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
Mike Jonas says:
The ocean heat content data, while not quite as noisy as the air temperature data, still has its ups-and-downs…plus it is not as well-sampled and they are still trying to sort out possible systematic errors / inconsistencies (although the paper you linked to thinks they have made progress on that). So, no, I don’t think a few years of low rise in ocean heat content means that there is no warming in the pipeline.
P Wilson says:
No…That is not how it works. As you change the concentration of CO2, you increase the effective radiating level from which emission escapes to space (*) and because the temperature is a decreasing function of height in the troposphere and because the amount of radiation emitted is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature, this means less radiation escapes to space. This results in a radiative imbalance and as a response, the climate system warms until radiative balance is restored.
All of this radiative stuff was understood back in the 1950s, as discussed here http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm , so you are only about half a century behind the times here.
(*) This effective radiating level is worth a little more explanation: Basically, if you look at a plot that shows where the radiation that escapes to space comes from, you have a somewhat bell-shaped curve with a maximum at some altitude that is the effective radiating level. The reason for the maximum is that radiation emitted from a low level is unlikely to escape to space without being absorbed and there just isn’t very much radiation emitted from a very high level both because there is less atmosphere up there to absorb the heat and because it is colder and hence emits less. In between, there is a “sweet spot”. So, as you increase the concentration of the greenhouse gases, it is really this whole bell-shaped curve that will shift upward a little bit in altitude, but we can summarize this verbally by just saying that the effective radiating level shifted up.
Looks like even the BBC is starting to consider AGW might be wrong, instead of just towing the line:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm
In any event the slow & steady increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration (fact) and a 1~2-degC global temperature rise in coming 50 years or so (still a hypothesis, unfortunately) are definitely a godsend to us humans, since both surely contribute to an increase in food production because everything (except water and salt) on our dining table originates in plant photosynthesis which is more active at elevated CO2 concentration and higher temperature (of course up to a certain level).
In Japan about 5000 people per year on average relocate from mainland (though quite tiny as compared US) to Okinawa, seeking more livable conditions in the place where average temperature is by ca. 7 degC higher than Tokyo.
As a 30-year researcher of photosynthesis I foresee no detrimental effect of the slowly rising temperature on crop yield since we could quite easily cope with it by changing, if necessary, the crop species. A warming by 1-2 degC in half a century is NO PROBLEM.
I want to revisit the thing about how a gas cannot trap heat, so to speak. They can absorb and re emit. In the case of CO2, three separate frequencies with a narrow bandwidth response. 15.7 microns is one that jumps to mind. Anyway, what is important to remember is that the gas does not get to “choose” which direction it emits toward. CO2 does not have the “evil” ability to direct heat only back toward the troposphere and the Earth’s surface, it will re-emit its absorbed heat in any direction, including back out into space. Just as clouds do, though clouds, by their construction and shear mass and opacity have a wider response and account for almost all heating and cooling as far as gases go. Even so, this effect results in something of a negative feedback.
Here’s a list of people who were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. I know who I would have voted for. http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/10/meet_the_people_who_were_passe.asp (N.b., I’m assuming this is an accurate list. I haven’t checked any other websites yet but I got the link from an Aussie newspaper so I hope it’s the correct list!)
And here are some awards that Pres. Obama will surely win shortly if he hasn’t already won … http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/rightwing147.html It brought a smile to my face 😉 Now to think up some more titles, awards, achievements for the Obamas… *cheeky grin*
Joel Shore (18:05:51) :
“I don’t think a few years of low rise in ocean heat content means that there is no warming in the pipeline.”
That would be correct… if there was a ‘low rise in ocean heat content.’ But there isn’t.
In fact, the ARGO buoy network shows ocean cooling: click.
Not one real world event that the alarmist contingent has pointed to that supposedly proves its runaway global warming cognitive dissonance has panned out: there is no ocean warming; no mysterious ‘heat in the pipeline’; no AGW-caused coral bleaching, no drowning polar bears, no ocean acidification, no abnormal sea ice declines, no walruses dying of heat stroke, no rising global temperatures, nor any of the thousand other global warming catastrophes they predict.
So who are we going to listen to? The increasingly wacked-out alarmist crowd? Or Mother Earth — who knows she is cooling, even as her beneficial trace gas CO2 rises?
The planet’s verdict gets my vote.
Joel Shore (18:18:43) :
The link only goes to a pro AGW website, which is bound to put man at the centre of the debate. In fact, how I described is precisely how it works, impartially.
The following quote is from the DMI website. The strange side tracings on the temperature curve in Anthony’s link to the right seem to be adjusting due to something other than direct temperature measurement. I am wondering if these up and down wriggles are because of cloud interference?
“Satellite observations of sea surface temperature is currently retrieved from several satellites. The most accurate infrared satellites have an pixel size of 1 km and an accuracy of 0.3 degrees but they are limited by clouds. DMI has developed a statistical method that uses the individual error characteristics to combine satellite observations from about 10 different instruments in an objective interpolation method. The satellite observations include polar orbiting infrared and microwave sensors as well as geostationary satellite observations and are obtained through the Ocean & Sea Ice SAF project and the GHRSST-pp project. One field is produced every day, based upon nighttime observations, and the spatial resolution is 0.03 for the North Sea/Baltic Sea domain and 0.05 degrees for the other domains. To see todays images of Sea Surface Temperature, click here. For information on the method, see http://ocean.dmi.dk/staff/jlh/jlh.html.
…………………………………..
Contact: Jacob L. Høyer
jlh@dmi.dk“
what is important are temperatures and physics . Whilst its true that any “global warming” or “global cooling” occurs at surface-near surface there isn’t any “global warming beyond this region, as optimum radiaion is already absorbed there. IE- it cannot be added to.
ron from Texas (18:49:01) :
True; CO2 could cause negative feedback.
Incoming solar radiation heads directly toward the Earth. But when a photon is intercepted by a CO2 molecule, the almost instantaneous re-emission of a photon from the same molecule might go down to the surface. Or, it might go straight back up into space.
Thus, CO2 is taking some of the incoming solar radiation that would otherwise strike the Earth, and sending it back into space. Ergo, negative feedback. And the more CO2, the more cooling.
addendum: “absorbed there” – being the mid-higher tropospheric altitude
I figured a redesign to the Nobel prize was in order…
http://tiggerstestblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/destroy-excellence-by-promoting.html
incidentally, none of this explains how c02 which absorbs heat in the 13-16 micron range can absorb temperatures ranging from 15C-30C – which are the lowwer and higher end of earth average temps
The BBC article “What happened to global warming?” is moved to the TOP OF THE PAGE at Drudge.
It is followed by news of the snowed out baseball game.
http://www.drudgereport.com
Joel Shore (18:18:43) :
BS^^4 AGW violates the Second law of Thermodynamics: somehow the cooler air forces the already warmer earth to increase its temperature even more?? That would ONLY be possible if CO2 were a one-way mirror at IR frequencies!
Jeff L (06:58:53) :
Coldest post-season game. Game 4 of the 1997 World Series at Cleveland between the Indians and Marlins, with a game-time temperature of 35.
Coldest game-time temperature in Rockies history was 28 degrees for when the Rockies met the then-Montreal Expos on April 12, 1997. Colorado won that game, 12-8.
http://colorado.rockies.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20091010&content_id=7420164&vkey=news_col&fext=.jsp&c_id=col
I’m still working on this, but here’s something to consider:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/DRAFT_VaughanPL2009CO_TPM_SSD_LNC.htm
ron from Texas says:
And, who exactly was arguing otherwise?
Smokey says:
The point that you are missing is that the radiation from the sun is mainly at visible (and near-infrared and near-UV) wavelengths where CO2 does not have much absorption, whereas the emission from the Earth is at infrared wavelengths where CO2 has considerable absorption. That is the feature of the greenhouse gases…They are nearly transparent to solar radiation but quite strongly absorbing of IR radiation.
Anyone here who has a line to the Nobel Prize committee? I’d just like to express my contempt for them and my questions as to how a race of men who could row Arctic oceans, see the new world, settle Iceland, become the palace guard of the Ottoman empire, establish trade over 90% of the known world and colonize numerous places, produce a race of people who make Volvos and Socialism. Is this possible? Any Anthropologists ready to do a study about what happened to testostorone in Scandanavia?
Dave Dodd says:
You guys really don’t do your reputation in the scientific community any good by perpetuating these crazy claims of Gerlich and Tscheuschner. What the Second Law says is that the NET heat flow between two objects at different temperatures must be from the hotter to the colder. However, the NET heat flow under the atmospheric greenhouse effect is from the (warmer) earth’s surface to the (colder) upper troposphere as required by the Second Law.
This may seem like it contradicts the idea of the upper troposphere is making the surface warmer than it would otherwise be but the confusion lies in what the comparative case is, namely, the case of no greenhouse effect where the atmosphere is transparent to IR radiation and all of what the earth radiates would escape into space. So, the fact that the upper troposphere returns any of the heat to the earth causes warming relative to the case where it all escapes to space, even if only a small fraction of what the upper troposphere receives is returned to the earth.
The concept is basically that of a heat shield. (Or, roughly speaking, a blanket…although that analogy here is less precise since a blanket operates less by inhibiting radiation as it does by inhabiting convection. Still the basic idea still applies of having something at a cooler temperature nonetheless keep a warmer object warmer than it otherwise would be if the blanket were not present.)
Joel Shore (20:59:43):
“The point that you are missing is that the radiation from the sun is mainly…”
Horse manure. If CO2 intercepts some of the incoming solar energy and then re-radiates part of it into outer space, then CO2 has a cooling effect.
Deal with it.
Yes, green on the outside and red on the inside.
P Wilson says:
Strangely enough, this claim is contradicted by looking at a plot closely related to one that you linked to in another thread: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Transmission_png There is in fact considerable blackbody emission in that range both for objects at the surface temperature of the earth and the lower temperatures up higher in the atmosphere. And even the CO2 absorption line at ~4 microns plays a role, albeit a smaller one.
[And, by the way, Smokey, this plot shows you more quantitatively how CO2 absorbs very little solar radiation. Water vapor absorbs a fair bit more…although still a lot less than it absorbs of terrestrial IR radiation.]
Joel Shore (10:35:32) :
“AlanG says:
In the last 100 years CO2 in the atmosphere has gone up from about 280 parts per million (ppm) to about 380 ppm, an increase of about 100 ppm. The Earth’s temperature has gone up by 0.6C. Both figures are disputed but these are the figures used by most scientists. The consensus is that the temperature rise is due to the increase in CO2 from burning fossil fuel.
However, the effect of CO2 is logarithmic. This is accepted by all scientists.
Correct.
In order to get a further temperature rise of 0.6C, CO2 will have to increase by another 200 ppm, or twice as much before. Another +0.6C after that would require an additional 400 ppm and so on.
Nope. That is not how a logarithmic function works [like T = A log(C/C_0) where C is the final concentration, C_0 is the initial concentration, T is the temperature, and A is a constant]. How it works is that the rise from 280ppm to 380ppm was an increase of 36%. So, it then takes another 36% increase from 380ppm, which is another ~136 ppm to cause the next 0.6 C temperature rise. And, then another ~188 ppm to cause the next 0.6 C temperature rise after that.
However, there are more fundamental problems with this argument: One is that it ignores the fact that, because the oceans have such a large thermal inertia, the earth is still out of radiative balance and there is warming “in the pipeline” that would occur even if CO2 levels were held constant. Another problem is that it neglects the cooling effects of the aerosols that we have emitted (and, admittedly, also the warming effects of some of the other greenhouse gases like CH4 and nitrous oxide). At the end of the day, it turns out that, because of these uncertainties (particularly the uncertainty in the aerosol forcing), the 20th century temperature record does not provide a very good constraint on the climate sensitivity. Better constraints are provided by combining it with other empirical data such as the climate response to the Mt Pinatubo eruption and the climate change from the last glacial maximum to now.
[quote]
When will CO2 reach another 200ppm? Not in your lifetime. Another 400 ppm after that looks impossible because there isn’t enough coal, oil and gas in the world to do that.[/quote]
Not sure where you are getting this information from, but in fact this paper in the peer-reviewed literature says that there are enough conventional reserves to get the CO2 levels up to 1200ppm and enough conventional + exotic reserves (like tar sands) to get it up to 4000ppm.
I believe CO2 levels are currently increasing about 2ppm / yr. However, that rate has been increasing over time as our emissions have increased. Note that even an increase of only 2% per year in emissions means that they would double in ~35 years.
What’s more, most of the temperature increase has been in Siberia, in winter and at night. This is as expected. The temperature where most people live has hardly changed at all.
Yes, the arctic region is warming faster than the rest of the world. However, it is also true that the warming is expected to be greater on the continents (especially the continental interiors) than the oceans…and since the world is 70% oceans, that means the warming on continents can be significantly larger.
And, of course, it is the melting of ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica that are expected to contribute the most to sea level rise beyond that just due to the thermal expansion of the ocean water itself”.
Joel Shore, AlanG,
You are neglecting the facts.
There is no correlation between CO2 levels and temperature.
Read the 10 myth’s about CO2 and stop building castles in the air.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/h-leighton-steward-ten-myths-about-co2/
Also read: Save the planet, kill yourself
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/10/saving-earth-by-hating-humanity.html