I’m off this weekend – talk quietly and politely amongst yourselves. Don’t make me come back here.
If you have something worth posting on the front page, flag a moderator. In the meantime I have a couple of stories that will post using the WordPress scheduler. – Anthony
Alarmists standing tall…
Just look at all the polar bears they’re dead you see?
And all the terrible CO2 for ten years straight is off the charts!!
The seas are boiling!! The ice is melting!!! The methane’s killing everyone!!!
Greenland’s greening!!! Antarctica has sparked the rising seas OH MY!!!!
And speaking of those rising seas, it turns out they are all becoming acid
don’t you know? So this vacation keep you feet and toes away from all the
boiling, gurgling, popping hydrochloric surf!!! Or maybe you should stay at home the surf will come to you!! And all the greatest climatologists and scientists agree, you’re gonna die, just listen now, if you don’t do just what
we say, you better kneel down and pray, because the end is near, you see?
We’re all much smarter than you are and you will die from what we said, the things above and so much more… you just don’t know what you’re in for.
So you be good and pay your way and thank the good ol’ USA, cause
politicians help us all… and if you don’t believe just shut up and move to the back.
If you don’t, your children die, just wait and see…
Doesn’t that seem reasonable?
Joel Shore (13:53:07) : “The layer of air radiates some of the energy it has absorbed back toward the ground, and some upwards to higher layers. As you go higher, the atmosphere gets thinner and colder. Eventually the energy reaches a layer so thin that radiation can escape into space.
What happens if we add more carbon dioxide? In the layers so high and thin that much of the heat radiation from lower down slips through, adding more greenhouse gas means the layer will absorb more of the rays. So the place from which most of the heat energy finally leaves the Earth will shift to higher layers. Those are colder layers, so they do not radiate heat as well. The planet as a whole is now taking in more energy than it radiates (which is in fact our current situation). As the higher levels radiate some of the excess downwards, all the lower levels down to the surface warm up.”
But under this mechanism, the lower levels and the surface cannot warm faster than the upper levels where the warming originates. Here are the relevant temperatures :
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/TropicsTroposphereGraph_LowRes.jpg
Methinks you have some explaining to do.
Note : Data graphed is for the whole available period, from Hadcrut3 (surface) and UAH (LT, MT). I use the tropics because that’s where the IPCC say the warming mostly occurs. See panels c (greenhouse gases) and f (all “forcings”).
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/IPCCFig9p1_LowRes.jpg
PS. Please stop saying that the planet as a whole is taking in more energy than it radiates, unless you can produce evidence. I and others have posted evidence that the oceans stopped warming around 2003 and have been cooling since about 2006 – concrete evidence that the planet as a whole is NOT taking in more energy than it radiates.
Stephen Wilde (14:34:24) : “The assumption that the air controls the temperature of the Earth only holds good if there is no variation in the rate of energy release from the oceans. I thnk we now have enough evidence to indicate that that assumption is no longer helpful.”
Agree. Oceans are crucial. And see ‘April E Coggins’ below.
Henry Galt (16:54:05) : “…. The yearly CO2 record correlates with yearly global temps. Hence ‘98, “hottest year on record” and ‘98, largest out-gassing in the recent CO2 record.”
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/deltaco2vstemp.jpg
On this time-frame, CO2 cannot be driving temperature – unless a sudden spike in CO2 can cause a simultaneous El Nino.
April E. Coggins (19:19:46) : “We are also experiencing record cold.” (and others similarly).
My guess is it’s caused by clouds. Both the PDO and the sun (and probably ENSO) affect the Earth’s cloud cover. As cloud cover decreases – as it did quite markedly up to around 2000 – more sunlight gets through to the oceans and warms them up. As cloud cover increases again – as it did from around 2000 onwards – the oceans similarly cool. But this is a fairly slow process, and the global climate has been warm over the last few years (the high point of the PDO cycle), so even after they have started cooling, the oceans are still warm, and hence the climate is still warm.
My guess is that the cloud changes are local in nature, ie depending on specific local conditions, but, via the oceans, are global in eventual overall effect. So in a cooling phase, we can expect pockets of temporary cold weather (driven by local clouds) while the rest of the planet is driven more by SST and all the other usual factors. And this, I think, is what we are seeing today : there are increasing numbers of reports of local record cold temperatures, even though the “official” global temperature is still as warm as in the 1990s.
[adapted from a post of mine on another thread]
JimInIndy (21:54:30) : “… the MWP/800 year delay mechanism is worthy of analysis and research”
Agree.
gtrip (21:22:19) :
Did you ever notice…
The important question today is : Will the Vikings go 16-0 ?
Oh ya, and that BBC article rules!
We’re all going to die, December 21st 2012, well, that is when the Mayan calendar ends..
http://www.smh.com.au/world/2012-isnt-the-end-of-the-world-is-it-20091012-gtn9.html
“At Cornell University in the United States, Ann Martin, who runs the “Curious? Ask an Astronomer” website, says people are scared.
It’s too bad that we’re getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they’re too young to die,” Martin said. “We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn’t live to see them grow up.”
Monkey see, monkey do.
Gene Nemetz (23:40:49) :
gtrip (21:22:19) :
Did you ever notice…
The important question today is : Will the Vikings go 16-0 ?
Unfortunately….no The season is long and the man is old. Unless he can find some crack I think he is going to find out why football players retire early.
But I will still be cheering for him….I just hate the build up as it usually has a let down. Just like the Warmist build up……but I am afraid…really afraid. that reality may not prevail.
And yes, I did write that wuss from SC or werever he is from. I ripped him for claiming to be on the side of righteousness and then doing this.
Being from AZ I will be calling and maybe approaching loser McCaom tomorrow. He also switched sides.
I think I’ve seen enough record lows and Club of Rome postings for awhile.
But do call your senators and insist they vote NO.
_Jim (07:47:24) :
but, but…
the wiki-GW-art was good enough for the UN!
Patrick Davis (00:00:14) :
“We’re all going to die, December 21st 2012, well, that is when the Mayan calendar ends..”
Isn’t it amazing that people actually believe this garbage? I wonder what they’ll all be doing on the 22nd? One thing’s for sure, it won’t be much of a Christmas for them – and especially for their kids.
rob uk (13:13:47) :
“Perhaps someone can explain how a Roman sea port of 2000 years ago in Kent UK can now be 2 miles inland.”
If anything, the southeast of England is subsiding relative to sea level because of ongoing Alpine tectonics. All we are seeing here, with the Roman port now being 2 miles inland, is the effect of sedimentation outrunning subsidence. This is perfectly normal and natural: somewhere along the coast is being eroded and the detritus is being deposited somewhere along the coast, specifically, in this example, in the Richborough area of Kent.
I’ve said before here that the concept of global sea level is probably about the same as the concept of a global temperature: It depends on how you measure it, where you measure it and when. The low countries (there’s a clue there for all you AGW disciples and believers out there…) of north west Europe are subsiding due to the tectonics I mentioned above and have been since The Alps started growing sometime in the early Tertiary period when Africa collided with Europe. Meanwhile, the northwest of Scotland and Norway are rising due to isostatic rebound after the last ice age.
Where do you measure the global sea level ‘zero’ when all the land is moving up and down all the time? As Bob Dylan once so eloquently put it: “The carpet too is moving under you”.
Is there a 21st party at WUWT for 21 million hits?
Roger Knights (18:53:48) :
“Al Gore says: “A zebra cannot change its spots.”
–The Stupidest Things Ever Said by Politicians, p. 54”
On the contrary, it may be the smartest thing he has ever said….
Here is an interesting article in todays ” Spiked” about adaptation by co- author of a World Bank report http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7521/
0bama fails to win Nobel Prize in Economics:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-fails-to-win-nobel-prize-in-economics-2009-10-12
From my local English language newspaper here in tropical Thailand.
“Floods cause chaos in Pattaya
During the afternoon of the 11th October and throughout the night, the heavens opened up over the skies of Pattaya with black threatening clouds,
lightning and then letting loose a tempest that severely hit the area causing widespread chaos just about everywhere leaving most of the city under water. Most of the main through ways such as Sukhumvit Road were transformed into Venice style canals with traffic stuck or unable to pass through. Many local communities suffered rising water levels that soon caused flooding to their homes and businesses. For years City Hall has been trying to solve the problem of flooding with cleaning up existing drains and providing new drains in many areas, but even they could not cope with this weekend’s disastrous event. An act of nature not normal for this time of year in the region, but one we will probably have to get used to due to changes in weather patterns around the world caused by global warming.
I emphasised the last sentence because it is completely 180 degrees wrong. Extremely heavy downpours are the norm here towards the end of the wet season which is where we are here weatherwise.
Meanwhile, the top story on the BBC World website is still their about turn on global warming.
Giant, Mucus-Like Sea Blobs on the Rise!
“It’s a good example [of what will happen if] we don’t do something to stop climate warming,” Danovaro said. “There are consequences [if] we continue to deny the scientific evidence.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091008-giant-sea-mucus-blobs.html
Pamela Gray says:
There are several confusions here:
(1) Condensation is not a cooling mechanism. It is a warming mechanism (i.e., it releases latent heat). So, the effect of evaporation / condensation is the transport of some heat from the surface up into the free troposphere, and this is known and accounted for. And, in fact, I’m this is essentially what leads to the negative lapse rate feedback that is incorporated in the climate models.
(2) What you are talking about are processes that redistribute heat in the troposphere. In fact, the troposphere is well-mixed and temperatures in the troposphere tend to be set by the physics involved, e.g., in the tropics the temperature structure tends to follow the moist adiabatic lapse rate. What is important for cooling or warming are mechanisms that actually change either the amount of solar energy absorbed or the amount of infrared radiation that escapes into space and thus change the energy balance in the troposphere, not just redistributing the heat (except to the extent that the redistribution of heat changes the amount radiating back out into space and, as I noted, this is already accounted for in the negative lapse rate feedback). A change in greenhouse gas levels changes the amount of infrared radiation that escapes into space.
(3) I agree that water vapor does not build and build. If the temperature rises, it does not take long for a new “equilibrium” to be established. However this new equilibrium will be with larger absolute humidity such that relative humidity remains roughly constant. [“Equilibrium” in quotes because the atmosphere is not really in equilibrium…but the point is that the new average absolute humidity will increase as the world warms.]
P Wilson says:
Yes, the oceans are a large source of thermal inertia which is why there is talk of the “warming in the pipeline”. However, air can transfer heat to the oceans. The fact that the heat capacity is low means that it is a slow process but that is just another way of saying that the oceans have a lot of thermal inertia.
Mike Jonas says:
Actually, you are wrong in your description of what determines the temperature structure in the tropics. It is not determined by where the additional radiative forcing is because of large role of convection and subsistence in mixing the troposphere. In fact, the structure of the warming predicted by the climate models is pretty much independent of where the forcing occurs. Here is a comparison of the structure of the warming predicted by a warming due to increased CO2 and one due to increased solar forcing: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/ Note that the only way to really distinguish these two forcings here is their different influence on the stratosphere (which, because of its temperature increasing with altitude is stable and does not get rapidly mixed like the troposphere does)…and the cooling of the stratosphere that is predicted by the greenhouse forcing mechanism is what is observed. (Some of that cooling is due to stratospheric ozone depletion, although apparently both the magnitude and vertical structure of the cooling in the stratosphere lead to the conclusion that a significant part of it is due to increasing GHGs.)
(Unlike the IPCC plot that you show, in the RealClimate plot the amount of solar forcing has been turned up so it produces the same magnitude of warming as the increase in greenhouse gases. The problem with the plot that you show is that it wasn’t made to resolve the structure of the warming for the warming mechanisms like solar that aren’t believed to have contributed very much to the 20th century warming. So, for example, all that you can say from the contours on the solar plot is that the surface in the tropics warms 0 – 0.2 C and further up in the troposphere it warms 0.2-0.4 C. Alas, this is compatible with any amplification factor between the surface and mid/upper troposphere of 1 to infinity.)
As for the plots you show of the temperature trends at the surface and lower- and mid-troposphere in the tropics, there are several issues that you have ignored:
(1) The mid-troposphere (T_2) temperature is actually a sampling of a wide range of temperatures centered about the mid-troposphere but also including a significant tail into the stratosphere. Because of this tail and the fact that the stratosphere is cooling (in fact more rapidly than the troposphere is warming), the trend gets contaminated. There is also possibly some contamination of even the lower troposphere trend, although this is still the subject of debate.
(2) The UAH and RSS satellite data sets for the LT still disagree significantly in the tropics with the RSS showing more of a positive trend. (The agreement between them is better for the global trends, with the UAH still lower but within the quoted errorbars.)
As is often the case, you are focussing too much on short-term fluctuations rather than the longer term trend. And, actually, one of the more recent papers that you or someone else posted does find a statistically-significant warming trend as inferred from the steric sea level rise since 2003, although it is admittedly only a modest trend. The longer-term trend in ocean heat content is very clear.
geoffchambers (02:03:48) 10-10-09:
“The latest example is Rereke Whakaaro on the UK TV ad thread, who picks up the fact that one of the British ministers responsible for this dire Orwellian propaganda campaign, Joan Ruddock, is an ex-chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and then accuses CND of being finance by Moscow Gold.”
I am sorry you have taken offence at my post.
In an earlier post I drew a parallel between the television commercial and the propaganda techniques used in the first half of the twentith century, a theme echoed by several other contributors.
It was TonyB (at 15:38:44) who first mentioned that Joan Ruddock was previously a chair for CND.
So, in my mind, I linked these two concepts and then combined them with my knowledge that, up until about 1958, the Soviets had sponsored an organisation known as the World Peace Council that sought to subvert the activities of the peace movement. When that was seen for what it was, the Soviets changed tactics and started funding various peace movement organisations through proxies and sometimes bogus companies and trusts.
This sponsorship was part of a Cold War strategy designed to keep pressure on the Government of the Day, and so limit the deployment of US weapons in the UK (and other parts of Europe).
This is well documented in the biographies of Stanislav Lunev (ex GRU), and Oleg Kalugin (ex KGB). In fact Lunev goes so far as to say that this was a, “hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost”.
Further opinion can be found in the book, “Foreign Policies of the Soviet Union”, by Richard Felix Staar.
Well Joel, all good [trends] must come to an end, at least for a time 🙂
With the recent Levitus 2009 OHC update, where did the heat go, or will it be recycled back into the oceans? Wouldn’t that qualify for a perpetuum mobile?
Just for grins, what is your interpretation of the deep drop in OHC through June 09? Confirmation of climate model simulations? Once the heat is removed into space, what is the likely response of near surface and LT temperatures?
So many questions.
Also, the UAH/RSS Tropics discrepancy has been addressed indicating UAH is the more accurate. Sorry, even Tamino had to cry uncle there after he assassinated the authors and they gave him a well deserved spanking.
Randall R. M. and B. M. Herman (2008) Using Limited Time Period Trends as a Means to Determine Attribution of Discrepancies in Microwave Sounding Unit . J. Geophs. Res – Atmospheres 113 D05105, doi:10.1029/2007JD008864.
This is also discussed by Christy and Douglass here:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf
Denmark’s chief climate negotiator resigns
Thomas Becker, right hand of incoming COP15 president Connie Hedegaard, has been relieved of duty with immediate notice.
http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=2325
Is this a serious development?
“Did you ever notice that the more words a person uses, the less they have to say?” gtrip
“For the dream comes through much effort and the voice of a fool through many words.” Ecclesiastes 5:3
Read the Bible yourself and cut out the middleman is what I recommend.
Joel Shore makes good points in his (20:52:05) comment. The CO2 physics is pretty well understood and he has tried to explain it quite well here.
I also accept as a fact that doubling CO2 provides about 1 C warming (without feedbacks).
It is the feedbacks which I do not buy. The science of feedbacks is definitely not yet settled.
DR says:
Well, if you are talking about this http://i34.tinypic.com/dev5ld.png then my interpretation is that ocean heat content bounces up and down somewhat over time but with a long term upward trend over the past 30 years. If you want to conclude that it is some sort of dramatic new downward trend, I would only note that such a conclusion would have been wrong if you made it in early 1998, early 2001, or late 2002 on the basis of similar steep drops. What makes you think that this time is somehow dramatically different? Short-term fluctuations happen. They’ve happened in the past and they will happen in the future.
I don’t think there is a general opinion yet that this is settled. Care to give me a cite to what you are talking about in regards to Tamino? I just did a search over on his website and couldn’t find what you were talking about (although I didn’t have much to go on).
Climate Terrorism? World Held to Ransom with Contrived Climate Science
by Dr. Tim Ball
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4165
Article in Danish language::
Chef-exit skader næppe klimaaftale
http://www.berlingske.dk/klima/chef-exit-skader-naeppe-klimaaftale
Thomas Becker was to be the Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard’s chief negotiator at the Copenhagen climate summit:
“Årsagen til Thomas Beckers exit er, at han bl.a. brugte 15.734 kr. på en restaurant i Bangkok uden at kunne aflevere de nødvendige bilag, ligesom han betalte repræsentation for 37 flasker rødvin og 41 gin-tonic til 39 personer, hvilket var at gå over stregen, mente man i ministeriets departement.”
which translates to something like (apologies on behalf of Google and myself for the grammar):
“The cause of Thomas Becker’s exit is that he, spent 15,734 Danish Crowns (~USD 3,100) at a restaurant in Bangkok without being able to deliver the necessary documents and he paid the representation of 37 bottles of red wine and 41 gin-tonic to 39 people, which was to cross the line, it was felt in the ministry.”
They are saving the planet, allright.