use bad data, and XBT data is inferior.
“Old data is by it’s nature, old. That doesn’t make it irrelevant. How would you ever see a long term trend if you kept throwing out old data?”
OK, fine. In that case, the prior data supports the contention that heat content rose in the latter third of the 20th century, and has now ceased. You would have been better off letting sleeping dogs lie.
The entire set of data suggests that there was an abrupt change of state near the turn of the century which was never anticipated, and for which there is no explanation under the AGW paradigm.
‘“Where is the heat going right now” is a different question – we simply don’t monitor the planet well enough to track it’s flow in minute detail hence why there is much variation in short term data.’
Well, isn’t that convenient. The heat is in the one place we can’t see it, and nobody has a clue how it got there. By, by gum, you’re just sure it is there, and you want us to accept it on faith.
“Evans/Nova use of the Argo data to suggest the oceans are not accumulating heat is incorrect for a number of reasons as outlined before http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/the-nova-travesty-cherry-picker-ahoy/ .”
The “outline” is, to put it gently, underwhelming. You got your choir stoked, though, so I guess you’d probably consider that a success.
“I am certain the current trend is upward for both 700m and 2,000m – significant or not it does not support Evans/Nova’s claim that the oceans are not warming.”
You are quibbling. It is nowhere near the expectation under the AGW hypothesis. And, what does it mean when you say “I am certain” and then couple that with “significant or not”? Are you certain or not?
“The data disagrees with you – please see previous graph. As climate scientists repeat, the long term warming trend eventually wins over short term fluctuations.”
Nine years is a long time. There is a LOT of catching up to do to validate the climate models. I’m sorry to inform you, it’s not going to happen.
“Good luck trying to support your theories with actual evidence. Report back when you have something substantial.”
I do not have to. The onus is on you to prove the AGW hypothesis. The stagnation in ocean temperatures severely weakens your case. It is not even close to being strong enough to justify wrenching changes to the global economy.
“It also seems strange that you accept the data quite readily when short term cooling is observed, but when warming return you have problems accepting the data even though it fits in well with the laws of physics.”
Cooling also fits well within the laws of physics due to the presence of feedbacks. Your “physics” is very basic. The real world is complex.
“Again the data disagrees with you.”
No, it disagrees with the expectations from the AGW hypothesis.
‘“We would see indications of the flux in the upper levels, and we don’t.”
Now you gained great confidence in the data and you’ve got your own ideas about how impossible it is. Astounding!’
We do not see indications of the flux in the upper levels. That is simply a statement of fact. The AGW hypothesis made specific predictions about the progression of ocean heat. The ARGO results were eagerly anticipated in the expectation that they would confirm them. They did not. Despite your desperate handwaving and pounding on the table, you have no evidence to support the hypothesis.
myrrh says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:21 am
[My tuppence worth on UV, Agile, I’ve just been discussing it, and because he always distracts by UV tangent.]
Okay, I see. I thought it was an odd question since it was wide open.
Also, in the future, it would be helpful to the reader if you specified the frequency range of the of UV you’re describing.
For instance, the UV bandwidth for generating vitamin D in your skin is opaque to glass (or Sun screen) but the UV from higher energy bands may not be opaque (I’d have to look up the frequency response of glass.)
A fantastic piece of work and very crisply executed, thank you very much.
Perhaps the New York Review of books would consider running this as a companion to this? I’m not holding my breath.
George E. Smith; says:
February 29, 2012 at 2:01 pm
@Myrrh
Maybe this can help you.
“HEAT” is transported by RADIATION, in exactly the same manner, as the dearly departed are transported to their afterlife, by coffins.
I haven’t heard that one before..
I usually hear that ‘all energy is the same and the matter converts it to heat’, to which my question – then what is the mechanism in the various matter which takes this undifferentiated energy and creates gamma, visible, radio etc.?
Back to your previous post:
Photons of ANY wavelength can be converted into “heat”; that’s the most common outcome, and photons of many wavelengths can be turned into electricity with near 100% efficiency; but not all with the same band gap photodiode. And as I stated above, any photon is emitted by precisely one particle, molecule or atom, and no single particle can have any Temperature assigned to it, so the photon knows nothing of any source Temperature.
The figure I’ve seen is 10% efficiency for visible light. But we’re not talking about producing electricity, we’re talking about visible light physically heating land and oceans. How is it doing this?
But we’re really not going to get anywhere, I still can’t understand what you mean. A photon is a particle.
“In physics, a photon is an elementary particle, the quantum of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. The effects of this force are easily observable at both the microscopic and macroscopic level, because the photon has no rest mass; this allows for interactions at long distances. Like all elementary particles, photons are currently best explained by quantum mechanics and exhibit wave–particle duality, exhibiting properties of both waves and particles. For example, a single photon may be refracted by a lens or exhibit wave interference with itself, but also act as a particle giving a definite result when its position is measured.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon
George, I’m giving up on this discussion. We obviously have no shared understanding of properties or terms.
Just one last thing. You really appear to dislike heat, well, it obviously doesn’t bother you that the heat we get from direct from the Sun is excluded from your ‘energy budget’, so maybe that’s why you have such antipathy towards it. Because this has been so thoroughly introduced into the ‘general’ education system, it becomes difficult to find any references to sensible figures, most pages on the internet are skewed to either promoting or not the rocking the boat of the fictional fisics of the ‘energy budget – where the heat direct from the Sun doesn’t reach us and visible light heats land and oceans’. You often put down heat, thermal infrared, by your cold water bottle example. Just a couple of things to add to the mix:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared
“Humans at normal body temperature radiate chiefly at wavelengths around 12 μm (micrometres), as shown by Wien’s displacement law.”
However, that figure not one I see commonly, it’s usually around 9/10, and we have an internal temp considerably higher than your bottle of cold water.
http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html
“Humans, at normal body temperature, radiate most strongly in the infrared at a wavelength of about 10 microns.
There are various thermal readers of one kind or another and some are used in disaster situations, earthquakes and such searching for bodies, and a way of testing these and to get used to using them is to fill a bottle with hot water and bury it.
As I’ve said, it’s not easy to find coherent information on the net about any of this anymore, it’s been so thoroughly compromised by the strange fisics produced to sell AGW, but are you sure your cold water bottle microns figure is right?
As an aside. We absorb heat from the Sun from around 3-50 microns, but our best absorption is at around 9.7, this matches water’s resonant absorption, which is how we get warmed up by the Sun, internally by the water in us being heated up as the infrared penetrates a few inches.
I forgot that dissolved salt lowered the freezing point, and I didn’t know that salt water just keeps getting denser as it cools. (So in order for sea-ice to float, the salt must get ejected during the freezing process?)
Anyway, my scientific reputation is now below 0 and well down into the minus figures. Do you think I could get a job with the ICPP?
Agile Aspect says:
February 29, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Okay, I see. I thought it was an odd question since it was wide open.
Also, in the future, it would be helpful to the reader if you specified the frequency range of the of UV you’re describing.
For instance, the UV bandwidth for generating vitamin D in your skin is opaque to glass (or Sun screen) but the UV from higher energy bands may not be opaque (I’d have to look up the frequency response of glass.)
Wasn’t the point, I giving information to Doug specific to his misconception about it and to give some of its actual effects generally (leaving you free to answer his main theme). He believes the AGWSF fisics comic cartoon energy budget (KT97 and variations), which claims that the Earth is not heated by the thermal energy direct from the Sun because it doesn’t reach the surface, and, that instead it is heated by Visible and the two shortwaves adjacent – UV and Near Infrared.
What this strange fisics created to support the AGW sell has done is to take properties and processes from real physics and misattribute them, or just generally garble them, they’re not too fussed, quite happy to use conflicting explanations. The name of their game is confuse and conquer.
Doug gives UV burning the skin as proof that these shortwaves (light in trad physics) really heat the Earth’s land and oceans as in the comic cartoon, that they are powerful energies. I gave UV working on DNA level, vit D production and tanning via melanin, and, water as transparent medium, killing bacteria it’s tranmitted through water, and Lake Tahoe, one of the world’s most transparent lakes to UV.
They can’t seem to stop thinking of Light as heat. They still resort to telling me how well educated they are so I should believe them, though they never come back with details I’ve requested, (method and empirical proof that blue light as from the Sun heats water, for example), but I stopped taking any of their claims to superior education seriously when I got this reply as I began investigated light and heat in this weird world they’re in:
—————————————–
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/28/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-atmospheric-windows/#comment-610576
Ira Glickstein, PhD says:
March 1, 2011 at 6:11 am
Myrrh says:
February 28, 2011 at 4:31 pm
I’m really at a loss to understand any of this. How on earth does Visible light and near short wave heat the Earth
Myrrh, you really need to get outside more and sit in the Sunshine and feel the warmth! That is how visible and near-visible (“shortwave”) light warms he Earth.
If you don’t or cannot get outside, turn on an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb and hold yourhand near it (not too close, you will get burned). Feel the heat? That is shortwave light because the filament is heated to temperatures similar to the Sun’ surface. You can tell it is shortwave because you can see the light.
——————————————————
See my problem? An incandescent light bulb gives around 5% visible light and 95% heat.
They’ve got something against heat.. You’ll often find in descriptions of different light bulbs now being made which produce more visible as, ‘without the waste product of heat’.
And even then, giving such examples, they still think visible heats land and oceans.
They think carbon dioxide diffuses into the atmosphere as if an ideal gas in a vacuum, no sense at all of weight/ gravity, attraction or volume – that’s all been taken out to reduce the sell to radiation only.
I suppose I just never thought that this sort of brainwashing could happen in bog standard science in the West, but it has.
So what you’re telling me is that there was no good reason for the government to change the composition of my asthma inhaler so that it’s practically useless?
Reblogged this on A TowDog and commented:
After you read, this should be stashed away behind glass to be broken whenever climate drones attack.
itsnotnova says:
February 29, 2012 at 1:32 pm
Physics disagrees with you. The heat transfer rate depends on the temperature of both bodies. A warmer lower body (lower ocean) reduces the amount of heat transferring from above.
I read the link and I do not see a problem with what I said. Let us assume the ocean was at 4.00 C and the atmosphere was at 15.0 C. Then net heat would go from the atmosphere to the ocean, right? Now if the ocean warmed to 4.01 C, the same thing would happen, right? It is only when the ocean got over 15.0 C that the ocean would warm the air, right? However I do agree that if the ocean reached 12.0 C, the air would lose heat at a slower rate than if the ocean was at 4.00 C. Now if your point was that the air loses heat slower if the ocean was at 4.01 C instead of 4.00 C, I guess in theory that would be the case, but you could not measure it.
But my point was that if the ocean reached 4.01 C, it would not cool back to 4.00 C later and release a whole bunch of heat to warm the air. So why worry about a minor heating of the deep ocean, even if this is where the heat is in fact going to?
George E. Smith; says:
February 26, 2012 at 8:43 pm
Beer’s law relates to the ABSORPTION of the dilute solution; it DOES NOT apply to the ENERGY TRANSMISSION of the sample; and in the atmosphere, the ABSORBING CO2, doesn’t hold onto the LWIR forever, but it re-emits a similar but not identical photon to the one that got absorbed.
;————————————————————————————————————————-
They aren’t claiming Beer’s Law is valid.
And absorption has no dimensions and needs to be related to the temperature residues (or the so-called temperature “anomaly” which has units of temperature.)
Hence the need for a climate model.
Since the Sun is huge lamp whose radiation is in phase, and the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is dilute (0.04% by volume), it’s perfectly valid starting point for building a model if one wants to relate absorption to temperature residues.
But any exponential would work which solves the differential dc/dT = k*c where T is the residue and k comes from where the Sun doesn’t shine.
RoHa says:
February 29, 2012 at 7:51 pm
<i?"So in order for sea-ice to float, the salt must get ejected during the freezing process?
Yes.
itsnotnova @ February 29, 3:07 am
I’ve only had time to glance through your website article, but I see that Bart is discussing it with you in a way that suggests that your reasoning may be flawed, so I think I’ll leave it to his capable hands. Additionally, as an engineer, I find the proposition of heating the abyss ALONE does not pass my lifelong test for reasonableness. Consequently, I’ll repeat my 2nd comment to RoHa below, but with the addition of your nom de blog in bold:
It adds to earlier comments, to which none of the usual suspects have responded, for instance: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-907990
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-907059
It looks like R. Gates is taking a break, so is there any chance that you could respond instead?
Myrrh says:
February 29, 2012 at 8:02 pm
They can’t seem to stop thinking of Light as heat.
That’s because it is! When I used green (532nm) light in my lab Laser Induced Incandescence experiment I heated soot particles to about 4000ºC.
Werner Brozek says:
February 29, 2012 at 8:04 am
Peridot says:
February 29, 2012 at 4:18 am
Things were different? In what way, please? Life was pretty similar…
Life was similar from the beginnings of life until around 1750. But then the industrial revolution began and man, due to burning of fossil fuels, added much more CO2 into the air than ordinary respiration would account for. So before 1750, increases in atmospheric CO2 had all natural causes such as oceans heating up due to Milankovitch cycles or volcanoes emitting CO2. But now mankind is adding to the natural balance by driving cars and heating homes, etc. However our net additions are not harming the planet in any way.
Thank you but my original problem is not answered, namely – if higher concentrations of CO2 in the past FOLLOWED temperature rises in the oceans and atmosphere and caused no such rises why should a tiny rise in CO2 be caused by ANY emissions now, ours included, let alone a temperature rise? The two things seem to be in total opposition to each other. Is there a definitive answer that allows for both to be correct or do people have to choose?
Reblogged this on Andrew J. Patrick and commented:
As succinct an argument as one can make about how the case for AGW is non-empircal.
“”””” Phil. says:
March 1, 2012 at 11:26 am
Myrrh says:
February 29, 2012 at 8:02 pm
They can’t seem to stop thinking of Light as heat.
That’s because it is! When I used green (532nm) light in my lab Laser Induced Incandescence experiment I heated soot particles to about 4000ºC. “””””
Well I have to say That I am far more pedantic than either you, Phil, or Myrrh
In MY view, “Light” is NOT “heat”, and neither one of them is “Electromagnetic Radiation.”
“LIGHT” is “The Human eye response to Electromagnertic radiation generally in the wavelength range of 400 to 700 (maybe 800) nm wavelength.” And for that reason it has its own set of units of “measurement”, such as Lumens, Candela; quantities such as luminance, luminous Intensity, Illuminance, etc ; all of which are different from radiance, radiant intensity, irradiance, etc which ARE units of electromagnetic radiation, which is a form of energy able to propagate through a vaccuum, in the total absence of physical materials
And “heat” also despite Myrr’s protestations is NOT electromagnetic radiation either; no matter what the wavelength of the radiation is.
But all that aside; back to Phil’s point; and Myrrh, if you choose to ignore anything or everything I say, I urge you to listen carefully to Phil; because you ignore his teaching at your own peril.
And to reinforce what Phil just said (in essence), photons at visible wavelengths DO create “heat” when absorbed by ordinary materials, which cannot convert their EM energy to some other energy form.
And Myrrh, if you read carefully what Dr Leif Svalgaard has noted here on several occasions, the TSI; Total Solar Irradiance, is routinely measured with a cavity calorimeter, that is essentially a bucket which captures photons no matter what their wavelength (or frequency) and also no matter what their source, or the Temperature of any such source, and it CONVERTS all of that energy into “HEAT”, which will raise the Temperature of that calorimeter, and some sensor will record the Temperature rise. That’s why they call it “TOTAL” solar irradiance, because it measures all wavelengths and the heating effect of all of them.
When scientists don’t use the correct terminology, specially in communicating with lay persons, we do them a disservice by confusing scientific concepts with ordinary everyday lay concepts, which may have quite different connotations. We flippantly use erroneous “Science slang” such as the word “brightness” for example, when we fully know what we mean, which is either Radiance, or Luminance; but the lay person cannot appreciate that we don’t mean candle power or some other quantity, even candela.
Which is why I choose pedantry over sloppy communication (when I think about it)
Phil. says:
March 1, 2012 at 11:26 am
Myrrh says:
February 29, 2012 at 8:02 pm
They can’t seem to stop thinking of Light as heat.
That’s because it is! When I used green (532nm) light in my lab Laser Induced Incandescence experiment I heated soot particles to about 4000ºC.
Yeah right, the Sun’s a laser. We’re just imagining we’re here, the Earth was burned to a crisp 4.5 billion years ago.
In traditional physics, note, traditional because very well understood, tested and proved empirically, there are two distinct categories among the different wavelengths that emanate from the Sun, Light and Heat.
The one called Light is visible and the light waves either side – see my explanation above of the difference between ir cameras. Some critters can see UV and near infrared, insects see it reflected off flowers, snakes see it reflected off things they like to eat. Light waves are tiny, they go bouncy bouncy all over the place. That’s how we see the world and colours and our blue sky, the more energetic blue is scattered more as it has more encounters. They are not hot, we cannot feel them at all.
They work on electronic transitions, for example, in the atmosphere visible light is absorbed briefly by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen, which then spit them back out again – this is called reflection/scattering. Think pin ball machine.
There are mediums transparent to visible light (read the previous paragraph again, note, the atmosphere is not such a medium, even though it is claimed to be in the AGW comic cartoon energy budget greenhouse).
So, water is a transparent medium for visible light – this means the molecules of water do not absorb visible, not even on an electron scale as in the atmosphere. Water simply transmits visible light through, that’s why we can see underwater, by refraction.. See OPTICS to further understand Light here. Transmits is a technical term. It means that water does not absorb visible light.
Heat from the Sun is the Sun’s thermal energy on the move to us, radiating out in huge heat waves – these work on vibrational levels on meeting matter, heat moves the whole molecules into vibrational states and so heats them up. Water is particularly good absorber of HEAT on the vibrational resonance level.
It is the Heat waves, the thermal infrared from the Sun, which heat up the Earth’s land and oceans.
Light waves from the Sun can’t do this.
It’s tough,if we’ve been taught something that is not true and have had no reason to question it. This becomes our paradigm through which we view the world and so try to fit everything we then learn into that, to try and make it fit logically because we always try to make sense of the world. But, we only have to look around our world, at the industries which understand the difference between light and heat, at our textbooks still teaching traditional physics which is that the heat we feel from the Sun is the invisible thermal infrared and that it is distinctly different from Light waves. Although these are getting harder to find.
Just as gamma rays are distincly different from radio waves. These have different properties, different sizes, different wavelengths, they interact with matter in different ways. Some sets can be made where they have similar behaviours, but, they are distinctly different from each other. One needs to understand these differences to see how distorted Ira’s answer was..
An incandescent lightbulb gives off 5% visible which we cannot feel, and 95% invisible thermal infrared which is heat, which we can feel – because it’s moving our molecules into vibration and making us hotter.
Light gets reflected off us, that’s what visible and near infrared cameras capture.
The main uses of Light is in seeing the world and in photosynthesis – without the energy of the visible blue and red particularly we wouldn’t have life as we know it, and photosynthesis is the conversion of visible light to chemical energy, not heat energy.
It’s an amazingly simply con this, take a look at the comic cartoon energy budget and see what they have done in the basics.
First they’ve taken out the great Water Cycle which cools our Earth, think deserts, without water our Earth with our atmosphere but without water would be like these. The water cycle brings the temp down from 67°C to the 15°C, that is a 52°C cooling, down from 67°C to the 15°C, that is a 52°C cooling.
The sleight of hand here is that they’ve taken the final temperature, 15°C, and the difference between that and the temp of the Earth with no atmosphere at all, -18°C, and simply claim that this 33°C difference is the result of ‘greenhouse gas warming’ – they taken out the major player in our Sun/Earth energy exchange, a whole chunk worth 52°C of water taking away heat from the Earth cooked by the Sun’s thermal energy. They’ve taken out a whole chunk of the process!
Second, what is the Water Cycle cooling? Our land and oceans heated up primarily from the direct heat of the Sun, they taken that out too. They say this heat doesn’t reach the Earth’s surface. But we can feel it..
Third, they’ve given the properties of Heat direct from the Sun, the effect it has on organic matter of heating it up, to shortwave Light from the Sun, which doesn’t do this.
Simple swapsies. There are more such, and fiddles with laws taken out of context and so on. But, if you can get your heads around the sleight of hand of these basics, you’ll re-arrange your brains back into sinc with the true physical reality around you.
And welcome back, we need you.
You’ll look at the light from the Sun and know it isn’t heat, that the heat you’re feeling from the Sun is the invisible thermal infrared, the Sun’s thermal energy on the move to us travelling in wave form.
And you’ll be able to understand incandescent lightbulbs.
Peridot says:
March 1, 2012 at 11:39 am
why should a tiny rise in CO2 be caused by ANY emissions now
Are you suggesting that mankind is NOT adding to the CO2 in the atmosphere by driving cars and heating homes over the last hundred years?
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
There might be a couple of instances where this article can be challenged but the overall picture, evidence and conclusion would be difficult for the warmists to legitimately debate. All the world-wide carbon control responses to the projected global warming “problems” have been based on computer modelling. It is clearly shown that that modelling fails to meet reality outcomes. They can call the climate variations by any name they choose, “climate change” at the moment, but the observed changes are do not support the CAGW theories.
Bart says:
“Correct. And, the graph after it goes until 2012. What is your point?”
That the graph didn’t include more recent data.
“So you claim.”
Search my site, prove otherwise. You made the call – now back it up with some evidence.
“But, you don’t use bad data, and XBT data is inferior.”
For the time before Argo was invented, XBT was all they had. Does that mean when new technology eventually replaces Argo, you would want to throw our the Argo data too?
Wishing the data away because it doesn’t agree with you is not good scientific method.
“OK, fine. In that case, the prior data supports the contention that heat content rose in the latter third of the 20th century, and has now ceased. You would have been better off letting sleeping dogs lie.
The entire set of data suggests that there was an abrupt change of state near the turn of the century which was never anticipated, and for which there is no explanation under the AGW paradigm.”
Uncertainty is not rise for celebration. Having a larger than expected spike in the data is not reassuring, although in the following few years as the variability produces a lower than expected amount, it does give “some people” reason to speculate that “warming has stopped”.
“Well, isn’t that convenient. The heat is in the one place we can’t see it, and nobody has a clue how it got there. By, by gum, you’re just sure it is there, and you want us to accept it on faith.”
No it’s actually inconvenient. It’s be much better for all involved if we knew with 100% certainty where all ocean currents and flows led. We don’t. That science for you – dealing with uncertainty is what it’s all about.
“The “outline” is, to put it gently, underwhelming. You got your choir stoked, though, so I guess you’d probably consider that a success.”
Underwhelming you say, but then don’t follow it up with an actual argument as to why.
“You are quibbling. It is nowhere near the expectation under the AGW hypothesis. And, what does it mean when you say “I am certain” and then couple that with “significant or not”? Are you certain or not?”
I’m not quibbling, I’m certain the data for both show positive linear regression. That is they both 100% show warming. What the statistical significance is I have no idea and am not about to calculate it.
My purpose for showing it is to demonstrate that Evans/Nova’s use of the data to indicate no warming is 100% incorrect. That is something I am 100% sure of.
“Nine years is a long time. There is a LOT of catching up to do to validate the climate models. I’m sorry to inform you, it’s not going to happen.”
You just told me that “there was an abrupt change of state near the turn of the century”; perhaps the models have to catch up the data?
Either way, the data doesn’t support the notion that the oceans have stopped warming.
“I do not have to. The onus is on you to prove the AGW hypothesis.”
Yes you do. You are the one stating that the data is incorrect hence you should discard it. You need to establish why the data should be discarded. “Because it goes upwards and you can’t explain why” is not good enough.
The AGW hypothesis is an entirely different question.
“Cooling also fits well within the laws of physics due to the presence of feedbacks. “
You haven’t countered my observation, you’ve simply started a different argument.
Let’s go back – I said “It also seems strange that you accept the data quite readily when short term cooling is observed, but when warming return you have problems accepting the data even though it fits in well with the laws of physics.”
“No, it disagrees with the expectations from the AGW hypothesis.”
You said “But, it is not due to any recent (in the past decade or more) surface heating. There is no storage of latent GHG warming happening.”
And I showed how that statement is incorrect. http://itsnotnova.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/ocean-heat-content-700-vs-2000.gif
Having faltered on that account you now change your statement to a comparison to “the AGW hypothesis” – I’ll assume that you mean Hansen’s models as stated in the article.
And your claim of not meeting projections may well depends on what start date you wish to cherry pick. http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/fake-predictions-for-fake-skeptics/
“We do not see indications of the flux in the upper levels. … “
Just because you personally don’t know or understand the mechanism for how the deeper ocean gained warmth doesn’t mean the data should be discarded.
“Despite your desperate handwaving and pounding on the table, you have no evidence to support the hypothesis.”
The science disgrees with you.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1375.html
Bart replies to ‘itsnotnova’:
“The onus is on you to prove the AGW hypothesis.”
That is exactly right. But the alarmist crowd always does whatever they can to avoid the scientific method. Per the scientific method skeptics have nothing to prove, because AGW is not the skeptics’ conjecture.
The central conjecture in the entire debate from the very beginning has been the claim that an increase in CO2 will cause catastrophic runaway global warming [CO2=CAGW]. But if 2xCO2 only resulted in ≈1°C warming or less, it would be a net benefit to humanity, the biosphere, and agriculture. So the alarmist cult has no choice in the matter: they must try to alarm the public with their evidence-free claims of CO2=CAGW [by ‘evidence’ I mean testable, empirical evidence per the scientific method].
Therefore, the AGW
hypothesisconjecture is always the issue being debated. And the onus is entirely on the purveyors of CAGW to defend their conjecture. Skeptics have nothing to prove: Ei incumbit probatio, qui dicit, non qui negat; cum per rerum naturam factum negantis probatio nulla sit. – The proof lies upon him who affirms, not upon him who denies; since, by the nature of things, he who denies a fact cannot produce any proof. It is akin to proving a negative. Regarding the conjecture that CO2 produced by human emissions is causing “unprecedented” global warming: the onus is upon those who say so. As to the claim that there has been an alarming late 20th century spike in global temperatures: the onus lies on those who say so. And as we shall see, that claim has been falsified.The “alarming late 20th century spike in global temperatures” is simply an artefact of using a zero baseline chart like this. It is deceptive because it uses a short time period. It does not show the temperature trend in its long term, real world context.
Zero baseline charts are fine for anomalies, but they misrepresent reality when used to show rising short term temperatures. They deceive the eye. Yes, the planet has been warming naturally since the LIA. But there is no discernable “fingerprint” of human CO2 emissions.
When a chart is used properly to show a long term trend without tying it to an arbitrary baseline, we see that the trend from the LIA has been exactly the same since the 1600’s. There is no change in the upward trend between times when CO2 was 280 ppmv, and when CO2 was 390 ppmv. Certainly there has been no accelerated warming, which is the central claim of the alarmist crowd. Therefore, the effect of CO2 on global temperatures, if any, is too insignificant to measure, and CO2 can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes.
By using the correct chart showing the trend since the LIA, it becomes apparent that nothing unusual is happening. With no change in trend either before or after the rise in CO2, the conjecture that anthropogenic CO2 emissions cause global warming is falsified.
Bart and Smokey, Re ARGO stuff,
You may find this discussion over at Tallbloke’s, where the aspects of “data corrections” etc are discussed. Deja vu? more of the creeping anticlockwise rotation and things are worse than we thought?
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/argo-the-mystery-of-global-warmings-missing-heat/#more-5052
Werner Brozek says:
“I read the link and I do not see a problem with what I said. Let us assume the ocean was at 4.00 C and the atmosphere was at 15.0 C. Then net heat would go from the atmosphere to the ocean, right? Now if the ocean warmed to 4.01 C, the same thing would happen, right?”
Almost. The rate of heat transfer would be slower because the difference between the two bodies has decreased. The net transfer would still be from the atmosphere to the ocean, but at a reduced rate, hence the atmosphere would be warmer than if the ocean was at 4.00 C.
“It is only when the ocean got over 15.0 C that the ocean would warm the air, right?”
In terms of net heat transfer, correct, the net transfer would from ocean to atmosphere.
I know you were only using a value of 4 as an example, but are you aware of actual surface temperature are of the ocean?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Weeklysst.gif
itsnotnova says:
February 29, 2012 at 1:32 pm
Werner Brozek says:
“All the presumed excess heat from CO2 would just dissipate into the deep ocean, never to return until the deep ocean reached a higher temperature than the atmosphere. “
Physics disagrees with you.
itsnotnova says:
March 1, 2012 at 8:11 pm
“It is only when the ocean got over 15.0 C that the ocean would warm the air, right?”
In terms of net heat transfer, correct, the net transfer would from ocean to atmosphere.
So which is it? Does physics disagree with me on the 1:32 pm post?
(By the way, my reference to the 4.00 C was because I had the deep ocean in mind.)
@Werner Brozek, You seemed to have overlooked the first part of my post.
@Werner Brozek, oh and the temperature of the deep ocean is in contact with upper layers. Same theory applies – a warmer deeper ocean reduces how fast heat will move from upper to lower.
The temperature of the water where it meets the atmosphere is usually much higher.
RoHa @ February 29, 7:51 pm
You asked if you might qualify for a job at the IPCC. Sorry to disappoint you, but I very much doubt it because you ask too many questions, and I’ve not detected any Greenie or Tree-hugging tendencies in your comments.
Ken McMurtrie says:
March 1, 2012 at 5:24 pm
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
There might be a couple of instances where this article can be challenged but the overall picture, evidence and conclusion would be difficult for the warmists to legitimately debate. All the world-wide carbon control responses to the projected global warming “problems” have been based on computer modelling. It is clearly shown that that modelling fails to meet reality outcomes. They can call the climate variations by any name they choose, “climate change” at the moment, but the observed changes are do not support the CAGW theories.
=======
Your link comes up page not found.
Tim Ball also has some pages on this aspect:
http://drtimball.com/2012/computers-incapable-of-modeling-climate-billions-wasted-to-perpetuate-deception/
http://drtimball.com/2011/the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change-ipcc-has-achieved-its-goal-it%e2%80%99s-time-to-repair-the-damage/
http://drtimball.com/2011/disastrous-computer-model-predictions-from-limits-to-growth-to-global-warming/
http://drtimball.com/2011/ipcc-false-philosophical-footings-a-massive-deception/
From the last:
“Imagine trying to claim that in the last 50 years, most natural causes of climate change have been replaced by human addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. Incredible as it sounds, that’s exactly what the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has done. Here is a quote from the 2007 Report:
Another unusual aspect of recent climate change is its cause: past climate changes were natural in origin (see FAQ 6.1), whereas most of the warming of the past 50 years is attributable to human activities.
In a complex deception, the IPCC established a false result – the unproven hypothesis that human CO2 was causing global warming – then used it as the basis for a false premise that justifies the false result. It is a classic circular argument, but essential to perpetuate the phony results, which are the basis of all official climate change beliefs and policies.”
itsnotnova says:
“@Werner Brozek, You seemed to have overlooked the first part of my post.”
‘itsnotnova’ seems to have entirely avoided my post @7:13 pm above. That is because the conjecture that CO2 is the cause of non-existent runaway global warming has been decisively falsified. If there is any dispute in the matter, ‘itsnotnova’ must provide empirical, testable evidence, per the scientific method, showing global harm resulting from the anthropogenic rise in [beneficial, harmless] CO2.
Otherwise, ‘itsnotnova’ should man up and acknowledge that the “carbon” scare has been falsified, so we can move on to investigating the natural causes of global warming and cooling.
I’d like to thank the readers that gave me the link to Evans’ pdf about the missing hotspot, since I was under the impression that the web is filled with warmist arguments about the topic, with apparently (due to my cursory searching) no rebuttal.
It is true that googling “David Evans” gives a lot of other people with that name; the sciencespeak site where the pdf resides is not an obvious click from the Google page, and it’s sadly “stuck in 1995”. Something could be done to render that content more visible; the pdf itself is somewhat unpolished, repeating itself at times, mixing up considerations about policy and political motives with the actual science; no alternative mechanism is proposed as to what could happen to all that water vapor (but it wasn’t required to invalidate the warmist assertion!)
All in all, the “missing hotspot” argument is really very convincing. Still, it’s all about vapor feedbacks, not CO2 forcings.
But, as for the greenhouse effect, people are pointing out that there is an observed decrease in stratospheric temperatures, and this is easily thought in terms of more heat being trapped in the lower strata, in the troposphere. That would give the CO2 a prominent role in this drama, albeit lacking the required catastrophic positive feedbacks (not that I’d want somehow to rule out an expected effect of CO2 increase on temperatures; it just sounds too perfectly fit for a theory that tends to overestimate it).
Now
http://joannenova.com.au/2008/10/not-found-the-hot-spot/
answers this very critique in a weak way, not separating CO2 and water vapor feedbacks.
The only valid argument she gives us is mentioning ozone depletion as a possible cause for the stratosphere cooling; but this is far from a definitive answer. We’d need someone investigating about different possible causes for the stratospheric cooling.
Btw, thanks for all your constructive work in search for the truth.
Here’s a fine critique of the AR5 WG1 drafts, by a Dutch scientist/reviewer:
POST-MODERN SCIENCE AND THE SCIENTIFIC LEGITIMACY OF THE IPCC’S WG1 AR5 DRAFT REPORT
Arthur Rörsch, The Netherlands
(First edition of a working paper, submitted to local authorities)
Small PDF download, 139kB.
Brian H,
Thanks for that link, which states:
The prevailing hypothesis of the assessment report is that Dangerous Anthropogenic Global Warming (DAGW) is occurring; this hypothesis has been under challenge for many years by numerous independent scientists. These scientists were not invited to participate in the preparation of the AR5 report.
In fact, the ‘Dangerous” appellation refers only to the danger of having the IPCC’s gravy train derailed. Further, it is disingenuous to use a subjective, alarmist, emotional, and unquantified term such as “Dangerous”. The UN/IPCC uses pseudo-scientific terms like “Dangerous” in order to lever more funds to continue their propaganda operations. It is completely unprofessional, as is the deliberate barring of opposing voices in the IPCC’s one-sided, censored debate.
. . .
itsnotnova says:
“@Werner Brozek, You seemed to have overlooked the first part of my post.”
‘itsnotnova’ seems to have overlooked my entire post, which responded to Bart but was directed at his comments, and which falsified his ‘CO2 is evil’ belief system.
Typically, when a memeber of the alarmist contingent cannot refute scientific skeptics, they ignore the facts presented hoping no one will notice. But the root word of ignorance is ignore, and we’re here to help educate the ignorant on the benefits of the scientific method, vs being spoon-fed their misinformation at the anti-science alarmist blogs they frequent.
The only real science is that which is underpinned by the scientific method; using testable, empirical, reproducible experiments, data and observations to arrive at hypotheses, and supported by total transparency of all data, methodologies, metadata and code.
[Now we’ll see if I’ve managed to draw out ‘itsnotnova’ into trying to defend his evidence-free belief that “carbon” is the primary driver of climate change…]
Werner Brozek says:
March 1, 2012 at 4:38 pm
Peridot says:
March 1, 2012 at 11:39
why should a tiny rise in CO2 be caused by ANY emissions now
Are you suggesting that mankind is NOT adding to the CO2 in the atmosphere by driving cars and heating homes over the last hundred years?
Yes. Otherwise the much larger emissions from the northern hemisphere in autumn from dying vegetation would have greatly increased the residual CO2 over the thousands of years this has been happening. Or do our emissions go straight up 8 miles or so and stay there while all other emissions of CO2 don’t do that? As CO2 is heavier than air why would any stay in the atmosphere? I think a physical law called Henry’s Law has something to do with it.
All this still doesn’t answer my oroginal problem: How can tiny emissions of CO2 from humanity cause any warming at all even if it added to the residual CO2 when paleoclimatologists have shown that rises in atmosphere CO2 FOLLOW rises in sea & air temperature but centuries later?
How can a few hundredths of 1% rise in CO2 lead to 1C temp. rise when 11% or 20% concentration of CO2 didn’t lead to a temperature hotter than Venus?
I’d still like an answer – really I would.
Reblogged this on Truth, Lies and In Between and commented:
Excellent.
itsnotnova says:
March 1, 2012 at 8:49 pm
You seemed to have overlooked the first part of my post.
I agree with:
“The heat transfer rate depends on the temperature of both bodies. A warmer lower body (lower ocean) reduces the amount of heat transferring from above.”
“temperature of the deep ocean is in contact with upper layers. Same theory applies”
True, but how much real difference will 0.01 C make, assuming the deep ocean did warm that much?
Peridot says:
March 2, 2012 at 10:04 am
I would have to write a book to answer all questions in detail. I will just give brief answers. First of all, see:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1950/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997/trend
Note the saw-toothed pattern of CO2. So yes, there are seasonal variations that trump the man-made portions for a few months every year. But with rare exceptions, the year to year trend is up. The only reasonable explanation is that this is due to man’s emissions.
No emissions go straight up. All gases diffuse in the same way. Buoyancy does NOT apply to gases. If it did, then we would never find chlorofluorocarbons high up in the stratosphere. Henry’s law deals with gases in liquids.
Carbon dioxide has increased by 39% since 1750 due to man. Some may dispute this and that is fine. I have no problem accepting this. The important thing is that it causes no catastrophic warming.
As for how it causes warming, there are many views at all ends of the spectrum. A number of articles from the past year would need to be read to cover it all.
Werner Brozek says:
March 2, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Peridot says:
March 2, 2012 at 10:04 am
——
No emissions go straight up.
Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, it will not ‘go straight up’ without help.
All gases diffuse in the same way.
How?
Buoyancy does NOT apply to gases.
If they’re lighter than air it does.
“Lighter than air refers to gases that are buoyant in air because they have densities lower than that of air (about 1.2 kg/m3, 1.2 g/L). Some of these gases are used as lifting gases in lighter-than-air aircraft, which include free balloons, moored balloons, and airships, to make the whole craft, on average, lighter than air. (Heavier-than-air aircraft include airplanes, gliders and helicopters.)” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighter_than_air
My bold.
If it did, then we would never find chlorofluorocarbons high up in the stratosphere.
Why not? There is obviously some work being done to put them there.
“Myrrh says:
March 2, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Buoyancy does NOT apply to gases.
If they’re lighter than air it does.”
I tried. I did not succeed with you. I give up.
Myrrh @ March 2, 4:39 pm
I see that Werner has lost patience with you, so let me have a quick try. There is a classic experiment that demonstrates diffusion in gases. (perhaps you could look-up).
Take two containers holding different species of gas(s) and connect them with a tube. Eventually the two containers will spontaneously contain an identical mixture of gases. (BTW more quickly the hotter they are). The reason is that ALL molecules in a gas have isotropic translational energy so that perfect mixing is the inevitable outcome. (they whizz around in all directions, regardless of species).
Of course a hydrogen or helium balloon will be lighter than surrounding air because diffusion is prevented by containment.
If you refuse this explanation, I will ignore any such response.
Myrrh,
Further my comment above, as further explanation, note that all those naughty molecules whizzing around isotropically regardless of species result in impacts on any containment mechanism, and hence a pressure reaction.
Werner Brozek says:
March 2, 2012 at 6:59 pm
“Myrrh says:
March 2, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Buoyancy does NOT apply to gases.
If they’re lighter than air it does.”
I tried. I did not succeed with you. I give up
Bob_FJ says:
Bob_FJ says:
March 2, 2012 at 7:48 pm
Myrrh @ March 2, 4:39 pm
I see that Werner has lost patience with you, so let me have a quick try. There is a classic experiment that demonstrates diffusion in gases. (perhaps you could look-up).
Take two containers holding different species of gas(s) and connect them with a tube. Eventually the two containers will spontaneously contain an identical mixture of gases. (BTW more quickly the hotter they are). The reason is that ALL molecules in a gas have isotropic translational energy so that perfect mixing is the inevitable outcome. (they whizz around in all directions, regardless of species).
Of course a hydrogen or helium balloon will be lighter than surrounding air because diffusion is prevented by containment.
If you refuse this explanation, I will ignore any such response.
March 2, 2012 at 7:59 pm
Myrrh,
Further my comment above, as further explanation, note that all those naughty molecules whizzing around isotropically regardless of species result in impacts on any containment mechanism, and hence a pressure reaction.
=======
Well I’m not giving up just yet..
You’re both making utterly ludicrous statements, you just don’t realise it. The atmosphere is not a vacuum, it is not empty space..
What we have surrounding us is an ocean of fluid gas, weighting a ton per square foot. That’s why you’ve no conception of convection in this, you’ve been taught that the atmosphere is ideal gas empty space with the molecules having no attraction, no volume, no weight because because you have no gravity. They (AGWSF Inc) has taken all this out so you no longer have any idea whatsover of the physical world around you.
You have no concept of gravity! Which means you have no concept of weight, so you have no concept of weight of one gas relative to another.
The atmosphere around you is not empty space with ideal molecules zipping through it at vast speeds! That’s why we have sound..
Get a grip will you.
The reason water evaporates is because it’s lighter than air.
That’s why you don’t understand, can’t even see, that they’ve taken out the whole Water Cycle!
Go on – explain how clouds form!!!
“note that all those naughty molecules whizzing around isotropically regardless of species result in impacts on any containment mechanism, and hence a pressure reaction.”
With your molecules whizzing around at great speed bouncing off each other in elastic collisions with no attraction – where’s the container around us that your ideal gas molecules bounce off to give us pressure?
How do we get rain from your molecules?
You (generic) and your silly jars and quoting ideal gas laws without understanding them. You take them out of context because that’s what you’ve been programmed to do, sound bite fictional physics memes and references to out of context laws and experiments which are totally irrelevant without adequate explanation of what you’re actually seeing. Do us all a favour here, understand what I’m saying and then go and deconstruct these fictional fisics memes they’ve brainwashed into you.
Explain* what you’re really seeing when you pour ink int a glass of water, what you’re really seeing when you open a bottle of scent in a room..
You can’t see the con because you don’t have any idea, no concept at all of the atmosphere around you – it is not empty space, it is not a vacuum, SB does not apply.
– see Steven Wilde
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/12/argo-and-the-ocean-temperature-maximum/#comment-891239
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/12/argo-and-the-ocean-temperature-maximum/#comment-891283
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/12/argo-and-the-ocean-temperature-maximum/#comment-891530
You have therefore no concept of GRAVITY. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THE GAS LAWS because you have no concept whatsover of what our atmosphere of fluid gas is. We have a heavy ocean of fluid gas surrounding us, subject to gravity.
You don’t get the joke when I say “that’s why you can’t hear me”.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion
“While Brownian motion of large molecules is observable under an electron-microscope, small-molecule diffusion can only be probed in carefully controlled experimental conditions. Under normal conditions, molecular diffusion is relevant only on length scales between nanometer and millimeter. On larger length scales, transport in liquids and gases is normally due to another transport phenomenon, convection.
Therefore, some often cited examples of diffusion are wrong: If cologne is sprayed in one place, it will soon be smelled in the entire room, but a simple calculation shows that this can’t be due to diffusion. If ink is dropped in water, one usually observes an inhomogeneous evolution of the spatial distribution, which clearly indicates convection; diffusion dominates only in perfect thermal equilibrium.”
Another example of what I mean by you generic having no sense of scale, extrapolating nanometre to our vast atmosphere – besides you mix up ideal gas/empty space jars and diffusion through these at great elastic speeds of volumeless weightless molecules in an empty atmosphere, you give Brownian motion as an example of diffusion, which requires a fluid medium! You don’t understand convection. You don’t have convection!
You don’t even have evaporation of water your AGWScience Fictional fisics world!
If you can get your heads around this, you’ll see that you’ve been living in a world through the looking glass with Alice, as much impossible fisics as you can imagine before breakfast. Come back. And if those who taught you are still teaching this…
“”””” @Myrrh
Maybe this can help you.
“HEAT” is transported by RADIATION, in exactly the same manner, as the dearly departed are transported to their afterlife, by coffins.
I haven’t heard that one before.. “””””
Well let me try to explain. You like many others claim (and teach) that “Electromagnetic Radiation” is one method (of three) for transporting heat; and I have asserted that is NOT so.
So Myrrh, would you agree that a “grocery shopping cart” is another method of heat transport ?
What’s that you say; “I haven’t heard that one before.”
Well of course it is true. You watch the average grocery shopping cart being wheeled out to the parking lot to somebody’s Pius , or perhaps SUV, and you will find that it is simply full of “heat”, so clearly “heat” is being transported by the shopping cart; by way of the bulk transport of heat containing matter; which therefore must be a form of convection. Well of course that heat is in the form of bread, and steaks, and potatoes, and whisky; even beer. And it is all going home to help stop the purchaser from freezing to death. So s/he will eat/drink the grocery cart contents to activate chemical reactions which will “HEAT” the body of the consumer. We call it “FOOD” but it really is to a large extent simply a stored chemical energy, which was convected out to the SUV by way of the shopping cart.
Now the shopping cart, and the bread loaf or bottle of Scotch are NOT “heat”; they are simply a conveyance mechanism by which “ENERGY” is being conveyed from one place to another; and it is only when that energy is released via chemical reactions, that “HEAT” is produced.
Shopping carts and potatoes are NOT HEAT; they simply are vehicles for the transport of ENERGY which can be used somewhere else TO CREATE “HEAT”.
Likewise Myrrh, ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION is not “HEAT”, it is simply a vehicle for the conveyance of ENERGY, which CAN be converted to “HEAT” somewhere else.
The coffin of the dearly departed is simply a conveyance for the physical remains of the loved one. The passage to the hereafter happens in the minds of the remaining friends and family; that eternal life is NOT what’s in the coffin.
So back to “heat” and “light” without the shouting. Neither one of these “things” is electro-magnetic radiation. Furthermore neither one is transported directly by EM radiation.
Both “heat” and “light”, and “warmth”, and “brightness”, and “cool” are human experienced psycho-physical aspects of the interraction of certain forms of energy with the human body.
A slab of granite, or obsidian glass does not understand the concept of being warm, or frigid, or of seeing things; those are concepts of human experience.
So “light” by definition, IS visible, since it is simply the psycho-physical response of the human eye to certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation; it IS NOT the radiation itself which is merely the shopping cart (or coffin).
Heat, or warmth is the same way; it is something WE feel, but inanimate objects do not. The granite or obsidian can and will respond to EM energy of sufficient intensity levels and wavelengths, but it doesn’t know anything about being cold or toasty.
Now I’m sure that Phil fully understands the difference, and we scientists do tend to throw around these terms flippantly; but we need to remeber that the same words have common everyday usage that lay persons don’t necessarily understand may have very precise scientific meanings so we MUST be careful in our use of words, to avoid confusing people who may not be schooled in the science behiond it.
And Myrrh, if you can get past the trap of believing that EM radiation is synonymous with “heat” and “light”, then you will have no problem in understanding that EM radiation in the visible “light” range of wavelengths, is just as capable (in fact moreso) as wavelengths in the near or far IR range of RAISING THE TEMPERATURE of physical materials, whether it be the oceans or human flesh or granite.
A photon at 10 microns wavelength in the LWIR range; which can be efficiently radiated by a bottle of water at 300 K Temperature has only 1/10th of the energy or a photon at 1 micron wavelength which is efficiently absorbed by water in our flesh. And a blue green photon at 500 nm near the solar spectrum peak (wavelength), has 20 times the energy of that 1o micron photon from the water bottle.
That fraudulent “laboratory” experiment demonstrating a 100 Watt incandescent light bulb, at probably 3,000 kelvin color Temperature, is radiating 10,000 times the power density level of the bottle of water; which bottle is quite representative of the surface of the earth which is LWIR irradiating the atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and moreover it emits plenty of 4 micron and 2.17 micron IR which CO2 also efficiently absorbs,
Bob_FJ says:
March 2, 2012 at 7:48 pm
Regarding your two container experiment, you did not say whether the containers were horizontal or vertical and if I understand Myrrh, that presumable makes all the difference. So I made some assumptions and some number crunching. As I often told my physics students, think of an extreme example and see where that takes you. So let us presume we have two containers that hold a mole of gas at 1.00 atmosphere and 20.000 C. Let us assume each container is 1.0 m high and that the bottom one contains a mole of radon and the top a mole of helium. (The reason I am not assuming the top has a vacuum is that I want to avoid the expansion due to cooling issue.) But for our calculations, we can ignore the helium. So at the start, the center of gravity for the radon is 0.5 m. At the end, it is 1.0 m. So we can calculate the gain in gravitational potential energy of the radon using E = mgh. Then we can calculate the drop in temperature due to this gain in gravitational potential energy using Q = mct. It turns out that in this case, the drop in temperature to raise the mole of radon 0.5 m is 0.005 C, so the final temperature drops from 20.000 to 19.995. The bottom line is that gravity is totally irrelevant here.
George E. Smith; says:
March 3, 2012 at 9:42 am
“”””” @Myrrh
Maybe this can help you.
“HEAT” is transported by RADIATION, in exactly the same manner, as the dearly departed are transported to their afterlife, by coffins.
Myrrh: “I haven’t heard that one before..”
Well let me try to explain. You like many others claim (and teach) that “Electromagnetic Radiation” is one method (of three) for transporting heat; and I have asserted that is NOT so.
And I have reminded you that you are saying something utterly opposed to all traditional, well tested and well understood physics – and as I went through in an earlier post, it is for you to adjust your thinking to this, not for you to imagine it is something different and claim you know better, just because you say so. That is absurd arrogance since you provide no proof that you have superior insight or knowledge, and, it is clearly shown that you don’t have because you claim impossible things from it, and I’ll say it again, without giving any proof.
So Myrrh, would you agree that a “grocery shopping cart” is another method of heat
transport ?
What’s that you say; “I haven’t heard that one before.”
Well of course it is true. You watch the average grocery shopping cart being wheeled out to the parking lot to somebody’s Pius , or perhaps SUV, and you will find that it is simply full of “heat”, so clearly “heat” is being transported by the shopping cart; by way of the bulk transport of heat containing matter; which therefore must be a form of convection. Well of course that heat is in the form of bread, and steaks, and potatoes, and whisky; even beer. And it is all going home to help stop the purchaser from freezing to death. So s/he will eat/drink the grocery cart contents to activate chemical reactions which will “HEAT” the body of the consumer. We call it “FOOD” but it really is to a large extent simply a stored chemical energy, which was convected out to the SUV by way of the shopping cart.
Now the shopping cart, and the bread loaf or bottle of Scotch are NOT “heat”; they are simply a conveyance mechanism by which “ENERGY” is being conveyed from one place to another; and it is only when that energy is released via chemical reactions, that “HEAT” is produced.
Shopping carts and potatoes are NOT HEAT; they simply are vehicles for the transport of ENERGY which can be used somewhere else TO CREATE “HEAT”.
As you say, they are not HEAT. Nor is the shopping cart a conveyor of heat. And you are confusing energies and matter. Moreover, you then have to bring in several more steps before you get heat. Chemical energy isn’t heat energy – for example in photosynthesis, the visible light’s energy is converted to chemical energy, to enable the plant to make sugar out of carbon dioxide and water, visible light is used to enable the process, the chemical energy produced, sugar, is not heat.
It is not until that chemical energy is used for other processes, growth, that heat is produced. The plant then releases that heat by transpiration.
And I do hate these bloody pages that are quite good until they spoil it by saying oxygen is a waste product of photosynthesis! Idiotic. By-product. Plants breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide as we do, it’s essential to them.
Anyway, rant over, the shopping cart is not a conveyor of heat, it is the conveyor of matter which may contain some heat, but which it then plays no part in actually converting to chemical energy. It’s not a very good analogy, even if that is ‘what electromagnetic energy is’, because it’s still
there at the end. It isn’t driving the process, it’s energy isn’t being used for chemical change, and, it isn’t driving the process to convert the chemical energy to heat as a by-product.
Picky, yes.
Likewise Myrrh, ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION is not “HEAT”, it is simply a vehicle for the conveyance of ENERGY, which CAN be converted to “HEAT” somewhere else.
Which is why you don’t understand what heat is. I have never said that electromagnetic radiation is heat. But it is your idea that it is ‘all the same energy’ “which can be converted to heat somewhere else”, and is where you’re going wrong.
As in photosynthesis, the visible light is converting to chemical energy. Chemical energy isn’t heat. It is chemical energy not heat energy, just as neither are mechanical energies.
“it is simply a vehicle for the conveyance of ENERGY”
This, I’ve worked out finally, is where you lose the plot. It IS ENERGY!
It doesn’t convey energy, it is electromagnetic energy. That is what it is.
The coffin of the dearly departed is simply a conveyance for the physical remains of the loved one. The passage to the hereafter happens in the minds of the remaining friends and family; that eternal life is NOT what’s in the coffin.
Matter is eternal, it can neither be created nor destroyed. That is eternal life.
But that’s still not what electromagnetic energy is, it is not ‘something’ carrying “energy”, it is not something carrying “heat” or “light”.
So back to “heat” and “light” without the shouting. Neither one of these “things” is electro-magnetic radiation.
This is where you’ve got it backwards. These “things”, “heat” and “light”, are exactly that, they are electromagnetic radiation.
Furthermore neither one is transported directly by EM radiation.
They are the EM radiation! One is light and one is heat.
Both “heat” and “light”, and “warmth”, and “brightness”, and “cool” are human experienced psycho-physical aspects of the interraction of certain forms of energy with the human body.
Psycho-babble gobbledegook.. Is this an example of post modern science?
A slab of granite, or obsidian glass does not understand the concept of being warm, or frigid, or of seeing things; those are concepts of human experience.
Oh what crap. They will heat up if heated. And, unless you can prove that they are not conscious of this …. 🙂
So “light” by definition, IS visible, since it is simply the psycho-physical response of the human eye to certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation; it IS NOT the radiation itself which is merely the shopping cart (or coffin).
Now listen carefully. Heat and Light are electromagnetic radiation. They are not being transported by this, this is what they are. They are electromagnetic radiation in the form of heat and light. Repeat that several times until it sinks in.
Just as thermal energy and heat are often confused – because they are the same thing.
Heat, or warmth is the same way; it is something WE feel, but inanimate objects do not. The granite or obsidian can and will respond to EM energy of sufficient intensity levels and wavelengths, but it doesn’t know anything about being cold or toasty.
I’ve now tried to start a reply several times… I think I’ll leave this one.. 🙂
Now I’m sure that Phil fully understands the difference, and we scientists do tend to throw around these terms flippantly; but we need to remeber that the same words have common everyday usage that lay persons don’t necessarily understand may have very precise scientific meanings so we MUST be careful in our use of words, to avoid confusing people who may not be schooled in the science behiond it.
Which is why you end up talking absolute gibberish! I suggest you stop thinking of yourself as a ‘scientist’ in this, and go back to studying basics, such as heat capacity and temperature and maybe then you’ll be able to convey the real physics and not this garbled mess.
And Myrrh, if you can get past the trap of believing that EM radiation is synonymous with “heat” and “light”, then you will have no problem in understanding that EM radiation in the visible “light” range of wavelengths, is just as capable (in fact moreso) as wavelengths in the near or far IR range of RAISING THE TEMPERATURE of physical materials, whether it be the oceans or human flesh or granite.
Well, as I have repeated asked whenever such a claim is made – effin’ prove it! Prove that visible blue light as from the Sun heats water. Let me know when you have a cup of it hot enough for a coffee – I’ll come over.
Until then, I prefer the real physical world around me to your Alice through the looking glass nonsense world.
That fraudulent “laboratory” experiment demonstrating a 100 Watt incandescent light bulb, at probably 3,000 kelvin color Temperature, is radiating 10,000 times the power density level of the bottle of water; which bottle is quite representative of the surface of the earth which is LWIR irradiating the atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and moreover it emits plenty of 4 micron and 2.17 micron IR which CO2 also efficiently absorbs,
What fraudulent laboratory experiment? Incandescent lightbulbs generate 5% visible light to 95% heat, thermal infrared. That’s simply a fact about incandescent light bulbs.
There’s a whole range of lightbulbs now, we know so much more about heat and light this side of the mirror, there are lightbulbs which are much cooler, producing a huge amount of visible light and very little thermal infrared. The kind that are used in greenhouses to give visible light to the plants without heating them up… 🙂
Still, thank you for taking the time to explain your thinking, I can understand now why you’re so confused.
Easily solvable. Adjust your brain to thinking of heat and light as different forms of electromagnetic energy and you should slip back into the right gear.
It’s these different forms, such as x-rays, gamma, visible, thermal infrared, that are distinctly different from each other. They have different properties one from the other, they are different sizes, have different effects on the matter they meet. They can share some of their characteristics with other forms, for example ionising and non-ionising UV, and can be categorised by their properties, Heat and Light are two such distinctly different forms. Near Infrared comes into the category of Light, for example. As before, because it is light and not heat, near infrared is used for photography – photo means light.
It’s not the matter they meet that makes ‘energy’ into heat or light or x-rays, it is what they are before they meet matter.
They are different FORMS of electromagnetism. They are distinct entities in their own right and act and react with matter in different ways, because they are different from each other.
Heat from the Sun, is the thermal energy of Sun, is electomagnetism in the form of heat. It is this heat which acts on organic matter, heat heats it up. Light doesn’t do this. They work on completely different levels of process because of their different properties. Heat causes whole molecules to vibrate, light for the most part gets bounced off molecules in refraction and reflection and scattering, or used to drive chemical changes as in photosynthesis.
“Radiation” is one method (of three) for transporting heat; and I have asserted that is NOT so.”
It might help you re-organise your brain around this if you used the correct term. Radiation is one method of transferring heat. It is heat itself, thermal energy, being transferred, not transported. Visible light isn’t thermal energy.
Electromagnetism isn’t a shopping trolley carrying energy, it is energy itself. Which is why you end up with an abandoned shopping trolley – we don’t end up with abandoned electromagnetic waves delivering something you call ‘energy’..
Well you know what they say about leading a horse to water. Perhaps someone else with patience beyond mine; who knows the correct process for watering a 14 day camel for a trip across the desert, can apply the process to Myrrh. I’ll not be with him on that trip.
George E. Smith @ March 4, 8:32 pm
George, I have admired your immense patience and labour with trying to get Myrrh to “see the light”, (pun intended), but let me draw a medical analogy; From my experience with two humans close to me and one of my two Jack Russell dogs, it can be very difficult to “cure” an OCD, or oftentimes impossible. (OCD = Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).
I also deeply admire the medical practitioners who try to affect such cures, although how they cope with their low success rate is a big mystery to me.
Werner Brozek @ March 3, 11:01 am
Werner, hoping that you have not given up in disgust here:
As an engineer, I have sometimes wondered in the past if the quantum theory diffusion effect might break down under situations of low gravitational force and/or very thin gases. However, it seems to me more recently that under such fringe conditions that molecular free path lengths must increase, but whilst the interactions will reduce, the outcome of molecular mixing of different species would be unchanged.
I’ve only glanced through Myrrh’s great wisdoms, but I think that he did not understand or ignored what I meant about “containment mechanisms” for atmospheric pressure. The prime one of course is gravitational, without which we would have no atmosphere. There are of course secondary thingies such as primarily advective weather systems resulting in regional variations in pressure containment. Ho hum!
Bob_FJ;
Few cures = guaranteed employment. The same reason bureaucracies never “solve” the issues they deal with.
>:-}
Bob_FJ says:
March 4, 2012 at 9:53 pm
Werner Brozek @ March 3, 11:01 am
Werner, hoping that you have not given up in disgust here:
As an engineer, I have sometimes wondered in the past if the quantum theory diffusion effect might break down under situations of low gravitational force and/or very thin gases. However, it seems to me more recently that under such fringe conditions that molecular free path lengths must increase, but whilst the interactions will reduce, the outcome of molecular mixing of different species would be unchanged.
I’ve only glanced through Myrrh’s great wisdoms, but I think that he did not understand or ignored what I meant about “containment mechanisms” for atmospheric pressure. The prime one of course is gravitational, without which we would have no atmosphere. There are of course secondary thingies such as primarily advective weather systems resulting in regional variations in pressure containment. Ho hum!
Ho hum, indeed. You review books without reading them?
The Werner Brozek’s of this argument don’t have gravity.
WARMISTS have instead, EMPTY SPACE. That’s why they use their SB vacuum to calculate radiation, because they don’t have an atmosphere. I’ll repeat that.
Warmists don’t have an atmosphere.
That’s why they have NO CONVECTION, NO WATER CYCLE! They have NO WIND! They have, instead of the heavy fluid gaseous ocean above us, EMPTY SPACE!
THEY DON’T HAVE AN ATMOSPHERE BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE GRAVITY!
THEY DON’T HAVE GRAVITY BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAVE REAL GASES, THEY LIVE IN AN IMAGINARY IDEAL GAS WORLD!
YOU PEOPLE REALLY PISS ME OFF.
Why don’t they have gravity? They don’t have gravity because they have a basic ideal gas world in a container. That’s all they know. They don’t know the difference between ideal and real because they don’t have real gases! That’s why they don’t know what I’m talking about.
You won’t understand my gibe about warmists having no sound in their world, because you don’t know what I’m talking about.
For warmists, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide are the basic description of the imaginary ideal gas – they take literally that molecules have no volume, no weight because no gravity, no interactions, no attractions..
That’s why their supermolecule carbon dioxide can stay up in their atmosphere for hundreds and thousands of years accumulating defying gravity! They have no water cycle because they have no rain, they have no rain because “Buoyancy does NOT apply to gases” as Werner has so adamantly said.
So they have no water evaporating because lighter than air, they have no carbon dioxide’s and water’s irresistable attraction for each other creating carbonic acid and coming down as rain, all pure clean rain is carbonic acid. They have no heavier than air carbon dioxide displacing air to come down to the ground unless work is being done to change that, because of all the above imaginary fisics!
Warmists live in the Alice through the looking glass land, THEY HAVE CREATED a WHOLE NEW FICTIONAL FISICS OF THEIR IMAGINARY EARTH!
They have no heat capacity because they have no effin’ molecules! They have hard dots zipping through empty space. They have no lapse rate because they have no gravity! Their ‘gravity’ is pressure from the side of the container. Their container is their imagined glass all around the Earth through which the heat of the Sun can’t penetrate! Hence their claim that shortwave heats their Earth’s land and oceans! And they seriously defend this nonsense.
You don’t know how utterly stupid warmist fisics if you haven’t bothered to read what I’ve been saying..
..THEY DON’T KNOW HOW UTTERLY ABSURD THEIR FISICS!
Warmists and warmists pretending to be sceptics mix up everything, giving properties of one thing to another, like giving the Sun’s invisible heat thermal infrared to visible shortwave. There is no internal consistency in the imaginary fisics, because they can imagine whatever impossible thing they want.
Their ideal gas molecules zip through their empty space atmosphere at vast speeds thoroughly mixing by ideal gas diffusion or, they mix by Brownian motion! They don’t have a fluid gas medium for Brownian motion! Do they care? They don’t even understand it to care. So they extrapolate from nanometre scale Brownian motion in a fluid to the whole of their empty vacuum space ideal gas gravity less atmosphere! Stupid isn’t a strong enough word for this.
Warmists believe it because they have been brainwashed through the education system into believing this collection of mix and make up properties and out of context law memes is real world physics, they show ‘experiments’ to prove it.. A scent bottle opened in a class room proves it! They have no convection, because they have no volume, because they have no gravity, because they have no…
Their molecules of gas HAVE NO PROPERTIES. That’s why they don’t understand electromagnetic waves – they don’t have properties in anything. These have all been taken out of their comic cartoon KT97 and variations energy budget.
Are the caps working? Are you paying attention to what I’m saying here?
Warmists have a completely fictional fisics which begins with their fictional ideal gas in an empty space container scenario.
And if you agree with Werner that “gases have no buoyancy” then you are no more an engineer than they are scientists. Imaginary scientists in an imaginary world.
That’s what is digusting here. You lot passing yourselves off as real world scientists and fuelling the take over of our personal freedoms by the puppet masters who created these fictional fisics memes for you. And you’re not scientists enough to see that.
Yet.
Myrrh says:
February 29, 2012 at 6:24 am
“Test #2 I have a stream of photons, each having a wavelength of 1.0 microns; now you would describe those 1.0 micron photons as “heat”.”
No I wouldn’t! That is a Light energy, not a Heat energy. Heat energy begins in mid infrared, only mid and longwave infrared are thermal.
;———————————————————————————————————————
Assuming you understand the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, i.e., heat is energy, then the phrase “Heat energy” is internally redundant.
Also, from the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, it follows that heat is not equal to temperature.
Suppose I place a dead fish inside a metal box, and bombard it for 4 minutes with 700 Watts of 133,000 micron (or 133 mm ) electromagnetic radiation, would the temperature of the fish rise?
Note, you might already have one of these boxes in your home – it’s called a microwave oven.
Agile Aspect says:
March 5, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Myrrh says:
February 29, 2012 at 6:24 am
“Test #2 I have a stream of photons, each having a wavelength of 1.0 microns; now you would describe those 1.0 micron photons as “heat”.”
No I wouldn’t! That is a Light energy, not a Heat energy. Heat energy begins in mid infrared, only mid and longwave infrared are thermal.
;———————————————————————————————————————
Assuming you understand the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, i.e., heat is energy, then the phrase “Heat energy” is internally redundant.
Assuming you’re making some stab at understanding English since it’s clear you don’t understand the first law of thermodynamics, which is of heat, thermo – so is light energy, heat isn’t light.
Also, from the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, it follows that heat is not equal to temperature.
I’ve never said it was, so why bring it in here?
Suppose I place a dead fish inside a metal box, and bombard it for 4 minutes with 700 Watts of 133,000 micron (or 133 mm ) electromagnetic radiation, would the temperature of the fish rise?
Note, you might already have one of these boxes in your home – it’s called a microwave oven.
Why not give an example of what was actually being discussed? Try cooking your fish with your remote control, let us know when it’s ready to eat..
Myrrh says:
March 1, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Phil. says:
March 1, 2012 at 11:26 am
Myrrh says:
February 29, 2012 at 8:02 pm
They can’t seem to stop thinking of Light as heat.
“That’s because it is! When I used green (532nm) light in my lab Laser Induced Incandescence experiment I heated soot particles to about 4000ºC.”
Yeah right, the Sun’s a laser. We’re just imagining we’re here, the Earth was burned to a crisp 4.5 billion years ago.
You seem to have some strange misconceptions as to what a laser is, in the experiment I described it’s just a stream of photons exactly at the same wavelength, i.e. 532nm in the green.
So pure green light focussed on black soot particles raised the temperature of them to 4000ºC, no mystical properties, just light (in this case visible) transferring energy. Something you mistakenly believe is impossible.
Yes, believe David Evans, an Electrical Engineer w/o a single peer-reviewed paper in the field of climate science. His only peer-reviewed and published paper was in 1987 and NOT in the field of climate science. This “article” by Evans was brought to you by the Mises Institute. Please disregard.
Pierre March 5, 6:32 pm
Pierre, I was a bit puzzled by what seems to be an attack on Dr. Evans scientific expertise etc, so I looked-up your Mises Institute reference, and they say of him in the same article:
I don’t get it, what’s your gripe?
Did you find any errors in his data or logic?
BTW, the article, which is a quick summary was not first published by Mises Institute since it appeared on Jo Nova’s site about a month earlier: http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/
Phil. says:
March 5, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Myrrh says:
March 1, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Phil. says:
March 1, 2012 at 11:26 am
Myrrh says:
February 29, 2012 at 8:02 pm
They can’t seem to stop thinking of Light as heat.
“That’s because it is! When I used green (532nm) light in my lab Laser Induced Incandescence experiment I heated soot particles to about 4000ºC.”
Yeah right, the Sun’s a laser. We’re just imagining we’re here, the Earth was burned to a crisp 4.5 billion years ago.
You seem to have some strange misconceptions as to what a laser is, in the experiment I described it’s just a stream of photons exactly at the same wavelength, i.e. 532nm in the green.
So pure green light focussed on black soot particles raised the temperature of them to 4000ºC, no mystical properties, just light (in this case visible) transferring energy. Something you mistakenly believe is impossible.
======
It really doesn’t matter how often I say “from the Sun”? Your great argument is provide an artificially enhanced light and claim (note, claim, I’ve asked you before to provide details, and you haven’t, not of the experiment, not the laser, sod all in fact), you always avoid it. And if I recall, you couldn’t tell the difference between a thermal measuring device and one measuring light.
You’ve been pissing me off for a long time.
It is still not heat. It is light, it is certainly intensified light. Visible light does not heat up something by moving the molecules into vibration, these work on an electonic transition scale, tiny, on the DNA level. You can stare up at the blue sky all day long, and your eyes won’t get burned. You see blue because it reflecting off the electrons of the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen, that’s why it’s called visible light, because you can see it. Would you do that with a laser? What’s the comparison between the visible light we get direct from the Sun and visible artificially enhanced laser of unknown origin?
How does it compare with near infrared light of your remote control?
See the NASA page – near infrared is light not heat, it is not hot.
Let us know when when you have managed to heat a cup of water with blue visible light as from the Sun.
Because until you do you’re just w*nk*ng off here. And it’s not a pretty sight..
Something that I’ve become interested in is the healing properties of light and heat radiation. UV is long known for it microbe zapping abilities and used in water purification, but much more, though not enough I think, has been done looking at how light can actually heal externally and internally. Blue light is excellent at zapping gum infections, for example, killing the bacteria within seconds. Pushed for time to find examples, but here’s a page:
http://www.photobiology.com/reviews/bunsen/index.htm
from which: ” Laser sources used in clinical routine give a nice example of the contrasting consequences that result from exposure to very high- and very low-intensity visible radiation. The importance of time and intensity-dependence of biological responses upon exposure to even low doses of visible radiation becomes evident when the effects of pulsed lasers used for selective photothermolysis, e.g. in the treatment of vascular skin lesions, and lasers applied for the enhancement of wound healing are compared (Fig.ure 54). While in the former case low doses between 6 and 8 J/cm² of 535 nm light are emitted within milli- or microseconds, in the latter comparable doses of red light (632.8nm) are delivered over periods of minutes. On the one hand, selective destruction of blood vessels is achieved [26](25), whereas on the other hand formation of new capillaries can be induced. [27-29] (26-28)”
And: http://heelspurs.com/led.html
from which: “Conditions and Injuries Helped by LEDs
Conditions known to be helped by LED light therapy
osteoarthritis (full-body Sun exposure is best, without sunscreen)
sports injuries such as knee, ankle, shoulder, etc
burns, scrapes, and pain relief from cuts
ulcers (on skin, not in stomach)
macular degeneration (see safety)
laser burns to the retina (see safety)
My bold..
For interest:
http://www.murder.demon.co.uk/
http://laser.physics.sunysb.edu/~tanya/report2/
Anyway, if you can’t tell the difference by now between light and heat radiation you could be missing out benefitting from the knowledge..
And, it’s still junk science in the KT97 AGWScience Fiction energy budget – visible light from the Sun is not capable of heating land and oceans as claimed in this, and, if you still think gases don’t have buoyancy then you’re living in a fantasy world, not the real world around you. As an antidote I suggest you bring back the Water Cycle and real gases with volume, etc., any good site on how weather works, it will give you a real atmosphere to fill your empty space.
Phil. @ March 5, 5:50 pm (Re: Myrth @ March 1, 3:13 pm)
From long experience, I usually only glance through Myrrh’s more recent long posts, although occasionally if I’m levitated to a bit of “stand-up-comedy”, I may read a bit. Out of that somewhere above, I recall that he/she asserts that ONLY mid and far infrared is thermal, so that most of the solar spectrum spread of thermal energy including near infrared of undefined division somehow does a vanishing trick.
Long ago, before I concluded that he/she may suffer from an OCD medical condition, I asked him/her to draw a vertical division line on your typical solar spectrum graph upon which, according to his unique “fisics”, that EMR of the longer wavelengths is thermal, but the shorter wavelengths on the other side were not. He did not respond to that and a bunch of other things, or at best obfuscated.
This comedy has been going on for a long time, and perhaps it is beyond a joke to many realists here.
Myrrh says:
March 5, 2012 at 4:54 pm
Try cooking your fish with your remote control, let us know when it’s ready to eat..
;———————————————————————–
It’s not clear you understand heat or temperature.
My remote uses an IR LED which has a bandwidth of 900 nm to 1.05 microns, peaks at 940 nm with a power of 20 mW.
The weight of the fish is 0.5 kilograms.
Assume the specific heat capacity of the fish is approximately equal to the specific heat capacity of water, namely, 4.1813 kJ/(kg*kelvin).
The specific heat capacity of dry air is 1.00 kJ/(kg*kelvin), the size of the box is 11.9 x 10^-3 m^3, and the weight of a cubic meter of dry air is 1.21 kg/m^3.
The temperature inside the metal box is 293 kelvin and the pressure is 101.325 kPa (or STP.)
Define cooking to be a temperature of 336 kelvin for at least 600 seconds.
Assume no heat leaks from the box.
How long will it take?
[snip – angry rant with liberal use of cuss words – calm down and resubmit – Anthony]
ENOUGH OF THE PREVARICATION
Prove that Visible light from the Sun heats the oceans as per the junk fictional fisics energy budget of the AGWScience Fiction puppet masters.
Until you try you won’t be able to tell the difference between heat and light, or understand temperature.
Water is a transparent medium for visible light. It does not absorb it.
To remind: your fictional world with its atmosphere of empty space of ideal gas molecules, in which clouds magically appear because your gases aren’t buoyant in air, still claims to have the same proportion surface ocean and land, and claims that shortwave converts these directly to heat, and, claims that the heat from the Sun, the thermal infrared which is the real Sun’s thermal energy on the move to us at the speed of electromagnetic waves, doesn’t reach Earth’s surface and so doesn’t heat land and oceans.
In the real world the thermal energy, heat, direct from the Sun, does reach the surface, and this is what heats up water by vibrational resonance of the molecules of water in the oceans and in us, we are a large proportion water.
This thermal energy of the real Sun on the move to us is thermal infrared, it is the Sun’s heat, it is invisible.
We know it is thermal energy because thermal energy is heat and we feel it as heat because it penetrates our bodies and warms us up*.
Shortwave light direct from the Sun in the real world works on electronic transition level, it is neither capable of moving whole molecules of water into vibrational resonance nor of being absorbed by them.
Water in the real world is a transparent medium for shortwave.
Which means that shortwave are transmitted through without being absorbed.
Which means shortwave beam light, direct from the Sun, has no way of heating the water of the oceans in the real world.
Prove that shortwave beam Light from the Sun is capable of heating the oceans in the real world – or admit it doesn’t or stop saying it does.
Your claim, you prove it.
This nonsensical fisics, for that is what it truly is as I’ve shown, claims that visible light is what heats us. Because you can’t tell the difference between heat and light or do not make the proper distinction between heat and light you continue to regurgitate this. Why, when I’ve given enough information from traditional physics that would give any one thinking himself a scientist pause to stop and think and investigate for himself? Instead you’re arguing as all warmists do, with ad hom and claims to your personal supposed scientific authority – haven’t any of you noticed that none of you provide the simple explanations and figures that I’ve been asking for? Why not if this is real physics and not the junk I say it is as shown from the traditional physics I’ve given?
This proof should be readily available, books and books of it, why hasn’t any of this been produced in the decades these claims have been made? Instead you scrabble around trying to find some way of justifying it, and you know for yourselves, you – can’t – find – anything. You can’t show traditional physics wrong in this.
An incandescent bulb radiates 95% heat, invisible thermal infrared, and 5% visible light.
Heat heats us up, light doesn’t.
You claim that the 5% visible light from the incandescent bulb is what we feel as heat because you claim that visible converts matter to heat**.
You either know how utterly ridiculous this claim and are pushing it anyway, or you have been completely taken in by this fictional fisics, the deliberate creation to promote the AGW scare.
I don’t care which category you fall into, but if you’re not in the first, then you should be reading this exchange with due attention. You try and decide who is talking real world physics and who is simply repeating the fictional memes and who is knowingly talking bs with the deliberate intention to confuse. And try not to get distracted..
——————–
* NASA: “Far infrared waves are thermal. In other words, we experience this type of infrared radiation every day in the form of heat! The heat that we feel from sunlight, a fire, a radiator or a warm sidewalk is infrared.”
“Shorter, near infrared waves are not hot at all – in fact you cannot even feel them. These shorter wavelengths are the ones used by your TV’s remote control.”
&
http://thermalenergy.org/heattransfer.php
Heat Transfer
“Thermal energy and heat are often confused. Rightly so because they are physically the same thing . Heat is always the thermal energy of some system. Using the word heat helps physicists to make a distinction relative to the system they are talking about.”
&
http://thermalenergy.org/
Thermal Energy Explained
**It is simply a physical fact in the real world that an incandescent light bulb radiates 95% heat, which is the invisible thermal infrared, and 5% visible light.
Ira Glickstein, PhD says:
March 1, 2011 at 6:11 am
Myrrh says:
February 28, 2011 at 4:31 pm
I’m really at a loss to understand any of this. How on earth does Visible light and near short wave heat the Earth?
“Myrrh, you really need to get outside more and sit in the Sunshine and feel the warmth! That is how visible and near-visible (“shortwave”) light warms the Earth.
If you don’t or cannot get outside, turn on an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb and hold your hand near it (not too close, you will get burned). Feel the heat? That is shortwave light because the filament is heated to temperatures similar to the Sun’ surface. You can tell it is shortwave because you can see the light.”
——————–
Talking nonsense doesn’t miraculously become real physics just because someone is a PhD.
Now, back to the flip side of the AGWScience Fiction claim: that the atmosphere is transparent to shortwave and this passes through without heating the atmosphere.
The real gas heavy volume of fluid gas atmosphere* above us weighing a ton on our shoulders and kept in place by gravity is not a transparent medium for visible light in our real world; the electrons of the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen absorb it and reflect/scatter it back out, as explained previously.
How much does the visible light in AGW’s comic cartoon energy budget heat the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, since you claim that absorption of visible light converts matter to heat?
Your claim, you prove it.
———————–
*The heavy ocean of real gas which is the real atmosphere of our world, is not empty space, it is not a vacuum, SB does not apply.
To understand the difference between these real gas molecules, which have real volume and weight etc., and the imaginary construct ideal gas molecules claimed for the empty atmosphere AGWSF fisics – where ideal gas molecules without volume or attraction or weight (which is gravity) zip around diffusing at great speeds through empty space by bouncing off each other to ‘mix thoroughly’, so giving the base of the fictional energy budget of radiation only and no convection etc. – simply learn how sound travels in the real atmosphere.
http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/01/sound-waves.html HOW SOUND TRAVELS
Sound cannot travel in empty space.
I hope you can hear me.
————————
Prove that Visible light from the Sun heats the oceans as per the junk fictional fisics of the AGWSF puppet masters.
Prove that shortwave beam Light from the Sun is capable of heating the oceans in the real world – or admit it doesn’t, or stop saying it does.
How much does the visible light in the comic cartoon energy budget KT97etc. heat the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, since you claim that absorption of visible light converts matter to heat?
Your claims, you prove them.
===
Myrrh says:
March 6, 2012 at 2:57 pm
Water is a transparent medium for visible light. It does not absorb it.
;——————————————————————————————————————
Why is water blue?
Agile Aspect says:
March 6, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Myrrh says:
March 6, 2012 at 2:57 pm
Water is a transparent medium for visible light. It does not absorb it.
;——————————————————————————————————————
Why is water blue?
==
Refraction, see Newton for prisms and good explanation on the optic’s page I linked to above for transmission through transparent media, and, see optics generally for such things as light perception and difference in speed of colours slowed down by air and water and colour mixing and pigmentation and see transparency and translucency link for electronic transitions, etc.
Similar to why we have blue sky, except that water is transparent medium for visible so visible light transmitted through without being absorbed, refraction, and the atmosphere isn’t, reflection/scattering. In the atmosphere the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen do absorb visible light as they reflect/scatter it. Which is where my question comes in.
Can you answer it?
The AGW claim is that ‘visible energy is absorbed and converts to heat lands and ocean’ – so basic physics, visible light is absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere in reflection/scattering so must be heating them up.
(Though it claims the atmosphere is a transparent medium for visible and isn’t absorbed, it is clearly not because it takes absorption to reflect/scatter.)
How much is visible light heating up the atmosphere in the AGWSF energy budget?
Myrrh says:
March 5, 2012 at 8:29 pm
Phil. says:
March 5, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Myrrh says:
March 1, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Phil. says:
March 1, 2012 at 11:26 am
Myrrh says:
February 29, 2012 at 8:02 pm
They can’t seem to stop thinking of Light as heat.
“That’s because it is! When I used green (532nm) light in my lab Laser Induced Incandescence experiment I heated soot particles to about 4000ºC.”
Yeah right, the Sun’s a laser. We’re just imagining we’re here, the Earth was burned to a crisp 4.5 billion years ago.
“You seem to have some strange misconceptions as to what a laser is, in the experiment I described it’s just a stream of photons exactly at the same wavelength, i.e. 532nm in the green.
So pure green light focussed on black soot particles raised the temperature of them to 4000ºC, no mystical properties, just light (in this case visible) transferring energy. Something you mistakenly believe is impossible.”
======
It really doesn’t matter how often I say “from the Sun”?
No it doesn’t, there’s no difference between 532nm photons emitted from the sun and those from the Nd:YAG laser, those from the laser are following paths which are more parallel and therefore are capable of being more tightly focussed than those from the sun, but the individual photons are indistinguishable.
Your great argument is provide an artificially enhanced light and claim (note, claim, I’ve asked you before to provide details, and you haven’t, not of the experiment, not the laser, sod all in fact), you always avoid it.
The light isn’t ‘artificially enhanced’, apparently you’re incapable of googling Laser Induced Incandescence? Lynn Melton’s original paper is a good place to start:
Melton, L.A., ” Soot Diagnostics Based on Laser Heating,” Appl. Opt., 23, 2201-2208, (1984).
I used basically the same technique as John Dec:
Dec, J., “Soot Distribution in a D.I. Diesel Engine Using 2-D Imaging of Laser-induced Incandescence, Elastic Scattering, and Flame Luminosity,” SAE Technical Paper 920115, 1992, doi:10.4271/920115.
And if I recall, you couldn’t tell the difference between a thermal measuring device and one measuring light.
No, that was your failure to understand that the most commonly used measuring devices for measuring light in the lab. do so by measuring the heat absorbed! The following describes how they work contrary to your ‘theory of light and heat’. The Scientech device is one of the most commonly used, you’ll notice it has a response curve from 0.2μm in the UV to 30μm in the IR, including the visible
http://www.scientech-inc.com/laserpowernotes.phtml
You’ve been pissing me off for a long time.
The feeling is mutual, for the most part I ignore the rubbish you post, but just in case someone might think that you actually have a clue about the subject I feel obliged to set the record straight. You’re clearly a lost cause since you’ve never shown the slightest indication of listening to anyone, in fact you go on abusive rants as you have here.
It is still not heat. It is light, it is certainly intensified light. Visible light does not heat up something by moving the molecules into vibration, these work on an electonic transition scale, tiny, on the DNA level.
More indications of your ignorance, electronic transitions are larger than vibrational and rotational transitions, it is the IR photons that are ‘tiny’!
You can stare up at the blue sky all day long, and your eyes won’t get burned.
Such a statement is dangerous and should carry a government health warning! Retinal damage is caused by visible light since UV and IR don’t make it to the retina. In fact to trace the path of UV or IR laser beams in the lab. I have to use fluorescent cards to detect them.
You see blue because it reflecting off the electrons of the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen, that’s why it’s called visible light, because you can see it. Would you do that with a laser? What’s the comparison between the visible light we get direct from the Sun and visible artificially enhanced laser of unknown origin?
How does it compare with near infrared light of your remote control?
See the NASA page – near infrared is light not heat, it is not hot.
Phil. says:
March 7, 2012 at 9:55 am
Myrrh: “It is still not heat. It is light, it is certainly intensified light. Visible light does not heat up something by moving the molecules into vibration, these work on an electonic transition scale, tiny, on the DNA level.”
More indications of your ignorance, electronic transitions are larger than vibrational and rotational transitions, it is the IR photons that are ‘tiny’!
LOL!
Myrrh: “You can stare up at the blue sky all day long, and your eyes won’t get burned.”
Such a statement is dangerous and should carry a government health warning! Retinal damage is caused by visible light since UV and IR don’t make it to the retina. In fact to trace the path of UV or IR laser beams in the lab. I have to use fluorescent cards to detect them.
And that!
I’m spoiled for choice, here we’re back to the ‘heat we feel from an incandescent lightbulb is from visible.. ‘
Well Phil, proof positive for anyone reading this if they investigate for themselves, that you certainly can’t be taken seriously in any science you’re giving.
So, how much is visible light heating the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, as their electrons absorb visible?
The last part of my preceding post which starts with “You see blue…..” is not mine, it’s Myrrh’s.
Myrrh says:
March 7, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Phil. says:
March 7, 2012 at 9:55 am
Myrrh: “It is still not heat. It is light, it is certainly intensified light. Visible light does not heat up something by moving the molecules into vibration, these work on an electonic transition scale, tiny, on the DNA level.”
“More indications of your ignorance, electronic transitions are larger than vibrational and rotational transitions, it is the IR photons that are ‘tiny’!”
LOL!
Not sure what you’re laughing at?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Franck-Condon-diagram.png/325px-Franck-Condon-diagram.png
Note the larger energy difference between the two electronic states, E0 and E1, when compared with the smaller differences between successive vibrational levels, v=0,1,2,……
Myrrh: “You can stare up at the blue sky all day long, and your eyes won’t get burned.”
Such a statement is dangerous and should carry a government health warning! Retinal damage is caused by visible light since UV and IR don’t make it to the retina. In fact to trace the path of UV or IR laser beams in the lab. I have to use fluorescent cards to detect them.
And that!
From advice given by NASA for eye safety when viewing eclipses:
“Exposure of the retina to intense visible light causes damage to its light-sensitive rod and cone cells. The light triggers a series of complex chemical reactions within the cells which damages their ability to respond to a visual stimulus, and in extreme cases, can destroy them. The result is a loss of visual function which may be either temporary or permanent, depending on the severity of the damage. When a person looks repeatedly or for a long time at the Sun without proper protection for the eyes, this photochemical retinal damage may be accompanied by a thermal injury – the high level of visible and near-infrared radiation causes heating that literally cooks the exposed tissue. This thermal injury or photocoagulation destroys the rods and cones, creating a small blind area.”
“Even when 99% of the Sun’s surface (the photosphere) is obscured during the partial phases of a solar eclipse, the remaining crescent Sun is still intense enough to cause a retinal burn, even though illumination levels are comparable to twilight”
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/safety2.html
I’m spoiled for choice, here we’re back to the ‘heat we feel from an incandescent lightbulb is from visible.. ‘
Really where do you get that from?
Well Phil, proof positive for anyone reading this if they investigate for themselves, that you certainly can’t be taken seriously in any science you’re giving.
Only if they suffer from the same delusions as you do. The rest will realize that you’re really out of touch (most know that anyway, see above).
So, how much is visible light heating the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, as their electrons absorb visible?
Not much since their absorption coefficients in the visible are so small, several orders of magnitude less than CO2 in the solar spectrum. The electronic transitions in O2 and N2 are in the UV, the Schumann-Runge and Vegard—Kaplan band systems.
Phil. @ March 7, 2:33 pm
Hi Phil, I admire your persistence in trying to explain stuff to Myrth, but it seems to me from long term observation of his/her comedy routine, (with suspicions of trolling), that he/she is apparently unable to comprehend the relevant well established physics. It seems to me that his/her main dogma is that he/she thinks water is transparent to visible light, and thus visible cannot be absorbed by water. However, there is much evidence that whilst visible EMR is much less absorbent in water than UV & IR by big orders of magnitude, it is still not transparent. FOR INSTANCE, see the following link, but note the differences in scale ranges, particularly in fig. 3.
http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~jones/es151/gallery/images/absorp_water.html
But, of course, seawater which covers over 70% of the surface contains all sorts of other stuff, and mysteriously it generally gets dark down there, depending on regional turbidity at around 100m. I’ve yet to see an elaboration from Myrrh as to why/how it gets dark down there!
Further my post just above, to be fair, there is SOME photosynthesis stuff going on in phytoplankton. (but far from all embracing, or dubious in net outcome to the argument)
Myrrh says:
March 7, 2012 at 12:24 am
Why is water blue?
==
Refraction, see Newton for prisms and good explanation on the optic’s page I linked to above for transmission through transparent media, and, see o
ptics generally for such things as light perception and difference in speed of colours slowed down by air and water and colour mixing and pigmentat
ion and see transparency and translucency link for electronic transitions, etc.
;—————————————————————————–
Water appears blue because water is absorbing visible light (assumed to be white) at frequencies which are the color complements of the blue light you’re viewing.
This is sometimes referred to as “eye ball” spectroscopy.
This doesn’t say anything about the absorption efficiency or the intensity of the light.
Glancing at the color complement chart, it appears water is absorbing visible light in the orange and red bandwidths. It could be absorbing in the yellow too.
In any case, the statement “Water is a transparent medium for visible light. It does not absorb it” is false.
The sky is blue because of the elastic scattering of blue light off of molecules in the atmosphere.
The intensity of the scattering goes like 1/wavelength^4 for molecules less 1/10 the wavelength of the light – which ends up favoring blue light.
For the electronic transitions of the nitrogen molecules, try this
http://www.nist.gov/data/PDFfiles/jpcrdM3.pdf
Or what is the color complement of green?
Opps – the last sentence in the last post, namely
Or what is the color complement of green?
shouldn’t be there.
I had intended to remove it before posting.
The answer is purple with blue side bands – or the absorption of visible light by chlorophyll.
@Smokey, Thanks you very much for your invitation but no I wont be drawn out and side-tracked by other arguments. I’ve stated that David Evans fails to include deeper heat when making model comparisons. No one here has been able to defend his actions and provide a scientific basis for why he “hides the heat”.
Good luck with your quest.
itsnotnova says:
“…I wont be drawn out and side-tracked by other arguments.”
My comments originate from a skeptical perspective, which is the topic of Dr Evans’ post. Therefore, a translation of your comment: ‘I can’t refute what you posted, so it’s time to skedaddle’. [I am supposing that you were responding to my comment @March 1, 2012 at 7:13 pm, although you didn’t make that very clear.]
The conjecture that CO2 is causing runaway global warming has been decisively falsified: there has been no acceleration of the [very mild] natural warming trend since the LIA. If there is any dispute in the matter, ‘itsnotnova’ must provide empirical, testable evidence, per the scientific method, showing that the rising temperature trend since the 1600’s is accelerating beyond its past parameters. I have shown that it is not.
As Dr Evans says: who are you going to believe, the government scientists, or the data?
Smokey @ March 8, 10:41 am
Smokey, your graph is certainly inconvenient data to be shunned by the CAGW crowd. In my view, (and probably that of Bart above; 60-year cycle), it would be even better if it had the closest fit sinusoidal trend around the linear trend.
The earliest reference to this that I know of was back in 2003 by a couple of Russians, and it was a remarkably good model projection to this day. See:
http://bobfjones.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/linear-trends-on-noisy-data/
Bob_FJ says:
March 7, 2012 at 10:30 pm
Phil. @ March 7, 2:33 pm
Hi Phil, I admire your persistence in trying to explain stuff to Myrth, but it seems to me from long term observation of his/her comedy routine, (with suspicions of trolling), that he/she is apparently unable to comprehend the relevant well established physics.
Agreed, but you don’t want him to continually post his nonsense without rebuttal otherwise readers might think he’s right.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-914539
Moderator’s Note: Myrrh, a little commentary, rather than just a link, would be good. -REP
This whole Masters or Doctoral Thesis or whatever you want to call it is destroyed by one thing.
RUNAWAY ARCTIC METHANE.
That means you cannot stipulate or postulate that the projected mean temps for future oceans are wrong or over estimated. The results of whats going to happen in the future are in the deep oceanic fossil record. At the risk of oversimplification, you may want to investigate this and try to avoid it if you want; it adds significant weight in off balance in favor of your argument. As a strong supporter of science, you should add this to your lexicon and counter it.
http://youtu.be/oHqKxWvcBdg
And if you might want to look into THE DAY THE OCEANS BOILED.