New PNAS paper: Experts surveyed on the probability of climate “tipping points”

O.K.
I have a slightly OT question here that I haven’t seen addressed, or, if I have, then my noggin hasn’t recorded it.
But.
What is the function of the internal temperature of the earth on earths temperature? I see discussion of earth as a black body, grey body, etc, etc, etc, but, nobody seems to want to think about the fact that the earth has a MOLTEN core, and an approximate constant soil temp of 56 degrees F or so. How much does this play into climate models and temperature.
Thanks and hope this is O.K. to ask here.

I saw a great comic dealing with one potential problem using windmills as an alternative energy source here . I’m a fan of this comic but this is the first time that he’s done anything dealing with the global warming “crisis”. Thought the readers here would enjoy.

I find myself wondering whether the dramatic rise over the years of the almighty ‘tipping point’ cliche will culminate in a runaway effect having recently reached its own tipping point of over-usage. I guess saying it is like wishing it.

This paper has got to be a new low point in climate science. Hopefully there is a bottom down there to stop science from sinking too low.
” Pairs of tipping events A, B are connected with a directed
arrow A 3 B if (i) at least 4 experts judged that some effect of triggering A on the probability of triggering B exists and (ii) they outnumbered the experts who saw no effect of A on B.”
Ohh, that’s really significant, isn’t it?

Very UNscientific.
It is to laugh. Hahaha.

Within 50 years we will have all kinds of new technologies which will remove fears about CO2, and give people who like to worry something completely different to worry about.

Tipping point? Might be nice if someone defined the term.
Maybe we should ask Al’s wifey.
Been there, done that

……………. she’d be your whunkle.
(sorry)

That’s a Joke; when I landed on the Docks of New York’s Manhattan Island almost exactly 48 years ago to the day; all my worldy goods were in two wooden crates sitting there on the dock (one was actually full of nothing by LP records) We were inside a Customs enclosure (fence), having done Immigration three days earler in Port Everglades Fla.
After being cleared by Customs, a NY dock hand, who spoke no English at all, towed my two boxes, which were already on a dolly, exactly six feet from the inside of the fence, through a gate to the outside of the fence; where a shipping agent took possession of them with my instructions to ship them to Beaverton Oregon.
The NY dockhand, of apparent Eastern European ancestry, was being hassled my some immigration officers, who imagined he was ship’s crew (Dutch Boat) jumping ship and trying to slip into USA, so they were wanting to see HIS papers (but not mine). Eventually his foreman bailed him out of the mixup; and then he held out his hand for a tip for his six feet of cart trundling, which I could have done myself. We were standing right underneath Anthony’s sign which read “NO TIPPING”. If I had jumped upwards, I would have banged my head on it. The same sign was on every overhead beam the whole length of the docks. So I deposited a nice shiny US Quarter in his palm, which was a significant portion of the total $40 US (and all other currencies) that we had on our persons. Where I came from offering someone a tip was considered an insult; as if he wouldn’t do a good job unless you bribed him with money.
The guy pushed the quarter back at me and mumbled “there’s no tip” or something muffled that sounded like that. So I dutifully put the quarter back in my pocket. The guy exploded; “c’mon ! arf a buck !”. it appears he said “That’s no tip”.
So I pointed to the overhead sign and told him in four letter words to take a long jump off a short pier. I still hate tipping people; it’s a scam.
But as to the earth’s climate having tipping points; given that the orbital parameters stay pretty much what they now are. No system that is as stable as the earth’s climate is, could possibly have tipping points, or it would have tipped a long time ago.
So forget climate tipping points; that’s also a scam; just like tipping is.
George

To Profarmer,
The earth’s core temperature is somewhat unknown with estimates between about 5,000 and 10,000 K. Apparently ongoing radioactive decay continues to keep it warm. I don’t know if there are also tidal forces that also keep it warmed due to the friction internally as the sun’s gravity pulls bulges on the earth crust. It is thought that the icy crust of Europa hides a liquid ocean underneath that is maintained by tidal forces energy since Europa is so close to Jupiter (maybe it’s Saturn; I can’t remember everything).
So earth should have a continuous outflow of thermal energy from the core; through the surface, but I have never seen any calculation or figure for what that flux might be. But it is known from mining operations that the temperature increases by so much for every so many meters underground depth; presumably after some surface skin which is warmest on the outside.
So that would seem to set a maqximum depth for penetration of energy from solar heating going into the earth’s surface. I have no idea what that depth is.
In the oceans, sunlight propagates many tens of metres into the deep oceans, and it gets colder as you go down, at least to some thermocline, and then apparently it continues to get colder with depth; but much slower, till it gets down to about +3 deg C.
Salt water has no temperature of maximum density before it freezes, like fresh water has at +4 deg C, so salt water always has a positive temperature coefficient of expansion; so deep water warmed by penetrating solar energy, expands and rises where it picks up even more solar energy and warms even more; so it continues to rise till it gets to the surface. At the surface it is hottest of all, si it radiates to the atmosphere, and it conducts to the atmosphere, and the warmed atmosphere also rises; and it evaporates into the atmosphere, which takes astronomical amounts of latent heat around 545 cal per gram into the atmosphere.
So convection trumps conduction; and I don’t think there is any such thing as a pipeline feeding solar energy into the ocean depths; ther’s no physical mechanism to do that. Not surprisingly those new diving buoys can’t find any such pipeline either.
George

Science by polling?
Good. We can dispense with such mundane details as facts, reality, and the like. Just conduct a poll and we shall know the truth in all its glory. And then — voila — we have a consensus.
The problem with this paper is obvious. The selection of experts was arbitrary. It should have been based on a poll to determine which experts were most expert on determining tipping points. Let’s conduct a poll to see if this paper needs further review.

So, I’m kinda confused…
The concept of “tipping point” seems to imply to me that our climate would shift from its current attractor to some new one.
I haven’t been able to find what people think the new attractor would look like. Some have said Venus, but we’re missing quite a bit of CO2 for that one.
If it’s not possible to construct a model of such an attractor, then maybe it’s because it isn’t there.
If there’s no new attractor to tip to, then there won’t be any “tipping point”.

Solar energy has (based on its time domain) no more than a few feet of influence on soil temps (its a common first year heat transfer problem of an infinite medium and mixed radiation convection boundary condition).
As for the calcs of flux, Lord Kelvin was the first to use the measured heat flux from the earth to calculate its age – and in doing so screwed up geological sciences for almost 50 years. He did conclusively prove the earth was much older than 6000 years – more in the 20 to 100 million year range – but this didn’t correlate with fossil records, which indicated a much longer time frame. It took the discovery of nuclear fusion to bring the two time calcs into sync….
In answer to your question, heat flux is a “constant”, and for purposes of global warming is considered such (if they consider it at all). Since most of the models deal with dT based on stored heat capacity and reradiation, I would think it could be dealt with as an offset in models, and wouldn’t require any real physics to be input (much like their models, in many respects!!!)

I should mention that Kelvin was an old sob – who confidently predicted that heavier than air flying machines would never work…

I think the most obvious objection (blatantly obvious) to this idea of ‘tipping’ point is that if there is a tipping point it MUST have occurred in the past. There is nothing unique about our current situation compared to the entire history of the planet. So where is this tipping point in the data? I see several tipping points, but they are all into and out of ice-ages!! No where in the data has there been 3-levels i.e. ice age to interglacial to runaway global warming desert earth. If this climate state didn’t exist in the past, it doesn’t exist as a viable state. There is a tipping point alright, but not in the direction AGW believers think it is.

Regarding heat within the Earth and how it varies with depth and what it means at the surface:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Geothermal_gradient
Here is one quote:
“This estimate, corroborated by thousands of observations of heat flow in boreholes all over the world, gives a global average of 3×10−2 W/m². Thus, if the geothermal heat flow rising through an acre of granite
terrain could be efficiently captured, it would light two 60 watt
light bulbs.”
Bottom line: this source of heat is miniscule and can be disregarded as far as Earth’s temperature is concerned. On the other hand, the Sun . . .

Adam from Kansas,
That’s really interesting. I wonder if the satellite data can be broken out between land and sea temps.

This is a cool way of doing science!
Soon, Gallup will be determining ALL the important science questions! Hey, we might finally get a grand unified theory! A T.O.E !!!! By polling consensus! I’m so excited about the future of science!

The only tipping point I care about is the one that delivers the fine wine from my glass to my taste buds.

Also from the above epw link I particulary like the following.
UN IPCC Scientist Dr. Steven M. Japar, a PhD atmospheric chemist who was part of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Second (1995) and Third (2001) Assessment Reports, and has authored 83 peer-reviewed publications and in the areas of climate change, atmospheric chemistry, air pollutions and vehicle emissions, challenged the IPCC’s climate claims.
“Temperature measurements show that the [climate model-predicted mid-troposphere] hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them!” Japar told the minority staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 7, 2009.
An IPCC Apostate.

Robert Austin “The fabulous tipping point, Hansen’s deus ex machina”.
What a fabulously clever statement! Mind if I borrow it sometime? 🙂 Yes it totally is his deus ex machina, LOL … totally.

steelbound (14:14:04) :
Linked to: http://xkcd.com/556/
I LOVE IT! thanks for posting that.
I did a render a couple of weeks ago with obama as don quixote..if interested:
http://www.cricket-studio.com/Renders/TiltingAtTurbines

Smokey (18:15:16) :
If Leif sees you are referring to the sun’s insolence he’ll probably bust a gut laughing.

Pofarmer – you said the underground temperature near the surface is constant. So to the atmosphere it’s probably treated as just another constant. It is also obvious on a hot beach, particularly one which was snow-covered a few months earlier. that surface temperature is significantly affected by weather. Of course, it probably should have been studied – and maybe has been. Good hunting.

Pofarmer (13:50:14) :

What is the function of the internal temperature of the earth on earths temperature? I see discussion of earth as a black body, grey body, etc, etc, etc, but, nobody seems to want to think about the fact that the earth has a MOLTEN core, and an approximate constant soil temp of 56 degrees F or so. How much does this play into climate models and temperature.

When there is a geothermal event such as a volcano, then it is taken into account when modeling climate reactions. However as the internal heat of the planet is notionally constant then it is not. That’s not to say it’s effect is the same for all points on the earth, but rather they don’t alter much. Unless a new rift opened that upset the homogenized nature of the geothermal balance then at least I think it is reasonable to ignore it.

hereticfringe
you mean Bill Engvall… Here’s Your Sign…
Jeff Foxworthy does You Might Be a Redneck…
Larry the Cable Guy does Git Er Done!
Ron White just does everything funny…all he has to do is talk….

On geothermal energy: Did you know that there exist applications for heating and cooling houses with it?
http://www.geothermal-heat-pump-resource.org/index.html
Their physics is off but the application is good 🙂
So this .93 WATS per acre are just what comes out of the insulating top layer. In the ocean bottoms, at which level in the ground the temperatures are 50C, convection is taking away much more energy than estimated up to now. Of course it will be constant unless there is volcanic activity.

John Hultquist quoted:
“This estimate, corroborated by thousands of observations of heat flow in boreholes all over the world, gives a global average of 3×10−2 W/m². Thus, if the geothermal heat flow rising through an acre of granite terrain could be efficiently captured, it would light two 60 watt light bulbs.”
This leaves me completely puzzled as to how geothermal heating systems can work. If heat transfer through the ground is that low, one would think that ground loop systems would gradually cool the ambient soil and cease to work. But this doesn’t happen….

E.M.Smith (17:34:50) :Is there any other term for ‘feedback loop leading to limit cases at each end with both ends stable” other than hysteresis? I find explaining it to non-tech folks tiring.

In electronics you have circuits that show hysteresis and “latch up” to the high supply voltage or ground potential, which would be a rough analog to the square wave oscillator that our climate appears to be, flopping from the low limit (ice age) to the high limit (warming peak).
For the sake of discussion you might try explaining it like a logistic curve that approaches a limit. For example the percentage of a population that are infected with a disease.
At the starting point you have no one infected (ice age), then a single person gets a communicable disease. He spreads it at some rate into the uninfected population, which starts an exponential growth cycle. This is where the tipping point and the simple limited logistic curve differ. The tipping point concept assumes an irreversible over shoot like a mass death event, that wipes out the population. If on the other hand, the curve is limited by some natural means like a low mortality infectious disease is, at some point the infection rate drops as you reach a point where almost everyone who can be infected is infected. At that point the new infection rate drops toward zero, and the total number of infected people reaches a maximum plateau at some value dependent on how many people are naturally immune to the disease, or due to living habits are not likely to contact an infected person and contract the disease.
That sort of logistic curve approaches an upper limit and then the total number of infected persons drops back to zero according to the natural recovery rate of the population.
The trick is figuring out what is the mechanism that establishes the apparent upper and lower limits to the climate and global temperature.
The natural historical cycle implies that some effect stops the cooling at some minimum temperature (maximum ice cover), and some effect limits maximum temperature when some mechanism of cooling begins to dominate heat input.
To use a very crude analogy. You hold your home at some temperature that you find comfortable with a thermostat. When you have a party, as new guests arrive the heat load in the house increases by about 300 watts for each additional warm body that shows up at the house. The temperature in the rooms rises slowly until some one notices it is hot and stuffy, and people start opening windows or leaving doors open or moving out on the patio where it is more comfortable. The human comfort zone establishes a natural upper limit to the temperature the crowd of people will tolerate.
We know that at sea surface temperatures near 84 deg F (29 deg C), some basic weather processes change. For example the Indian Monsoon turns on when SST get near that upper limit, and rainfall during the monsoon tracks well with SST temperatures during the period just prior to the Monsoon season. Cyclones also become stronger and larger (with larger cloud shields) as sea surface temperatures increase.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v306/n5943/abs/306576a0.html
That “trigger temperature” for strong convective storms is not far from that long term global average upper limit of 22 deg C. Local humidity conditions also play into this over land, where humidities may not be high enough for strong convection to develop due to instability, as warm moist air is unlikely to be lifted above its condensation level to trigger thunder storm development in low humidity conditions. In the oceans available humidity is not likely to ever be an issue at these temps.
That I think, would be a reasonable explanation of that observed “implied” upper limit. When large areas of the ocean reach these critical SST numbers the heat transported to high altitudes by convection and the dramatic albedo changes produced by these large convective storms over whelms stored heat in the ocean and solar heating and cools every thing down. I see thunder storm development like a pressure safety valve. As temperatures and humidities rise, thunderstorms move enormous amounts of energy to high altitudes in very short time periods, and also cut off radiant heating by the sun to the lower atmosphere and ground while they are active. Once that excess heat is radiated to space falling rain and hail rapidly cool down the ground and lower atmosphere to temperatures below that critical temperature humidity combination that is inherently unstable (high CAPE “convective available potential energy”). When CAPE is high it takes very small triggers to kick of massive thunderstorm developments. At low CAPE numbers it is almost impossible to trigger a thunderstorm even at high temperatures. Here in the high plains temperatures over about 84 deg F and humidities over 50% RH almost guarantee an active thunderstorm day.
The only thing left is to figure out a counter balancing effect that would put a low limit on the earths surface temperatures. For example as the earth cools at some point, no place on the earth would be warm enough and moist enough to trigger convective storm development. That would completely shut off that “heat pump” that pushes warm moist air to high altitudes and creates large areas of very white clouds during the summer peak heating.
Then you have dry cold conditions and stable weather during the local summer where the oceans slowly store up heat until that water vapor heat pump begins to turn on again. Once temperatures and humidities get high enough, in the summer months as warm moist air moves over the ice fields, it would lots of warm rain on the coastal ice fields and snow cover. Rainfall on snow can lead to very rapid melting of snow, which changes albedo as more and more land is melting off each summer the ice cover slowly melts back and the climate warms back up until it switches into a rapid warming mode (interglacial).
If this cycle works as I imagine it, I would expect at the end of the interglacial cycle you would see much higher precipitation (pumping massive amounts of heat to high altitudes), and higher snow depths during the early fall, late spring that would shift the earths albedo toward a higher heat loss due to higher reflection (snow blitz concept). This in turn would cause less time for the snow fields to melt off in the spring and summer, so less total heating due to the higher albedo.
If the climate hovers at a central point in that oscillation very small changes in TSI could make it “flop” to either warming or cooling trend, until these limits kick in stopping it and conditions gradually creep back toward that median value. Throw in the additional effect of seasonal heating cycles the Milankovitch cycles,and volcanic dust inputs, and they could move that whole upper limit lower limit higher and lower.
Suppose the lower limit during an interglacial cycle was about what we saw during the little ice age, and the upper limit is that 22 deg C limit implied by historical records during warm cycles?
To drop back to the infectious disease analogy, suppose that you substitute convective storms for infected people. If during the summer you have lots of convective storms covering most of the warm ocean with high cloud layers you effectively “cut off heating” in the afternoon every day when the storms build. When you get to the point that all the warm ocean water is covered by storm clouds every afternoon, you have created that upper limit barrier. The oceans cannot heat up any more because they are screened from the sun during the afternoon heating period, and heat losses to space go through the roof while the storms are active pumping warm moist air to 50-65k ft altitudes. When the storms collapse in the evening, the sky clears and night time radiant cooling is easy in the now clear skies.
This is the pattern we see during the summer thunderstorm season as the thunderstorms build during the peak of the heating day, grow vigorously until shortly after sunset then the skies clear into the night. Each part of the country has a natural time of the day when this process kicks off. Farther east the peak time for thunderstorm development is later in the evening and would have less impact on day time heating but would still pump large amounts of heat energy to high altitudes.
It seems to be a logical cycle to me, but I do not have the information to verify or falsify the concept.
This is sort of an off the top of my head post so I hope that makes sense as a possible pair of boundary conditions that naturally limit climate shifts to a relatively narrow band depending on the prevailing heat input due to TSI and its modifiers like volcanic ash and planetary motions.
Larry

OT: Mount Redoubt in Alaska alert level raised to orange.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29719558/

Anthony: AGW doctrine based on CO2-greenhouse effect eliminated?:
From: http://algorelied.com/?p=899
New peer-reviewed study: In summary, there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect, in particular CO2-greenhouse effect, in theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics. Thus it is illegitimate to deduce predictions which provide a consulting solution for economics and intergovernmental policy.
That sucking sound you hear is all of the air and energy being sucked out of Al Gore’s global warming climate change climate crisis machine.
Source: Falsification of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame of Physics published in The International Journal of Modern Physics. Authors: Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner

CMOC hikes to MGIS while NINO hooks to the sideline and DAIS runs a post. MGIS can hit DAIS long if he’s open, but otherwise can throw to NINO who laterals to AMAZ coming out of the backfield.
This is exactly the play the Cardinals ran in the Super Bowl and look where that got them.

LA NINA
Speaking of tipping, looks like we may be tipping into yet another La Nina. There’s some awfully cold water pooling out there.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo&hot.html

The quotes below are from the Proceedings of the ECLAT-2 Helsinki Workshop , 14-16 April, 1999
A Concerted Action Towards the Improved Understanding and
Application of Results from Climate Model Experiments in European Climate Change Impacts Research. Representing Uncertainty in Climate Change Scenarios and Impact Studies. (search Hadley Centre for it or google it)
“One of the earliest scenarios constructed specifically for use in
impact assessment was based on expert judgement. It was part of a study conducted by the National Defense University and involved
presenting a panel of experts with a graph of decadal-mean annual temperatures for the Northern Hemisphere from 1871 to 1970. They were requested to provide upper (10 percentile), middle (median) and lower (90 percentile) estimates for the three decades to 2000 (NDU, 1978). The 19 responses were averaged and weighted according to the level of expertise of panel members and a frequency distribution constructed. The study concluded that although there was a “broad range of perceptions about possible temperature trends to the end of the century” the most likely scenario was for “a climate resembling the average for the past thirty years” (NDU, 1978). ”
This is of course “before Rumsfeld”:
“Uncertainty is a constant companion of scientists and decision-makers involved in global climate change research and management. This uncertainty arises from two quite different sources – ‘incomplete’
knowledge and ‘unknowable’ knowledge. ‘Incomplete’ knowledge affects much of our model design, whether they be climate models (e.g. poorly understood cloud physics) or impact models (e.g. poorly known
plant physiological responses to changing atmospheric nutrients).
‘Unknowable’ knowledge arises from the inherent indeterminacy of future human society and of the climate system. Human (and therefore social) actions are not predictable in any deterministic sense and we will always have to create future greenhouse gas emissions trajectories on the basis of indeterminate scenario analysis (Nakicenovicet al.., 1998). Uncertainties in climate change predictions arising from this source are therefore endemic
In other words, as Rummy said, we don’t know what we don’t know.
Here’s more from ECLAT:
“The concept of probabilities for social and economic systems and developments assumes a very different role to that in natural sciences. Even if probability distributions can be constructed, they are inherently subjective and also time dependent.
To quote Henry Linden: “The probability of occurrence of long-term trends is inversely proportional to the ‘expert’ consensus.”
The poor track record of energy price forecasts, but even the continuous change (lowering) of median population projections are a case in point. In fact, excessive self-cite and “benchmarking” of modeling studies
to existing scenarios (example: IS92a) creates the danger of artificially constructing “expert consensus”.
This was in 1999 and in public statements the science was already certain and settled. In fact Professor Bob Watson when Chairman of IPCC in 1996 was asked about scientists who disagreed with IPCC he said “The science is settled and we are not going to re-open the debate now.” He is currently the UK’s Director of Strategy at Tyndall and Chief Scientific Adviser to DEFRA.

Anthony,
While I like your article on “tipping points”, I must point out to you that your picture is completely in accurate. While most here are thinking of “tipping” as in “give a tip to your waitress”, this sign has nothing to do with that. The EPA law is about “fly-tipping” which was indeed enacted in 1990, and is illegal for a very good reason.
Fly-Tipping is:

Fly tipping is the illegal dumping of waste. Whether it involves a single bin bag of rubbish chucked over a hedge, or lorry loads of building debris dumped by the side of the road, waste which is not disposed of in the correct manner and in the right location, is deemed as fly tipping.
The most common types of waste to be dumped include large appliances and domestic items, such as sofas and freezers, tyres, construction waste and chemicals.

Please see:
Fly Tipping
Penalties for Fly-Tipping
Fly-Tipping and the Law
The picture of your sign pertains to the dumping of trash and NOT tipping your waitress!

Squidly,
Relax…
Anthony knows this already.
It’s meant to be humour.
Everyone in this forum knows this is not about tipping waitresses, or cab drivers.
If we did, we would all be rooting for Hansen, Gore and the rest of the global warming madness.

Squidly,
I take that back,
scanning the comments I guess there are a couple of narrowly-horizoned dimbulbs here who were mislead.

I have serious problem with all theses climate experts who constantly preach only doom and gloom for mankind and the climate of this planet. They seem to be unable to get right neither the first few years nor the first decade in predicting realistic actual global temperatures. Now we are being asked to accept climate forecasts 100 years, 200 years and even a 1000 year ahead and some with even 90% confidence. It seems to me that climate science is the only free money science going around town today and if you want some of the action you have invent a potential threat whether real or imaginary, exaggerate it and then sell it to get the your share of the free money.
We just heard from 2009 International Conference on Climate Change attended by some 800 scientists and there was no such tipping point message coming from this conference. Matter of fact it was the opposite message .Natural variability is what drives our climate. We have no control over this.
There are just too many so called experts who now totally confuse the public. Thank goodness that the public is not buying this as 44% of them now believe that long term planetary trends are responsible for the climate change. The governments remain gullible and give our hard earned tax money away too easily while people are forced to live in tents with no jobs and no money others are chasing nebulous and expensive climate studies 1000 years ahead. What waste. We need to deal with our today’s problems first.
Let’s focus on legitimate goals like cleaning up real air pollution like SO2, NOx, CO, particulate matter, ground level ozone and smog, volatile organic compounds, lead. Let’s improve our energy efficiency and develop cleaner fuels but let’s stop focusing on CO2 only. It will do very little to change climate.Instead of preparing for unprecedented global warming for the next 30 years we better prepare for global cooling and quickly for the cooling has already started.

hotrod (22:10:51) :
. . . To use a very crude analogy. You hold your home at some temperature that you find comfortable with a thermostat. When you have a party, as new guests arrive the heat load in the house increases by about 300 watts for each additional warm body that shows up at the house. The temperature in the rooms rises slowly until some one notices it is hot and stuffy, and people start opening windows or leaving doors open or moving out on the patio where it is more comfortable. The human comfort zone establishes a natural upper limit to the temperature the crowd of people will tolerate. . .

A waggish friend used to argue that warm temperatures were caused by increasing numbers of people. Witness the equatorial lattitudes, where the population far exceeds that of colder climes. Or, as Hotrod points out, look what happens when people gather in a room—it heats up so much that people take their coats off!
/Mr Lynn

The lowest sustained solar radio flux since the F10.7 proxy was created in 1947;
Solar wind is the lowest observed since the beginning of the space age;
The solar wind magnetic field 36 percent weaker than during the minimum of Solar Cycle 23;
Effectively no sunspots;
Cosmic rays at near record-high levels (is this a fact?).
I think Leif’s theory Climate = no sun effect is falling apart
Mind you… could be completely wrong.. I admire his tenacity though…

RE previous: It seems the cosmic ray story is correct as well
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/

All of this predicting and calculating and scaring is based on the silly assumption that we can even measure the Earth’s “average” temperature and that this “average” has a meaning. It does however give us something to do all day.

My gawd! I never correlated the phrase “tipping point” with more funding! What a calculated and cleaver use of words. This goes back to the conflagration of like-minded green scientists who wished to somehow bring about a green utopia and freedom from foreign oil. With benevolent thoughts they conjured up meaningless…um..er…meaningful, emotional phrases that would not only cause bucket tipping but would bring the group to popular fame and increased publication. Which would then lead to new more leisurely pursuits in scientific inquiry: polls!
The grant application would go something like this and hand written on college ruled paper, double spaced:
Me: “I would like to study this ‘opinion’ phenomenon, as this is an important part of global warming.”
Grant committee: “$500,000.”
Me: “This study is also relevant to the Arctic ice issue.”
Grant committee: “plus $100,000.”
Me: “I also think it will lead to the discovery of the ‘hot spot’.”
Grant committee: “1 mil”.
Me: “Thank you for your time. Can I poll you now? Just talk into this rabbit hutch while I read the temperature gauge.”

I think we are approaching a tipping point, but it’s political and unrelated to the actual climate.
Will the USA implement an ill-conceived cap-and-trade system to fund new social programs? Will we implement a less onerous and more transparent carbon tax instead? Will people press our political leaders to do nothing that will drag the economy further? Will the skeptics and realists finally be heard, or will they continue to be dismissed as flatearthers?
That’s the real tipping point we’re approaching and it’s coming up fast.

Pamela, maybe get some of that funding to the 5th grader you spoke of in another thread. Perhaps he will be able to forecast the weather here more accurately than has been done up to now. If it is so “easy”, than how come nobody can do it? I was surprised as it was the least intelligent and most mean spirited post I have ever seen from you. If you would be so kind as to explain why you felt it necessary to disrespect me in such a manner? Are you still upset that I dare to question Dr. Svalgaard? You have to admit there is little humility and much contempt for most of us in his posts, yet the fact remains that he might just be wrong. This possibility exists for all of us, pro or non, sun as driver or not. I have truly enjoyed reading your posts as they are well grounded and well thought out. Until that one. Were you having a bad day? WUWT?

Paraphrasing: I have no idea what’s going on but it’s so scary!
“Tipping Point” is the modern name for the God of Thunder.

“Pierre Gosselin (01:01:14) :
LA NINA
Speaking of tipping, looks like we may be tipping into yet another La Nina. There’s some awfully cold water pooling out there.”
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo&hot.html
On that same web page, further down, there is are a couple maps of “coral bleaching hotspots”. Is it my imagination, or are the hotspots only showing up in places where no one ever goes?
Mike

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool; avoid him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a student; teach him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep; wake him.
He who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man; follow him.
Hmmmm who fits in each spot? I guess I’m in the second spot…

“”” anna v (21:36:03) :
continuing my anna v (21:19:00) :
Back of the envelope:
Since as far as the sun goes, the earth and moon are in the same ballpark, if all the sun energy falling on the moon at full moon came to earth, that would give 5% extra energy ( radius of moon 1/8 of earth, area of face pi*r**2). Thats a lot of watts per meter square. average would be half of that. “””
The operational words in this Anna, are “IF ALL” ; and if it did that would be simply “off all”, wouldn’t it.
Fortunately that doesn’t happen. The sun may be illuminating the moon (and earth) with a nearly colimated beam having about a half degree divergence; but in addition to a less than one reflection coefficient; the moon’s surface is a highly diffuse reflector, so one can reasonably presume that the moon is a Lambertian reflector.
I think your back of envelope may have some typos, because if the moon is only 1/8th of earth’s diameter (that sounds too small) the areas would be 1/64th, which doesn’t get you any 5%. But if that was a good ratio, then the earth would subtend about 4 degrees.
Google says moon is 1/4 earth; 3475 km versus 12742 km.
So areas are 1/16, which would be 6 1/4%.
But now earth subtends 2 degrees at moon or 1 degree semi-cone angle.
So flux from Lambertian source would be pi x I x sin^2(1deg) , or since total flux is pi x I then the fraction is simply sin^2(1 degree) n= 3 x 10^-4
So even a perfectly reflecting moon would only add 0.03% to earth’s solar energy, at full moon.
Actually it is more likely that the moon’s surface reflectance is closer to isotropic than Lambertian, in which case it would be even less.
George

“”” But as to the earth’s climate having tipping points; given that the orbital parameters stay pretty much what they now are. No system that is as stable as the earth’s climate is, could possibly have tipping points, or it would have tipped a long time ago.
So forget climate tipping points; that’s also a scam; just like tipping is.
George, I’m not so sure. I think we DO have tipping points, in a nice Hysteresis system of ice ages. “””
Say E.M. IANAL but I tend to write like one.
See where I said; “given that the orbital parameters stay pretty much what they now are. ”
Now I deliberately put that in there for the express purpose of eliminating your ice ages hysteresis, which most people seem to agree happen when the orbital parameters change to something different from what we have now.
Yes I agree that ice ages occur and are sort of regenerative; so I eliminated that case.
OK; you have to read what I say; not what you thought I said.
And yes Kiwiland still frowns on tipping and for the same reasons.
Tena koe

I’m intrigued by the electric Sun hypothesis. Apparently, the toroidal ring current surrounding the sun has disappeared or is experiencing less current density and has de-energized below our ability to detect. This makes sense if there is a drop in the current which is directed into the sun via the toroidal ring current.
So basically the Sun acts like a condensor and the Earth acts as a ‘leaky’ capacitor (the components being the ionosphere, atmospheric moisture and the ground/crust) with the magma acting as a resistor. The magma is actually a dense, pressurized plasma, so the ‘drift’ current induces heating due to random electron collissions. The current also induces a magnetic field and rotation due to a homo-polar motor effect. The mass of the Earth acts like a flywheel, moderating any changes in rotational velocity due to fluctuations in the current.
If this hypothesis is actually true, then climate extremes would be limited to the amount of current received from the Sun. It would also be more likely to reach the maximum limit more frequently than the minimum limit. The only ‘tipping’ point would be a sudden surge in the current powering the Sun. Then we’d have devastating CME’s to worry about (exploding plasma ‘double layers’, more so than any changes to climate.
Anyway, I like to think outside the ‘sphere’. And besides, climate in that model is inherently controlled by total energy received from the Sun, like a heating element.
I could be wrong, but empirical data, especially certain details, matches the model, imo.

George E. Smith (08:54:41) :
George note I was saying radius not diameter for 1/8th, but I did forget that in these units the earth area would be 3.14, so instead of 5% it is 1.6% of the energy falling on earth.
I am willing to forget that n. You are treating the moon as a diffuse source, I am thinking of it as a total reflector ( if aluminized) that would just keep the parallelism of rays coming from the sun, we should see an image of the sun. I am trying to think whether the cone is relevant in this case. It would not be for coherent radiation, and parallel rays seem similar to coherent to me, but you may be right. If so, one could put large parabolic mirrors to transfer the energy , but that would be much more expensive.

Mike Bryant:
“On that same web page, further down, there is are a couple maps of “coral bleaching hotspots”. Is it my imagination, or are the hotspots only showing up in places where no one ever goes?”
To Mike and all the WUWT crew: THAT IS A BIG LIE Along the central west coast of south america THERE ARE NO corals whatsoever, as you may guess, because of the cold Humbolt current. Islands are absolutely deprived of anything other than sea birds’ dung (“Guano”, pronouced “Gooahno”, after the quecha for dung)
If real those yellows and oranges are more probably related to undersea hot spots along the Nazca tectonic plate.

David Ball, I am not sure which post you are referring to that I was mean spirited in. Regarding climate, I have posted my opinion about climate many times on this blog. Think back to your 5th grade science textbook: Temperate Forest, Desert, etc. These are all explained and their climates outlined. Unless the address changes for these ecosystems, the typical climate for each will pretty much stay the same within a range of weather pattern variations. Climate is easy to predict, weather, not so much.
My above comment on “tipping point” is that it is likely used in order to get a submission to rise to the top of grant applications, or get an article published. My parody was related to that phrase.

No No.. Tipping point = The point at which no one believes your theory anymore.
Steven Goddard (15:20:39) :
Within 50 years we will have all kinds of new technologies which will remove fears about CO2, and give people who like to worry something completely different to worry about.
Hehe.. I give it 5 years before the screaming becomes Ice age! Ice age! The only tipping point I have seen is a change from warm to cool but the beauty of it all is… just about the time it gets on a roll.. the climate will change again .. hahahah!

Pamela, your need to put me down to feel better about yourself does not look good on you. Neither climate nor weather can be predicted using 5th grade science books. Or 12th grade science books. This is what makes the phrase “Climate Change” so ridiculous. Your generalizations are also unbecoming. Calgary’s weather is chaotic in the extreme (as other posters have mentioned), and it seems it has become even more difficult to forecast of late. I was doing UHI studies with my father 36 years ago (about grade 5, coincidentally), so I do not appreciate your condescension, thank you. Perhaps you thought my question was simplistic, but I think it is you who missed the point. My father has a Doctor of Science in climatology, I do not, but it is possible that I may have picked up a little more than 5th grade science growing up.

Roger Sowell> “THE IMPACTS OF SEA-LEVEL RISE ON THE CALIFORNIA COAST
”
Some one is watching the half filled glass, not the half empty one. If something is rising up something is sinking down…with every quake. (VBH: Very black humor)

David Ball
I notice your comment about Pamela and took the trouble to go all through this thread, as being mean spirited would be very uncharacteristic of the posts I have seen from her.
All I can see is a parody she made and a mild comment. Unless something has been deleted I honestly can’t see anything that would upset you so much.
I think it was just a misunderstanding.
Tonyb

You have to go to the thread regarding Al Gore’s Writing on the wall. There is no misunderstanding. I do not care if I am popular on this blog, it seems I am not, but If you read back further I will be vindicated. I had a legitimate question, which Anthony did not answer in his response, by the way.You must admit that to imply that a 5th grader can predict weather is an unintelligent remark and was clearly meant to mock. For what reason she would decide to mock me is beyond my knowledge, and you will read in that thread my question as to why she felt the need to do this. I do not attack anyone on this sight, I do not engage in ad homs. I guess I do not fit into her little “community” on this blog. I thought we were on the same side. A house divided cannot stand said the man in the stove-pipe hat.