Cloud cover is a major forcing, and uncertain, say researchers from the Hebrew University, US and Australia
Jerusalem, Jan. 26, 2014 – The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence? That is an issue on which science is making progress, but the answers are still far from exact, say researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the US and Australia who have studied the issue and whose work which has just appeared in the journal Science.
Indeed, one could say that the picture is a “cloudy” one, since the determination of the greenhouse gas effect involves multifaceted interactions with cloud cover.
To some extent, aerosols –- particles that float in the air caused by dust or pollution, including greenhouse gases – counteract part of the harming effects of climate warming by increasing the amount of sunlight reflected from clouds back into space. However, the ways in which these aerosols affect climate through their interaction with clouds are complex and incompletely captured by climate models, say the researchers. As a result, the radiative forcing (that is, the disturbance to the earth’s “energy budget” from the sun) caused by human activities is highly uncertain, making it difficult to predict the extent of global warming.
And while advances have led to a more detailed understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions and their effects on climate, further progress is hampered by limited observational capabilities and coarse climate models, says Prof. Daniel Rosenfeld of the Fredy and Nadine Herrmann Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of the article in Science. Rosenfeld wrote this article in cooperation with Dr. Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Dr. Robert Wood of the University of Washington, Seattle, and Dr. Leo Donner of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. .
Their recent studies have revealed a much more complicated picture of aerosol-cloud interactions than considered previously. Depending on the meteorological circumstances, aerosols can have dramatic effects of either increasing or decreasing the cloud sun-deflecting effect, the researchers say. Furthermore, little is known about the unperturbed aerosol level that existed in the preindustrial era. This reference level is very important for estimating the radiative forcing from aerosols.
Also needing further clarification is the response of the cloud cover and organization to the loss of water by rainfall. Understanding of the formation of ice and its interactions with liquid droplets is even more limited, mainly due to poor ability to measure the ice-nucleating activity of aerosols and the subsequent ice-forming processes in clouds.
Explicit computer simulations of these processes even at the scale of a whole cloud or multi-cloud system, let alone that of the planet, require hundreds of hours on the most powerful computers available. Therefore, a sufficiently accurate simulation of these processes at a global scale is still impractical.
Recently, however, researchers have been able to create groundbreaking simulations in which models were formulated presenting simplified schemes of cloud-aerosol interactions, This approach offers the potential for model runs that resolve clouds on a global scale for time scales up to several years, but climate simulations on a scale of a century are still not feasible. The model is also too coarse to resolve many of the fundamental aerosol-cloud processes at the scales on which they actually occur. Improved observational tests are essential for validating the results of simulations and ensuring that modeling developments are on the right track, say the researchers.
While it is unfortunate that further progress on understanding aerosol-cloud interactions and their effects on climate is limited by inadequate observational tools and models, achieving the required improvement in observations and simulations is within technological reach, the researchers emphasize, provided that the financial resources are invested. The level of effort, they say, should match the socioeconomic importance of what the results could provide: lower uncertainty in measuring man-made climate forcing and better understanding and predictions of future impacts of aerosols on our weather and climate.
Blah, blah blah
More rubbish
Link to the abstract for this paper in this post, which says “”the radiative forcing (that is, the perturbation to Earth’s energy budget) caused by human activities is highly uncertain, making it difficult to predict the extent of global warming.”
Settled Science: New paper finds effect of man on climate is “highly uncertain”
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/01/settled-science-new-paper-finds-effect.html
As mentioned at a few places before, the “consensus” crowd is about to hijack the concepts they dismissed only a few months ago. Everything in order to maintain window view on a gravy express.
Next step will be “disappearing” of their AGW legacy, so we better start accumulating their mischiefs while they are still there.
Until we can model cloud formation – we have no GCM model. I don’t understand the debate on this. Where have I gone amiss? GK
Ma Nature says you blew it
The masses know it
Scramble Scramble Scramble
Here’s another excuse
Well so far, according to Hansen’s models ate least, the world has not noticed that CO2 has risen recently.
Still tiptoeing gently down the Scenario C dotted line = no forcing = <1.0C per doubling 🙂
http://snag.gy/FeWzn.jpg
These guys lose me in their first sentence: “The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given…………” Do they actually think that one molecule of CO2 out of 2,500 molecules of air makes any difference? And man was responsible for 3-4% of that one molecule! They are barking up the wrong tree.
Anyone got a direct link?
Often wondered about strictly the change in atmosheric density for retaining heat. Aside from any given molecule’s wave length absorption of heat, denser gasses have more heat at the same temperature.
If that standard applied, co2 would make little difference because of its low concentration… while plentiful h2o has a real impact on heat.
Sounds like they are excited about their models and now need additional funding to run them and, oh, get a preindustrial aerosol baseline.
” … achieving the required improvement in observations and simulations is within technological reach, the researchers emphasize, provided that the financial resources are invested …”
See attached grant application.
“To some extent, aerosols –- particles that float in the air caused by dust or pollution, including greenhouse gases …”
Watch out for those CO2 particles! They’ll put your eye out!
I notice Sherwood is a co-author. Only a few weeks ago he was saying that climate sensitivity was 4 degrees based on his work on how clouds are formed. Now he is saying clouds are uncertain.
HenryP says:
January 27, 2014 at 12:15 pm
Blah, blah blah
More rubbish!
Blah, blah blah is translated to– Please send more money for studies for the next (?) years so I can retire before we have to find an answer that holds up under scrutiny.
Final para: ‘While it is unfortunate that further progress on understanding aerosol-cloud interactions and their effects on climate is limited by inadequate observational tools and models, achieving the required improvement in observations and simulations is within technological reach, the researchers emphasize, provided that the financial resources are invested. The level of effort, they say, should match the socioeconomic importance of what the results could provide: lower uncertainty in measuring man-made climate forcing and better understanding and predictions of future impacts of aerosols on our weather and climate’.
Having at last accepted that the science isn’t settled, the AGW zealots now want a pile of money to attempt to resettle it. Meanwhile economies are being screwed and people being impoverished as politicians, to lazy to ask the key questions of these madmen, behave like gaderine swine.
Jerusalem, by William Blake:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
But we must act NOW!!! Before it’s too late…err before the general public catches on.
“Explicit computer simulations of these processes even at the scale of a whole cloud or multi-cloud system, let alone that of the planet, require hundreds of hours on the most powerful computers available. Therefore, a sufficiently accurate simulation of these processes at a global scale is still impractical.”
I am not so convinced it is impractical to get useful information from a relatively simple model – it depends on what is being modeled.
The atmosphere (as discussed and dissed many times on WUWT) operates as a large heat engine (not ‘like one’ it is one). It strikes me as true that radiative models generally describe what would happen if the earth were really, really small and the atmosphere retained its normal viscosity. By that I mean some models assume radiative heat transfer dominates the movement of heat from the surface to the TOA. Verbal models of ‘how CO2 works’ describe radiative energy transfer, in the absence of mass transfer (updrafts)
In normal life the major portion of heat transfer in such a system is by convection. The FEA models for convective heat transfer between a hot and cold place with the heat applied at the bottom are pretty good. The ‘atmosphere’ breaks automatically into cells that circulate vertically air powered by heat and operating as a set of thermosiphons. The size of the cell is determined by the temperature difference and the properties of the fluid (in this case air, which is a fluid) and the vertical height. The property ‘viscosity-height’ is a major factor in the characteristic shape of things to come.
I realize ‘clouds’ covers a lot and I am sure they are going to take ages to model them in detail, but we would be far better off treating the atmosphere as a convection problem ‘with complexities’ than as a radiative physics problem with ‘impossibly complex factors that are also there’. We need a better two or three box model that is convective at the bottom and radiative at the top.
Ms. Climate’s relationship status on Facebook is “It’s complicated.”
“G. Karst says:
January 27, 2014 at 12:20 pm
Until we can model cloud formation – we have no GCM model. I don’t understand the debate on this. Where have I gone amiss? GK
#################
by assuming that you have to model everything to have a model that is useful to someone for some purpose.
Suppose you have a model of a car. You model everything except the change in tire air pressure as a result of the tire heating up. You could say your model depicted a tire filled with a gas like argon or nitrogen ( that’s what we used to limit tire expansion under heating)
Any ways you have this model that is missing a key feature. It will still be pretty good for many uses. For example, if you want to test some simple aerodynmic changes to the body.
You think the problem is black and white. No cloud formation= no model. Working scientists and working engineers dont necessarily think that way. They think.. what’s the best I can do, and then, how good is it, and then is it good enough for some purpose even if that purpose is limited.
meanwhile naysayers never build anything and say shit like man will never fly
“The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence? That is an issue on which science is making progress, but the answers are still far from exact, …”
What is “a given”? How can something be declared “a given” when the next thing stated is “but the answers are still far from exact”? Where was it proved CO2 does anything but make plants grow?
How can anyone determine whether this is “progress” or just more climate change political hype?
“If the answers are still far from exact” as they say, what purpose does this announcement serve other than to keep “greenhouse” gases on center stage, to give “deniers” “pause” in criticizing climate change politics? This paper appears to serve the purpose of creating cognitive dissonance.
What is “a given” is that these people from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem are full of it. There is NO extent that they or we or anyone can predict its (AGW) future influence! NONE. The CAGW crowd has had three decades to demonstrate any skill whatsoever and they’ve FAILED miserably. If we are “given” any climate model results from them, we’d better be “given” the code and data so we can reproduce the same “results” exactly. Otherwise humanity will be fooled again – “exactly”.
“””””……Link to the abstract for this paper in this post, which says “”the radiative forcing (that is, the perturbation to Earth’s energy budget) caused by human activities is highly uncertain, ……”””””
I must be dreaming !
“””””…..(that is, the perturbation to Earth’s energy budget) …..””””””
No; it isn’t possible they might be thinking of atmospheric trace molecules (in all three phases) interfering with incoming solar energy. They do actually mention clouds, which are water (H2O) in the liquid and/or solid phases, But then they talk of “sunlight” reflected back into space.
Presumably they are some sort od scientists, with at least a rudimentary knowledge of physics.
So I’ll forgive them for equating “sunlight” with solar radiant energy. Sunlight is lumens, and it is all in my head. (eyes if you like) Solar radiant energy is in Joules, and only some of it is visible, and can produce the psycho-physical response of “light” in your brain; but I’ll let that pass.
But then they go on to assert that clouds REFLECT the sun light/energy. Well with a refractive index in the 1.333 range, water does reflect about 2% per surface, so there is some reflection; but not the 80% claimed. It is actually ordinary scattering through quite linear multiple optical refraction. I’ve ray traced a rain drop in near collimated incident rays, so many times, I can draw it in my sleep. Just two or three sequential wide angle refractions is enough to render the scattering virtually isotropic.
Now this direct interaction of the clouds with solar energy, is quite different from their interaction with the surface emitted LWIR radiation. That is virtually all absorbed (>95%) by droplets bigger than about 50 microns diameter (2 mils). So subsequently, it is re-emitted, as a BB like thermal spectrum, characteristic of the cloud Temperature. Once again this is isotropic emission, so half of it is still directed towards space.
But I didn’t see much talk about the absorption of incoming solar energy, by the water vapor, even in CAVU conditions. (Clear Air, Visibility Unlimited).
So you can squirm about “aerosols” and cloud formation, all you like; but mox nix; even if clouds don’t form, the INCREASED atmospheric WATER VAPOR due to any surface warming, will result in an increased absorption of the incoming solar spectrum energy; which thus will not reach the ocean surface to be stored in the deep.
No dancing, can avoid, that this is a negative feedback; regardless (or irregardless) of whether clouds are increased.
(some) Physicists understand what we really mean, when we talk of “sunlight”, and we know what we really mean when we talk of “reflection” ; but it only confuses the lay reader, when we misuse those words, when describing atmospheric effects.
Clouds do NOT (significantly) REFLECT solar spectrum energy; they scatter it by wide angle refraction. They also do NOT (significantly) REFLECT surface emitted LWIR radiation. They absorb it, and then re-radiate.
So what exactly are these Terra-computer models actually modeling, if these folks don’t know the correct words to use ?
They are sneaking up on Willis’s heat engine. CO2 is trumped by the operation of the heat engine.
wws at 1.07pm says
‘Jerusalem by William Blake’
This a particularly apt reference, as Blake, though not an atheist, was apalled by the power of organised religion. Some scholars believe that his reference to dark satanic mills relates to the spires of Oxford University where much of the hierachy of the Anglican church was educated and was its seat of academic power.
Very analogous to the role of the IPCC in relation to the CAGW religion.
Did anyone notice? The authors contradict themselves. How can something be both “impractical” and “within technological reach”
“Therefore, a sufficiently accurate simulation of these processes at a global scale is still impractical.”
“achieving the required improvement in observations and simulations is within technological reach”
Susie says: @ January 27, 2014 at 12:59 pm
I notice Sherwood is a co-author. Only a few weeks ago he was saying that climate sensitivity was 4 degrees based on his work on how clouds are formed. Now he is saying clouds are uncertain.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nice catch.
I haven’t seen any WUWT comment on this:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/ir-expert-speaks-out-after-40-years-of-silence-its-the-water-vapor-stupid-and-not-the-co2/#comments
Seems the guy might know something.
george e. smith says: @ January 27, 2014 at 1:29 pm
So these are pseudo scientists looking for more grant money – Got it.
Thanks
Old’un wrote –
“This a particularly apt reference, as Blake, though not an atheist, was apalled by the power of organised religion. Some scholars believe that his reference to dark satanic mills relates to the spires of Oxford University where much of the hierachy of the Anglican church was educated and was its seat of academic power.”
Here is what Blake actually said –
“I turn my eyes to the Schools & Universities of Europe
And there behold the Loom of Locke whose Woof rages dire
Washd by the Water-wheels of Newton. black the cloth
In heavy wreathes folds over every Nation; cruel Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden: which
Wheel within Wheel in freedom revolve in harmony & peace.”
Jerusalem
The clockwork solar system which was modeled out of timekeeping averages plus a lot of bluff and voodoo and indeed they were cruel works. As they hadn’t a clue what Sir Isaac’s absolute/relative time,space and motion represented they let their imaginations run wild a century ago and buried humanity deeper in that unfortunate celestial sphere system.
Blake’s picture is of a man so entranced with models on paper that he and his followers forget to breath the air of creation as a wondrous spectacle or have I got the wrong crowd here ?
http://pavlopoulos.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/william-blake-newton.jpg
“Now I a fourfold vision see And a fourfold vision is given to me Tis fourfold in my supreme delight And three fold in soft Beulahs night And twofold Always. May God us keep From Single vision & Newtons sleep.” Blake
The main point that I get from this article is that there is a real need for more grant money, and ‘we need it now’. The socioeconomic importance cannot be overstated, or understated. Actually, the ‘importance’ isn’t really well understood yet, but there is a model being developed to answer that particular question. In the meantime, clouds are blithely sailing through the skies in an audacious fashion, floating hither and thither irreverently.
…The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence? …
Sir! Sir! I know the answer!
“The science is settled. It will create dangerous warming all over the US, and the UK will have no rain any more.”
Do I get a prize now?
Mosher should read the 10 commandments of rational argument
1. Thou shall not attack a person’s character but the argument itself. (“Ad hominem”)
2. Thou shall not misrepresent or exaggerate a person’s argument in order to make it easier to attack. (“Straw Man Fallacy)
3. Thou shall not use small numbers to represent the whole. (“Hasty Generalization”)
4. Thou shall not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (“Begging the Question”)
5. Thou shall not claim that because you believe in something it must be the cause. (“Post Hoc/False Claim”)
6. Thou shall not reduce the argument down to two possibilities. (“Fake Dichotomy”)
7. Thou shall not argue that because of our ignorance that the claim must be true or false. (“Ad Ignorantiam”)
8. Thou shall not lay the burden of proof onto him who is questioning the claim. (“Burden of Proof Reversal”)
9. Thou shall not assume “this” follows “that” when “it” has no logical connection. (“Non Sequitor”)
10. Thou shall not claim that because a premises is popular, therefore, it must be true. (“Bandwagon Fallacy”)”
“The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given”. It’s the sun that warms, not a cold gas.
+1 for Mike Borgelt’s comment.
“the required improvement … provided that the financial resources are invested”
Almost all public statements by both real and pseudo-scientists translate as “Gimme da money!”
OK Mosher, of what use are these models to predict future TEMPERATURES if they cannot model CLOUDS which heavily affect TEMPERATURES? You sir are the world champion of obfuscation, is your mother proud of you?
The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence?
I have to pile on. (Anymoose, H2O ruins stuff too, Bob Weber, Dodgy Geezer, phillipbratby all beat me to it.)
This sentence says that we
1. know the warming effect of greenhouse gasses,
2. that we know the human-induced part of GHGs
3. The GHG warming effect is “given”, ergo history and today are explained. (No mention of The Pause.)
4. It is the future that is uncertain.
They want us to believe that as of today CO2 is magically going to change its GW properties.
It takes talent to turn off a reader in the first two dozen words.
Not to mention that, in order to validate a 100 years run model, you have to wait… er… 100 years.
Quackitists and quackademics……..if the earth was a greenhouse there would be no life on this planet. It is a convection system of incomprehensible complexity.
Steven Mosher says;
Your analogy falls way short. How a car or an airplane may perform in the real world is well understood, and not particularly complicated when compared to the Earth’s climate. If Boeing built an airplane solely with computer modeling (and they have ) but on the first flight it crashed and killed the crew, they would not do it again and then tell the next crew, “Not to worry, we’ve got it right this time.”
I agree with you that people should try, and I applaud those who do, but when you fail over and over, don’t try and sell your predictions as fact.
The technological reach the authors are talking about is computer hardware related, when referencing the models. The best chip technology today is by Samsung with their 20nm process node technology. A close second is Intel with their 21 nm and sometime later this year their 14nm.
It is becoming much more expensive to continue this reduction in process node technology, so much so that an individual company might not be able to get enough revenue from sales to afford to put into manufacturing the next size reduction.
A switch is required to extreme ultra violet technology, requiring new tools, for the development of continued reduction in size. Intel’s road map has 7nm scheduled for 2017 and 5nm for 2019.
Exascale computing has two major obstacles to overcome:
Memory: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/14/intel_exascale_update_deepdive/
And interconnect: … http://insidehpc.com/2013/11/15/doe-awards-25-4-million-exascale-interconnect-design/
Last year Samsung invested 20 Billion in upgrades to their manufacturing capability and future capability, Intel somewhere around 11 Billion,
Might anyone react to this post at Real-Science:
IR Expert Speaks Out After 40 Years Of Silence : “IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2″
Mike Sanicola says:
I’m a professional infrared astronomer who spent his life trying to observe space through the atmosphere’s back-radiation that the environmental activists claim is caused by CO2 and guess what? In all the bands that are responsible for back radiation in the brightness temperatures (color temperatures) related to earth’s surface temperature (between 9 microns and 13 microns for temps of 220K to 320 K) there is no absorption of radiation by CO2 at all. In all the bands between 9 and 9.5 there is mild absorption by H2O, from 9.5 to 10 microns (300 K) the atmosphere is perfectly clear except around 9.6 is a big ozone band that the warmists never mention for some reason. From 10 to 13 microns there is more absorption by H2O. Starting at 13 we get CO2 absorption but that wavelength corresponds to temperatures below even that of the south pole. Nowhere from 9 to 13 microns do we see appreciable absorption bands of CO2. This means the greenhouse effect is way over 95% caused by water vapor and probably less than 3% from CO2. I would say even ozone is more important due to the 9.6 band, but it’s so high in the atmosphere that it probably serves more to radiate heat into space than for back-radiation to the surface. The whole theory of a CO2 greenhouse effect is wrong yet the ignorant masses in academia have gone to great lengths trying to prove it with one lie and false study after another, mainly because the people pushing the global warming hoax are funded by the government who needs to report what it does to the IPCC to further their “cause”. I’m retired so I don’t need to keep my mouth shut anymore. Kept my mouth shut for 40 years, now I will tell you, not one single IR astronomer gives a rats arse about CO2. Just to let you know how stupid the global warming activists are, I’ve been to the south pole 3 times and even there, where the water vapor is under 0.2 mm precipitable, it’s still the H2O that is the main concern in our field and nobody even talks about CO2 because CO2 doesn’t absorb or radiate in the portion of the spectrum corresponding with earth’s surface temps of 220 to 320 K. Not at all. Therefore, for Earth as a black body radiator IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/ir-expert-speaks-out-after-40-years-of-silence-its-the-water-vapor-stupid-and-not-the-co2/
I thought it was the most compelling argument against a significant role of CO2 I’ve seen so far. Any ideas?
@Mosher
“by assuming that you have to model everything to have a model that is useful to someone for some purpose.”
The fact that water vapour feedback is a major contributor to warming; more significant than the initial CO2 contribution, you don’t think that qualifies? Seriously?
wanting more funding fits with the latest meme, which CAGW-infested Bloomberg continues to build:
27 Jan: Bloomberg: Barry Ritholtz: Global Warming Battle Is Over Market Share, Not Science
Last week, the New York Times reported that venerable Dow Jones Industrial Average component Coca-Cola Co. was awakening to the impact of climate change on its business…
Global warming, according to the article, is being seen “as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk.”
This debate is no longer about whether global warming is real (it is) or whether humans are the most likely cause (you are), but rather, some very interesting and different questions that might be more professionally relevant to finance: How is this going to affect business? What are the investing consequences? Who will be the financial winners and losers of climate change?…
Investors should be considering this as a fight over market share, not a scientific debate. That is the approach taken by McKenzie Funk in a new book, “Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming.” The impact is across many industries. It’s time to throw out your preconceptions of climate change as a fight between green hippies and Big Oil….
The culturally constructed ignorance known as “agnotology” has been driven primarily by the oil and coal industries. Funk argues that we are about to move beyond that faux debate to a more important battle between even larger interests. Consider:
Insurers stand to make larger payouts because of more severe weather and more frequent natural disasters. However, this will inevitably lead to appreciable higher insurance premiums and potentially rising profits.
The travel and hotel industry is facing specific challenges. Ski resorts that were in prime snow making areas may find themselves no longer ideally located; warm weather destinations boasting access to reefs for snorkeling and scuba diving have troubles as reefs die out…
My perspective on global warming is different than some. As a car and boat enthusiast, the various gasoline-powered vehicles I own crank out a few thousand horsepower and generate a not-insignificant amount of pollution. However, I don’t pretend climate change is a hoax or that it won’t matter in the future. So long as creating pollution is cheap and legal, we won’t see many people changing personal behavior. The most likely fix for this is some form of a carbon tax.
But the bigger issue is the financial consequences. Investors are going to see companies increasingly affected by climate change. For those of you who still are fighting the science — sorry to tell you, the debate has moved on…
Too many people have had their heads in the sand. It is time to start making some decisions based on possible investing outcomes, not pseudo-science. To those who figure this out, a green fortune awaits — in both senses of the word.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-27/global-warming-battle-is-over-market-share-not-science.html
Anymoose says:
January 27, 2014 at 12:32 pm
These guys lose me in their first sentence: “The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given…………” Do they actually think that one molecule of CO2 out of 2,500 molecules of air makes any difference? And man was responsible for 3-4% of that one molecule! They are barking up the wrong tree.
And if my arithmetic is right that means one in every 62,500 molecules is man contributed.
Anthony watts & al
This is rather the way I like it and where I may be able to contribute.
“But…. what about the clouds?” was my first and spontaneous question and objection, when I stumbled over the climate research institute at the university festival in Oslo.
It being cloudy and foggy…. yes indeed!
And “the clouds” is further a fameous greek comedy.
I was able to ruin Svensmarks CLOUD efforts in CERN quite easily by reconstructing John William Herschels Blueprint- Cyanotypie- method for the study of shortwave- light, and by knowing that (NH4)2SO4 is not hygroscopic, whereas the system SO3 .nH2O is a quite severely hygroscopic system giving acid rains.
But, Goodnight, it is 0025 here.
Grrrrrr. Can I say that these esteemed climate scientists don’t know WTF is going on? I know science advances through curiosity, falsification, repeatability etc. but climate science is so complicated that no one can tell me with (an honest) 90% confidence how warm the Earth’s surface will be in 2100. Yet the IPCC has made its pronouncements since AR1 in 1990!!!!!!!!!!!
Discoveries and research is fine but didn’t the IPCC jump the gun????? See surface temperature standstill for 16 years and counting. See projections V observations. This is crap.
Clarification.
I mean all climate scientists, not just the ones who wrote THIS paper.
The opening editorial line:
The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence?
suggests a graduated back-tracking is under way.
“Hey, we were not exactly right but we are learning” … leading to “we worked under the best scientific evidence available at the time. Yes, we were wrong but admit it as we have learnt more”.
and the politicos:
“We followed policies mandated by the best scientific information in the world, at the time”
Jimbo, and everyone are reproducing a terrible spelling mistake, on a par with the misuse of the semi-colon:
It is CRIMATOLOGY, not climatology.
My take on it is, if he’s right about the Earth only emitting IR at 9-13 microns, then this nightmare of endlessly talking about “the pause” and looking at “trends in global surface temperature”…”arctic ice”…”NO Antarctica is losing ice MASS but gaining sea ice area”…”the models predicted everything [within massive uncertainty bars]…”no they didn’t they failed”…”oh yes they did”…”oh no they didn’t” and this whole unrelenting semantic ordeal that is “the climate change debate” can finally be OVER.
Because if CO2 doesn’t absorb/emit at 9-13 microns then that quite simply means all energy emitted from the Earth’s surface goes straight out to space as far as CO2 is concerned (H2O impedes it but CO2 literally couldn’t).
So IF the Earth only emits 9-13 microns IR and IF CO2 categorically does not absorb and emit in those wavelengths then we can all finally move on with our lives and stop screaming at each other about trends until we die.
I said something like this before:
Man can’t control nature but some men are using nature to try to control Man. (And make a few bucks in the process.)
Sorry should have added, my post is directed at Scarface.
I had a look at a nasa website ,
“Clouds on average cause cooling “
While they do work on modelling, we still do not have a quantitative assessment of the impact of clouds historically!
I, and others, have tried to work out the impact of changes in cloud cover on daytime temperatures, but I have yet to see a comprehensive analysis of global cloud cover changes and their impacts. The data is not there for the world, but it certainly is there for regions, and since CO2 is supposed to be global AND changes in a region like the Arctic or Australia or the peninsular Antarctic region are supposed to reflect global changes, one would think the analyses would bear significance for CAGW.
Never study what will upset the granting machines, a variant of the lawyer advice to never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.
Re the greenhouse effect of CO2 – let’s don’t forget that on average there is 30 to 140 times as much water vapor in the air as CO2, and water vapor is about 8.5 times as potent a GHG as CO2 – in other words, about 250 to 1,400 times the effect of CO2. Kinda puts CO2 in perspective, doesn’t it? And that’s ALL the CO2 being pumped into the air – how about, fo openers, animal respiration, a huge multiple of fossil fuel CO2? ‘Nuff said. Man’s activities ain’t about squat when it comes to climate.
disappointed says:
January 27, 2014 at 11:42 am
In my mind it had better be removed.
———————————————–
I see several others who voice a similar thought, but doesn’t the great comment section rectify the need for removal with it,s diverse and open conversation that sheds light on reasons pro and con as to the value of the post?
The above post was meant for another page. Sorry!
Scientifically speaking, you might think it would be a good idea to try to understand clouds first, before focusing in on how aerosols might effect them. However that ignores the political imperative so present in science funding these days. It is much easier to get funding to study the effect of aerosols because that is a form of ‘pollution’, and there is the potential to turn up a ‘problem’ needing ‘urgent action’ and all the rest of the political carry on. This hits all the right buttons with funding agencies.
Although it is a fundamentally more important problem, trying to get funding to do the basic research required to simply improve our understanding of clouds as a natural process is much harder. Hopefully they’ll be able to sneak some basic scientific research on clouds in there while they look for the ‘problem’ with aerosols they need to find to satisfy their funders.
Steven Mosher says:
January 27, 2014 at 1:18 pm
meanwhile naysayers never build anything and say shit like man will never fly
————
Steven, while I agree with the general meaning of your post, it really only applies when the amount of detail lost in the model is insignificant to what’s being modeled.
Clouds aren’t insignificant, they’re a key part of the climate. Scientific estimates say that a 3% change in cloud cover can account for a major change in climate.
Add to that the fact we don’t know how oceans work either and take a look at a picture of our planet from outer space. You’ll see immediately how important clouds and oceans are.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36019
I liked this: ‘Improved observational tests are essential for validating the results of simulations and ensuring that modeling developments are on the right track, say the researchers.’
Why those sillies. Whatever would make them think that?
=============
“””””…..wws says:
January 27, 2014 at 1:07 pm
Jerusalem, by William Blake:…..”””””
Thanx wws. Years ago I used to sing that song. (in elem school; not in ss-chool.)
I have the tune down pat. Never would have remembered the words.
Haven’t sung a note, since the Plasticine Age, but I still know that tune.
g
From the grauniad.co.uk no less.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/27/scandinavian-miracle-brutal-truth-denmark-norway-sweden
After being in this debate for a long time, I’d say I still haven’t seen anyone show me how CO2 does what it is supposed to do.
The only factual thing I’ve seen demonstrated is that CO2 is an efficient emitter of energy from the atmosphere to space at between 10 kms to 20 kms high where it is -53C or 220K. That technically means CO2 cools the atmosphere, not warms it.
Its not like I am incapable of understanding or even if that matters at all. Its just that NOONE has shown how it works. There are 2 papers which pop out a “forcing” number supposed based on Modtran and Hitran but they explain absolutely nothing. They just produce a number. And then there is the feedbacks, partially based on a real meteorology, but perhaps not, that seem to highly “tuned” to pop out further temperature increases along the lines of the theory as I have deconstructed it. Highly tuned, as in, change the feedback parametres by 25% and the whole thing falls apart.
But that is all there is to the story.
If someone has more to add in terms of explaining it, I’d sure appreciate it.
“…The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence? …”
It would be a given if they could find its signature in the troposphere, until they do that it is a good theory not backed up by evidence?
That is my question by the way.
Steven Mosher says that a model which purports to describe the activity of the earth’s atmosphere without CLOUDS!!! is useful.
Steven, perhaps you should take a look at a satellite image of the earth any time of the year, day or night…I think you’ll find CLOUDS are quite a factor.
To take up your model car analogy, try thinking of a car with no hood, windscreen or front fender.. or maybe a car with no wheels. Yes that will come in very useful.
Regarding Steven Mosher’s analogy of a car, I think what we’re really missing here is an adequate model of it’s engine.
aljaz america in full Michael Mannian denier-mode:
26 Jan: Aljazeera America: Prominent scientist suing climate change deniers for libel
Speaking to Al Jazeera America just days after a court ruled that his defamation lawsuit against the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and conservative news magazine National Review could proceed, Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, accused his detractors of resorting to old allegations that had been disproved time and time again…
But Mann told Al Jazeera that accusations made by his detractors had already been roundly rejected by the scientific community, stemmed largely from groups with a vested interest with the fossil-fuel industry and were part of a larger, ongoing effort to discredit climate-change research.
“The tactics climate-change deniers employ is based on the idea that if they can discredit one prominent scientist, they can discredit the entire environmental movement. They’re also trying to serve notice to other scientists who think about speaking out,” he said.
Mann’s lawyer John B. Williams added that the invidious nature of some comments from climate-change deniers was “sidetracking the real debate, which is science-based.”…
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/26/judge-allows-climatescientisttomoveforwardwithdefamationcase.html
REPLY: but with now only about 16,000 viewers, most of whom don’t care about climate, his appearance on AJA TV isn’t of any consequence – Anthony
“””””…..Mike Borgelt says:
January 27, 2014 at 2:00 pm
I haven’t seen any WUWT comment on this:…..”””””
An interesting post ; izzat Steve Goddard’s web site ??
The general gist of his post is something I have railed on for some time, but absent the info, on what IR astronomers see glaring them in their eyes (IRIs).
At the presumed 288 K earth surface Temperature (maybe 287 K), the calculated BB spectral radiance peak is at 10.1 microns (on spectral radiance per micron wavelength; not per wave nummer plots).
from stuff you learn in the 8th grade science, or maybe 4-H club science; you are supposed to have remembered that exactly 25% of all BB radiant energy lies at wavelengths shorter than the peak wavelength. Also, that only 1% of BB radiant energy lies below half the peak wavelength; and only 1% of the total energy lies above eight times the peak wavelength.
So for a 288 K BB, we have a 10.1 micron peak, and only 25% is below that, and the 1% limits are at 5.05, and 80.8 microns.
Now the 10.1 microns is in the so-called “atmospheric window”, but as the astronomer emeritus said, the 9.6 micron Ozone hole is in there too.
Now 10.1 microns may be the 288 K mean surface Temperature emission spectrum peak; BUT !!
at that Temperature (15 deg. C) the total radiant emittance is 390 W/m^2. Look for that nummer on Kevin Trenberth’s budget cartoon. So what is it like when the surface Temperature is 333 K or + 60 deg. C as in the equatorial deserts, where the earth is really cooling off at a high emission rate.
Well (333/273)^4 = 1.787 which now gives us 697 W/m^2 of cooling emittance.
But hang on . At that Temperature, the spectral emission peak has shifted due to Wien Displacement, and is now at 8.735 microns, and not 10.1.
Now even further into the window gap, and now even below the Ozone hole. Moreover, it is now further removed from the 15 micron CO2 degenerate (double) bending mode band; so CO2 is even less effective (but the spectral emittance at the CO2 band is still higer; but nowhere near 78.7% higher.
Of course, these equatorial deserts are as dry as a bone, so the atmospheric moisture content is way down; which is why the air Temperature crashes at sunset.; so the escape of this 78% higher emittance is further enhanced by the lack of water GHG effect.
Now the full calculation is a bit more complex. From your 4-H club you learned that the PEAK spectral radiant emittance increases as the FIFTH power of the Temperature; Not the FOURTH power.
So the narrower spectrum around the 8.7 micron peak, within the atmospheric window is actually more like 2.067 times the value per micron, at 288 K.
Which is why I have claimed for quite some time, that it is the tropical deserts and other location (UHIs as well) with their higher Temperatures, which are doing the planetary cooling chore; not the frozen wastelands (and seas) at the poles.
So what of those polar regions. Antarctica, we now know regularly gets down to – 94 deg. C , or about 179 kelvins.
So now the BB emittance spectral peak has shifted out to 16.25 microns; almost past the entire CO2 band. The total radiant emittance has dropped to only 14.9% of its 288 K value; or just 58.2 W/m^2. The shifted peak spectral emittance has dropped to just 9.3% of its 288 K value.
So the polar regions, have very little to do with the radiative cooling of the planet; even though CO2 develops its full GHG potential at those Temperatures. There’s very little radiative cooling going on at the poles for CO2 to have much influence there, on global cooling or warming.
So I checked my car’s radiator. It runs damn hot; hotter even than the Sahara. But it sure does cool like a Coors lite ( a near beer; same as Millers).
I notice several posts regarding the fact that atmospheric CO2 is about one in twenty five hundred molecules of the atmosphere.
Cube root of 2500 is about 13.6 . So a rather rough estimate, but if you are a CO2 molecule, then on average, it’s about 13.6 molecules from you to the nearest other CO2 molecule.
Do you get the feeling that you are alone in the universe ?? CO2 molecules don’t even know that others like them even exist. (in the atmosphere), so each one acts alone; by hisself.
Well so what ?
May I suggest that this paucity of CO2 molecules in the air is NOT a good choice for a hill to die on.
I’m typing this on a PC laptop full of silicon ICs. The density of deliberately inserted doping atoms in the silicon, (boron or phosphorous in older ICs) makes CO2 look like an ant’s convention at a picnic. Silicon IC dopant levels are WAY BELOW one in 2500. more like one in 50,000 to one in a million.
So all of the mayhem, that gose on inside your computer is caused by impurities way lower in abundance than CO2 in the atmosphere.
So forget that argument; it’s plain silly.
ladies and genltemen
I have to agree quite eagerly to what Georg E Smith is writing here.
What poisons theese debates first of all is the exteemly arrogant and ignorant and ugly religion of dia- lectic materialism, like for instance the Gen. Director and chief Engineer and Master Plumber and chief radiologist style of Cernobyl, all of them carefully head hunted and examined and plantet there from the Party. All from the same kind of background raisings at “The Peoples” Academy.
We notice here Quacky toxicology with very professional labels from the experts on things, and with no ideas of what is inside the bottles and the barrels or the atoms or molecules or conscepts, and how it possibly works.
Have you ever heard about a catalyst for instance and able to tell us what it is and how it works and in what conscentrations?
The very typical style of hat- tricks and of quackery is also to confuse surfaces and Volume and heat and temperature. Crooky and / or silly advocates and KADREmissionaries from the PARTY are further able to invent Perpetuum mobile stright vaway at any time and to launch and sell it.
Such as for instance finding and discovering or buying Kilovolts, and advocate and present it and sell it for kilowatts and even kilowatt- hours.
Thus also their eager and religious political propaganda against any kind of basic and of higher learnings. .
Mosher writes “You think the problem is black and white. No cloud formation= no model. Working scientists and working engineers dont necessarily think that way. They think.. what’s the best I can do, and then, how good is it, and then is it good enough for some purpose even if that purpose is limited.”
Good engineers know the limitations of a method. For example using a coarse cloud model might work ok up to a few hundred iterations (ie modelling weather) but will probably not be ok when iterating millions of times modelling climate.
There were many “flying machines” built before the Wright Brothers’ but none of them flew.
Actually, the story was the other way around. Models said that man could never fly. Wright brothers experiments proven the models wrong.
@cynical scientist
Otto Lilienthal was flying with hanggliders in Berlin long before the Wright Brothers, whoose problem was rather to get that propellar machine in order and mount it on a proper stearable gliding airplane. And they carefully designed and studied model gliding airplanes to find out.
Who inspired whoom ,who learnt from whoom and who stole it from whoom and who did first put things together and refined it further, and why would nobody believe it or buy it until.-…. that is quite a history.
The radiative forcing of all CO2 emitted since 1750 is 1.6 W/m^2. The uncertainty in radiative forcing of aerosol-cloud is -2 to -2.9 W/m^2 (Penner et al, 2003). We cannot conclude CO2 has a net forcing effect if we cannot model aerosol-cloud accurately. The net effect we are looking for is smaller than the uncertainty. The net forcing attributed to CO2 is speculative.
I read this as a kind of pre-emptive ritual obeisance at the altar of CAGW before getting down to business.
Smith!
Computer chips are solids. Atmosphere is gaseous. There is no analogy unless you are worried about your computer overheating!
***this line really is the sub-heading, i kid u not:
27 Jan: UK Independent: What the Pope’s green manifesto should say…
***1. Introduce an international carbon tax
by Memphis Barker
To stop the planet overheating will require all kinds of power, so it is a boon that ‘higher’ is joining the fray. Pope Francis is drafting an encyclical – the Vatican’s version of an open letter – on the environment. In person soft-spoken and stirringly humane, in this case The Voice of God will hit a thunderous note. Two weeks ago, Francis gave warning: “God always forgives, we sometimes forgive, but when nature – creation – is mistreated, she never forgives.”…
Here is one suggestion, both practical and presumptuous. Call for an international carbon tax…
Right now, twenty per cent of global emissions are subject to some form of carbon tax (though in Europe the price is too low to make much difference). If the encyclical is still in draft, Francis should call for the other eighty per cent to join in, and a higher price per tonne. Climate change is one problem – as the Pope no doubt recognises – that prayer alone will not solve.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/what-the-popes-green-manifesto-should-say-1-introduce-an-international-carbon-tax-9088975.html
@William Howard McClenney
I am living here at 60 deg north in the oslofjort trying to be a washproof and properly enlighted viking all the time, think globally, and buy it and act locally. Thus I also build up my chosmology in a very local and personal way.
Fred Hoyle has been presented and studied at the university. SIR! Fred stands with only one foot on the Pedestal…. and so does also SIR! Arthur Eddington.
What stands better is the younger dryas cathastrophy. But what caused it? There are many theories and suggestion , but my very hot suggestion is the quite sudden outbreak of the quite enormeous Eiffel vulcanism at exactly the same time and dated. I think that will ruin any other theory. Katla shall also have had a large outbreak shortly after, making things even worse. But I am not sure of all theese things; it must be checked up very carefully. I have mentioned it to Ole Humlum, who is interesteed. The Danes found and invented younger dryas.
I have also looked at Dansgaard Oechsler- oscillations and that seems rather not to be what we have to conscider in our days.They are explained by hydrological and glaciological premises that are not real or present on earth today.
Looking at it in my own way and having not submitted to the obviously arrogant and ignorant fanatic and militant groups of global religious war against science,……..
and against a hockeystick…..
I rather try and see the aspects that will be relevant for my grandchildren to be aware of, so that my grandchildren will remember me with thanks.
And I think CO2 AGW is a reality at climate response 3 deg / doubbling of CO2. But what will be the consequenses?
During last glaciation, the sub- glacial land areas both in america and in eurasia were extreemly dry, characterized by “Dust bowls…” and enormeous løss- powder sediments.
The whole prarie is Løss- sediments. The Kentucky Bread Basket is such settled Dust bowls from that extreemly period. and so is the very fameous Cerno- sol black soil and bread basket of Ukraina. And the further enormeous Løss sediments, the yellow river of northern China.
This is simply conscistent also with the wapour pressure curve of water. What goes up must come down, and so it is according to Aristoteles, who did not know about space rockets.
Giving a more cloudy and rainy and warmer world especially in the northern hemispere and not so much in the tropical area, because water stabilizes. It starts to rather cool when water wapour gas has warmed enough. Cooling rains from above in the tropes, you see. On top of a tropical hurricane there is tropical snow- hurricane with the sun right in Zenith.
What cools us is not the poles They would have melted long ago if they did.
What cools us is simply Big Bang, a relativistic phaenomena, that measures 2pi minus 30 seconds of arch and keeps 3K.
The Tropopause, not the poles is the cool and cooling side of the globe.
Then what warms us does measure 30 minutes of arch as seen fom here, another relativistic phaenomena, and keeps 5750K.
That is our conditions here and what we can rely on.
A warmer world also seems to become greener, plus that there will be more CO2 for photosyntesis. Bur there may be dramatic extreemes that we call “weather” Ask Anthony Watts on that.,
The extreeemly fameous brown coal sediments worldwide from 50-5 million years ago are from a warm period of very high CO2, quite obviously with a quite enormeous plant growth that ate down the volcanic CO2 from the atmosphere again after the very atlantic ocean opened….. and,…… megafauna to eat that enormeous weed under the mild pissing rains worldwide!
Kaolin- and Bauxit- sediments from that period also tell of very steady rains in a rather warm climate due to high CO2.
Milancovic- cycling- Ice ages came back after green weed had eaten down again all that volcanic CO2 from the opening of the atlantic ocean.
And as it became cooler after maximum holocene due to the falling milancovic trancient, central Asia dried up. And mankind there entered the horseback they left home, ran over and invaded the wetter and greener Europe in masses. And in the east they invaded the greener and wetter and milder northern China so that large walls had to be built against them.
This all entails that we can look forward to a qite much greener and wetter world, allthough not everywhere.
Northern eurasian and american areas are expected to have milder weather hand higher forest and crop growth.
And don`t forget Sahara dried up as it got cooler. Central congo seems to have been more open under max holocene. Culture, stonehenges and pottery is found where there is tight jungle today.
So I am not without hope for my grandchildren, one only has to know it right and to tell them right.
Also very important is that we must stop fighting “the weed”, all that we do not understand. We must go for diversity and rather learn to use and to live with the flora, The green values,….that is our only reliable and serious carbon sink. Future will demand more work from us. Avoid sports and rather go to work. Sports is work astray and perverted work. Rather sing a song and learn to play an instrument, at work.
But if you join the climate deniers and the quite fameous warriors against science and the cheaters and tellers of falseness, you will not be able to teach and to tell your grandchildren right, and then they will blame you and hate you.
http://www.billzilla.org/pearce.htm
What we know is so small compared to what we don’t know!
@Andres Valencia.
YES!
But also think in terms of quality and not just in terms of size and quantity. Then it may look quite different, about essencial knowledge different from a lot of worthless and irrelevant knowledge.
and about “grasping the grain” or the essence of it.
And even Who is entitled to decide and to judge on that?
That is another discussion and maybe quite more important discussion.
Meanwhile…..
back at the late Holocene/mid North American “ranch”, Tonto, cleverly disguised as an already half-precession cycle plus old extreme interglacial, is getting his/her mid North American climate waxed………..
Termination and glacial inception thresholds can occur in 1-3 years. The rest of the climate state reversals can take from decades to a few centuries. And they are not necessarily particularly stable. We have had, in fact, Younger Dryas climate reversals during the last stages of the most recent deglaciations. We have also had from 1 to 3 rather rapid, and reportedly quite unprecedented warmings, just before decaying into yet the next glacial.
Famous astronomer Fred Hoyle (originator of the now disfavored Steady State Theory) stated on the Cambridge Conference Network in 1999:
“This is why the past million years has been essentially a continuing ice-age, broken occasionally by short-lived interglacials. It is also why those who have engaged in lurid talk over an enhanced greenhouse effect raising the Earth’s temperature by a degree or two should be seen as both demented and dangerous. The problem for the present swollen human species is of a drift back into an ice-age, not away from an ice-age.”
The ranch slider is open amid a months long balmy left coast (US) “heat wave”. It’s a hundred degrees F colder (+60 to -40F) in upper midwest North America. I’m pecking this out wearing a T-shirt and gym-shorts. Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillation #19 scored a 16C rise during the early last glacial. The average glacial maximum/peak interglacial difference often reported as ~20C, or ~66F since at least the mid-Brunhes.
So figure whatever should be your late January temperature average, subtract 66F/20C from it for what a reasonable approximation might be for perhaps the next glacial maximum, assuming CO2 is not actually the climate security blanket it is proclaimed from on high to be. If it makes you feel better, use July averages instead.
Then contemplate removing it…….just for grins and giggles.
Say we had gotten right with the AGW program, 17, 15, 10 or even 5 years ago, squelching its concentration to 350.org or less. Would it, could it, be so cold over so much of the northern hemisphere, year on year, northern hemisphere continent by continent? If so, then why do it?
Keeping in mind that your answer must address not just now, not just the next few years, not even the next few decades or centuries, but perhaps the next ~900 centuries. All the way to the next regularly-scheduled interglacial……however “cloudy” or dusty that might be.
“Stay thirsty, my friends.” – Sayeth the most interesting man (woman etc.) in the not necessarily still obvious pre-glacial world……
Grant says:
January 27, 2014 at 3:06 pm
Steven Mosher says;
————————————-
Nice analogy!
I would add that clouds would be of much greater significance to weather and climate, than the air pressure in a vehicles tires.
Well Michael, you just showed everyone, that you don’t know diddly about semiconductor technology, or solid state Physics.
I don’t have the time or patience to explain either how boron and phosphorous at one part in 100,000 radically alter the behavior of electricity and or photons from the pure silicon; nor how CO2 at one part in 2500 radically alters the LWIR optical absorption of air.
But you are welcome to believe whatever you like. The phase that the material is in matters not a jot. Even liquids exhibit the same extreme change in behavior with miniscule impurity content.
The highest purity de-ionized water exhibits an electrical resistivity around 18 megOhm cm. Dip ordinary window glass (soda-lime (green) glass) into such water, and it will immediately dissolve enough glass to become quite electrically conductive. The glass looks untouched, but the small amount in solution destroys the high resistivity of the pure water.
I make it a habit to never stand between somebody, and a cliff they decide to jump off.
“Furthermore, little is known about the unperturbed aerosol level that existed in the preindustrial era. This reference level is very important for estimating the radiative forcing from aerosols.”
Ain’t no such thing as an “unperturbed preidustrial aerosol level”. Check the amount of dust in Greenland and Antarctic “preidustrial” ice-cores, the “pristinest” places on Earth. Dust levels have varied by a factor of approximately 1000 over time (ice ages are dustier).
I have a far superior way to show people how sparse CO2 is.
a. First inform CO2 is under 0.04% of the atmosphere.
b. Hold one arm out full stretch and the other hand out as far as the elbow (1.5m). “This represents 100% of the atmosphere, ok?”
c. Then show them the thickness of your finger nail. “That is about 0.6mm, the same as 0.04% CO2”.
d. Then say if this nail was only one third as thick, all plant life dies.
Plants breathe in CO2 to live. All animal life lives because plants are eaten for their carbon bearing sugars, especially you. Not enough CO2 means death to all life.
“I’ve looked a clouds from both sides now
I really don’t know life at all”
Anymoose says:
January 27, 2014 at 12:32 pm
These guys lose me in their first sentence: “The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given…………” Do they actually think that one molecule of CO2 out of 2,500 molecules of air makes any difference? And man was responsible for 3-4% of that one molecule! They are barking up the wrong tree.
The higher the CO2 is in the atmosphere the colder it is and the less it radiates back. When there is very low level cloud almost 100% of the outgoing heat is radiated back. I think water vapour wins on back radiation. For those not understanding %, you can’t get more than 100%!
”The warming effect of human induced greenhouse gasses is a given”
NO IT IS NOT! It is an unproved theory relying on violations of thermodynamic laws and principles.
Everybody in the climate warming scam is talking about aerosols as the new fashionable reason why the climate is just going right on doing what the climate always has and to hell with the stupidity of the Holy Models of the Climate Catastrophe cult.
So what are aerosols?.
Dust smoke and etc are the usual understandings given by both the lay person and I suspect most climate scientists who will as usual try to hide their ignorance about aerosols and their composition and re-actions and interactions through the usual obfuscation and high [? “fly” ] blown sciency sounding “we know it all” rhetoric,
[ Boy! are the climate scientists getting a rapidly escalating pounding across the skeptic blogs in the last couple of months or even within the last few weeks. Their credibility is absolutely shot to hell in the eyes of the skeptics and increasingly the not so skeptical as well. That type of attitude by the skeptics towards something is usually a forerunner indicating that such a now increasingly cynical attitude towards climate scientists and climate science will expand into the public consciousness in the near future.
And then the pollies will start moving.
Not a good for your future employment as a lavishly funded climate scientist to be tagged as a rabid warmer I would think ]
When it comes to clouds and the factors that create and influence cloud formation of every type Nature as usual is just sitting back and having her usual good belly laugh at the ignorance and stupidity of climate scientists who as usual are running around telling everybody that they will have this cloud thing all taped, understood and under control if we just send more money.
Bacteria and viruses make up a high percentage of the ice crystal and cloud droplet forming factors that create clouds.
Some papers below on the role of ice forming and cloud droplet forming bacteria and fungi and etc.
http://www.insidescience.org/content/ice-ice-bacteria-not-too-cold/1488
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/22/1212089110
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/nsf-smf051509.php
Those papers are only the tip of the known biological cloud and ice crystal forming bacteria and viral components of cloud formation, a subject the biologists have known about for quite a number of years.
And when you get biological influences of considerable significance into an equation such as global cloud formation then it usually never ever quite gets sorted out as Nature as usual just keeps right on shifting the goal posts.
Why don’t you try adding a similar concentration of arsenic oxide to your tea or coffee?
Or, perhaps, try something a bit safer and more relevant: Add a similar concentration of MILK to your tea or coffee.
Bill Illis says, January 27, 2014 at 4:46 pm:
You’re right, Bill. And still very, very few, even on this blog, seem to question in the least the basic idea that it somehow MUST happen. It just MUST warm the Earth system. But it’s all words. Nothing is ever shown. We’re only helping to perpetuate the myth that it does (the base premise behind the entire (C)AGW hype) by not questioning it.
Like Konrad very succinctly put it on another thread here at WUWT just recently:
“Ultimately there is no way forward that involves claiming ManBearPig is not real while claiming ManBearPigglet is.”
Cloud cover is not ‘forcing’ at all. Water vapour is not a GHG. This can be seen clearly in, say, the Amazon rain forest. The average temperature through the year is 25C, and only varies by 2C. During the day the temperature varies between 2c to 5C.
The water vapour is acting like a Thermos flask to keep the temperatures steady – it keeps the area cooler during the day and warmer through the night. Note that it does not ’cause’ heating or cooling but it PREVENTS heating or cooling. A Thermos flask does not heat a hot liquid or cool a cold one, it prevents or slows the liquids moving to room temperature.
In the case of the rain forest the analogy of the Thermos flask would be to put liquid in at room temperature and put it in, say, the Sahara Desert. The insulation would prevent the liquid reaching the hottest or the coolest of the temperatures outside.
The effect of water on climate is so overwhelming that it obscures any effect of GHGs, whether it is water vapour, ice, oceans, or on land [in soil, rivers or lakes]. The only areas where GHGs can be studied is where water is minimal, for example, the Sahara Desert.
I would argue that GHGs do NOT ’cause’ warming but prevent or slow down cooling. [See below] So how do GHGs fare in the desert. The Sahara can have a daily temperature range of 35C or more! The annual variation of temperatures is large as well. The conclusion would be that GHGs have little or no effect.
It would seem a simple experiment to show the effect of GHGs. It would involve two transparent boxes [using rock crystal?], both with a black metal disc on the base with a thermometer attached. One would be filled with air [no water vapour] and the other with CO2, both at the same pressure. Place the two boxes in a dry desert and measure the temperature of the metal over a 24 hour period.
Does the box with CO2 become hotter than the other, and for how long during the 24 hours.
Also, does the box with CO2 reach temperatures above the maximum temperature possible with just the Sun’s heat. I.E. Does it cause warming rather than prevent cooling?
Anticlimatic
You are totally forgetting or hiding the heat source inside that thermos flask of yours, the very fameous heating element inside such calorimetric experiments for which you are due to make up complete budgets.
You are not mentioning the 150 Ohm resistor under 12 volt lead and aqcid battery voltage for such due practical experiments in the lab, in school.
You are haiding the declain as they say, you are haiding the declain of the sunshine that skines down into that thermos flask of yours every day and to its bottoms.
Why do you do that, still expecting people to take your termos flask budget argunent for serious and valid?
These guys talk of aerosols modifying global warming. That talk is all irrelevant if there is no global warming. And there is none. I attached a comment about that to the Rosenfeld et al paper in Science 343, 379 (2014). While at it I also shot down Hansen 1988. Text of comment aimed at Dr. Rosenfeld that includes my critique of Hansen is below.
‘What is wrong with this opening sentence Dr. Rosenfeld?
“Aerosols counteract part of the warming
effects of greenhouse gases,…”
Answer: you are saying that greenhouse gases have warming effects when nothing is further from the truth. First, there is more carbon dioxide than ever in the air now but there has been no warming whatsoever for the last 16 years. This fact immediately invalidates the claim that addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will cause warming. That claim can be traced back to James Hansen’s presentation to the U. S. Senate in 1988. Problem is that Hansen had no idea of what he was talking about in 1988. He showed a temperature curve that went up and peaked in May 1988. That was the warmest temperature reached in 100 years he told the audience. There was only a one percent chance that this could happen by random chance. “The four warmest years, …. have all been in the eighties. And 1988 so far is so much warmer than 1987, that barring a remarkable and improbable cooling, 1988 will be the warmest year on record.” Hence, that peak is a global warming peak created by greenhouse warming. His problem is that demonstrably that peak is not a global warming peak. It is nothing more exotic than an ordinary El Nino peak, created by the ENSO oscillation of equatorial Pacific. It happens to be one of five El Nino peaks produced by ENSO between the years 1979 and 1997. More specifically, it is the 1987/88 El Nino, the middle one of these five. There were two El Nino peaks before it and these could have supplied the other warm peaks he mentioned. He is also dead wrong about 1988 being warmer than 1987 because they are both of equal height, for the simple reason that they are the two peak years of the 1987/88 El Nino. And as to that “improbable cooling” he expected not to see, it did arrive by year’s end when everybody had left. Not improbably, but as was to be expected. It’s cause was the arrival of a La Nina that always follows an El Nino. His last exhibit was climate models, computed out to the year 2019, that scared the audience. Comparison of his “business as usual” case with what the actual temperature later did shows that he greatly overestimated warming to come. But what can you expect from someone who thinks that finding an El Nino means that global warming is here. His claim that he saw greenhouse warming in 1988 is one of the foundation stones of IPCC that was started that same year. It is complete rubbish.’
To John Finn:
Your snarky suggestion: ‘Why don’t you try adding a similar concentration of arsenic oxide to your tea or coffee? ” is noted. Which oxide, pray tell? Although both arsenic trioxide and
arsenic pentaoxide don’t melt at coffee temperature, I guess you’re talking about the pentaoxide,
which is soluble in water (the trioxide is much less soluble).
Your analogy is strained. Arsenic pentaoxide is notably toxic; carbon dioxide is only
toxic to animals to the extent that no animal can live in too great a concentration of
its own waste.
@ Graham W
Thanks! I already didn’t worry much about CO2 anymore, but your conclusion regarding that post is exactly what I thought too. There is no ‘problem’, not even a potential one, with CO2. It never had, has or will ever have any impact. Case closed imho.
@ Mike Borgelt
Sorry, I now see you already mentioned it!
For Carbomontanus
Are you talking about a calorimeter?
‘Thermos’ is a brand name and may not be recognised everywhere. I am talking about a vacuum flask or Dewar flask – used to keep, typically, coffee warm while you are travelling.
@anticlimatic
Yes thank you. Thermos may be a brand name. I talk of a Dewar bottle. And of calorimetric budget.
“Cloud cover is a major forcing” my sweet bippy. It is not a forcing at all, it is an inherent, continuous, and inevitable component of all weather. It can’t be resolved as an external agent; it’s a response to n other variables.
Brian H
Cloud cower is defined as a feedback, different from a “forcing”. According to the “mainstream” theory.
And Brian H,
H2O- gas is a GHG indeed.