This is an essay professor Richard Lindzen of MIT sent to the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va for their Opinion Page in March, and was recently republished in the Janesville, WI Gazette Extra where it got notice from many WUWT readers. It is well worth the read. – Anthony
To a significant extent, the issue of climate change revolves around the elevation of the commonplace to the ancient level of ominous omen. In a world where climate change has always been the norm, climate change is now taken as punishment for sinful levels of consumption. In a world where we experience temperature changes of tens of degrees in a single day, we treat changes of a few tenths of a degree in some statistical residue, known as the global mean temperature anomaly (GATA), as portents of disaster.
Earth has had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a 100,000-year cycle for the last 700,000 years, and there have been previous interglacials that appear to have been warmer than the present despite lower carbon-dioxide levels. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th century, these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat, and, indeed, some alpine glaciers are advancing again.
For small changes in GATA, there is no need for any external cause. Earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Examples include El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, etc. Recent work suggests that this variability is enough to account for all change in the globally averaged temperature anomaly since the 19th century. To be sure, man’s emissions of carbon dioxide must have some impact. The question of importance, however, is how much.
A generally accepted answer is that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (it turns out that one gets the same value for a doubling regardless of what value one starts from) would perturb the energy balance of Earth about 2 percent, and this would produce about 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming in the absence of feedbacks. The observed warming over the past century, even if it were all due to increases in carbon dioxide, would not imply any greater warming.
However, current climate models do predict that a doubling of carbon dioxide might produce more warming: from 3.6 degrees F to 9 degrees F or more. They do so because within these models the far more important radiative substances, water vapor and clouds, act to greatly amplify whatever an increase in carbon dioxide might do. This is known as positive feedback. Thus, if adding carbon dioxide reduces the ability of the earth system to cool by emitting thermal radiation to space, the positive feedbacks will further reduce this ability.
It is again acknowledged that such processes are poorly handled in current models, and there is substantial evidence that the feedbacks may actually be negative rather than positive. Citing but one example, 2.5 billion years ago the sun’s brightness was 20 percent to 30 percent less than it is today (compared to the 2 percent change in energy balance associated with a doubling of carbon-dioxide levels) yet the oceans were unfrozen and the temperatures appear to have been similar to today’s.
This was referred to by Carl Sagan as the Early Faint Sun Paradox. For 30 years, there has been an unsuccessful search for a greenhouse gas resolution of the paradox, but it turns out that a modest negative feedback from clouds is entirely adequate. With the positive feedback in current models, the resolution would be essentially impossible. [Note: readers, see this recent story on WUWT from Stanford that shows Greenhouse theory isn’t needed in the faint young sun paradox at all – Anthony]
Interestingly, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from manmade gases is already about 86 percent of what one expects from a doubling of carbon dioxide (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons, and ozone). Thus, these models should show much more warming than has been observed. The reason they don’t is that they have arbitrarily removed the difference and attributed this to essentially unknown aerosols.
The IPCC claim that most of the recent warming (since the 1950s) is due to man assumed that current models adequately accounted for natural internal variability. The failure of these models to anticipate the fact that there has been no statistically significant warming for the past 14 years or so contradicts this assumption. This has been acknowledged by major modeling groups in England and Germany.
However, the modelers chose not to stress this. Rather they suggested that the models could be further corrected, and that warming would resume by 2009, 2013, or even 2030.
Global warming enthusiasts have responded to the absence of warming in recent years by arguing that the past decade has been the warmest on record. We are still speaking of tenths of a degree, and the records themselves have come into question. Since we are, according to these records, in a relatively warm period, it is not surprising that the past decade was the warmest on record. This in no way contradicts the absence of increasing temperatures for over a decade.
Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) suggests that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, so too is the basis for alarm. However, the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc., all depend not on GATA but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind and the state of the ocean.
The fact that some models suggest changes in alarming phenomena will accompany global warming does not logically imply that changes in these phenomena imply global warming. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred, and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.
One may ask why there has been the astounding upsurge in alarmism in the past four years. When an issue like global warming is around for more than 20 years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence and donations are reasonably clear. So, too, are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of carbon dioxide is a dream come true. After all, carbon dioxide is a product of breathing itself.
Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted to save Earth. Nations see how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. So do private firms. The case of Enron (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, Enron was one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon-emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to trillions of dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions.
It is probably no accident that Al Gore himself is associated with such activities. The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to one’s carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant. The possibilities for corruption are immense.
Finally, there are the well-meaning individuals who believe that in accepting the alarmist view of climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue. For them, psychic welfare is at stake.
Clearly, the possibility that warming may have ceased could provoke a sense of urgency. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, the need to courageously resist hysteria is equally clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever-present climate change is no substitute for prudence.
Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric science at MIT. Readers may send him e-mail at rlindzenmit.edu. He wrote this for The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va.
I believe part of the recent surge in acceptance of the run-away AGW hypothesis was due to the record arctic ice melt of the summer of 2007. At that time it looked like this could be the beginning of a process that might see the arctic ocean ice-free in as few as ten more years. I recall articles in the press about the increased importance of this region and the great international race to control the new trade routes that were going to open up.
rw: “In fact, observed warming does quite obviously contradict claims that there is no warming.”
Your presupposition is that we ‘in fact’ are observing human caused warming. The ‘fact’ that we only have such short and relatively inaccurate temperature data, and that even that data we have accumulated has been shown to be specious and susceptible to tampering, means you cannot use the words ‘in fact’ accurately.
We have a very unclear picture about the long term, and much less so the theorized dramatic impact of humans on presumed GW.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/19/eco.globalwarmingsurvey/index.html
The 2009 polling of climatologists showing that 97% believe humans ‘play a role in global warming’ proves nothing. Play how much of a role, and in what magnitude of global warming? How is this different from other generic, global trends in the past, even in the recent past (the past 500 years.)
If we can de-politicize this discussion, we will know much more in 100, 200 and 500 years – if we’re all still here – but making presumptions and stating ‘in fact’ about observations built upon specious and manipulated data proves nothing.
People that confidently assert otherwise, without addressing the facts on the ground – manipulation and political wonkery – are part and parcel with the manipulation.
Mike (05:42:45) :
“If the first nine doctors tell you to lose weight, eat better and get more exercise but the tenth one says not to worry, it is tempting to go with the tenth doctor, but this is not wise.”
The problem is in your analogy.
My analogy would rather be that if you first go to NINE healers (feel-good post normal science) , and then a real doctor (original style science), its probably best to ignore the healers.
Otherwise your hypocondria might evolve into a psychosis.
1 of 9 Richard Lindzen The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming Fermilab Colloquium 2-10-2010.mp4
2 of 9 Richard Lindzen The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming Fermilab Colloquium 2-10-2010.mp4
3 of 9 Richard Lindzen The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming Fermilab Colloquium 2-10-2010.mp4
4 of 9 Richard Lindzen The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming Fermilab Colloquium 2-10-2010.mp4
5 of 9 Richard Lindzen The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming Fermilab Colloquium 2-10-2010.mp4
6 of 9 Richard Lindzen The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming Fermilab Colloquium 2-10-2010.mp4
7 of 9 Richard Lindzen The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming Fermilab Colloquium 2-10-2010.mp4
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9 of 9 Richard Lindzen The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming Fermilab Colloquium 2-10-2010.mp4
@ur momisugly rw (05:22:03)
I applaud your attempt at point by point rebuttal, but when I investigate your points one by one, they don’t seem convincing. ‘d rather not go into each one, so let me simply try to explain something that you say is confusing. Here’s your quote which begins by quoting Lindzen:
“‘…it is not surprising that the past decade was the warmest on record. This in no way contradicts the absence of increasing temperatures for over a decade.’
This is perhaps the most weirdly confused sentence I’ve seen on this blog. In fact, observed warming does quite obviously contradict claims that there is no warming.”
Now let’s look at Lindzen’s complete paragraph from which you took one sentence out of context:
“Global warming enthusiasts have responded to the absence of warming in recent years by arguing that the past decade has been the warmest on record. We are still speaking of tenths of a degree, and the records themselves have come into question. Since we are, according to these records, in a relatively warm period, it is not surprising that the past decade was the warmest on record. This in no way contradicts the absence of increasing temperatures for over a decade.”
Lindzen’s points are 1) the last 15 years or so have not shown any warming, and 2) AGW enthusiasts respond to that fact by saying the past decade has been the warmest on record.
Thought experiment: Assume that the temperature of the earth increased until 15 years ago and then remained perfectly constant to date. Was the last decade the warmest on record? Yes. Does that prove there was not a constant temperature for the last 15 years. No. That’s all that Lindzen said.
You can suggest that it’s a straw man argument, but what he is really saying is that AGW enthusiasts are cherry-picking their facts by ignoring unfavorable ones.
Sorry that I have no time to review each of your points. I agree that explaining one of your questions does not refute any of your other points. Maybe we could get together for a beer on the White House lawn.
@ur momisugly Simon Filiatrault April 9, 2010 at 3:11 pm who asked:
Could George E. Smith or Docmartyn, explain where they see this in the CO2 data?
‘ if you look up the Mauna Loa data on the NOAA web site; you will see that every year, ML sees a 6 ppm drop in CO2 in just 5 months.’
Looking at this graph
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png
I don’t see any drop, just increase?
Please enlighten me… Thanks”
The black line is a running average, the actual measurements are the red line. There is an annual oscillation of about 6 ppm.
As physicists point out that CO2 has a very finite limit as a heat retainer, Warmists attempt chemistry to enrich the bad rep of the molecule as necessary for life as water. Oceanic acidification. Of course the alkaline seas have not altered pH levels by one iota in the last 100,000 years, yet we are now supposed to believe that it is imminent because of coal electric plants. But it will not happen.
http://www.climatebasics.com/acd.html
kwik (09:25:47) : My doctor told me I was a hypochondriac. I said ” Doc, that’s the one thing I haven’t got!!”
I always appreciate Richard Lindzen’s viewpoint. Thanks for posting this Anthony!
Mike Bryant (07:25:35) :
My take:
Geologists study earth… mostly think CAGW is bunk
Meteorologists study weather… mostly think CAGW is bunk
Climatologists study grant applications… mostly think whatever is necessary
————————
Reply:
How true.
Having worked in the coal industry as a geologist and mining engineer, I have considered some of those massive, exceptionally deep coal seams (some in the Powder River Basin get up to 80 feet thick) and I wonder how warm and luxurious it would have to be to support plantlife that would accumulate such massive amounts of carbon. Obviously I haven’t found any paleo-thermometers conveniently sticking out of said coal seams from which I could read at what temperatures they were formed (I’m sure there are geomarkers that are used as well as recent tree rings), but I currently see no such equivalent conditions on earth and I wonder how “climate scientists” (I always use quotation marks to indicate something I’ve seen printed elsewhere but don’t believe myself) can have the gumption to assume we’re currently living through the worst of times climate-wise.
And the coal seams of which I speak are not anomalies–they are found in abundance in certain time periods in the geologic column that indicate the earth was a much better greenhouse that it currently is.
Any thinking geologist worth his salt has difficulty believing the AGW theory. That’s why they’re disliked so intensely by the AGW grant chasers.
Anu (16:51:16):
About two years ago, 90% of those who present at the Japan Geoscience Symposium did not believe the IPCC report. (Here).
Maybe because geologists do know about past climate. I strongly doubt they all were “petroleum geologists”, as I suppose for a geologist to be able to work with an oil company is like winning the lottery.
Anyway, science is not made by consensus, polls, or “who’s with me” hand counts. Neither competence is. That’s just politics.
@Anu (16:51:16) :
“Doran found that climatologists *who are active in research* showed the strongest consensus on the causes of global warming, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role.”
================
Since obtaining funding for climate research is virtually impossible unless you go along with the prevailing orthodoxy on AGW, and engage in research aimed to support it, there is no surprise that 97 percent of of those “who are active on climate research” agree with it.
I am absolutely certain that at least 97% of phrenologists who were “active in phrenology research” when that science was all the rage, agreed with whatever phrenologists had to agree with.
One more thing. The word “climatologist” in the study you quote does not mean a person with an official degree in climatology (there are very few PhDs in that field, and they are too young). It means scientists “who are active on climate research.” That’s what a climatologist is.
Climatology requires knowledge of, among other things:
atmospheric physics, atmospheric chemistry, solar physics, planetary physics, thermodynamics, geology, oceanography, vulcanology, hydrospheric science, biospheric science, vegetation science, statistics, and probably many more disciplines others can add at will
It is clear that no person exists that can possibly have an adequately specialized knowledge of all those disciplines.
We could therefore conclude (only half in jest) that climatologists cannot exist, because the human brain is incapable of such feats at the moment.
Geologists are indeed very skeptical (often sardonic) about the pronouncements of warming enthusiasts. This is not surprising either, since, unlike climate modellers, they may actually have some detailed knowledge about the history of the Earth.
bubbagyro (16:21:15) :
Speaking of half-lives in the environment of things like CO2, DDT, PCB’s being orders of magnitude less than the wisdom of the day guestimated reminds me of a proposed case history back in the 1960s in the early years of the environmental movement. I was working as an exploration geologist in northern British Columbia and learned of an expedition planned to develop criteria for assessing future damage from smelting base metals.
The target was the old Anyox smelter in the Stewart, B.C area that began during WWI and closed in 1936. The sulphur dioxide smoke had killed the forest over an area of 100sq miles and weakened the trees over many more hundreds of sq mi. The abandoned town of Anyox burned down in 1942 and started a forest fire that cleared out much of the damaged trees over a very large area. The case study planned was to send a team up to Anyox area, and radiating outwards from the smelter, to assess the state of the surroundings and develop a baseline for estimating the permanent to long term damage that metal smelting caused.
The team arrived to find a healthy regrowth forest and for days trekked backwards and forwards in frustration, searching in vain for the foundations of the smelter and the town of Anyox. Finally, they engaged a local prospector who led them along a trail to where, in the midst of the dark forest, they found themselves among gravelly disintegrating concrete and rusty steel. This land of total devastation had recovered and was thriving after only 20 years.
Now I don’t want to ever see a production plant operate like that ever again but lets not let hysterical hyperbole be one of the parameters in science. Indeed, it might be possible to derive a factor to divide hyperbolic estimates made by alarmists of any kind.
I usually tend to agree with Professor Lindzen, but I think there’s something wrong with his comment about how we’ve already seen 86% of the forcing from ghg’s. Let’s see: Go to ( ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt ). Find 2009 average CO2 concentration. Answer: 387.35 ppmv. Open Excel. Enter formula: =ln(387.35/280)/ln(2) . Answer: 0.468211 Can someone please tell me how 46.8% translates to 86%? Maybe you can get there if you assume that N2O, CH4 and the other greenhouse gases will not increase further for the foreseeable future, but I doubt it.
DocMartyn:
Using a single time constant when there are clearly multiple reservoirs (ocean well mixed surface and deeper ocean just for two in addition to the atmosphere) with different time constants, not to mention unknown sinks, makes your model seriously oversimplified. The parameterized version of the Bern model in IPCC AR4 has its flaws (like failure to account for the unknown sink), but it still gives a better fit than yours. See my post here: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/where-has-all-the-carbon-gone/
And again: When you have multiple reservoirs with multiple time constants that are transferring CO2 back and forth, the residence time of a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is not the same as the time constant of the atmospheric concentration. The atmospheric concentration time constant not only can be, but is much longer than the residence time.
Bill Tuttle:
“Would that be the report that the IPCC said it would have to “do-over” because it was so riddled with unjustified assumptions and disproven claims that it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny?”
Which IPCC are you referring to? No IPCC that I know of has ever said such a thing.
seattlebruce:
“Your presupposition is that we ‘in fact’ are observing human caused warming.”
No. The cause is irrelevant to my point. The fact is, the last 10 years have been warmer than any other 10 years in the instrumental record. Claims that global temperatures are not rising are laughable; all the more so when the statement is that warming doesn’t mean it’s warming.
DCC: the point is that you cannot make any statement about trends based on only 14 years of global temperature data. That bears repeating, and emphasising: you CANNOT make ANY statement about trends based on only 14 years of global temperature data. Just like you can’t say anything about how much an oak tree is growing by observing it for a week, or how much a tectonic plate is moving by observing it for 20 minutes. Lindzen knows this. He’s simply playing a game, and trying to fool you. Don’t be fooled.
mikael pihlström (04:19:23) :
“I would have to read the ‘IPCC people’ arguments also.”
Well, I did that, sort of. It’s longish, unless you just stick to the Summary for Policimakers glossy brochure, or its diluted simile, the one for the press, which would be a waste of your time.
A few tens of pages inside it I started looking into their references. That was more than a year ago. I would suggest you to wait for this here before you start reading it all.
I also would suggest you to know how models are meant to be built and used before reading it.
Even so, you will find that the IPCC report doesn’t support clearly much that is written by CAGW enthusiasts.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
EDITORIAL: Global warming’s unscientific method
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The prophets of global warming continue to lament as their carefully crafted yarn unravels before their eyes. Ross McKitrick, an intrepid economics professor from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, has tugged apart the thin mathematical threads that once held together the story of climate change.
Recent attempts to silence Mr. McKitrick illuminate the extent to which the alarmists have abandoned proper scientific method in their pursuit of political goals.
Mr. McKitrick has spent the past two years attempting to publish a scientific paper that documents a fundamental error in the 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. This U.N. document serves as the sole authority upon which the Environmental Protection Agency based its December “endangerment finding” that will allow unelected bureaucrats to impose cap-and-trade-style regulations without a vote of Congress. The cost to the public in higher gas and energy prices will run in the billions.
One might think that the scientific community would be extra diligent in double-checking the conclusions of a report carrying such weighty real-world consequences. In fact, the opposite happened. Seven scientific journals circled the wagons to block publication of Mr. McKitrick’s explosive findings.
The IPCC report argued that temperatures rose one degree Celsius over the course of a century as a direct result of man-made carbon-dioxide emissions. This tiny change in temperature was calculated through the use of an “adjusted” set of global surface-temperature readings. Mr. McKitrick found that factors unrelated to global climate contaminated this data set, resulting in a higher temperature reading. He showed a statistically significant correlation between the change in temperature readings and socioeconomic indicators. It makes sense, for example, that replacing trees and forests with concrete and glass skyscrapers might contribute to the .01 degree annual increase in local temperature readings. This “urban heat island” effect would not be present in readings taken outside the asphalt jungle.
Scientific journals evaluate arguments of this sort using a peer-review process by which purportedly impartial experts in the relevant field verify the paper’s accuracy and suitability for publication. By addressing issues raised by reviewers, researchers are able to present an improved and refined final product. In Mr. McKitrick’s case, the process appears to have been abused to stifle dissent.
The leading journals Science and Nature both rejected the paper as too specialized and lacking in novelty. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society did not respond. Reasons given for refusing the paper in other outlets frequently contradicted one another.
One of the famous leaked e-mails from the former head of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia sheds light on what really happens behind the scenes. “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,” professor Phil Jones wrote in reference to a 2004 journal article by Mr. McKitrick. “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Mr. McKitrick’s views were indeed excluded from the IPCC report, but his paper will now be published in a forthcoming edition of Statistics, Politics and Policy. One of that journal’s editors told The Washington Times that the submission was treated as “fairly routine.” That is to say, they treated it as scientists should.
The soundness of a statistical analysis does not change simply because the numbers point to a truth inconvenient for those seeking to manipulate science to advance political policy. Thanks to the exposure of East Anglia’s unscientific method, the public can peer behind the curtains and see that the emperors of warming have no clothes.
“The fact is, the last 10 years have been warmer than any other 10 years in the instrumental record. Claims that global temperatures are not rising are laughable”
There is nothing laughable, or hard to understand, about the fact that temperatures have not risen in the last ten years, while the last ten years may have been the warmest in the instrumental record. It really is not that hard to understand, if you try. If your nose did not grow for the last ten years, but grew before that, then your nose during the last ten years will be bigger than ever before, and that’s perfectly compatible with the fact that it hasn’t grown for ten years.
“the point is that you cannot make any statement about trends based on only 14 years of global temperature data.”
I agree. But why is 20 years so much better?
The trend on which all this is based goes from the very late 70s to 1998. And if you agree with Jones that no statistically significant warming has occured since 1995, then you have the previous 16 or 17 years to get your “significant” trend. The trend over the course of the entire 20th century is about 0.6-0.7 C, probably no greater than the expected error, and, given the secrecy and opaqueness of the methods by which the record was constructed, probably not worth paying any attention to. The only reliable global record we have is the 30-year satellite record, where the warmng trend does not go beyond 20 years.
Lord Monckton on Bonn Climate Conference: New treaty, new world government?
“DeWitt Payne (10:44:39) :
DocMartyn:
Using a single time constant when there are clearly multiple reservoirs (ocean well mixed surface and deeper ocean just for two in addition to the atmosphere) with different time constants, not to mention unknown sinks, makes your model seriously oversimplified. The parameterized version of the Bern model in IPCC AR4 has its flaws (like failure to account for the unknown sink), but it still gives a better fit than yours. See my post here: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/where-has-all-the-carbon-gone/
And again: When you have multiple reservoirs with multiple time constants that are transferring CO2 back and forth, the residence time of a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is not the same as the time constant of the atmospheric concentration. The atmospheric concentration time constant not only can be, but is much longer than the residence time.”
Err, bullshit. I have not calculated “the residence time of a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere”, nor have I calculated the rate at which the CO2 dissolved in the ocean exchanges with the CO2 in the atmosphere. I have done a steady state analysis of the rate of CO2 influx and efflux from the atmosphere.
Do not claim that equilibrium box models are superior to steady state flux analysis. Biochemists study steady state all the time, they never use box models, but steady state analysis has been used successfully for 50 years or more.
Look at the first plot. We have an estimate for the amount of human CO2 release and we have a measure of atmospheric [CO2]. We can therefore estimate the natural level of atmospheric [CO2] and the OVERALL influx/efflux rates. Modeling the t1/2 is then trivial.
“Using a single time constant when there are clearly multiple reservoirs (ocean well mixed surface and deeper ocean just for two in addition to the atmosphere) with different time constants, not to mention unknown sinks, makes your model seriously oversimplified.”
You do know that rates are additive don’t you? So A->B = K1 and A->C = K2 then A=A0e^(-(K1+K2)t).
In 1959 Keeling had 316 ppm and in 2006 382 ppm, which equates to 620 and 750 Gt atmospheric carbon. Between 1959 and 2006 humans dumped 248 Gt of carbon in the atmosphere. So only 130 of the 250 Gt is still there, so do your own fit. The t1/2 is about 30 years. This is not the rate of exchange between the oceans and atmosphere, the 14C loss of CO2 after H-bomb testing has a t1/2 of a decade or so.
So DeWitt Payne, put up or shut up. Fit the known release of CO2 with Keelings and show that the ‘atmospheric concentration time constant’ is greater than 30 years.
Possibly the most obvious place to look for man’s impact on pumping ‘greenhouse’ gases into the atmosphere has nothing whatsoever to do with carbon dioxide, but it has to do with water vapour.
No climate model takes account of the effect of evaporation from irrigation – the number is truly mind-numbing.
Irrigation currently consumes around 3,500 cubic kilometres of water per year (Source Wikipedia) – 74%, or 2.600 cubic kilometres of this is lost to evaporation. This is a figure of 2,600 billion tonnes per year, or approximately 100 times the annual amount of carbon dioxide produced by man.
Between 1955 and 1983, the amount of land under irrigation almost doubled, since that time it has been growing at around 1.3% per year.
True, some of the water used for irrigation, would have evaporated somewhere else, but this would be tiny compared to the 74% figure given above.
Does anyone think about or even consider the effects of increased irrigation is having on climate? Answer: No, absolutely not.
Yet it probably has an effect which is a multiple of carbon dioxide’s impact.
“There is nothing laughable, or hard to understand, about the fact that temperatures have not risen in the last ten years”
It’s clear that you have very strong preconceptions. Please, open your eyes a little bit. You can learn this properly, if you want to. Like I said already, you CANNOT say ANYTHING about temperature trends based on only ten years. You might as well say an oak tree has stopped growing after observing it for twenty minutes. There is nothing hard to understand about this, so why have you and many other people failed to grasp it?
“…why is 20 years so much better?”
It’s not ‘so’ much better. The longer the period, the greater the chance that a trend will be clearly distinguishable from the random variation due to weather. Simple as that. 15 years is too short a period, almost always. 20 years is just about long enough. 30 years is better still.
“The trend on which all this is based goes from the very late 70s to 1998.”
Nothing changed in 1998. Warming continues.
“And if you agree with Jones that no statistically significant warming has occured since 1995, then you have the previous 16 or 17 years to get your “significant” trend.”
You miss the point, again. There was no statistically significant warming from 1978-1992, or from 1979-1993, or 1980-1994, or 1981-1995, or 1995-2009, or any of the other 14 year periods. If I say it one more time, might you get it? You CANNOT say anything about temperature trends based on only 14 years of data. Climate is a longer-term phenomenon than that.
Mike (05:42:45) :
“Some people will go to doctor after doctor until they hear what they want. If the first nine doctors tell you to lose weight, eat better and get more exercise but the tenth one says not to worry, it is tempting to go with the tenth doctor, but this is not wise.”
Allegories, parables, metaphors and other figures of speech don’t make the greatest arguments. I like them, they’re decorative, they make people yawn less for a while, but they usually don’t work.
Suppose that the person there, instead of just eating too many sinful hamburgers and pizzas, was consulting on the need for a risky, very expensive surgery, of very dubious outcome? Or suppose he/she wasn’t even that sick — the hypochondria hypothesis above?
There’s my own little metaphor too.
Dewitt Payne
was wondering when you would show up 🙂
Enter formula: =ln(387.35/280)/ln(2) . Answer: 0.468211 Can someone please tell me how 46.8% translates to 86%?>>
My guess is he may have made several assumptions, the wording about other GHG gave me that impression. But I think one of the factors would be the exponential increase in radiance from the earth as temperature increases. My own rough math got me to 60% though, not 86%. Since Lindzen doesn’t seem to be the type to throw meaningless numbers around, I presume he had some logic behind that number and would be interested to know what it was.
That said, even if you used 48%, the point is that the next 100 ppm will have much less forcing effect than the first 100 ppm, and temperature increase in degrees per watt of forcing declines at the same time.
rw (10:45:34)
So I guess we can forget all the red-faced, spittle flecked, alarmist arm waving over a few years of Arctic ice decline? Especially since the Antarctic isn’t following suit: click. If it were a global warming problem, the Antarctic would be declining too. It isn’t.
And regarding your post @05:22:03, thanx for your personal opinions. Not only are they wrong, they mean nothing without empirical evidence. So we’re back to the null hypothesis. All the climate fluctuations we see are well within the past parameters of natural climate variability. You can be a worry-wart, but the fact is that nothing abnormal is occurring.
Mike (05:42:45) :
I call BS.
List the total of all climatologists, then list the 97% subset who believe Prof Lindzen is “wrong.” And just out of curiosity, Prof Lindzen is wrong about what, exactly? Everything?
DCC,
My apologies, I was wrong and you were right.
Ed Scott (11:10:07),
Good article, thanks for posting. But shouldn’t it be Professor – rather than “Mr.” – McKitrick?