Some Comments on the Lindzen and Choi (2009) Feedback Study
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
I keep getting requests to comment on the recent GRL paper by Lindzen and Choi (2009), who computed how satellite-measured net (solar + infrared) radiation in the tropics varied with surface temperature changes over the 15 year period of record of the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS, 1985-1999).
The ERBS satellite carried the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) which provided our first decadal-time scale record of quasi-global changes in absorbed solar and emitted infrared energy. Such measurements are critical to our understanding of feedbacks in the climate system, and thus to any estimates of how the climate system responds to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
The authors showed that satellite-observed radiation loss by the Earth increased dramatically with warming, often in excess of 6 Watts per sq. meter per degree (6 W m-2 K-1). In stark contrast, all of the computerized climate models they examined did just the opposite, with the atmosphere trapping more radiation with warming rather than releasing more.
The implication of their results was clear: most if not all climate models that predict global warming are far too sensitive, and thus produce far too much warming and associated climate change in response to humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions.
A GOOD METHODOLOGY: FOCUS ON THE LARGEST TEMPERATURE CHANGES
One thing I liked about the authors’ analysis is that they examined only those time periods with the largest temperature changes – whether warming or cooling. There is a good reason why one can expect a more accurate estimate of feedback by just focusing on those large temperature changes, rather than blindly treating all time periods equally. The reason is that feedback is the radiation change RESULTING FROM a temperature change. If there is a radiation change, but no temperature change, then the radiation change obviously cannot be due to feedback. Instead, it would be from some internal variation in cloudiness not caused by feedback.
But it also turns out that a non-feedback radiation change causes a time-lagged temperature change which completely obscures the resulting feedback. In other words, it is not possible to measure the feedback in response to a radiatively induced temperature change that can not be accurately quantified (e.g., from chaotic cloud variations in the system). This is the subject of several of my previous blog postings, and is addressed in detail in our new JGR paper — now in review — entitled, “On the Diagnosis of Radiative Feedbacks in the Presence of Unknown Radiative Forcing”, by Spencer and Braswell).
WHAT DO THE AMIP CLIMATE MODEL RESULTS MEAN?
Now for my main concern. Lindzen and Choi examined the AMIP (Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project) climate model runs, where the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were specified, and the model atmosphere was then allowed to respond to the specified surface temperature changes. Energy is not conserved in such model experiments since any atmospheric radiative feedback which develops (e.g. a change in vapor or clouds) is not allowed to then feed-back upon the surface temperature, which is what happens in the real world.
Now, this seems like it might actually be a GOOD thing for estimating feedbacks, since (as just mentioned) most feedbacks are the atmospheric response to surface forcing, not the surface response to atmospheric forcing. But the results I have been getting from the fully coupled ocean-atmosphere (CMIP) model runs that the IPCC depends upon for their global warming predictions do NOT show what Lindzen and Choi found in the AMIP model runs. While the authors found decreases in radiation loss with short-term temperature increases, I find that the CMIP models exhibit an INCREASE in radiative loss with short term warming.
In fact, a radiation increase MUST exist for the climate system to be stable, at least in the long term. Even though some of the CMIP models produce a lot of global warming, all of them are still stable in this regard, with net increases in lost radiation with warming (NOTE: If analyzing the transient CMIP runs where CO2 is increased over long periods of time, one must first remove that radiative forcing in order to see the increase in radiative loss).
So, while I tend to agree with the Lindzen and Choi position that the real climate system is much less sensitive than the IPCC climate models suggest, it is not clear to me that their results actually demonstrate this.
ANOTHER VIEW OF THE ERBE DATA
Since I have been doing similar computations with the CERES satellite data, I decided to do my own analysis of the re-calibrated ERBE data that Lindzen and Choi analyzed. Unfortunately, the ERBE data are rather dicey to analyze because the ERBE satellite orbit repeatedly drifted in and out of the day-night (diurnal) cycle. As a result, the ERBE Team advises that one should only analyze 36-day intervals (or some multiple of 36 days) for data over the deep tropics, while 72-day averages are necessary for the full latitudinal extent of the satellite data (60N to 60S latitude).
Lindzen and Choi instead did some multi-month averaging in an apparent effort to get around this ‘aliasing’ problem, but my analysis suggests that the only way around the problem it is to do just what the ERBE Team recommends: deal with 36 day averages (or even multiples of that) for the tropics; 72 day averages for the 60N to 60S latitude band. So it is not clear to me whether the multi-month averaging actually removed the aliased signal from the satellite data. I tried multi-month averaging, too, but got very noisy results.
Next, since they were dealing with multi-month averages, Lindzen and Choi could use available monthly sea surface temperature datasets. But I needed 36-day averages. So, since we have daily tropospheric temperatures from the MSU/AMSU data, I used our (UAH) lower tropospheric temperatures (LT) instead of surface temperatures. Unfortunately, this further complicates any direct comparisons that might be made between my computations (shown below) and those of Lindzen and Choi.
Finally, rather than picking specific periods where the temperature changes were particularly large, like Lindzen and Choi did, I computed results from ALL time periods, but then sorted the results from the largest temperature changes to the smallest. This allows me to compute and plot cumulative average regression slopes from the largest to the smallest temperature changes, so we can see how the diagnosed feedbacks vary as we add more time intervals with progressively weaker temperature changes.
RESULTS
For the 20N-20S latitude band (same as that analyzed by Lindzen and Choi), and at 36-day averaging time, the following figure shows the diagnosed feedback parameters (linear regression slopes) tend to be in the range of 2 to 4 W m-2 K-1, which is considerably smaller than what Lindzen and Choi found, which were often greater than 6 W m-2 K-1. As mentioned above, the corresponding climate model computations they made had the opposite sign, but as I have pointed out, the CMIP models do not, and the real climate system cannot have a net negative feedback parameter and still be stable.
But since the Lindzen and Choi results were for changes on time scales longer than 36 days, next I computed similar statistics for 108-day averages. Once again we see feedback diagnoses in the range of 2 to 4 W m-2 K-1:
Finally, I extended the time averaging to 180 days (five 36-day periods), which is probably closest to the time averaging that Lindzen and Choi employed. But rather than getting closer to the higher feedback parameter values they found, the result is instead somewhat lower, around 2 W m-2 K-1.
In all of these figures, running (not independent) averages were computed, always separated by the next average by 36 days.
By way of comparison, the IPCC CMIP (coupled ocean-atmosphere) models show long-term feedbacks generally in the range of 1 to 2 W m-2 K-1. So, my ERBE results are not that different from the models. BUT..it should be remembered that: (1) the satellite results here (and those of Lindzen and Choi) are for just the tropics, while the model feedbacks are for global averages; and (2) it has not yet been demonstrated that short-term feedbacks in the real climate system (or in the models) are substantially the same as the long-term feedbacks.
WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?
It is not clear to me just what the Lindzen and Choi results mean in the context of long-term feedbacks (and thus climate sensitivity). I’ve been sitting on the above analysis for weeks since (1) I am not completely comfortable with their averaging of the satellite data, (2) I get such different results for feedback parameters than they got; and (3) it is not clear whether their analysis of AMIP model output really does relate to feedbacks in those models, especially since my analysis (as yet unpublished) of the more realistic CMIP models gives very different results.
Of course, since the above analysis is not peer-reviewed and published, it might be worth no more than what you paid for it. But I predict that Lindzen and Choi will eventually be challenged by other researchers who will do their own analysis of the ERBE data, possibly like that I have outlined above, and then publish conclusions that are quite divergent from the authors’ conclusions.
In any event, I don’t think the question of exactly what feedbacks are exhibited by the ERBE satellite is anywhere close to being settled.
Joel, In your commentary above the only sentence that seems worth responding to is:
“We can also calculate the radiative imbalance due to an increase in greenhouse gases and it is considerably larger…and, in fact, large enough to be important. ”
verified Data? causative physical mechanism?
regarding the impending smoking gun of oceans, can you provide data for that? Unless some can be found then we’re back to square 1: That solar IR can heat the oceans, whilst ghg’s can’t. If so, then any smoking gun is the process of slow solar heating and heat transport along ocean circulation thereof. At the moment the earth is trying rather hard to conserve heat.
take into consideration that radiation exitfrom its source is more potent than radiation intercepted by ghg’s – most radiation escapes them.
Its a very big hurdle to argue that an optimum emission of re-radiated energy can return a much smaller amount and have an effect of *imbalance*
Smokey says:
Yes, they do (correctly) believe that all of the increase in CO2 has been due to human activity because they understand the difference between the large exchanges of CO2 between the various reservoirs (atmosphere, biosphere, and oceans) which were in a quite stable steady-state before the Industrial Revolution and the rapid addition of a new source of CO2 that has been locked away from these reservoirs for millions of years. They discuss this here http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/FAQ/wg1_faq-7.1.html and say:
Yes, the increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases during the industrial era are caused by human activities. In fact, the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations does not reveal the full extent of human emissions in that it accounts for only 55% of the CO2 released by human activity since 1959. The rest has been taken up by plants on land and by the oceans.
Joel Shore,
You can believe the UN/IPCC all you like, but they have ulterior motives for grossly exaggerating the CO2 situation. Here, you might even learn something: click. And anyone who takes the IPCC at face value is a credulous fool.
Stephen Wilde says:
I have no idea what you are talking about here. Why does the warming have to leap across anything? It will penetrate by conduction and mixing just like heat generally does. Even if you neglect mixing (which may be a good approximation over such short distance scales…I’m not sure), heat conduction over a distance as small as 1mm ain’t that hard. In fact, if you use the thermal conductivity of water (0.58 W/m/K), you get that the amount of heat per unit area per unit time that can be conducted over a distance of 1mm is (580 W/m^2/C) *delta_T where delta_T is the temperature difference in C across the 1mm layer. That’s a lot of heat!
Well, that’s not what the data of Peter Minnett says. It shows the differential decreased. And really, it seems sort of desperately ridiculous to propose that the radiative imbalance that occurs due to the reduction in IR radiation escaping from the atmosphere will not lead to warming. Just on basic principles, that is what it ought to lead to. There could be some debate about where that warming is distributed vertically in the troposphere (although in the tropics, the temperature distribution is generally dominated by the moist adiabatic lapse rate), but it really seems rather unlikely that heat that we know is getting absorbed and not reflected would somehow magically not go into heating up the system. If you want to talk about “magic”, that would be some pretty good magic!
Smokey:
You, I am afraid, is the one who is credulous and who is frankly putty in the hands of those spouting scientific nonsense! The residence time of atmospheric CO2 is not relevant for determining how long an elevation in CO2 levels will last because, while exchanges between the atmosphere, upper ocean, and biosphere are quite fast, what is slow and becomes the rate-limiting step is the mixing of the CO2 down into the deep ocean, which takes on the order of a thousand years or more. So, if you put a new slug of CO2 into the atmosphere, it is only a matter of a few years before the ocean – atmosphere -biosphere system comes to a new steady-state but that steady-state will still have a healthy fraction (somewhere around 40%, if I remember correctly) of the original slug remaining in the atmosphere (with the rest partitioned between the upper ocean and biosphere). And, even the mixing down to the deep ocean doesn’t get rid of all of the elevation; the remainder (~10-15%) has to wait to be absorbed by the even-slower process of weathering of rocks, which will take on the order of 200,000 years. Those who are interested in learning more about this can read David Archer’s post here or, better yet, read his book “The Long Thaw”. Basic textbooks on climate science, such as “Global Warming: The Hard Science” (Chapter 8) by L.D. Danny Harvey also discuss this.
But, hey, if you want to go around claiming that the current elevation of CO2 levels is not due to our burning of fossil fuels, I encourage you to mention this in everything that you ever post or say to a policymaker or scientist because I can almost guarantee you that it will make them decide very rapidly how seriously to treat you comments. You may be able to fool some credulous folks around here but you won’t fool many whose opinion really matters.
Whoops…Forgot the link to David Archer’s post: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/03/how-long-will-global-warming-last/
joel,
you are right of course concerning the .7 and /4 averaging in addition to the need to convert from peak to peak to average.
as for the world catching fire – won’t happen for a few billion yrs yet but it’s obviously not intended as a literal interpretation but more of a parody of a parody with the extremist warmers like hansen. You’ll note too that my original comment concerning the 2nd law was not directed to you and was also associated with sarcasm. It was also not presented as an argument.
I did note you have not attempted to comment on or refute my last comments concerning the skin, conservation of energy, and the total screwup of that experiment by your author (or at least the failure to provide any of the information that might be somewhat meaningful).
The point of ocean contribution is that due to the low power transfer rate (associated with the long time constant), the contribution in increased temperatures or the net imbalance in temperature will be quite minimal, like that of the geothermal factor.
The radiative change you speak of in regards to imbalance is actually a misconception. The simple conceptual models used say that there’s only one mean temperature for the surface given X solar insolation and Y ghg absorption. Even conceptually and simplistically, it’s not right. Cloud cover enters in as a factor. Taking cloud cover fraction (again with an averaged cloud cover) one has a linear relationship for two lines in a graph of power density versus cloud cover fraction. One line is incoming power reaching the surface which decreases from 235 w/m^2 down to (probably about 10% of that value for total overcast of heavy clouds) and the other line is outgoing power to space based on clear sky surface emission minus atmospheric ghg absorption for clear skies down to totally top of cloud emissions at around 220 K with very little ghg absorption considering it is pretty much at the top of the water bearing area of the atmosphere. Those two lines will interesct somewhere in the vacinity of about 0.62 cloud cover and represent the balance point for radiative power into and out of the Earth system. Note that this can occur without a change in surface averaged temperature. Also note that total clear skies would result in about a 10 deg. C rise in surface temperature to achieve balance.
In reality, this cloud cover fraction must be a function of parameters, such as incoming solar power, along with quite a few pertubational factors, such as potentially cosmic ray intensity. Otherwise, we would not have a rather stable temperature average nor would we have a fairly consistent cloud cover. Unfortunately, some of these factors are almost certainly somewhat chaotic. Whatever the case, one is only going to ascertain this by analysis of the actual system response. Using defective, incomplete, and extremely course models will never cut it. If it is truly chaotic, it will not ever be modeled accurately from what I understand from the chaos experts.
Joel Shore (19:15:56)
I consider Minnett to be wrong because his description completely omits evaporative cooling.
I have tried to find independent support for his description to no avail.
In normal outdoor conditions the downwelling IR produces a very slight slackening of the cooling gradient in the topmost evaporating layer. That would explain why there is insufficient energy in the 100 micron deep evaporating layer to provide enough energy for the phase change so that much of the energy needed comes from below and the lower 900 microns of the ocean skin experiences evaporative cooling.
A temperature sensor would record an increased temperature in the topmost 100 micron deep evaporating layer when the rate of downwelling IR rises. However, that would lead to additional evaporative cooling in the lower 900 microns so that the temperature differential between skin and bulk would increase and not decrease as required by AGW theory.
Joel:
Data? Direct calculations based on such data? Empirical evidence? Causative and verified physical mechanism?
all so far is pure rhetoric and notion. At least try and answer the question as to why In 2009 (July) NOAA said ocean surface heated a lot, and the air heated a little. How can the air be heating the oceans when the ocean surface heats more than the air?
The IPCC formulation of Anthropogenic c02 is refuted here:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm
Although there is no way that the IPCC tries to account for its figures, which are pulled out of thin air. There are some 38,000GT’s of c02 in the oceans which regulate how much c02 is in the atmosphere.
none of this answers how c02 causes a temperature increase. The reason why its so difficult to argue with the logic of RC or the IPCC is because there is none, as they’re both run by political hacks. They pick the ballooned number they need, then work backwards to defend them. It makes it difficult for scientists to unravel, since all such arguments depend on authority and authority can’t replace evidence, and at that point, they can’t explain what they claim to know.
Why for instance, now that projected air temperatures have failed to materialise do these cool temperatures heat oceans? How do 15 microns worth of a trace gas put heat into a system that has already exhaled it at a lower thermal ratio? It is lke arguing that the steam from water increases the temperature of water beyond 100C, and that this temperature increae will be dependent on how much steam re-enters the boiling water. None of the proponents of the c02 theory have attempted to explain a single point of the c02 mechanism, notwithstanding arguments pointing to the fact that it doesn’t have the thermal capacity to.
Joel says:
“But, hey, if you want to go around claiming that the current elevation of CO2 levels is not due to our burning of fossil fuels, I encourage you to mention this in everything that you ever post or say to a policymaker or scientist because I can almost guarantee you that it will make them decide very rapidly how seriously to treat you comments. You may be able to fool some credulous folks around here but you won’t fool many whose opinion really matters.”
The amount of c02 release by oceans is some 26 times that of man – ther are 1,000GT of c02 at the ocean surface alone, which can be released during warm oceans episodes, whilst that released by soils, decay, vegetation and are some 2,600 GT, although each year , the surface ocean and atmosphere exchange an estimated 90 GT C; vegetation and the atmosphere, 60 GT C; marine biota and the surface ocean, 50 GT C; and the surface ocean and the intermediate and deep oceans, 100 GT C.”
Anthropogenic is some 8GT per year, which is 1% as natural c02 exchanges. Yet c02 is well regulated and increases uniformly each year. If there were no regulating effect of c02 by oceans, which determine how much c02 resides in the atmosphere, then it would vary erratically every year with geo and biological fluxes.
“And really, it seems sort of desperately ridiculous to propose that the radiative imbalance that occurs due to the reduction in IR radiation escaping from the atmosphere will not lead to warming.”
Well, if it were, it must be water vapour feedback which absorbs LW at 4-9.4 microns, then from 12-70 microns. C02 is only operative at a peak 15, with shoulders from 13-16. Outgoing radiation coincides with the water vapour area, though most outgoing radiation escapes either ghg. c02 depends on subzero temperatures. To maintain that it has a warming effect where it can capture heat does depend on upper toposheric temperatures, which can go as low as -60C, although there is not a physical mechanism by which such extremes can cause elevated warm temperatures at the surface.
It’s the standard understanding of the physics of the phase changes of water as per all the textbooks that describe evaporation as a net cooling effect and which confirm that infra red radiation does not get deep enough into a body of water in the open air to avoid being removed by increased evaporation.
It’s the AGW proponents who are trying to avoid the known physical laws.
I’ve been asking for real world evidence for 18 months now and zilch so far. Just a bleating appeal to Mr. Minnett’s authority and his unproven and apparently unsupported ocean skin theory.
To go with that theory one has to show that extra infra red, despite producing increased evaporation, manages to reduce the evaporative cooling of the ocean skin.
I really don’t see it. More evaporation must of necessity give stronger evaporative cooling in the ocean skin thus increasing the energy flow upwards, not decreasing it.
Where is the evidence that ANY downwelling IR whether natural or man made provides enough surplus energy 1mm down where it really matters given that it only penetrates to one tenth of that depth.
The truth is that ALL IR goes to accelerating energy from the oceans because it substantially drives the evaporative process and the more of it the faster.
I was reluctant to go that far for over a year but given the lack of evidence to the contrary I currently think it to be so
From Joel’s link:
“The increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is known to be caused by human activities because the character of CO2 in the atmosphere, in particular the ratio of its heavy to light carbon atoms, has changed in a way that can be attributed to addition of fossil fuel carbon.”
The keyword there is “can”. It can also be attributed to decrease in the rate of production of heavy carbon atoms. While the reported data are consistent with the hypothesis, consistency is not proof.
” In addition, the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen in the atmosphere has declined as CO2 has increased; this is as expected because oxygen is depleted when fossil fuels are burned.”
Again, it is consistent with the hypothesis, but it is not proof. They talk about the relative abundance of 12C in vegetation (and, these adjectives need to be treated cautiously, as the actual preference is quite small), but they do not delve into the production of 13C or 14C and what mechanisms might have altered their rate of production in the given timeline.
The evidences presented are circumstantial. [snip]. What fair-minded jury would convict beyond a reasonable doubt in this case?
Stephen Wilde says:
Can you provide such references? It is obvious that the phase change due to increased evaporation has a net cooling effect when all else is equal. However, all else is not equal when you are increasing the IR radiation. What happens in reality is that some of the energy from increased IR radiation will go into heating the oceans and some will go into increasing evaporation.
So, are you saying that the way to cool the ocean is to bombard it with more and more IR radiation?
Wow…What double standards! Minnett provides not only theory but data to back it up. You by contrast just supply the handwaving hypothesis with nothing whatsoever to back it up.
As I pointed out in my post of (19:15:56) 9 Nov 2009, even if you restrict yourself to only conduction of heat, you find that there is a lot of heat that can be conducted over small distance scales of order 1mm even for rather modest temperature differences. This is because a modest temperature difference over a small distance is still a large temperature gradient. It is thus likely a very good approximation to assume that the skin layer is at a uniform temperature…and Minnett shows that this temperature is higher (relative to the temperature 5cm below) when more IR radiation is impinging on the ocean surface.
Well, I guess it makes it nice when you serve as judge and jury for the validity of your own hypotheses. I would say that by “lack of evidence to the contrary”, you just mean that you have dismissed any evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, you seem to have mainly presented your notions to a sympathetic audience, with only a few of us (who are not experts in the field) to provide a modicum of balance. If you want to get serious about this, you need to actually submit it to a peer-reviewed journal. Otherwise, you are just grand-standing.
Another big problem with your “theory”, by the way, is that even if most of the energy from increased IR does go into increased evaporation, that energy is released as latent heat when the water condensed, so there is no net transfer of heat out of the atmosphere…only transfer from the surface up into the atmosphere. To the extent that such transfer does cause the upper atmosphere to warm more than the surface and thus provides a negative feedback, it is already included in all of the climate models. (And, of course, the increase in water vapor also provides a positive feedback because water vapor is a greenhouse gas.)
P Wilson: I frankly don’t have time to waste with someone who just rejects laws of physics (such as the S-B Equation) when they uncomfortable to his political beliefs and who can write nonsensical posts faster than I can try to correct them. I only suggest that wherever you go to communicate your views to scientists or policymakers, you should be certain to tell them your views on the origin of the current rise in CO2 and your notions that the S-B Equation does not apply to objects radiating at terrestrial temperatures. I am sure that they will be suitably impressed.
Bart says:
Science doesn’t deal in proof. In fact, one can always say “God did it” and that statement cannot be shown to be false.
Well, basically every scientific body on the planet would and has.
The evidence that the current CO2 rise is due to man is so ridiculously overwhelming that I frankly am amazed that anyone disputes it. All that it shows is how strongly people will cling to unscientific beliefs when their desire to do so is strong enough. Even if you ignore the isotopic evidence entirely, one has to posit all sorts of magical things that occur in order for the current rise not to be due to our emissions. You have to imagine that at the same time that we started emitting CO2, the oceans and/or biosphere magically started absorbing all of this CO2 but then independently also started emitting more CO2 (just because they felt like it) and that it magically did this in a way that kept the ratio of the excess CO2 building up in the atmosphere to the amount we emit almost perfectly constant even as our emissions increase! Frankly, one can’t even formulate a hypothesis to explain the CO2 buildup that doesn’t sound ridiculous on its face. And, then one is also faced with the very strong circumstantial evidence provided by the fact that CO2 levels are higher than they have been in at least 750,000 years.
Bart: I should add that your [snip] is without foundation and follows a similar pattern of the echo chamber on the internet, whereby people like McIntyre make mountains out of molehills, basically making claims that pretty much fall apart or a shown to be much less important than they claim them to be under closer scrutiny. Such people are usually, however, careful to avoid any sorts of [snip].
If Roy Spencer and John Christy were on the on the side of the consensus instead of the “skeptic” side, they would have been absolutely pilloried by you folks for all the errors that they made in analyzing the satellite data, which were primarily in the direction of cooling artifacts. These errors, unlike the ones that have been discovered in the work of Mann and others, were enough to significantly change overall conclusions.
REPLY: to Joel I don’t agree with Bart’s choice of words, and I’m snipping it in the original and in your reply.
However, the important difference is, Spencer and Christy recognized and corrected their error associated with satellite orbit decay, and it was a very complex mathematical issue that only a few experts could see. They were in fact pilloried for it, recognized it, and corrected it. Science at its best.
As an example of the problem on the other side:
Dr. Mann cannot and apparently, will not, recognize and correct a simple proxy data inversion that is as “plain as day”, even to laymen. Defend Mann all you want, we’ll enjoy the entertainment, but the truth is he is creating his own problems by not addressing the issue head-on. So far his actions on these topics have not inspired trust. I am hopeful that will change and he’ll correct the issue. Once he does, there would be no reason then to have issue with the data.
The biggest problem in climate science today is the stubbornness to let the science self correct. – Anthony
P Wilson (23:38:39),
Thanks for that citation, it was new to me. Here’s another, from a real rocket scientist: click.
Also, the U.S. Department of Energy shows that human emitted CO2 is little more than one-fortieth of the amount emitted through natural processes. The UN’s IPCC was the source of that data. Even Joel Shore’s guru, Al Gore, is backing away from CO2 as the central cause of [apparently non-existent] CAGW. Demonizing harmless, beneficial CO2 is so 2008.
Hey, WUWT has an actual Rocket Scientist. And a real Viscount! No wonder Gavin is so envious. But he has something we don’t: his own self-reinforcing echo chamber. Who needs different points of view anyway?
“Science doesn’t deal in proof.”
Then, it is not science. It is, at best, pre-science,i.e., an informed hypothesis, a vague conjecture, or rank speculation, take your pick.
I can tell you without any doubt that, in a specific regime, gravity acts as an inverse square law. I can tell you that particles move with wavelike characteristics. I can tell you that light emission is definitely stimulated by the absorption of photons, and that its energy is proportional to its frequency, while its momentum is inversely proportional to its wavelength, and I can tell you the constant of proportionality to seven significant digits in specific regimes.
“The evidence that the current CO2 rise is due to man is so ridiculously overwhelming that I frankly am amazed that anyone disputes it.”
Yet, you cannot cite a reference upon which I cannot cast reasonable doubt. You cannot cite mathematical equations which tie the increase in the isotope ratio to a specific increase in overall concentration, because there is not enough information on hand to do so.
When the stakes are high, you had better, by God, be dealing with at least a reasonable doubt standard. In the 19th century, it was observed that aboriginal peoples with little contact to the outside world tended to be less advanced, and the theory of racially linked intelligence was born. It was consistent with the known facts at the time. The evidence was “ridiculously overwhelming”. But, I would risk triggering Godwin’s Law if I detailed to you how that particular hypothesis played out.
“You have to imagine that at the same time that we started emitting CO2, the oceans and/or biosphere magically started absorbing all of this CO2 but then independently also started emitting more CO2 (just because they felt like it) …”
No, I just have to presume that CO2 levels vary all the time, as is shown in the geologic record, and that it happened to be on the upswing when we started measuring it directly. Moreover,
“…and that it magically did this in a way that kept the ratio of the excess CO2 building up in the atmosphere to the amount we emit almost perfectly constant even as our emissions increase!”
What does this mean? Why do you believe this is evidence in support of your cause? Firstly, it is not true. Secondly, even if it were, it would be like arguing that the increase in CO2 is directly proportional to the increase in the parallax to Vega – to the degree these two slowly changing time series may be modeled as trends, they are inherently proportional to one another. It means nothing.
The point being made Joel,. can you provide data and verified physical mechanisms ?
The IPCC can’t. NASA can’t. The Royal Societ can’t
Never mind your vituperations Joel. All that is being asked for is evidence and data that is verified, and explanations of such
if you can’t answer some rather basic questions, then fine. No-one is condemning
Joel.
Ok. The SB equation applies to certain things associated with mechanics and engineering. It can’t cover the complexities of nature. It was pulled into liquids and gases since it exagerrates tenfold their effect. It cannot be applied to all matter, liquids, gases and solids, as well as biological matter. If so it produces absurd results. If a calorimeter using remote temperature sensors record the fact that for example a human produces 85wm2, or 150w/m2 if he/she is playing tennis (at 27C) then sure, the SB gives 525w/m2. The latter figure is enough to bring sunflower oil to its boiling point. So the proposition is that if thermal imaging gives highlights for human s against a cooler terrestruial background, it implies that earth readiates less than 85w/m2.
Normal temperature matter doesn’t radiate that much energy that the SB gives. It can’t, as a physical equation, be taken and adapted to suit a purpose. You might as well measure the volume of chicken eggs by using Boyle’s law
I frankly don’t have time to waste with someone who just rejects laws of physics (such as the S-B Equation) when they uncomfortable to his political beliefs and who can write nonsensical posts faster than I can try to correct them.
Smokey (11:42:52) :
I always thought Schmidt had it in for Lord Monckton. I’m guessing that they *crossed paths* at some debate in Oxford university whilst Mann was a student there and Monckton was in Thatcher’s (Hadley) policy unit