I have been remiss at posting reviews on several books that people have sent me. I hope to get some of them up in the next week. Dr. Spencer’s announcement below is a start, though his is the one book I don’t have. – Anthony
============
The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists
By Dr. Roy Spencer
Today (April 20) is the official release date of my new book entitled: “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists“, published by Encounter Books.
About one-half of Blunder is a non-technical description of our new peer reviewed and soon-to-be-published research which supports the opinion that a majority of Americans already hold: that warming in recent decades is mostly due to a natural cycle in the climate system — not to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning.
Believe it or not, this potential natural explanation for recent warming has never been seriously researched by climate scientists. The main reason they have ignored this possibility is that they cannot think of what might have caused it.
You see, climate researchers are rather myopic. They think that the only way for global-average temperatures to change is for the climate system to be forced ‘externally’…by a change in the output of the sun, or by a large volcanic eruption. These are events which occur external to the normal, internal operation of the climate system.
But what they have ignored is the potential for the climate system to cause its own climate change. Climate change is simply what the system does, owing to its complex, dynamic, chaotic internal behavior.
As I travel around the country, I find that the public instinctively understands the possibility that there are natural climate cycles. Unfortunately, it is the climate “experts” who have difficulty grasping the concept. This is why I am taking my case to the public in this book. The climate research community long ago took the wrong fork in the road, and I am afraid that it might be too late for them to turn back.
NATURE’S SUNSHADE: CLOUDS
The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.
How could the experts have missed such a simple explanation? Because they have convinced themselves that only a temperature change can cause a cloud cover change, and not the other way around. The issue is one of causation. They have not accounted for cloud changes causing temperature changes.
The experts have simply mixed up cause and effect when observing how clouds and temperature vary. The book reveals a simple way to determine the direction of causation from satellite observations of global average temperature and cloud variations. And that new tool should fundamentally change how we view the climate system.
Blunder also addresses a second major mistake that results from ignoring the effect of natural cloud variations on temperature: it results in the illusion that the climate system is very sensitive. The experts claim that, since our climate system is very sensitive, then our carbon dioxide emissions are all that is needed to explain global warming. There is no need to look for alternative explanations.
But I show that the experts have merely reasoned themselves in a circle on this subject. When properly interpreted, our satellite observations actually reveal that the system is quite IN-sensitive. And an insensitive climate system means that nature does not really care whether you travel by jet, or how many hamburgers or steaks you eat.
CARBON DIOXIDE: FRIEND OR FOE?
The supposed explanation that global warming is due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide from our burning of fossil fuels turns out to be based upon little more than circumstantial evidence. It is partly a symptom of our rather primitive understanding of how the climate system works.
And I predict that the proposed cure for global warming – reducing greenhouse gas emissions – will someday seem as outdated as using leeches to cure human illnesses.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that scientific knowledge is continually changing, it is increasingly apparent that the politicians are not going to let little things like facts get in their way. For instance, a new draft climate change report was released by the U.S. yesterday (April 19) which, in part, says: “Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced … Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases.”
You see, the legislative train left the station many years ago, and no amount of new science will slow it down as it accelerates toward its final destination: forcibly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But in Blunder I address what other scientists should have the courage to admit: that maybe putting more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing. Given that it is necessary for life on Earth, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is surprisingly small. We already know that nature is gobbling up 50% of what humanity produces, no matter how fast we produce it. So, it is only logical to address the possibility that nature — that life on Earth — has actually been starved for carbon dioxide.
This should give you some idea of the major themes of my new book. I am under no illusion that the book will settle the scientific debate over global warming.
To the contrary — I am hoping the debate will finally begin.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“DirkH (13:44:23) : Your comment is awaiting moderation
[…]
Al “2 million degrees” Gore.
”
I completely forgot that our mathematical genius himself is a member of the Club Of Rome. Sorry. Sometimes you just forget how widespread it is.
“mbabbitt (11:58:54) :
[…]
Buteyko today is endorsed as a non-medicinal asthma treatement in Britain and in Russian and is relatively well known in Australia. […]”
Thanks a lot! I’ve never heard of him. This is fascinating, i know quite a lot of asthma sufferers and will tell them about it.
AGW true believers, looking theoretically at radiational effects in isolation from all other factors, think that trace gas concentrations regulate the surface temperature. Skeptics are convinced, on the basis of observations, that the hydrological cycle in all of its phases is the regulatory mechanism. The debate between the camps will never end, because of the political investment made in the AGW hypothesis.
I don’t have the time to write Smithsonian mini-essays, let alone Spencerian books, but the crucial issue boils down to the balance between the rate at which Earth’s climate system thermalizes insolation and the rate at which it emits thermal radiation to space. It should be apparent to all that clouds are the gatekeepers of insolation, thereby affecting the SUPPLY of energy driving the whole climate system. Trace gases are physically incapable of any such effect. At best, they can only affect how thermal energy is STORED within the system. AGW believers constantly conflate these distinct processes and confuse the issue with misleading terminology and nonsensical notions of “water vapor feedback,” for which they have never produced any compelling evidence. I dare say there has never been a tropical thunderstorm that did not, within an hour, drop surface temperatures by several degrees. Until they do, their entire radiative greenhouse paradigm is open to question.
Joel Shore (10:29:12) :
“So, who do you think wants the “disbandment of the Western civilisation”
Erlich and his friends. The IPCC top folks. Greenpeace. WWF. Lots of top government people. Like Brown, Milliband, Merkel. Obama (slightly silent, lately), Rudd. I could go on forever.
Its repeated on a weekly basis, Joel.
They want laws and regulations, like saying CO2 is a pollutant. Regulations in minute detail on who is to do what regarding energy and CO2. Who can fly where. Who can drive where.
Who can buy what.
Because otherwise, it was only 18 months until it was too late. Right? The end of the world? Wasn’t it Brown saying that?
And enforcing this will in practice disbanding democracy and free markets. Hence the western civilisation is gone. Step by step.
Either one believes in this, and that means shutting down civilisation. (Otherwise we all cook) Or you dont.
Haven’t you understood the message from the warmers?
Or have I misunderstood? The world isn’t ending (according to the warmers), after all?
Thanks, Leif!! Good job!
I highly recommend visiting the following site, as it is a strong endorser of the Buteyko method and contains links to Buteyko practitioners and other sites’ articles, as well as a video explaining the method (plus a long article itself).
http://www.trisoma.com/breathing.html
Steven, I believe there is already a gravitational land tide, as well as a water tide solar effect that has been known for a while. If there are changes in volcano activity as a result of that tide, I believe it would be an Earth bound variability related to plate tectonics. The fact that our crust is a highly variable entity with lots of thickening and thinning activity happening (relatively speaking), far out performs any land tidal differences the Sun may impose on pressure build up and release.
Dr. Spencer,
I suggest that you submit an editorial to the WSJ describing your several theses, and putting your book in the trailing byline. They have recently published several submissions by Dr. Lindzen and I expect that they would welcome yours; and it would serve to publicize your book.
Rated #77 on Amazon I am impressed with Dr Spencer.
….they sure don’t have much good to say about Dr. Spencer’s book on the Realclimate.org blog!!
I’m actually amazed that they published a few of my posts for once! I wasn’t particularly confrontational, just giving them some realistic advice regarding the changing attitudes of the public….they just don’t seem to get it over there!!
You can only cry “WOLF!!” so many times, or so I’ve been told….
Thanks. Do you happen to have a link to that document, if it’s a PDF? I couldn’t find a site with those phrases online when I googled.
RE: “As an example we see that one of the moons of Jupiter (or was it Saturn) has such a state of internal excitement from conflicting gravitational forces that the surface is frequently showing volcanic activity.”
Planet Saturn, Moon: Enceladus.
Photographed in action November 2005 by Cassini: Multiple jets of 180 Kelvin (60 watts sq. meter surface radiation (comparison: Yellowstone active area 2.5 watts sq. meter) to an altitude of about ‘several hundred kilometers’.
Analyzed in a 2.5 km fly-through in March 2006 as being composed of:
Water, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, acetylene, hydrogen cyanide; traces of ethane, propane, benzene, formaldehyde and other organics.
Carolyn Porco, was the lead at the time (Director of CICLOPS).
Fascinating stuff.
Organics in extra-terrestrial geysers.
Science still lives.
Pamela Gray (16:52:48)
I think I see your point but would just say that the heat energy inside the Earth comes only from two sources:
i) Radioactive decay which is all internally generated
ii) Convective movement leading to friction induced by external gravitational forces.
I would imagine that i) is pretty steady but that variability mostly comes from ii). On that basis it would not matter if the energy value of ii) is less than that of i)
Both must contribute to the basic temperature of the Earth system as a whole but the general evidence is that the energy which seeps into the oceans from below is insignificant compared to the energy flows dictated by oceanic processes. The energy which is thrust into the air from time to time seems to be quickly dissipated by the negative feedback processes represented by the variable speed of the hydrological cycle.
So although I accept that external gravitational influences have an effect they seem to be second or third order compared to sun and oceans and of a short term nature only.
“Roger Knights (16:51:31) :
[…]
I highly recommend visiting the following site, as it is a strong endorser of the Buteyko method and contains links to Buteyko practitioners and other sites’ articles, as well as a video explaining the method (plus a long article itself).
http://www.trisoma.com/breathing.html
”
Thanks to you as well, Roger!
Henry chance (10:43:31) :
“I see it is selling very well. #78 a few minutes ago.”
Henry, how did you manage to find that information?
Joel Shore (10:18:16) :
So, who do you think wants the “disbandment of the Western civilisation”: Most of the Democratic party and some in the Republican party (like McCain before he had a right-wing primary opponent)? Most of the climate science community? The National Academy of Sciences and analogous bodies in all the other G8+5 nations? The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the AGU, the AMS, the APS, …?
_______________________________________________________________________________
If you are asking that question you have not been paying attention:
In Sept. 14, 1994 David Rockefeller, speaking at the UN Business Council,.
“This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long – We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”( He is speaking of the current financial crisis)
– Admiral Chester Ward, former CFR member and Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy said “Once the ruling members of the CFR shadow government have decided that the U.S. Government should adopt a particular policy, the very substantial research facilities of (the) CFR are put to work to develop arguments, intellectual and emotional, to support the new policy, and to confound and discredit, intellectually and politically, any opposition.”
David Rockefeller has had a lifelong association with the Council on Foreign Relations. He was appointed a director in 1949 and chairman, from 1970 to 1985. His father provided major funding for its first headquarters. Ongoing funding is provided by the family’s Rockefeller Foundation.
In the 2002 Rockefeller autobiography “Memoirs” on page 405,” Mr. Rockefeller writes: “For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents… to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists and of conspiring with others around the world … If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Strong worked for the Rockefellers in Saudi Arabia (oil) in the fifties. Maurice Strong is a member of the Club of Rome, a Rockefeller Foundation trustee and senior adviser to the World Bank. It is instructive to read Strong’s 1972 Stockholm speech and compare it with the issues of Earth Summit 1992. Strong warned urgently about global warming, the devastation of forests, the loss of biodiversity, polluted oceans, the population time bomb. Then as now, he invited to the conference the brand-new environmental NGOs [non-governmental organizations]: he gave them money to come; they were invited to raise hell at home. After Stockholm, environment issues became part of the administrative framework in Canada, the U.S., Britain, and Europe.
http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html
Even the people at Radio for Peace at the Peace University saw through Maurice Strong and his ties to big business and the big banks! Can’t you spot a wolf in sheep’s clothing with a hidden agenda by now???
http://www.w4uvh.net/dxldtd3g.html%5DMaurice Strong and Radio for Peace Internationa
“The university’s administrator, Canadian Maurice Strong, came in on a wave of influence based on the promise of Ted Turner’s foundation to give a billion dollars to the UN. His connections to the Turner foundation, the World Bank, and to those environmental groups you hear criticized for allowing domination by big business, are just the tip of the iceberg.
Anyone searching “Maurice Strong” on the web encounters a very interesting array of entries. (To quote Lewis Carroll, the story becomes “Curious and curiouser”) If we can believe even 10% of the story of his ascent to power and influence, an astonishing tale of subterfuge emerges, consistent with his attack on RFPI. Beyond the fig leaf of NGO’s that he uses for cover, Strong’s real alliances are with the enemies of the UN, which they are busily “reforming”
Where does Maurice Strong stand as a CO2 emitter? If you thought Al Gore was a hypocrite, Strong has him topped by a mile as the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Canada!
“…Ontario Hydro, an industrial concern, headed by Earth Summit secretary general Maurice Strong, which [b]is the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Canada.[/b] This corporation is currently selling nuclear reactors to Argentina and Chile…. “
“He is a huge political donor, not just in Canada, but in the USA to both the Republican and Democratic parties….
…he became president of Power Corporation, he has served as president of energy companies such as Petro-Canada and Ontario Hydro, and on the board of industrial giant Toyota. “
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/061.html
Strong had a history as a conman and swindler long before his involvement with Obama, Gore and the Chicago Climate Exchange click Strong has also been caught up in a series of U.N. scandals and conflicts of interest. not to mentions several insider trading scams such as the AZL Resources Lawsuit the food for oil scandal and the Molten Metal Inc swindle involving Al Gore, tax payer money, lawsuits and aHouse Committee investigation
Elaine Dewar, who interviewed Strong, described why he loved the UN.
“He could raise his own money from whomever he liked, appoint anyone he wanted, control the agenda,” wrote Dewar.
“He told me he had more unfettered power than a cabinet minister in Ottawa. He was right: He didn’t have to run for re-election, yet he could profoundly affect lives.”
Strong prefers power extracted from democracies, and kept from unenlightened voters. Most power-crazed men would stop at calling for a one world Earth Charter to replace the U.S. Constitution, or the UN Charter.
Strong explained: “Licences to have babies incidentally is something that I got in trouble for some years ago for suggesting even in Canada that this might be necessary at some point, at least some restriction on the right to have a child.” Strong himself has five children.” http://www.taxtyranny.ca/images/HTML/Maurice-Strong/article1.html
“David Rockefeller praised the major media for their complicity in helping to facilitate the globalist agenda by saying, “We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. . . . It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” http://www.newswithviews.com/Cappadona/heidi5.htm
THESE are the people you want us to believe have NO influence on the global Warming issue????
Phil M. (12:32:19) :
“As usual, what ruffles my feathers is not the fact that sceptics feel the way they do about AGW. It’s everything else they have to say.”
Phil, you are constructing and living in a Fantasyland concerning the “they” you speak of, one where you can transfer all of your own fears onto the “they”, blame “them”, then think you have solved what is really your own failure to confront your own life – your own self-realisation of your existence as alive and thinking, and the fact that it is you who has to reconcile yourself with the conditions of your existence. It’s the same for the rest of us. It is not “them” or “they” who are the first and main problem you have to deal with before moving on. It is that you have not faced your self, its situation, reactions, and capabilities.
But I’m assuming that you can “know yourself”, if you just slow down and take a look at it. Try it, or at least stop blaming the “others” for your own fears and uncertainties. Apart from not being “fair”, it’s irritating, and it also allows you to be a tool for people who would manipulate you toward their own selfish and otherwise malign goals. Take control of your self first.
Joel Shore (10:29:12) :
“Maybe once most of the so-called ‘skeptics’ start displaying true skepticism… & blah, blah, etc.”
Climate skepticism begins at the null hypothesis, which recognizes the fact that the climate’s actions are fully explained by natural variability, with no need to resort to the belief that a minor trace gas drives everything. To the extent that CO2 has any effect at all, it is so insignificant that it can be entirely disregarded. The climate is entirely benign.
Alarmists like yourself have never been able to falsify the null hypothesis because the planet is right in the middle of its long term temperature parameters. Nothing unusual is happening, despite your fervent hope for a climate catastrophe.
And when someone points out: “The true agenda is the disbandment of the Western civilization, and starting a new dark era of socialism and control of every man’s activity via the UN.”
You respond with a mindless retort: “It is not surprising that someone who has these sorts of paranoid and strongly ideological beliefs… & more blah, blah, etc.”
Even Stevie Wonder could see the incessant world wide push to regulate everything and everyone in the name of “carbon.”
Plastic grocery bags will cost 25¢ each starting next year. The never ending talk about peoples’ “carbon footprint” is intended to pave the way for a drastically reduced and much more expensive lifestyle, because CO2 is emitted from manufacturing everything from fertilizer to plastics. Air travel is under attack. The totally corrupt, unelected UN kleptocrats demand a “World Tax” starting at over $100,000,000,000 a year from U.S. taxpayers alone [with almost all other countries exempted from the tax], etc., etc., etc.
This is all propaganda marching us in a direction away from freedom, and toward complete regulation and control by nameless, faceless, self-serving bureaucrats who will have total authority over every aspect of your life… and you can’t see it??
In the 1930’s the communists used to call people like you “useful fools.” You would sell out our freedom to these greedy thieves with their hands ever deeper in our pockets in order to win a lame argument, just because you can’t admit what is happening right in front of you.
REPLY: With Joel’s “so called skeptics” comment, maybe it is time for him to hit the road. Frankly I’m getting tired of him, and when he says things like that, it displays his contempt. I really don’t care for people visiting my home on the Internet that have contempt for me and the people who frequent here. If you want to engage in contempt, there’s plenty of other places for that. – Anthony
Gail Combs (05:42:06) :
And Rockefeller is member of Club of Rome?
For The Record –
mbabbitt (11:58:54) :
People here would do well to google and read up on the work of (Russian Breathing researcher) Dr Konstantin Buteyko’s (1923-2003) Breath Retraining methodology. He once worked on the Russian Space program and argued that much of human illness is supported by our trained overbreathing (over-emphasis on O2 intake), which lowers our internal C02. Dr. Buteyko’s decades long research and treatment of asthma and hypertension worked off the radical idea that it is the lack of adequate supplies of CO2 in our bodily tissues (a vasodilator and smooth muscle relaxant) that prevents our bodies from being able to access the O2 that is held by our hemoglobin.
Nah, ftr, this idea is all wrong. No one is “trained” to overbreathe. Though it can be voluntarily overridden for some period of time, respiratory drive is automatic and primarily controlled by the CO2 concentration reaching chemoreceptors in the brain so that the appropriate bodily pH can be maintained for the chemical-metabolic reactions necessary for life. No one who knows anything about CO2 in relation to human physiology makes the allegedly “common mistake of seeing C02 purlely as a metabolic waste product.”
The normal body CO2 mixed venous concentration [right before the blood goes back into the right side of the heart, then to the lung] is about 56,000ppm, pCO2 = 40-44, and there’s plenty more always being produced by aerobic combustion of fuels, depending on your level of activity, core body temp., etc..
As to Butyeko’s claim about an alleged learned breath training which “overemphasizes” O2 supply, low oxygen respiratory drive doesn’t even kick in at all until O2 concentration drops to around pO2= 60, down from a normal arterial pO2 of about 100. At pO2 = 60, Oxygen starts to be much more easily dissociated from hemoglobin and is therefore already automatically more available, especially for tissues whose pO2 has dropped to that level or lower, as in the case of muscular exertion.
Butekyo seems to be arguing that simply because decreased pH to the point of “acidosis” makes Oxygen dissociate from hemoglobin “easier” or sooner than when pH is not acidotic, the Bohr effect, that therefore acidosis is to be desired, which is wrong because lower pO2 already accomplishes this automatically all by itself. And you can’t easily manufacture a CO2 induced acidosis anyway because, 1] an increased CO2 concentration from decreased “ventilation” per breath by breath slowing or holding, or by obstuction to ventilation – blocking inhaling and exhaling – will only cause you to automatically breathe faster which will then drive down CO2 and H+ concentrations back to normal; and, 2] even if you did manage to cause a longer term increase in CO2 concentration and thus a transient “respiratory acidosis”, your kidney’s would manufacture/reabsorb more bicarbonate, HCO3-, so as to correct the acidosis back to a normal pH over a few days and continuing as needed.
Finally, CO2 retention in an asthma attack is a very bad sign, causes an acute respiratory acidosis, and certainly doesn’t reverse the attack.
“”” stevengoddard (11:07:16) :
The inability to model clouds accurately is the Achilles Heel of GCMs. “””
Steve; it also is not simply the inability (well let’s say “difficulty”) to model; but also to measure clouds.
I have not read; and probably won’t read Brian Sussman’s book on “Climategate”; well unless I find it lying around somewhere. Based on what he himself has said about it, I think he went off on the wrong track; even though he may be right about his conclusion.
There’s no future in arguing that the earth did not warm a little; well up to about 15 years ago, or that it may have been in a long term recovery from the last ice age. So what; we can find somewhere between -90 deg C and +60 deg C to live comfortably on this planet. There’s also no future in denying the LWIR absorption mechanism of CO2. But it is not sensible to claim that the GCMs do not MODEL WATER VAPOR; and I deliberately accented that to point out that this is the way it is always stated “VAPOR”.
I’ve never seen anybody claim that the GCMs properly model “WATER”. There does seem to be acknowledgement that they don’t model CLOUDS very well.
So how about CLOUD MEASUREMENT ? Here we have a real problem; because there simply is not way (that I am aware of) to continuously monitor globally the effect of cloud cover.
Satellite measurments, and lunar earthshine measurments claim to be able to make observations of cloud cover largely by making albedo measurments; and even those are inadequet. Clouds come and go so rapidly, that no single satellite can continuously monitor the entire earth.
I suspect that if every satellite in the GPS network was also a cloud monitoring satellite, that we might have good enough data to get at least a credible measurement of the earth’s albedo.
But that still does not solve the problem.
I don’t see any way that an extra-terrestrial cloud observation network; however extensive, can ever monitor the grlound level effect of cloud cover.
Some people who do monitor albedo now by whatever method they use, claim that they see no evidence of changes in cloud cover; well maybe they don’t see much. But they largely dismiss the idea.
Well that is not surprising, since the extra-terrestrial measurments, cannot determine the optical absorption of PRECIPITABLE clouds.
A midwestern Sunday afternoon (4PM) thunderstorm looks pretty much the same as a powder puff, when viewed from a commercial jet flying high above. I have flown from JFK to STL over virtually solid cloud cover that looked like powder snow; and the only clue to what havoc was going on underneath the snow, was to watch the wall to wall lighning strikes going on in those clouds; sometimes jumping cloud to cloud on top; from horizon to horizon, almost the whole trip.
An albedo measurment isn’t going to register anything much different from a benign cloud layer that is thick but not moisture laden to the point of heavy precipitation.
So I place no stock in cloud measurments that are NOT made at ground level; and no suitable network for doing that exists.
If we can’t put enough Owl Boxes around the planet to properly sample the Temperature; we certainly can’t afford to put out a network of all sky cameras to properly sample the real cloud cover.
But Wentz et al in SCIENCE july-7/2007 gave us the clue; although not specifically. A one deg C change in mean global surface Temperature gives a 7% change in, Total Global Evaporation, Total atmospheric Water Content, and Total Global Precipitation. What the missed was that the last item pretty much guarantees somethign in the range of a 7% change in Total Precipitable Cloud Cover; dictated by the fact that precipitation is often accompanied by clouds bearing moisture. That is what is missing from the extra-terrestrial albedo measurments; and apparently from the computer modelling.
In dismissive criticism of Sussman’s book (“missfiring on all cylinders”) Stanford’s Stephen Schneider; who evidently bestowed on us his invention of “Climate Sensitivity” Claims that water vapor is a “weak greenhouse gas”
compared to CO2, and that is what is important; not the great difference in the atmospheric abundance of H2O and CO2.
The lie to Schneider’s claim is demonstrated by the dry desert night cooling that everyone is familiar with.
There is no reason to believe that the all powerful CO2 and methane GHGs are not present in full complement in dry desert night skies; yet they fail miserably to hold up the daytime intense heat of those deserts; Strangely Dr Schneider it seems that it is only when H2O is present in the night sky; either as high humidity water vapor; or as liquid or solid H2O clouds; that the nigh time cooling of those hot places is inhibited.
If Schneider’s postulate was true; then we would not have the total greenhouse effect we presently enjoy; but ice ball earth would prevail; notwithstanding the power of CO2.
I’m not sure I can afford to spend $14 on Dr Spencer’s book; but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Incidently; what is it that people don’t like about the iceberg cover. I suppose the underwater volume, is likely considerably larger than the 10-11 times the above water volume; and somebody should work out the cube root of 10-11, and rescale the underwater size. Other than that, I suppose it is an impossible camera shot.
Evidently Dr Spencer also uses the 8th grade high school science student as an achievement level for scientific common sense; at least one reviewer of his book claims so.
The deliberate spelling misteaks in the above are all the author’s own work; as a result of a manual typing dylsexia.
If Chasmod can’t fix that; then just live with it.
@george E. Smith
I agree that clouds are still the great unknown regarding our understanding of climate. There are so many different types of cloud, and as you mention, measuring them is an impossible task (link below) .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cloud_types#Notes_and_references
Some years ago I was on a hot beach in Corsica, blue sky and a pint of cold lager by the side of my chair. Suddenly I noticed a round white cloud appear out of the blue, then another which I saw being created on the peak of a small hill just behind the beach. In less than an hour a broad white swath stretched out to the horizon, then just a couple of hours later cloud production had stopped and the sky was unsullied again. In view of this, any measurement system would have to work real-time, I think, to capture these capricious events.
Last year I saw a new (to me) phenomenon in the sky over the UK – noctilucent clouds. My wife and I saw the pale blue wraiths on several occasions, floating high in the ignorosphere. I never found a convincing reason how these clouds of ice crystals form in the high thin upper atmosphere wjere water vapour shouldn’t even exist!
I’m afraid accurate cloud cover measurements are going to remain a mystery and ‘guestimates’ of cloud effects will continue to dog the GCMs.
George E. Smith (10:40:19) :
The deliberate spelling misteaks in the above are all the author’s own work; as a result of a manual typing dylsexia.
If Chasmod can’t fix that; then just live with it.
——-
REPLY: HAH! My own spelling mistakes are almost always the result of posting in haste, because the missus is shooting me evil-eye glances and wondering why I’m spending so much time on the laptop at home!!
Chasmod, don’t worry, you won’t get involved in my domestic spat!
Somehow, I think Anthony is sympathetic to my plight….
It looks like this book is getting one of the highest sales rankings I have seen for a book on this topic in the Amazon general books category. Congratulations Dr. Spencer.