I decided to make an animated GIF of the latest cycle 24 sunspot, dubbed number 1002, which was literally a “flash in the pan”.
Credit: SOHO/MDI
One thing that has been common so far with all cycle 24 sunspots this year is that they have been small and very short lived. This one lived just slightly more than a whole day, a mere blip in solar time, where some sunspots will survive for a whole solar rotation (27 days) or more.
Leif Svalgaard (14:26:31) :
“…It is the other way around, the people claiming that natural variability accounts for the warming need to prove that positive…”
Say what?
“climate change is natural” is such a weird and novel concept that it has acquired a “burden of proof?”
When, please, tell me when…
when was the precise switchover from natural weather to man-made weather?
Anybody claiming humans make weather walks around under a huge dark cloud of “burden of proof.”
Anyone who claims we can adjust the climate to our liking…
[self-censored]
…and then sends rubber duckies into glaciers!
kim (14:25:39) :
The CO2=AGW paradigm won’t die from human mortality, it will die from freezing up and cracking into little shards.
We shall see. As Dee pointed out in a recent post, out children and grandchildren are already well indoctrinated.
Leif, I do not believe the examples you give in this instance are relevant. You are right in saying that we need not disprove every outlandish hypothesis in order to establish a theory. But the reigning assumption has always been that our climate is controled by a combination of natural factors. This is not on the same level as aliens or young earth catastrophism. In fact climate modelers strive to account for every natural influence on climate in order to seperate the AGW fingerprint from the rest of the data. Moreover, they acknowledge that their LOSU (level of scientific understanding) is “low” for a number of major atmospheric parameters (notably water vapor and clouds). So my point is that if you cannot clearly discern the fingerprint of nature from the fingerprint of human influence, you have no right to claim that your theory is 90%+ certain. We are back to humility again.
“Global Warming” is not a scientific discovery…
it is a political invention.
See, science works like this…
“[science] has two rules.
“First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless.
“Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised…
“…To understand the global weather, you must first collect a great body of meteorological data; you must discover how weather actually behaves.” – Carl Sagan, “Cosmos”
“It is time however that we began to realize that much of what passes for science today may have been scientific yesterday but can no longer qualify because it does not make any additional meaningful statements about anything. It blindly adheres to procedures as a church adheres to its ritual.” – E.T. Hall, “The Silent Language”
kim (14:25:39) :
” The CO2=AGW paradigm won’t die from human mortality, it will die from freezing up and cracking into little shards. ”
Could do both at the same time.
I believe I have entered into some kind of fugue state. I am watching FOX News Special Report, and guess who is sponsoring it? wecansolveit.org… that’s who’ Then the ad comes on… We can repower America with wind and solar. Get rid of our dependence on foreign oil. Big oil is spending lots of money to keep you dependent.
My mind is swimming… Am I in the Twilight Zone or what?
I guess that’s the $300,000,000 ad fund at work.
I guess we don’t need nuclear… or all the coal plants we are building. With this mortgage thing, we are already tapped out.
Bill D. (14:50:28) I dearly hope this recent dip in temperatures will allow us to tease out the various influences, the oceanic oscillations, the solar input, and that of CO2. The question has to be asked, though, instead of denied.
John-X (15:33:15) Let’s not have the works be grand, please.
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RE: Glenn (01:32:41) :
Actually, by NOT firing Hansen, NASA is being political. The guy’s broken all the rules of conduct, yet skates. I surmise there are one or more heavy hitters either at the cabinet level or one layer below that, who have drunk the AGW fanatic Kool Aid. Even the big, big boss has shown a degree of AGW fanatical orientation.
Old world saying: “A fish rots from the head.”
You said it, Bill D. There’s no way they can account for that 90+% certainty, they sure can’t show it via weather/climate prediction. I mean, I can build a simple computer model and pretty much have a 50/50 chance of getting close to what really happens. Doesn’t mean a thing. And if you get enough model runs together, like monkeys and Shakespeare, one will at least get reasonably close by chance alone.
Bill D. (14:50:28) :
climate modelers strive to account for every natural influence on climate in order to seperate the AGW fingerprint from the rest of the data.
I’m not a participant in the AGW debate, but I was under the impression that AGW was physics and not correlations. The physics going back to Svante Arhenius ~100 years ago. And that the effect of CO2 was something that can be calculated from first principles, at least the sensitivity. Of course, there may be other things, like feedback and so on, but those things can be estimated, and if not, they have not been shown to be effective. It is wrong science to say to an AGW opponent: “ok, you prove that your mechanism [solar, oceans, aliens, or whatever] explains the data. What you cannot explain must be our effect”.
Leif, the AGW hypothesis is based on sound physics so far as the absorption spectrum of CO2 is concerned. In fact many skeptics would even agree with the IPCC that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in ~1.2C increase in temperature. It is the sensitivity of the climate to this warming where the controversey lies. The level of scientific understanding of major feedback mechanisms is still emerging. Consequently we do not yet posess physical equations to quantify some parameters. In these cases estimates must be made by modelers (this of course begs the whole question as to whether a chaotic system can be reliably modeled over long periods of time). The difficulty of this task must not be underestimated. For example, the type, extent, and height of cloud cover can make or break the entire hypothesis. An error of just 1% in cloud cover is equivalent to about 5 million square km. Consequently, how the climate responds to the 1.2C increase can amplify the warming or reduce it (e.g., by the formation of low, opaque clouds). Our understanding of climate feedbacks at this point does not warrant a high level of confidence in IPCC predictions.
‘Leif Svalgaard (11:00:16) :
As I have just explained at length, the difference in technology does not mean that the old sunspot numbers are undercounted.
Wolf took the difference in technology and seeing and eye-sight into account [although his method was forgotten or ignored during the 20th century].’
That is what leads me to count 2 orders of magnitude here.
200 yrs to Wolf to Modern.
And I agree with you that there is inherent confusion in doing the double conversion.
Leif Svalgaard (17:16:41) :
The physics going back to Svante Arhenius ~100 years ago. And that the effect of CO2 was something that can be calculated from first principles, at least the sensitivity.
[snip]
Perhaps, but not the way you think.
http://landshape.org/enm/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/Miskolczi%20-%20Idojaras%202007%20Jan-March.pdf
“For example, a hypothetical CO2 doubling will increase the optical depth (of the global average profile) by 0.0241, and the related increase in the surface temperature will be 0.24 K. The related change in the OLR corresponds to -0.3 K cooling. This may be compared to the 0.3 K and -1.2 K observed temperature changes of the surface and lower stratosphere between 1979 and 2004 in Karl et al., (2006).
From the extrapolation of the ‘Keeling Curve’ the estimated increase in the average CO2 concentration during this time period is about 22%, (National Research Council of the National Academies, 2004). Comparing the magnitude of the expected change in the surface temperature we conclude, that the observed increase in the CO2 concentration must not be the primary reason of the global warming.” p. 22
–Mike Ramsey
Leif,
“I was under the impression that AGW was physics and not correlations.”
The basic mechanisms are based on physics, however, estimates of past and future warming are model generated guesses (realclimate has admitted this in a recent post).
More importantly, the IPCC acknowledges that ‘natural factors’ are the null hypothesis and tries to use models to show that the planet would have cooled over the last 50 years without GHGs.
IOW, the IPCC is committed to the 100% GHGs hypothesis and nothing else because accepting that even 20-30% of the warming was caused by other factors would require them to admit that:
1) the models were tuned to match the hindcast;
2) CO2 climate sensitivity is likely less than they have been saying;
I agree with you that there is no one factor at work and we will eventually figure them all out.
Bill D. (18:20:39) :
Our understanding of climate feedbacks at this point does not warrant a high level of confidence in IPCC predictions.
I never said that I had. I’m ‘carbon neutral’ 🙂 whatever warms us is good. Rather warm than cold. My only beef with the debate is that I think it unreasonable just to dump whatever doesn’t fit on the Sun. The Sun varies so little that for me to accept that “it is the Sun, stupid” I want to see mechanisms that serve to amplify the tiny variations. And I haven’t seen any yes, that is up to my own standard for a plausible mechanism. But, basically, as they say, I don’t have a horse in the race, in spite of the various accusations. past and future, of the contrary.
Mike Ramsey (18:51:38) :
Comparing the magnitude of the expected change in the surface temperature we conclude, that the observed increase in the CO2 concentration must not be the primary reason of the global warming.”
Just as you conclude and agree that on physical grounds CO2 is not the primary reason for GW, I conclude on physical and observational grounds that the Sun isn’t either. And I don’t buy the “what else can it be” cry.
Raven (19:38:17) :
More importantly, the IPCC acknowledges that ‘natural factors’ are the null hypothesis and tries to use models to show that the planet would have cooled over the last 50 years without GHGs.
In spite of solar activity being at an ‘all-time high’? following the popularist solar ‘facts’ and correlations.
Leif
I agree. The solar connection has not been demonstrated to my satisfaction either. Though there are some interesting correlations (see http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Solar_Changes_and_the_Climate.pdf). We are making much more progress with correlating climate changes to deacadal and multi-decadal changes in ocean temperature caused by upwelling, density turnover, etc. In terms of climate, the oceans are the largest reservoir of heat and CO2. For example, see http://icecap.us/docs/change/OceanMultidecadalCyclesTemps.pdf
Bill D. (20:19:28) :
Though there are some interesting correlations (see http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Solar_Changes_and_the_Climate…
This link uses obsolete and dubious solar data: Hoyt&Schatten TSI, Lockwood’s non-existing ‘doubling’ of IMF, Lassens and Friis-Christensen debunked [and poor] paper about solar cycle lengths, etc, so it not interesting at all, except as a historical paper documenting the gullibility of ‘climate’ wiggle-matchers.
Hello,
We crossed the 446 day old bar impeccable, a sign moreover towards cooling.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/13/spotless-days-400-and-counting/
Leif Svalgaard
“… The Sun varies so little that for me to accept that “it is the Sun, stupid” I want to see mechanisms that serve to amplify the tiny variations…”
one possible mechanism could be measured and quantified with the CLOUD experiment.
i think, it is quite disturbing that this experiment has been delayed so long.
I hope science is still that interesting to scientists that human curiosity wins in the end.
Leif Svalgaard (19:40:23) :
Just as you conclude and agree that on physical grounds CO2 is not the primary reason for GW, I conclude on physical and observational grounds that the Sun isn’t either. And I don’t buy the “what else can it be” cry.
To make the judgment that 0.1% isn’t enough you would have to know what would be enough. How much variability in solar output would be necessary to explain the temperature record?
Mike Ramsey
Mike Ramsey (02:58:42) :
To make the judgment that 0.1% isn’t enough you would have to know what would be enough. How much variability in solar output would be necessary to explain the temperature record?
Ten times as much. When Jack Eddy in the 1070s drew attention to the Maunder minimum, he noted that it coincided with the Little Ice Age. At the time the only ‘measurements’ of TSI were Abbot’s 1913-1956 data which showed a spurious [as we know today] 1 to 2% variation, so it made eminent sense to link MM and LIA. A decade later, Eddy’s suggestion was observationally refuted [as he himself has acknowledged] because the observed variation in TSI turned out to be 10 times smaller.
Though I am sure these papers have not gone unanswered, I would not discount the sun’s role entirely. It is not “settled science” yet.
“Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900–2000 global surface
warming” N. Scafetta1 and B. J. West http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/2005GL025539.pdf
“Phenomenological solar signature in 400 years of reconstructed
Northern Hemisphere temperature record” N. Scafetta1 and B. J. West (Duke University, Physics Dept.)
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/ImpactSunonEarthsTemp.pdf
“How much variability in solar output would be necessary to explain the temperature record?”
“Ten times as much. ” — Lief
Based on the GCHs. (Global Climate Hacks) A “hack” is a computer program written by somebody who doesn’t completely understand the problem space which that programmer keeps adjusting, still without understanding (taking hacks at), until he gets something that approximates the expected answer.
Lief can say that it will take 10 times as much all he wants but he has no evidence of this beyond the climate models and the assertion of a negative. Lief has asserted this negative many times. There is no mechanism that he believes could alter the climate based on the known variation in TSI. Whatever. This “10 times as much” figure is pulled out of a hat. The only way such a judgement is valid is if all of the facts are known. Even the IPCC admits they don’t understand cloud cover. It is like the argument of creationists who say that they just can’t concieve that life “is an accident” The climate is not limited by current human understanding, or even by the ultimate possible human understanding. “Ten times” is only a judgement, an opinion. It is not a scientific finding that can be proven through rigorous logic.
Bill D. (05:55:53) :
Though I am sure these papers have not gone unanswered, I would not discount the sun’s role entirely. It is not “settled science” yet.
“Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900–2000 global surface warming” N. Scafetta1 and B. J. West …
They compare the temperatures with Lean’s old TSI-reconstruction which not even Lean believes anymore. The reconstruction was made to match the Lockwood ‘doubling’ of the Sun’s magnetic field. Lockwood’s group now find that their old result was flawed and that there has been no ‘doubling in the last 100 years’. There is now general agreement that the Sun’s magnetic field was low at the beginning of the 20th century, increased to a high by mid-century, then decreasing to the same low level as at the beginning of the century. Curiously, some people see that as direct proof of AGW: the sun did it until 1950s, but since the magnetic field [and TSI] has come down again, but the temps have not, CO2 must be the explanation of why temps go up while the Sun goes down. So support for a solar influence is also strong support for AGW. Even Friis-Christensen and Lassen used that argument in explaining why their solar cycle length correlation with temperature broke down after the 1980s. Go Figure.