GISS's Gavin Schmidt credits WUWT community with spotting the error

Vincent Guerrini Jr:

I think we should give the AGW’ers a rest after all they really believe what they are doing is correct (re earth warming) so their intentions are not harmful….

Regarding the followers, I generally agree with you, but not about the leaders. They are fully aware of what they’re doing. Some have explicitly said their goal is to de-industrialize the west, and to prevent third world growth. For example: The WWF has a current ad running telling us that Polar Bears will be extinct within our childrens’ lifetimes, due to “climate change”. There’s not an ounce of proof to back up that claim, yet they’re allowed to say it on national television as if it were absolute truth. With no equally public challenge to this assertion, it spreads through the public, again, as absolute truth. This is where the real harm is caused.
Sorry, but I can’t give these people a break.

Neven wrote:
>I think [Gavin’s] a man who’s well-read, writes well and even if the AGW-theory is a conspiracy, it’s not that easy to get where he is professionaly. This makes me conclude that he’d be happy to accept disgrace in order for AGW and its consequences not happening.
He hasn’t shown the ability to do so regarding small errors, so I would not expect him to do so for larger ones.

Neven
I trust this site a heck of a lot more than RC. I seem to be barred from posting on there.
I don’t know why this is so as I just try, politely, to get people to look at the logic of their positions.
For instance, leaving aside the truth of CO2 driven AGW, why does nearly everyone assume that man has only a malign influence on the planet rather than benign sometimes?
Mankind has become more successful as he has gained the ability to manipulate his environment rather just respond to it unlike lesser animals. You correspond now because Mankind has been very active in manipulating the environment in the last few thousand years.
There are only three answers to the issue of Mankind having some influence on the planets future climate, assuming that he does.
1. The changes will be significant and harmful to Mankind and or the Planet.
2. The changes will be significant and helpful to Mankind and or the Planet.
3. The changes will be insignificant and not impact greatly Mankind and or the Planet.
What logic drives you to presuppose the first and not the second? Any examples of a warmer and more CO2 saturated Planet would be useful.
If you come from the kind of oddball environmentalist position, often expressed or inferred, that all Mans interference with the normal progress of the Planets environmental conditions must be considered harmful, ask yourself this.
If Mankind really does have the ability to significantly alter climatic conditions should he seek to prevent the next ice age?
If not why not? If so on what grounds would you justify it?
Also would you try to undo Mankinds past environmental manipulations that have so far been beneficial in the extreme to Mankind when taken as a whole?
Alan

John V-
I don’t believe you ever answered my question about your comparison of GISTEMP to CRN12R. You are simply comparing trends for the U.S., not global, correct? Something key to consider is that GISTEMP shows a much greater rise in temperatures for other parts of the world than the U.S. The U.S. is the most thoroughly covered large country (with weather stations). So even if GISTEMP agrees with trends from “good” stations in the U.S., what about the data from all over the world?

“but the conclusions would be the same if I aligned at the beginning. Here’s the graph you requested:” – JohnV
Does it bother you, even in the slightest, that there seems to be a systematic warm bias in the CRN12 stations in the sample at the beginning of the last century? Before the introduction of the automobile? Maybe we don’t have enough stations yet, as has been pointed out repeatedly, so small anomolies tend to distort the data. Does it bother you in the slightest that you are making arguments regarding large and complex physical systems based on moving curves up and down on a multiline chart in what can only be described as an arbitrary fashion? Do you wonder if the answer may not be discernable with a temp history of CRN12 that only goes back 110 years?
The only conlcusion that can be drawn from your work is that the GISTEMP at this stage of the project, seems to follow the sign of the the currently identified CRN1and 2 stations over time. Please don’t try to imply otherwise. I can wait until the project is complete to draw any conclusions myself.
This whole argument jumps the gun. I am done with it.

Neven
“You see what I mean? If AGW turns out to be happening this blog has indirectly harmed me, my children and all the other people I care about. If this weren’t so I would not be saying any of this. People are free to choose and believe whatever they want but their freedom stops where the freedom of others begin. That’s what makes AGW so interesting.”
The “fatal conceit:” The idea that “man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes.”
Ever since the beginning of modern science, the best minds have recognized that “the range of acknowledged ignorance will grow with the advance of science.” Unfortunately, the popular effect of this scientific advance has been a belief, seemingly shared by many scientists, that the range of our ignorance is steadily diminishing and that we can therefore aim at more comprehensive and deliberate control of all human activities. It is for this reason that those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often become the enemies of freedom.” – F. A. Hayek
Mr. Neven, you use the big “IF.” to accuse others of indirectly harming you, your children and all the other people you care about. IF I am harmed, my children are harmed, my grand children are harmed, my great grand children are harmed and all the other people I care about are harmed by a theory, offered with no scientific proof, only supposition, then I say provide the necessary proof of an unproven theory, because the freedom of the alarmists stops where the freedom of the skeptics begins.
The whole of the Algore/UN/IPCC effort started with the precept that man-made CO2 is causing global warming, which evolved into global warming/climate change. Climate change is a constant occurrence in Nature, irrelevant to man’s presence.
The alarmist thinking now is that the truth of the theory does not matter, it is the imagined consequence of inaction that requires action, however futile that action may be and at whatever the cost might be.
IF you find AGW so interesting, provide the proof that man-made global warming is valid.

John V-
I’m afraid you are mistaken about the 1930s…yes, it was warmer in the U.S., but there was a similar trend globally (many of the warmest years from before the 1990s were in the late 1930s/early 1940s). In addition, anecdotal evidence about sea ice and other things indicates that the 1935-45 period was probably not much cooler than the last ten years.
The U.S. trends are significantly different than the global trends overall.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/nebraska/year2005-us-temperature-graph.gif
http://heartspring.net/images/global_temperature_land_oce.gif
I don’t question GISS data from the U.S. nearly as much as their data from around the rest of the world – especially sparsely populated places like Siberia.

In common with earlier posters, I too found George’s exposition (13/11/08 18:07:46) compelling and convincing. So may I ask his (and anybody else’s) opinion on the following (no doubt naive) layman’s observations?
(1) The oceans are “thermally sluggish” (ie slow to heat or cool compared to the land) and are also flat (ie devoid of mountains). I think this means that most sorts of clouds are generally less likely to form over the ocean than the land. (Obviously not all because of different types of cloud formation, caused by colliding air masses perhaps).
(2) Generally, hot countries outside the equatorial zone seem to be pretty much cloud-free (Saudi Arabia etc). So they will be able to radiate heat away to space very rapidly (high temperatures allied to absence of cloud).
(3) The whole theory of AGW seems to be about trace amounts of CO2 enlisting water vapour to provide a positive feedback effect. (I’m not sure whether it matters whether this water vapour is condensed out into clouds or not. Certainly clear nights even with high relative humidity seem to me much colder than similar cloudy ones).
While I’m quite sure that all this doesn’t affect the physics and certainty of the expert view of AGW, I’d still like to be able to understand in simple and sympathetic terms how the effect of clouds is accommodated within the current orthodoxy. Hence this appeal for further explanation to George particularly.

significant increases in UHI have occurred since the 1930s, and there is no evidence that GISS has properly compensated for that.

I agree that UHI is an issue. I suspect that a substantial part of the difference between my CRN5 and rural CRN12 (or CRN123R) results is due to UHI. However, GISTEMP agrees with the rural CRN12 and CRN123 results. To me this is is evidence that GISTEMP does a good job of correcting for UHI (at least for the USA lower-48).
Thanks for the links to global and USA48 temperature histories. Here’s a single graph with both trends to the same scale:
http://opentemp.org/_results/20071018_CRN123R_TRI/usa48_world.png

“First, it is a straight-out 1% loss. You need – more – than 1% “growth” just to break even.”
No. The difference in my example is 0.01 percent growth. Your original claim is: “The cost (according to Stern) is a third or more of GWP growth per
year.” But the cost (according to Stern) is: “…likely to be around 1% of global GDP by 2050.”
“Global GDP” is a total and is not the same as GDP growth. You are confusing the two, which leads you to assume that the global economy would need an additional 1 percent growth in order to break even. But this would not be the case, since there would not be a 1 percent loss in GDP growth, as my simplified calculations show.
“Second, the very industries getting socked in the teeth are responsible for a great deal of the growth. So it’s not merely a flesh wound, it’s a knee-shot.”
Again you are assuming that Stern’s 1 percent refers to growth rather than total GDP. You are also assuming a static economy. A rise in the cost of CO2-emitting processes would encourage a shift towards alternative technologies and this activity would contribute to economic growth. So it’s bit alarmist to be talking about “knee-shots”.

“”Simon Abingdon (12:36:45) :
…….deletions……
While I’m quite sure that all this doesn’t affect the physics and certainty of the expert view of AGW, I’d still like to be able to understand in simple and sympathetic terms how the effect of clouds is accommodated within the current orthodoxy. Hence this appeal for further explanation to George particularly. “”
Simon, you have hit on a key element, an one which I think is the crux of the whole problem.
For the record; I am NOT a climatologist; have never worked in the field; I have no links to any energy or other resource companies, and I depend on no grants either public or private, for my living. I work for a profitmaking high tech company (double spinoff from Hewlett Packard); and I have no axe to grind. I just want to see them get the science correct; and hopefully before we do real damage to this planet, both ecologically and economically.
I’m on public record as having stated that so long as we have the oceans, we cannot change the temperature of this planet; either up or down, even if we wanted to. I’m also NOT a skeptic. I’m firmly convinced that the 150 year old Arhennius thesis of CO2 caused global warming is quite wrong, and I believe that the current state of experimental climate science clearly proves that.
Has this planet warmed up over much of the last 50 years? absolutely yes. Has atmospheric CO2 level increased over that time; certainly. Does Infrared absorption by CO2 and other GHG tend to cause surface warming; once again yes. Is that a serious problem ABSOLUTLEY NOT !
At the risk of incurring Anthony’s wrath for using up his space; I’ll try to address some of the issues.
First of all this isn’t rocket science; any ordinarily intelligent person can easily understand what’s going on if it is explained to him/er; even an 8th grade science student can understand the issues.
First lets deal with the incoming solar spectrum, which is where we get our “renewable green energy”, our life’s blood
The sun radiates very closely like a “Black Body” as mentioned above at a temperature of about 6000K. At the top of our atmosphere, we receive that energy at a rate of about 1368 Watts per square meter (about 10 square feet).
25% of that radiation comes in at wavelengths shorter than the peak wavelength of that spectrum, which is at about 0.5 microns in the green color region. Less than 1% of that total is at wavenegths less than 50% of the peak which is 250 nm in the Ultraviolet (UV). 99% of the solar total is at wavelengths less than 8 times the peak, or 4 microns in the infrared, and half of the total is at shorter than 1.5 times the peak or 0.75 microns.
By the time that radiation passes through the clear atmosphere some has been absorbed by various things in the atmosphere including both water vapor and CO2, and about 1000 Watts per square meter reaches the ground maximum. 73% of the ground is actually the oceans, and about 97% of what hits the oceans gets absorbed. 3% of the total is reflected off the water surface due to what is called Fresnel reflection; which is the ordinary reflection you see off glass or water.
As the sunlight proceeds down in the ocean, the shorter, and longer wavelengths get peeled off and absorbed in the water. Scuba divers will tell you that reds go first, then orange, yellows; you don’t notice the UV and violet go missing too. The very brightest sunlight which contains most of the energy is green blue and it goes deepest; several hundred feet; but it all eventually gets absorbed and most of it turns into heating of the water. Photosynthesis by phytoplankton will capture some. The warmed water is going to expand, and tend to float towards the surface (convection) which will very slowly tend to bring that heat energy back to the surface. But conduction is also going to cause some of it to leak downwards to the cooler ocean depths. So we end up with a temperature gradient, where the surface waters are warmest, and the temperature slowly drops down to the “thermocline” where it tends to stop, and then proceed to cool deeper but at a slower rate. Local turbulences and tides etc can stir things up and confuse all this but in calm conditions that’s what you get. So the vast majority of the incoming solar energy goes into the oceans and warms at least the surface layers, with a slower transport to the cooler depths. So the oceans are a pretty good approximation to a true black body,a nd if we didn’t have the blue scattering atmosphere the oceans would look black from outer space.
Now the surfaces all over the earth, at temperatures between -90 and +60 or thereabouts will radiate some sort of thermal radiation in the infrared region, less than 1% of it will be below about 4 microns, and 99% of it will be below about 100 microns, but the peak is in the 10.1 micron region for most of the earth. This radiation is primarily what causes the planet to cool off. The total spherical surface is four times the earth disk area which is intercepting the sunlight, so on average it only has to emit about 1/4 of the rate of absorption. NOAA says that number is about 390 Watts per square meter. If we didn’t have the atmosphere the whole thing would settle out at a temperature that is below zero (C) maybe -15 C, and we would all freeze.
Green house gases, primarily water vapor (about 1% of the atmosphere) and CO2 (385 ppm) absorb some of this emitted infrared, radiation, which excites various kinds of “molecular vibrations” in different gases that contain at least two atoms; but it is mostly water and CO2 that absorb most. In the case of CO2 we get what is called a resonance absorption, which selctively grabs radiation at around 15 microns wavelength, and that energy capture by the molecule causes the normally straight O=C-O CO2 molecule to bend in the middle back and forth, and also up and down; that single minus sign is actually a double equals sign edge on, because the four cabon bonds form a tetrahedral arrangement, so you get two pairs at right angles. So we call this a degenerate mode of vibration since there are two different yet identical versions.
If the CO2 molecule were isolated, this absorption would be very sharp, like tuning a radio to a particular station; but CO2 molecules in the atmosphere are isolated from each other by N2, O2, and those snooty loner A guys that are about 1% of the air. A CO2 molecule has to look past about 13-14 other molecules before it ever sees another CO2, because they are only 385 ppm of the air. So the CO2 can only interract with the ordinary nitrogen and oxygen atmospheric gases; they can’t gang up on anybody. (I have just put the water of other GHG aside since they do similar things).
The molecules bang into each other, and the average velocity of collision depends on the square root of the average temperature of the atmosphere. This movement velocity creates a Doppler effect, just like a passing train whistle,so the actual frequency (or wavelength) that gets absorbed by the CO2 varies over a range around 15 due to this Doppler shift which we call temperature broadening. The atmospheric density determines how often the CO2 will crash into another molecule, which will cause it to spill its extra infrared energy, and stop vibrating. the more dense the air, the more often the collisions, and the more the absorption band spreads out in “pressure ” broadening. So temperature and pressure broadening of the 15 micron CO2 “line” spreads it out int a band from about 13.5 microns to about 16.5 microns, and this is the piece of the outgoing emission from the earth that gets intercepted by the GHG.
It is NOT trapped; because it will get re-emitted by the CO2 as soon as it hits another molecule, or even spontaneously before it hits anything. The emission results in a further spreading of the spectrum, and the emitted photon can go in any direction so about half of it goes up towards outer space, and about half goes down towards the ground. The upward re-emission tends to escape more easily, becuase the temperature is dropping, and the atmospheric pressure is dropping with altitude, so the CO2 absorption band is getting narrower with altitude, so less of the spectrum gets re-absorbed. The ozone absorption band is from 9-10 microns, narrower than CO2 because it is at high altitude, less dense and colder, so less broadening.
The downward radiation might get re-absorbed, but eventually most of it will reach the ground.
This process results in delaying the escape of the surface IR, while the sun keeps on pouring more energy in, so the delay, results in the surface temperature getting hotter. You can claim if you like, that the returning IR warms the surface; but in reality it is the extra solar energy that arrives during the escape delay, that is actually warming the surface; and this is the so-called Greenhouse effect.
Now remember that 73% of the surface is ocean, and even the soil and land surfaces contain a lot of moisture, so much of the re-absorbed IR form the GHG gets absorbed back in the water/oceans.
Water is the most opaque known liquid for long wavelength infra red radiation, and all of this infrared gets stopped in about the top 10 microns of water thickness, so it abnormally warms the water surface compared to the deep diving incoming solar radiation; and that leads in turn to prompt evaporation of the more energetic surface water molecules.
So sunlight cause sluggish and slow surface warming and evaporation, but returning IR gives prompt warming and evaporation.
Now water vapor is a GHG; the most powerful, so more evaporation causes more ir capture by water, and a positive feedback warming effect occurs.
But remember that the ocean doesn’t need warming from CO2 emissions to create evaporation, the water vapor in the atmsopehre is perfectly capable of starting that process itself; so I believe that the CO2 amplification by water feedback is a myth; the water can do it all by itself.
Well now comes the punch line !
Water is the ONLY GHG in the atmosphere that exists in the atmosphere in all three phases, vapor, liquid, and solid.
As a vapor, water is a positive feedback GHG warming influence; BUT as a liquid or solid, water forms CLOUDS; and clouds are invariably a NEGATIVE FEEDBACK COOLING influence (over climate time scales).
Nobody EVER observed it to warm up due to a cloud passing between them and the sun; it ALWAYS cools down; and for very good reasons optically and otherwise.
First off, the cloud tops are highly reflecting of solar radiation so they reflect more sunlight back out into space (albedo effect). NOTE; albedo effect is always solar spectrum radiation; maybe slightly spectrally altered by non constant reflectivity.
The other effect of some clouds, is to absorb additional incoming solar radiation, and stop it from reaching the ground. This is specially true of precipitating clouds that are going to cause rain or snow or what have you.
Now globally, total global evaporation must always equal total global preciptiation; if that wasn’t true, pretty soon the oceans would be over our heads.
So more evaporation due to GHG returned IR radiation, ultimately results in an increase in total global precipitable cloud cover, and that extra cloud cover blocks more sunlight and cools the place down.
If you can access SCIENCE for July 2007, a paper by Wentz et al; “How much more rain will global warming Bring?”
They showed from satellite data, that a one degree C increase in mean surface temperature, results in a 7% increase in global evaporation, a 7% increase in total atmospheric water content, and a 7% increase in total global precipitation; from which one might infer, about a 7% increase in global precipitable clouds; and there is the negative feedback that stops the temperature from climbing too high.
The ocean warming, evaporation, cloud formation, precipitation cycle adjusts the mean global cloud cover (about 50%) so it doesn’t get too hot.
If surface temperatures get too high, you get more evaporation, more cloud formation, more rain clouds, and more sunlight blocking to oppose the warming. If it gets too cold, you get a lot of rain and snow, whcih removes a lot of clouds, and more sunlight comes in and warms the place back up again.
Anything that enhances cloud formation, such as a volcanic eruption dust, or solar and cosmic charged particle showers, menas you don’t need as high a temperature to get the right amount of cloud, so it cools down. It is not sunlight scatter or blocking by volcanic ash that causes cooling, it is the resultant cloud formation.
If we clean up the air and don’t get a lot of cosmic rays, clouds don’t form as easily and the temperature rises to get more water vapor up there to make it easier to form clouds.
The whole place is a giant swamp cooler, and the oceans/clouds are in total control of the mean surface temperatures; CO2 and other GHGs have almost nothing to do with it; although it certainly is true that they try to warm the surface. All they end up doing is lowering the equilibrium amount of cloud cover required to maintain the global surface temperature.
Now there’s a whole lot more things going on as well, but you get the picture. It’s not that difficult a problem; but it is going to take a lot of studies to get data to quantify these effects, and some of the ways these interractions happen I don’t know anything about; but we will gradually learn them.
But anyway, if you had control of the temperature knob, what temperature would you set it to; and why; and would you want that responsibility.
The various machinations that the sun and its spots and shockwave shield have been up to over the last half century since IGY in 1957/58 have had a great effect on cloud formation via the solar wind and cosmic ray link that are affected by sunspot magnetic fields; but now we have a sleepy sun sans spots, that doesn’t look like it is in any hurry to wake up, and that is why we are likely to be looking at a cooler future.
Finally; I know a hell of a lot about feedback amplifiers, and such things always have a delay between the cause (input) and the effect (output), and if that delay is significant, the net result is that the amplifier oscillates wildly, from + limit to -limit, and if any such feedbacks were responding to CO2, we would see those wild oscillations. And in feedback systems the cause (input) ALWAYS happens before the effect (output), and every ice core data set, shows that rising or falling surface temperatures lead to rising or falling CO2 in the atmosphere, sometimes with a delay of about 800 years.
When I went to school, having the cause happen 800 years after the effect would be a statutory bar to such a thesis; and even in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, his graphs on page 66/67 clearly show that the CO2 doesn’t change till after the temperature; and we know why, because CO2 is more soluble in colder water, so warming the oceans cause CO2 outgassing, and slower CO2 uptake.
George