Since there has been a lot of discussion about Monckton here and elsewhere, I’ve offered him the opportunity to present his views here. – Anthony
Guest post by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
At www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org I publish a widely-circulated and vigorously-debated Monthly CO2 Report, including graphs showing changes in CO2 concentration and in global mean surface temperature since 1980, when the satellites went on weather watch and the NOAA first published its global CO2 concentration series. Since some commenters here at Wattsup have queried some of our findings, I have asked Anthony to allow me to contribute this short discussion.
We were among the first to show that CO2 concentration is not rising at the fast, exponential rate that current anthropogenic emissions would lead the IPCC to expect, and that global temperature has scarcely changed since the turn of the millennium on 1 January 2001.
CO2 concentration: On emissions reduction, the international community has talked the talk, but – not least because China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa are growing so quickly – it has not walked the walk. Accordingly, carbon emissions are at the high end of the IPCC’s projections, close to the A2 (“business as usual”) emissions scenario, which projects that atmospheric CO2 will grow at an exponential rate between now and 2100 in the absence of global cuts in emissions:
Exponential increase in CO2 concentration from 2000-2100 is projected by the IPCC on its A2 emissions scenario, which comes closest to today’s CO2 emissions. On the SPPI CO2-concentration graph, this projection is implemented by way of an exponential function that generates the projection zone. This IPCC graph has been enlarged, its ordinate and abscissa labeled, and its aspect ratio altered to provide a comparison with the landscape format of the SPPI graph.
On the A2 emissions scenario, the IPCC foresees CO2 rising from a measured 368 ppmv in 2000 (NOAA global CO2 dataset) to a projected 836[730, 1020] ppmv by 2100. However, reality is not obliging. The rate of increase in CO2 concentration has been slowing in recent years: an exponential curve cannot behave thus. In fact, the the NOAA’s deseasonalized CO2 concentration curve is very close to linear:
CO2 concentration change from 2000-2010 (upper panel) and projected to 2100 (lower panel). The least-squares linear-regression trend on the data shows CO2 concentration rising to just 570 ppmv by 2100, well below the IPCC’s least estimate of 730 ppmv on the A2 emissions scenario.
The IPCC projection zone on the SPPI graphs has its origin at the left-hand end of the linear-regression trend on the NOAA data, and the exponential curves are calculated from that point so that they reach the IPCC’s projected concentrations in 2100.
We present the graph thus to show the crucial point: that the CO2 concentration trend is well below the least IPCC estimate. Some have criticized our approach on the ground that over a short enough distance a linear and an exponential trend may be near-coincident. This objection is more theoretical than real.
First, the fit of the dark-blue deseasonalized NOAA data to the underlying linear-regression trend line (light blue) is very much closer than it is even to the IPCC’s least projection on scenario A2. If CO2 were now in fact rising at a merely linear rate, and if that rate were to continue, concentration would reach only 570 ppmv by 2100.
Secondly, the exponential curve most closely fitting the NOAA data would be barely supra-linear, reaching just 614 ppmv by 2100, rather than the linear 570 ppmv. In practice, the substantial shortfall between prediction and outturn is important, as we now demonstrate. The equation for the IPCC’s central estimate of equilibrium warming from a given rise in CO2 concentration is:
∆T = 4.7 ln(C/C0),
where the bracketed term represents a proportionate increase in CO2 concentration. Thus, at CO2 doubling, the IPCC would expect 4.7 ln 2 = 3.26 K warming – or around 5.9 F° (IPCC, 2007, ch.10, p.798, box 10.2). On the A2 scenario, CO2 is projected to increase by more than double: equilibrium warming would be 3.86 K, and transient warming would be <0.5 K less, at 3.4 K.
But if we were to take the best-fit exponential trend on the CO2 data over the past decade, equilibrium warming from 2000-2100 would be 4.7 ln(614/368) = 2.41 K, comfortably below the IPCC’s least estimate and a hefty 26% below its central estimate. Combining the IPCC’s apparent overestimate of CO2 concentration growth with the fact that use of the IPCC’s methods for determining climate sensitivity to observed increases in the concentration of CO2 and five other climate-relevant greenhouse gases over the 55 years 1950-2005 would project a transient warming 2.3 times greater than the observed 0.65 K, anthropogenic warming over the 21st century could be as little as 1 K (less than 2 F°), which would be harmless and beneficial.
Temperature: How, then, has observed, real-world global temperature responded?
The UAH satellite temperature record shows warming at a rate equivalent to 1.4 K/century over the past 30 years. However, the least-squared linear-regression trend is well below the lower bound of the IPCC projection zone.
The SPPI’s graph of the University of Alabama at Huntsville’s monthly global-temperature anomalies over the 30 years since 1 January 1980 shows warming at a rate equivalent to 1.4 K/century – almost double the rate for the 20th-century as a whole. However, most of the warming was attributable to a naturally-occurring reduction in cloud cover that allowed some 2.6 Watts per square meter of additional solar radiance to reach the Earth’s surface between 1981 and 2003 (Pinker et al., 2005; Wild et al., 2006; Boston, 2010, personal communication).
Even with this natural warming, the least-squares linear-regression trend on the UAH monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies is below the lower bound of the IPCC projection zone.
Some have said that the IPCC projection zone on our graphs should show exactly the values that the IPCC actually projects for the A2 scenario. However, as will soon become apparent, the IPCC’s “global-warming” projections for the early part of the present century appear to have been, in effect, artificially detuned to conform more closely to observation. In compiling our graphs, we decided not merely to accept the IPCC’s projections as being a true representation of the warming that using the IPCC’s own methods for determining climate sensitivity would lead us to expect, but to establish just how much warming the use of the IPCC’s methods would predict, and to take that warming as the basis for the definition of the IPCC projection zone.
Let us illustrate the problem with a concrete example. On the A2 scenario, the IPCC projects a warming of 0.2 K/decade for 2000-2020. However, given the IPCC’s projection that CO2 concentration will grow exponentially from 368 ppmv in 2000 towards 836 ppmv by 2100, CO2 should have been 368e(10/100) ln(836/368) = 399.5 ppmv in 2010, and equilibrium warming should thus have been 4.7 ln(399.5/368) = 0.39 K, which we reduce by one-fifth to yield transient warming of 0.31 K, more than half as much again as the IPCC’s 0.2 K. Of course, CO2 concentration in 2010 was only 388 ppmv, and, as the SPPI’s temperature graph shows (this time using the RSS satellite dataset), warming occurred at only 0.3 K/century: about a tenth of the transient warming that use of the IPCC’s methods would lead us to expect.
Barely significant warming: The RSS satellite data for the first decade of the 21st century show only a tenth of the warming that use of the IPCC’s methods would lead us to expect.
We make no apology, therefore, for labelling as “IPCC” a projection zone that is calculated on the basis of the methods described by the IPCC itself. Our intention in publishing these graphs is to provide a visual illustration of the extent to which the methods relied upon by the IPCC itself in determining climate sensitivity are reliable.
Some have also criticized us for displaying temperature records for as short a period as a decade. However, every month we also display the full 30-year satellite record, so as to place the current millennium’s temperature record in its proper context. And our detractors were somehow strangely silent when, not long ago, a US agency issued a statement that the past 13 months had been the warmest in the instrumental record, and drew inappropriate conclusions from it about catastrophic “global warming”.
We have made one adjustment to please our critics: the IPCC projection zone in the SPPI temperature graphs now shows transient rather than equilibrium warming.
One should not ignore the elephant in the room. Our CO2 graph shows one elephant: the failure of CO2 concentration over the past decade to follow the high trajectory projected by the IPCC on the basis of global emissions similar to today’s. As far as we can discover, no one but SPPI has pointed out this phenomenon. Our temperature graph shows another elephant: the 30-year warming trend – long enough to matter – is again well below what the IPCC’s methods would project. If either situation changes, followers of our monthly graphs will be among the first to know. As they say at Fox News, “We report: you decide.”
There should be a “K” or “°C” or “in Kelvin” added to the line with Delta T
“However, most of the warming was attributable to a naturally-occurring reduction in cloud cover that allowed some 2.6 Watts per square meter of additional solar radiance to reach the Earth’s surface between 1981 and 2003 (Pinker et al., 2005; Wild et al., 2006; Boston, 2010, personal communication).”
Interesting. The jet streams moved poleward during that period allowing albedo to decline as the angle of incidence of solar energy onto the clouds changed and more ocean areas were exposed to the sky.
Now albedo is rising again and the jets have moved back equatorward.
The poleward shift has been attributed to more CO2. What say alarmists now that they have moved back again whilst CO2 continues to rise (for the time being) ?
Well said, Lord Monckton! The last quote – “we report, you decide” – is indicative of a respect for democracy and the intelligence of the individual that is noticeably lacking in the IPCC’s pronouncements.
Anyone offering an alternative to CO2, e is going to have a hard time.
We have to search not for the alternative but for the truth, one step at the time:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC-B.htm
As a non scientist I find the maths hard to follow but the logic of what you write is mostly common sense. I have some very basic questions from a non scientist trying to understand.
Can someone tell me: are all gases greenhouse gases to some degree? For instance my understanding is that in the league of gases Co2 is not the principal player that water vapour is (by a large factor).
Does pumping Co2 into the air increase the total amount of gas in the atmosphere, or does it take the place of another gas. For instance if I put on the kettle, bursta hydrogen filled ballon, or drive a hydrogen car that emits water vapour, am I contributing to green house gases?
How big a hole has discarding Michael Mann’s hockey stick left? Are there other reputable demonstrations of a direct causal relationship between Co2 concentrations and global heating? I know there is a lag effect, but is this accounted for by Co2 being released and absorbed by the oceans? Do warming oceans release Co2 and cold oceans absorb Co2, or is it more complex?
Hard to argue with any of that.
As the Pacific cools over the next decade, there will be a repeat of the 1940-1970 dip in global temperatures.
I would conclude from this that the rate of warming due to increased CO2 levels is less than the amplitude of the PDO cycle. Hence 1940 – 1970 cooling 1970-2000 warming 2000- 2030 cooling. hard to be precise but a figure of around 0.5c/century looks about right?
Though the 0.5C/century increase will also be declining as more CO2 enters the atmosphere.
The CO2 – temperature correlation is simply broken, and no amount of alarmist handwaving can fix it.
Congratulations to Lord Moncton! He has demonstrated an ability to write prose in a manner easily comprehensible to Americans. Not to mention his grasp of climate science and his incredible British ability to stay the course.
Monckton is witty, good-humored, well-informed, well-spoken and erudite.
No wonder, then, that the shrill voices of the hard Left Green (or should that be the other way around?) have declared him Public Enemy No. 1 and have made him the target of some of the most vulgar personal abuse I have ever read, including the person who declared they would like to feed him a teaspoonful of DDT to punish him for his views on how to combat malaria.
I have the impression that Monckton here deals specifically with the exact maths, science, IPCC, and quotation issues behind the commonest detractors’ comments along the line of “Monckton has been falsified by xxxxxxxxxx”.
This post therefore looks like a good resource to refer such detractors to. And to remind other Monckton-has-bad-evidence-asserters of the likelihood that their assertions can also be answered – indeed, the likelihood that they have already been answered somewhere by Monckton.
Excellent article.
I do feel however that we are battling the AGW alarmists on the wrong battle field a lot of the time.
If I were to state that I had a model of the stock market which was so accurate that it allowed me to not only model the market but to actually steer it where I wanted it to go just by adjusting my 5% stake in pork bellies I doubt that many people would bother to investigate my pork belly/FTSE/Dow-Jones corelation.
Most sensible people would realise that my claim to have such an accurate model is absurd and my claim to be able to use that to produce a credible steering mechanism is beyond nonsense.
It would say that the climate is orders of magnitude more complicated and complex than the stock market and our ability to record climate measurements for modelling with computers is negligible.
And yet for some reason people are willing to believe that the warmists have such accurate models of the climate….
I am baffled.
Stephen Wilde says:
August 14, 2010 at 3:45 am
“However, most of the warming was attributable to a naturally-occurring reduction in cloud cover that allowed some 2.6 Watts per square meter of additional solar radiance to reach the Earth’s surface between 1981 and 2003 (Pinker et al., 2005; Wild et al., 2006; Boston, 2010, personal communication).”
Interesting. The jet streams moved poleward during that period allowing albedo to decline as the angle of incidence of solar energy onto the clouds changed and more ocean areas were exposed to the sky.
Now albedo is rising again and the jets have moved back equatorward.
The poleward shift has been attributed to more CO2. What say alarmists now that they have moved back again whilst CO2 continues to rise (for the time being) ?
“The poleward shift has been attributed to more CO2. What say alarmists now that they have moved back again whilst CO2 continues to rise (for the time being) ?”
More CO2 caused the shift of course.
Get with the program CO2 is the universal causal agent in climatology.
Real Climate had a ‘disproof’ of Lord Monckton’s CO2 claims.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/08/monckton-makes-it-up/
But if you look at their figure 4, you will see that Monckton’s ‘fantasy IPCC projections’ are almost exactly the same as the IPCC’s projections. So I am not sure what point they are trying to make.
I tried to point this out on Real Climate, but four of my five postings were deleted.
AGW does not brook freedom of speech. You will think what the the Great Comrade tells you to think.
.
Has the measurement of CO2 changed, from one station at Muana Volcano station base line.
Or is it now measured at Latitude stations completely devoid of geospheric influence.
It is so hard to keep track of the CO2 baseline.
People say this is a pure line, as a Math grad I say no.
Yer I know back in the box Jack.
As math CO2 is only a variable.
I never believed CO2 from Maunaoa atoll, was a ref point. POO. (point of origin math, the other term for POO is zero axis point).
If that was baseline, that was mad.
Mr Monckton, thank you for posting this. The fact is that observations show the IPCC as well as Hansen are incorrect in that they understate ability of the earth to recycle CO2, and overstate the climate sensitivity and feedbacks to CO2. This clear lack of understanding in regard to the CO2 lifecycle and climate sensitvity in response to CO2, would have ended the IPCC influence long ago were it not for the politics with which you are so familiar.
You make a very cogent comment about the benefits of CO2 if they were to produce the moderate warming which the current trend indicates. I have long been wishing the “skeptics” could go on the offensive with this. Have you ever seen an economic report on the benefits such a senario would present? Dont you agree it would be helpfull to point out the potential trillions of dollars in savings, not to mention the human misery that could be avoided if these benefits were realized?
Thank you for your service.
I love this statement:
“…since the turn of the millennium on 1 January 2001.”
Every American and probably most people in the world celebrated the beginning of the third Millenium on Jan 1 2000 – what dos the rabble know. It bothered me, but could not convince anyone that there was no year ZERO, and we had to wait until the end of 2000 to finish the 20th century.
Lord M. knows and is subtly to setting the record straight.
Thank You
Hal
NASA says it can measure all gases, then it can measure CO2.
Indoctrino persideumus ad alquemus per som sim totius al requeoriatus te dac did un de terteius minimixius..
Latin: Bullshit, we don’t even have a CO2 baseline.
As always a very interesting review of the data/science by Lord Monckton.
A tad OT. The whole raison d’être of the UNIPCC & it’s bedfellows within the PDRofEU, is to produce scare stories to frighten us all, especially the gullible & naive, or “green” people, as they used to be referred! It is just a means to an end. The F.E.A.R. or False Evidence Appearing Real, by the “Useful Idiots” within the UNIPCC, was for the purpose of exercising control over others, or Global Governance as it is more correctly named, the end of Democracy as we know it, rather as it is in the PDRofEU. We here in the PDRofEU have a European Parliament, which has no other power than to cede more power to the European Commission, bit by bit until its power is absolute – it’s almost there, & National Governments have none but mere duties to instigate EU Laws & Regulations by the bucket load. Take stock my Colonial cousins, YOU’RE NEXT! The EU Commission has the real power, Commissioners holding absolutge power are appointed not elected, a President has been appointed, not democratically elected in an election standing on particular policies against a political opponent, that would never do! He has no power & is purely decorative, window dressing for the almighty Super-State. Commissioners can be called to Parliament to answer questions on proposed laws & regulations, but can use all 15-16 minutes allowed for such purposes to waffle away about anything & everything, democracy will have been seen to be done as a perfunctory measure. You, my dear friends, are next. After all, the US EPA has similar undemocratic powers to act arbitrarily has it not? Finished! Snip away. I’m off for a pint in my local village pub!
As we enter into the next year and the next decade it will become abundantly clear to Warmists that their IPCC doomsday scenarios are just not panning out re: Co2 and warming. They can dismiss Monckton if they like but the truth will always out with time and their opportunities to spin and ‘adjust’ will become fewer and fewer. A bit like someone painting themselves into a corner or digging a hole. :o)
There is a measurement unit typo just above the last graph “…CO2 concentration in 2010 was only 388 K…” should read “…CO2 concentration in 2010 was only 388 ppmv…”
[Fixed, thanx.]
“CO2 concentration in 2010 was only 388 K”
“K” should be “ppmv”
[Fixed, thanx. ~dbs]
I find the best long term fit of the reported atmospheric CO2 is not exponential or linear, but is a sine function with a cycle wave length of 307.5 years. Following this function, CO2 will max out at the turn of the century at around 500 ppm regardless of what we do to control it. Atmospheric moisture including clouds and rain control the atmospheric concentration of CO2. It also controls the rate of energy lost to space.
Mr Monckton, I do hope you will respond to any comments critical of your presentation. Thanks.
Great work, as ever.
Small point: should the date in the second line of the text immediately below the third CO2 graph be 2100, not 2000?
[Typo fixed, thanx.]
Rick Bradford says:
August 14, 2010 at 5:12 am
“……………..including the person who declared they would like to feed him a teaspoonful of DDT to punish him for his views on how to combat malaria.”
Actually Rick there used to be a chap that demonstrated the low toxicity of DDT by eating it by the spoonful. All a waste of his time because St Rachel won out in the end and a lot of people died (and are still dying) from malaria.
Uh-oh. The C02 concentration isn’t rising fast enough, therefore we must act quickly to restore it’s IPCC trend. They need the money.
Under the third graph, it should say 2100 instead of 2000, no?
“concentration rising to just 570 ppmv by 2000” – should be 2100 me thinks.
[Typo fixed, thanx. ~dbs]
“Of course, CO2 concentration in 2010 was only 388 K” – Shouldn’t that read ppmv?
[Thanx, typo has been fixed. ~dbs]
Julian in Wales
Most gases are not greenhouse gases. H2O is far and away the dominant greenhouse gas in regions which have significant humidity.
The concentration of CO2 is very low, and each molecule requires one molecule of O2 to form. So increasing CO2 has very little effect on the total number of molecules in the atmosphere.
Lord Monckton,
Thanks for this post and all your fine work challenging CAGW alarmists. Your presentations are always thought-provoking, lively, and highly enjoyable.
Lord Monckton, sir, you make an eloquent argument.
I tend to decline, however, to jump into the slog pits of arguing what, in a larger sense, amounts basically to minutia, and hold out for the answer to two very simple questions, which no one, on either the alarmist or skeptical sides of the discussion, are in any position to readily answer, but which seem to me to be fundamental to the entire issue.
1) Is there an ‘optimal’ level of CO2 partial pressure in the planetary atmospheric mix, one that is most conducive, overall, to the sustainability of life on Earth? And what are the upper and lower absolute boundaries which we should truly worry about, for the survival of the biosphere? (That second part is probably a bit easier to determine via experimentation and observation under controlled, repeatable experimentation, one would imagine)
2) Is there an ‘optimal’ overall global mean temperature, as in, does such a condition exist, or is it merely a chimera?
Unless or until these two very basic issues can be, and are addressed, in a rational, non-hysterical manner, then what passes for scientific discussion is, to this observer, not all that far removed from the random noises coming from a very animated mob, with the actually useful information being drowned out in the background noise.
That said – I’m very appreciative of Lord Monckton’s efforts to bring rational discussion to the fore, and for sites such as WUWT, for promoting such effort.
Dear M’lud,
I actually get this! Thanks for your clarity.
Okay. I await the critical responses to see what objections there may be to it.
A clarification to Julian in Wales. Most of the gas in our atmosphere is diatomic
O-O or N-N. Those are NOT called greenhouse gases although they do have a very
limited greenhouse effect. Multi-atomic gases like H-O-H and O-C-O ARE greenhouse gases.
Vulcevic says:
” Anyone offering an alternative to CO2, e is going to have a hard time”.
How about particulates, like the Asian Brown Cloud for starters. But more to the point, just because YOU think you have eliminated all but CO2, doesn’t mean that CO2 is the cause. To spend scarce resources on a potential “wild goose chase” may well do more harm then good.
Ralph:
That’s about par for RC. They did the same for yours truly when they didn’t like my contradictory analysis of Tamino’s Central England temperature predictions.
However, reality is not obliging. The rate of increase in CO2 concentration has been slowing in recent years: an exponential curve cannot behave thus. In fact, the the NOAA’s deseasonalized CO2 concentration curve is very close to linear
Truly reality is not obliging (this argument). Have a look at the recent trends in CO2 emissions from Mauna Loa, and they don’t look anything like linear. Of course, if you cherry pick a couple of years from the record, it’s very easy to make them look like they aren’t increasing, but when you look at the whole record from 1960, it is VERY apparent that they are increasing exponentially. But hey, don’t believe me – check for yourself: Full Mauna Loa CO2 record.
Lord Monckton,
I appreciate greatly that you are becoming more active here at WUWT.
Question – In your post you show a graph ” CO2 concentration change from 2000-2010 (upper panel)”. Would you care to comment on why, since the current severe global economic turndown of the last ~3 yrs, the COs concentration in the atmosphere hasn’t shown a dip corresponding to less CO2 emissions during the current global economic turndown? Would an atmospheric CO2 conc dip be expected?
John
HEAR! HEAR! Our Lordship! As well done as your videos in response to your detractors, specifically the sneak attack by Prof. Abrahams. And may I add I am equally impressed with your very lovely gardens. And what was that bird chirping in the background? I think its cousin is living in the woods behind our house.
Lew Skannen said at 5:39 am
….. And yet for some reason people are willing to believe that the warmists have such accurate models of the climate….
I am baffled.
Let me try to “unbaffle” you, Grasshopper. The greater majority of people are (have been) brainwashed into believing anything and everything computers put forth. The whole of the theory of human caused global atmospheric warming rests on the blind acceptance of the output of less than two dozen computer programs written (starting in the 50’s and little changed systematically since then) and modified by less than 150 people total, over the years. Most of these folks are “programmers” by trade, not climatologists. While most do take direction from espoused atmospheric “scientists” the two disciplines are diametrically apposed. One deals in the unreal digital world – computers, the other in the very real analog world – the global atmosphere. Unfortunately, most of the folks in the second group are also part of the above mentioned “brainwashed” group. I believe this to be a very serious problem, especially among the younger members in the science fields. They see “everything” as absolutes; black/white, on/off, one/zero, right/wrong and believe there is nothing that can not be “digitized” and computer analyzed. And whatever comes out of the computer is sacrosanct! It’s as strong a belief system as any religion has ever been, with its multitude of blind followers. Review and note how most of the folks here (including His Lordship) that make sense are NOT blind to other views and almost ALWAYS acknowledge how little we really know and admit/accept/agree that their conclusions might change with more info. Most here, strive for clarity, not consensus.
Windrider>
There are many ‘optimum’ global temperatures – it just depends whose perspective you’re talking about. I note, though, that warm periods are known as ‘climatic optimums’ – go figure.
It is clear that Monckton’s efforts to present and demystify the evidence for the benefit of an in-expert audience are not universally appreciated. We are supposed to rely on the academic illuminati for such wisdom, rather than be trusted with our own judgement.
He may be vilified in academia and in the cosy corridors of power but it’s not difficult to see why he enjoys such popular support , while getting so under the skin of a handful of persistent but increasingly isolated, snidey, side-swiping media ‘commentators”.
While he talks about observations & evidence, they talk about him.
“The rate of increase in CO2 concentration has been slowing in recent years”
False.
Very nicely done, I really like how you mention that there is a decrease in cloud cover that can attribute most of the observed warming and showing that it is a natural cycle at work. Also thank you for showing that the IPCC’s estimates for CO2 and Temperature were horribly wrong
The reason for the IPCC projection errors are simple.
Here it from two well known climate scientists:
and there’s someone else who you might remember: James Hansen interview
Wind rider, you are free to suggest that the important question is the optimum CO2 and temperature. But I think most of us are concentrating on a different question, which is whether human beings are powerful enough and smart enough to control either of those numbers much in the first place. Otherwise, once you decide what the temperature ought to be, your only real-life way to set your personal thermostat is move to the fortunate country where it happens to be set that way for you.
david says:
August 14, 2010 at 6:25 am
Mr Monckton, I do hope you will respond to any comments critical of your presentation. Thanks.
As I read it David, that’s exactly what this presentation was doing, politely, calmy and ever so patiently, explaining and taking on board many of the questions raised by earlier presentations.
I think there’s another elephant in the room. While one could claim that CO2 levels are rising exponentially where it looks almost linear in a short period of time, this trend is only true since 1950. We have direct recorded evidence of what the CO2 levels were before that time way back to the early 1800’s where it was well over 400 ppm. Same for the 1930’s and 1940’s. CO2 levels fluctuates as does the climate. I think the alarmists are really using the recent and relatively smooth CO2 trends for all its worth. Great if you want to show exponential correlation, especially backward in time with ice core samples for example which would prove completely unreliable.
Lew Skannen says:
“It would say that the climate is orders of magnitude more complicated and complex than the stock market and our ability to record climate measurements for modelling with computers is negligible.”
Here, Here! Someone needs to keep saying this and saying it until all parties, pro or con, understand it. There are too many intercorrelated variables of unknown values and doubtfull causality to accurately predict climate. Mr. Skannen’s stock market example is excellent! Even if we knew the future values of all of the supposedly causal variables and did a curvilinear fit multiple regression analysis, multicolinearity of the data would be a problem in making an accurate prediction.
Ok, I’ve read the article, (Thank you very much Christopher Monckton of Brenchley) and I’ve read the comments. There appears to be something missing……….what could it be?………….. Oh, yeh, where are all the Monckton antagonists? Is it true they are literally too scared to debate directly? Maybe their reaction to Monckton is so prevailing that they are in the midst of a seizure or stroke and can’t come to the keyboard. Maybe it is a correct assumption they are only concerned with the title he uses and have very little retort when it comes to the actual math.
Julian in Wales says:
August 14, 2010 at 4:07 am
“Can someone tell me: are all gases greenhouse gases to some degree? For instance my understanding is that in the league of gases Co2 is not the principal player that water vapour is (by a large factor).
Water, or H2O in its various forms, as far as I can tell, is the biggest player in the climate in terms of molecules. (Many would submit that the Sun is the biggest factor for our climate, and they wouldn’t be incorrect.) It isn’t just water vapor, it is H2O in solid, liquid and gas. Given that the state of H2O isn’t static it is difficult pin down exactly how much contributes to what. For instance, (recent example) a glacier calves an iceberg.(Solid) Icebergs will reflect heat back out to space. Eventually, the iceberg may melt. (Liquid) The oceans serve as a collector of CO2 and holds CO2 for a bit and then releases it. The oceans also absorb heat. Eventually, the water will evaporate and take the form of (gas) water vapor. While clouds are a form of water vapor, they shouldn’t be confused. Clouds, similar to ice, reflect heat back out to space. Clouds cover about 40% of the earth at any given time, but does vary. Water vapor is indeed a GHG. In this function, it prevents heat from escaping back out to space. Eventually, that same H2O molecule forms to a liquid and falls back to the earth and the process starts anew. The difficult part of all of this is quantifying the effects and applying different laws of nature. One law of nature is “what goes up, must come down.”(Thank you Mr. Newton.) This applies to H2O, CO2 and a plethora of other substances. However, heat and light are not subject to such constraints, but the energy is often carried by the molecules that are. Oh, heck, I’m rambling.
Yes, H2O is a much greater player in terms of GHG, the problem is, H2O is basically a constant, while CO2 and other GHG are variables. It is impossible to quantify the percentage of the effects of the various GHG, including H2O because they exist in different levels of our atmosphere and absorb(and release) energy at different rates, but some do at the same frequencies(heat and light) as others while others do not. So, one can’t accurately state if we add X amount of CO2(or any other GHG) that we will retain Y amount of heat. Clear anything up for you?
Does pumping Co2 into the air increase the total amount of gas in the atmosphere, or does it take the place of another gas. For instance if I put on the kettle, bursta hydrogen filled ballon, or drive a hydrogen car that emits water vapour, am I contributing to green house gases?
See the above ramblings. but don’t feel guilty about drinking some tea. It’ll be okay.
How big a hole has discarding Michael Mann’s hockey stick left? Are there other reputable demonstrations of a direct causal relationship between Co2 concentrations and global heating? I know there is a lag effect, but is this accounted for by Co2 being released and absorbed by the oceans? Do warming oceans release Co2 and cold oceans absorb Co2, or is it more complex?”
Mann’s hockey stick graph was never “reputable”, thus he was never reputable. There has never been a direct relationship (casual or otherwise) demonstrated between CO2 and global heating. But there are many climatologist who make essentially the same claims. I always assumed because that’s how they
earn a livingbilk people for their money. Yes, it is more complicated, but you can essentially consider cold ocean absorbs and warm ocean releases CO2.While I had attempted to clear up some of your questions, I fear I may have missed my mark. Still, it is my hope you may find something useful in that sprawling verbiage. If you need more concise explanations, there are usually several here that can go into much greater detail than I on the various subjects I touched on.
P.S. Does pumping Co2 into the air increase the total amount of gas in the atmosphere, or does it take the place of another gas.
That is a beautiful question and can be answered on various levels, but I’ve already rambled enough and it’s Saturday!!! So, I’m going to do like Led Zepplin and Ramble On elsewhere.
There are a few people who will see Lord Moncktons picture in a post who will scroll down immediately to the comment box and say, “Ya, but Monckton isn’t a Lord.”
Lord Monckton, thanks for your clarity and perseverance.
It has become increasingly clear to me that our planet’s weather (and climate thereoff) is self-regulated. External influences will cause deviations that will be counteracted and overcorrected and corrected again in the opposite direction in search of equilibrium.
The ecosphere will be responding to these changes and adapting if the time frame is ample enough. But clearly we have more to fear from moderate global cooling than moderate warming.
This is the viewpoint of an electronics engineer that used to work in control systems, so it comes naturally to me (and to other excellent contributors to this blog).
See “Climate Change (“Global Warming”)? The cyclic nature of Earth’s climate” at http://www.oarval.org/ClimateChange.htm
Thanks again, Anthony, moderators
We have direct recorded evidence of what the CO2 levels were before that time way back to the early 1800′s where it was well over 400 ppm.
Vorlak: I’d like to see your direct recorded evidence of this.
@ Rick Bradford says:
August 14, 2010 at 5:12 am
Not sure if you were riffing on this or not, but the guy who invented DDT, Paul Hermann Müller, used to do just that–ate a teaspoon a day to show how harmless it was.
My Dear Lord Monckton,
You point out a linear trend of 199ppmv/century based on “January 2000 to January 2010 data” in your 2nd and 3rd charts.
If you had performed the same calculation in January of 2000, based on data from 1/1990 to 1/2000, would you not arrive at a linear trend of about 153ppmv/century?
Similarly, I calculated the linear trend observed at the end of each decade based on Mauna Loa data (subtracting data points 10 years apart, multiplying by 10 to arrive at the century rate of change) :
1960-1970 = 85 ppmv/century
1970-1080 = 128 ppmv/century
1980-1990 = 157 ppmv/century
1990-2000 = 153 ppmv/century
2000-2010 = 193 ppmv/century
Do you think it is reasonable to expect this steady increase in the trend to suddenly stop in 2010? What would the 2100 CO2 concentration be if this trend of increasing trends were to continue?
Thank you, Anthony, for the opportunity to ask questions of our Dear Lord Monckton, and to hopefully receive answers from his most generous Lordship.
Sincerely,
Brad
duckster says @ 8:39 am:
“Vorlak: I’d like to see your direct recorded evidence of this.”
Vorlath, may I respond? Thank you: click
That chart is the average of over 90,000 direct chemical measurements of atmospheric CO2 by dozens of [non-government] scientists, including many Nobel laureates who were taking the readings for their own edification and curiosity, not to push an agenda. Their reputations were on the line, and their measurements in general were in good agreement.
The wet chemical methods they used were not as accurate as current methods, but they were within several percent. The measurements were taken on mountain tops, on isolated, sparsely populated shores, and on the windward side of ships sailing across the Arctic, Beaufort, Antarctic, South Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
All trends become linear if the interval taken is small enough – Calculus!
Thr following is quite important so everybody pay attention.
After analysis, the concentration of CO2 or any gas in a sample of local air is reported for purified dry air (PDA) which does not occur in the earth’s atmosphere and is comprised of nitrogen, oxygen, the inert gases and CO2, often called the fixed gases. The composition (i.e, the relative amounts of the fixed gases) of PDA is fairly uniform through out the atmosphere and independent of site, elevation, temperature, pressure, and humidity except for minor local variations in particular with respect to CO2. This the origin of the phrase “well-mixed atmospheric gases”.
In real air, there is no uniform distribution of the masses of the constituents of the atmosphere in space and time as shown by a daily weather maps of the earth. High pressure cells have more mass of the atmospheric constituents than do low pressure cells, and these are always moving and their mass and composition is constantly changing. Real air is the term for local air at the intake ports of air separation plants and includes all types of particulate matter, reactive gases such as oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, ozone, ammonia, volatile organic compounds, water vapor, fog and the fixed gases. The composition of real air with respect to mass is always site specific but does vary slightly with changing weather.
PDA at STP (i.e., 273.15 K and one atmosphere pressure) is called standard dry air (SDA) and has 393 ppmv, 393 ml, 17.5 mmoles, 772 mg or 0.000772 kg of CO2 per cubic meter. As mentioned above the composition of PDA is fairly uniform through out atmosphere and will usually have 393 ppmv of CO2. However, the mass of the constituents in any unit volume of the atmosphere will depend m0stly on pressure, temperature and humidity. Clouds in any unit volume of the atmosphere will also lower the mass of fixed gasses.
Climate models apparently use the concentration of CO2 in ppmv. Not only is this incorrect but is the fatal flaw which greatly limits the skill and accuracy of climate model scenarios or projections. The metric that should be used for CO2 and the gases including water vapor is mass per unit volume. The mass of CO2 in the atmosphere is much less than is indicated by the current methods of analysis.
Clouds are micro droplets of water and will contain atmospheric gases, the amount of which will depend on pressure and temperature and on the number of droplets per unit volume. Clouds are always moving and can transport atmospheric gases and in particular CO2 in the liquid phase. Depending on the conditions the clouds encounter, they can release the atmospheric gases and in particular CO2 and water as vapor into the atmosphere or transport the gases to the ground in rain drops. This another reason why there is no uniform distribution of the mass of the atmospheric gases in space and time.
After visiting many climate website and blogs over the years, this chemist has concluded that the nearly 100% of the climate scientists and lay people are unaware of the above. Based on the above, climate modeling would be very difficult without making many simplifying assumptions and consequently the various scenarios or projections (i.e., computational speculation and conjucture) from climate models can not be used regulating greenhouse emissions.
After years of reading the horror stories of CAGW…. CO2 Heats world to hell. CO2 Killed the Amazon frogs. CO2 Stole my Baby….. etc.
Reading something from Lord Monckton is like a breath of fresh air…. Comprehensible, reasoned, Scientifically sound information…. Gives one hope for the future of Science….:-)
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:34 am
So I can assume your failure to mention evidence of past CO2 levels much higher than today isn’t an example of “cherry-picking”, but rather an oversight? Believe it or not, CO2 levels existed prior to 1960. I know, it’s strange, but true nonetheless.
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf and
http://www.junkscience.com/images/paleocarbon.gif
As already mentioned by Brad Beeson, the Lord has taken a tangent to an upward curve, and extrapolated it forwards. If you extrapolate back you get 170 ppm in 1900 (it was nearer 290). These two extrapolations are likely equally valid to do, i.e. not at all valid.
The curve is also not simply exponential. When it was 300 ppm, the rate was 0.1% per year, at 350 ppm it was nearer 0.4%, now at 390 it is nearer 0.55%, and the IPCC projection has this continuing to increase to 0.8% by 2100. An exponential would have this percentage a constant for every year which doesn’t fit past data.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:33 am
“There are a few people who will see Lord Moncktons picture in a post who will scroll down immediately to the comment box and say, “Ya, but Monckton isn’t a Lord.”
I expected the same, but so far it hasn’t happened, maybe they got tired of being made fun of? Or perhaps they are seizing and stroking and are incapacitated at the moment.
It’s almost as fun as when Monckton speaks of his Nobel prize! While I can’t tell for sure, but given the odoriferous responses to Monckton’s Nobel prize, I think some defecate all over themselves. Christopher, can you do it again please? Its more fun than watching Orcas eat seals!
Let’s eyeball the correlation between CO2 and global temps. Hm-m-m.
Another question: Since the rate of increase in CO2 is not caused by the U.S., why are the eco-alarmists not organizing protests in front of the Chinese embassy? Hm-m-m.
In due respect, your statement:
” In fact, the the NOAA’s deseasonalized CO2 concentration curve is very close to linear…”
Is not correct, for if you do a graph of the actual growth rates of CO2 over a longer time period, the actual nonlinear, exponential growth can clearly be seen in this graph:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/rate.jpg
If the growth rate of CO2 was linear (as you suggest), the line in the above graph would be closer to horizontal. Thus, even though the IPCC does not actually make forecasts in CO2 concentrations, but only emission scenarios:
http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc_co2.html
Your suggestion that CO2 growth is linear is incorrect, so event though the IPCC doesn’t make forecasts in CO2 growth, as they clearly state here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/emission/index.php?idp=25
“Scenarios are images of the future, or alternative futures. They are neither predictions nor forecasts.”
Now, it turns out that the A2 scenario might be close to accurate, given that CO2 growth is and has been exponential for many decades (as the first graph clearly shows), and that your suggestion of a linear CO2 growth, based on only a decade of data where an exponential trend would be hard to spot, is clearly wrong.
So in all due respect, the foundation of your argument seems a bit flawed, and CO2 growth, and thus the projections for temperature increases in the year 2100, might well be closer to the IPCC A2 scenario, than your simple linear extrapolation of 10 years of data would suggest.
J.Bob says: August 14, 2010 at 7:33 am
—————————-
My knowledge of CO2 is pretty rudimentary, but as far as know there is very little of it, if compared to the water vapour; also the CO2 natural cycle appears to contradict AGW.
My interest is in the oceans’ circulation, as the oceans have huge energy capacity, keeping an overall global energy constancy.
What we need to know is: how, when and where that energy is realised and what are natural regulators.
As a bit of a hobby I am perusing my own ideas, regardless of detractors.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC-B.htm
vukcevic says:
August 14, 2010 at 3:51 am
The following changes everything where only your theory about climate survives:
http://www.milesmathis.com/atmo.html
http://www.milesmathis.com/uft.html
Smokey says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:36 am
“Another question: Since the rate of increase in CO2 is not caused by the U.S., why are the eco-alarmists not organizing protests in front of the Chinese embassy? Hm-m-m.”
Well, the cynical side of me would state this is an application of Reagan’s principle. He stated that political ideologues shouldn’t speak ill of other political ideologues with the similar ideologies. In his particular case, he was referring to conservatives, but it can be applied to other ideologies just the same. We see it every day in the U.S. I think this is the phenomenon we are observing.
The contention and absolute burden of proof, that the continued artificial alteration of the Earth’s atmosphere is harmless, remains with those who would continue that alteration. Sadly, the changes wrought on this planet in the last half century have rendered that position untenable. Margaret Thatcher herself would agree that we have a duty and obligation, for the benefit of future generations, to end this experiment as quickly and thoroughly as we can.
Smokey says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:36 am
“Let’s eyeball the correlation between CO2 and global temps. Hm-m-m.”
Actually your graph works very well if you halve the gradient of the CO2 line so that 20 ppm corresponds to 0.2 degrees. I wish they would use this scaling on the widget, because it really makes the point. This corresponds to a feedback factor near 3. It would help even more to smooth the temperature with a 3-year running average to eliminate things like El Ninos.
In answer to Brad Beeson, who has expressed a doubt about whether atmospheric CO2 concentration is decaying from the A2 scenario’s predicted exponential growth as my posting said it is, I determined the successive decadal least-squares linear-regression trends on the monthly NOAA global deseasonalized CO2 concentration data, for the ten successive periods 1990-2000 to 1999-2009.
The trend values are 149, 160, 170, 178, 184, 187, 191, 195, 194, and 198 ppmv/century respectively. The differences, which, in an exponential curve, would of course increase successively, in fact mostly decline successively: 11, 10, 8, 6, 3, 4, 4, -1, and 4 ppmv/century respectively. In recent years, as I have said, the curve has been decaying from the exponentiality that would be expected given that aggregate anthropogenic emissions are closer to the IPCC’s A2 emissions scenario than to any lesser scenario.
As always, one should be cautious enough not to put too much weight on a short run of data. However, as my posting made clear, I have also determined the best-fit exponential curve for the data over the past ten years, and it is a curve heading for 614 ppmv by 2100, considerably below the lower-bound curve running up to 730 ppmv by 2100 that the IPCC projects on the A2 scenario.
That, sir, is the elephant in the room: even though CO2 emissions are rising rapidly, CO2 concentration is – to borrow a sporting term – falling behind (or, rather, below) the (exponential) curve. That, as my posting explained, will significantly reduce 21st-century anthropogenic warming compared with the IPCC’s projections, if the current trend continues.
I have not yet investigated the relationship between the slowing (and occasional reversal) of the rate of increase in CO2 concentration and the increase over recent years in estimated global anthropogenic emissions.
” Julian in Wales says:
August 14, 2010 at 4:07 am
Does pumping Co2 into the air increase the total amount of gas in the atmosphere, or does it take the place of another gas. ”
If we look at liquid water that is boiled and escapes into the air, the answer is yes and yes. The water molecules replace others, mainly nitrogen (76%) and oxygen (23%), which makes moist air lighter than dry air; the replaced molecules have to go somewhere else (up).
Robert M –
I focus on those two questions primarily because the lack of a coherent answer, primarily from the alarmists, pretty much kicks the stool out from under their hysterics – well for me, at any rate. As far as whether or not humans make an impact on the climate, as we are “players”, the obvius answer to that one is yes, with what remains being a quibble about degree. Are we the butterflies in the Amazon, of chaos theory fame, or are we actual movers and shakers, as some seem firmly convinced. I’m not really buying in to the belief that mankind has the capability to cause significant, long term, and irreversible systemic change that many ascribe to. We certainly can make one hell of a localized mess from time to time, but I don’t think we’re capable (yet) of truly throwing a monkey into the wrench, so to speak, and certainly not through randomized individual action or mere lifestyle choices, even in the aggregate. Yes, we can shoot most of the Buffaloes. Yes we can kill all of the Dodos or the passenger pigeons. In a longer time scale, this has what effect, exactly? Not much, really. Can we pump all of the accumulated hydrocarbons out of the crust and intensify, for a rather short period, a portion of the carbon cycle? Sure. Does it damage the planet overall, or merely adversely impact us, the humans doing so, when (and if) it runs out? We may be screwed, figuratively, but the planet really doesn’t care, as there will be basically the same number of atoms trapped in the gravity well as when the exercise began, just in a different arrangement and or distribution.
Many seem to be ready to hop behind the wheel and drive, without really having a clue how the car works in the first place. Seems it would be advisable that we do so, before we get into a knock down drag out fight over whether or not fiddling with the car’s stereo will make us run off the road and over a cliff. Which is analogous, from my perspective, to what is going on right now.
Lord Monckton, Anthony, Steve Goddard, et al – they seem to me to be attempting to advocate understanding what’s going on under the hood, whereas Hansen, Gore, Pauchauri, and a long line of politicians seem to be vehement about using the seat controls to put all the passengers in a really uncomfortable position while claiming that will adjust the air conditioning somehow.
Full disclosure – all of this from a non-academic, sitting in the peanut gallery, watching the price for energy head skywards based upon what in most instances has proven to be fabricated bull poop. And, being basically a cheap bastage, this really, really annoys me.
You might want to check out the greening of the globe and agriculture stats. Check out increased land dedicated to crop production world-wide. And we are growing more CO2 gobbling crops and using more land to do it. Some crops are also being genetically engineered to produce several crops in a single growing season (especially in the case of year ground growing season climates).
How about this?
Delta T:
The missing unit still annoys me; Burmese, Liberians and Americans might believe it is in °F.
(As the French say: déformation professionnel.)
GeoFlynx says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:47 am
“The contention and absolute burden of proof, that the continued artificial alteration of the Earth’s atmosphere is harmless, remains with those who would continue that alteration. Sadly, the changes wrought on this planet in the last half century have rendered that position untenable. Margaret Thatcher herself would agree that we have a duty and obligation, for the benefit of future generations, to end this experiment as quickly and thoroughly as we can.”
No, that is backward thinking. First, prove there have been “changes wrought on the planet in the last half century.” Then prove those changes have been detrimental. Then show the said hypothetically detrimental changes have been caused by “artificial alteration of the Earth’s atmosphere”.
The onus isn’t upon anyone to disprove theories and wild speculation. The onus is upon the people postulating these wild speculations to prove their precognitions.
If you want mankind to take a giant step back as to quality of life and life expectancy, you damn well have something better than a fail computer model to present as evidence.
>>Sexton
>>CO2 levels existed prior to 1960. I know, it’s strange, but true nonetheless.
>> http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf
>> http://www.junkscience.com/images/paleocarbon.gif
I presume those high CO2 readings in the 1930s were due to outgassing from the oceans. The 1930s – 40s were a warm period, when the oceans could not hold as much dissolved CO2.
ie: Atmospheric CO2 concentrations follow temperature, and not vice verse.
.
In answer to R. Gates, I did not state in my posting that the CO2 concentration graph for the past ten years was “linear”: merely that it was “very close to linear”.
Summing the absolute differences between the monthly NOAA data and the corresponding points on the least-squares linear regression trend generates a very substantially lower value than similarly comparing the monthly NOAA data and the IPCC’s lower-bound exponential curve.
Furthermore, I did not confine the analysis to the linear regression trend. I also determined the exponential curve over the past decade that would give the closest fit to the NOAA data, and, as I explained in my posting, that curve would reach 614 ppmv by 2100 – not much above the 570 ppmv towards which the linear trend is heading.
My conclusion was, and is, that if the current decay of the NOAA data from true exponentiality – which has persisted now for a dozen years – were to continue, a substantial fraction of the anthropogenic warming that would otherwise have been expected to occur over the 21st century on the basis of the IPCC’s methods will not in fact occur. That is the central point demonstrated by our CO2 graph.
Vorlath says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:28 am
(…)
I think the alarmists are really using the recent and relatively smooth CO2 trends for all its worth. Great if you want to show exponential correlation, especially backward in time with ice core samples for example which would prove completely unreliable.
——-Reply:
Or more to the point, they like to EXTRAPOLATE current trends forward to support their inane hysteria regarding climate change. A serious look at the past 150 year’s worth of CO2 records obviously destroys any reason to extrapolate, rendering their hysteria as bunk.
john edmondson says:
August 14, 2010 at 4:43 am
Hard to argue with any of that.
As the Pacific cools over the next decade, there will be a repeat of the 1940-1970 dip in global temperatures.
======================================================
Which was preceeded by the dust bowl in the US.
Exactly like we are seeing in Russia this time.
@ Duckster,
I checked out your NOAA link and it looks a LOT more linear that curvilinear to me.
Curious thing about atmospheric CO2 concentrations, from several decades of observation we can pretty accurately calculate what the concentration will be next year. But if we approach it from the other direction and calculate what it will be based on the estimated amount of CO2 mankind emits into the atmosphere we consistently overestimate.
Mankind has been generating commercial electricity and operating internal combustion engines for only a little over a hundred years. Think back to the year 1920 and consider all the technological advances mankind has made in 90 years. Now…how likely do you think it is that we will be producing and using energy the same way we do now 50 or 90 years in the future? Energy availability it tightly correlated with better standards of living, greater average life expectancy, technological innovation, reduction of famine and disease and cleaner environments. How many life changing technologies have come out of central Africa or the Amazon rain forest? We need energy now…right now. As energy becomes more abundant, mankind advances and new technologies are created.
In my mind, CO2 is all but irrelevant. Lord Monckton has demonstrated that even if we shut down ALL anthropogenic sources of CO2 for 30 years it would make no demonstrable difference in climate, however over half the human population would perish and we would be freezing in caves worrying more about how to feed ourselves than exploring the world around us.
AGW theory had more than a fair run. As it was “studied” it morphed into a political and financial fraud. They can’t prove squat and the time to leave it in the heap with phrenology is long past.
Also, many thanks to Lord Monckton and Robert Ferguson for SPPI.
GeoFlynx says:
“The contention and absolute burden of proof, that the continued artificial alteration of the Earth’s atmosphere is harmless, remains with those who would continue that alteration. Sadly, the changes wrought on this planet in the last half century have rendered that position untenable.”
A classic example of an argumentum ad ignorantium: because we can measure a change in a tiny trace gas, there must be a harmful alteration. Why? Because we can’t think of any other answer.
The answer so far is: there is no problem. If there is a problem, then where is your testable, replicable evidence?
Every scare blamed on CO2 has turned out to be baseless. Every one of them: droughts, Arctic ice, insect infestations, fast rising sea levels, toad extinctions, calving glaciers, Tuvalu sinking, killer hurricanes and tornadoes, floods, two-headed frogs, etc., etc.
Where is your evidence showing that CO2 has a measurable effect on these events?
I am not 100% against the precautionary principle [OK, maybe 99%]. But there is never any cost/benefit analysis, which would require some sort of quantification of an observed effect of the rise of this minor trace gas. Being scared of “what if” is the road to economic ruin.
Provide convincing, testable evidence that CO2 is causing problems. With a one-third increase in this minor trace gas, there certainly should be some real world evidence. Where is it?
@Julian in Wales
Not all gasses are “greenhouse gasses”. To be a greenhouse gas, a gas has to absorb infra-red energy at a wavelength somewhere around that which the Earth emits energy at (15 micrometers wavelength).
Think of the gas like a filter which absorbs a specific color – if the filter (gas) absorbs that radiation, the energy has to go somewhere, so it heats up the filter (gas).
The main gases which absorb around 15 micrometers are CO2 and H2O (vapor).
Water vapor is at much (MUCH!) higher concentrations and so absorbs much more. It is the principle greenhouse gas.
The AGW proponents realize that on its own, increasing CO2 concentrations are not going to make a huge difference, so they have to include other factors to multiply the effect a small temperature increase due to increasing CO2. Typically, they assume that increasing CO2/temperature will drastically increase the concentration of water vapor, and that will make the big change in temperature.
In terms of a systems analysis, they use water vapor as a positive feedback mechanism.
Feedback, in simplest terms can be describes thus:
Assume we have an amplifier (doesn’t matter what we are amplifying, but for the sake of simplicity, lets assume its sound). Now lets assume that the amplifier multiplies its input by 10x. So we put in a signal of 1 and we get out a signal of 10. Assume no feedback at this point (its an “open loop” system).
If we have negative feedback, we take some of the output, invert it (so that its exactly opposite to the input) and feed it back into the input. What this will do is to cancel out some of the input signal, so 1 in will no longer produce 10 out, but some smaller number.
Negative feedback has the effect of stabilizing systems. Its used in just about every engineering discipline you can think of to make systems controllable and stable.
Positive feedback on the other hand is not inverted. So it adds to the input signal.
So 1 in will produce more than 10 out. Systems can tolerate only a very (VERY!) small amount of positive feedback before they become completely unstable.
The most common manifestation is when someone holds a microphone in front of a public address speaker. A tiny noise is picked up by the mic. it is amplified and comes out of the speaker as a louder noise, which is picked up by the mic, and comes out of the speaker as a yet louder noise and the system goes into oscillation (the horrible squeal that we have all heard at some point).
Without this positive feedback, the AGW models are not at all frightening.
In truth, the Earth has seen temperature swings of much more than the AGW proponents are talking about, and if there really was positive feedback in the atmospheric temperature system, the Earth would long ago have “locked” into a frozen ball of ice, or a hot inferno, like Venus.
What happens in practice is that unlike CO2 concentrations, which are relatively steady over long periods, water vapor concentrations vary all over the place, in very short times, and the atmosphere has its own way of dumping excess concentrations (its called rain).
When H2O concentration gets high enough, water condenses out, forming clouds, which block/reflect sunlight (this is NEGATIVE feedback) reducing the temperature of the earth.
The fact that the climate on Earth has been stable enough to support life for millions of years strongly suggests strong negative feedback mechanisms.
So pumping H2O into the atmosphere (BTW, card dump MUCH more H2O than CO2 into the atmosphere) doesn’t have any real effect.
Don’t worry about your kettle!
The Mann hockey stick had not really been removed yet. They have found ways to “rehabilitate” it. See Andrew Monckford’s book (The Hocky Stick Illusion — a really good read!) for the full story.
>>Smokey:
>>Since the rate of increase in CO2 is not caused by the U.S.,
>>why are the eco-alarmists not organizing protests in front of
>>the Chinese embassy? Hm-m-m.
Ah, the primary conundrum of AGW, which (by your tone) I am sure you know the answer to.
Only Westerners can be evil bogey-men, in the eyes of AGW Greenies, while all other nations are as pure as the driven snow.
That is why you need to give all your wealth to the Third World, and become as poor and backward as they are. Technological progress is evil, while regression to poverty is pure rapture. All hail to the hair-shirt deity (made purely from natural fibres, of course.)
Oh, and can you can give up your property and land too, for you have no rights to this small locale. Property is theft, don’t you know. Squeeze up a bit there – room for another 7 billion……..
.
PS re CFCs: See this WUWT thread for a discussion of the paper I mentioned above:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/22/study-shows-cfcs-cosmic-rays-major-culprits-for-global-warming/
GeoFlynx says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:47 am
“The contention and absolute burden of proof, that the continued artificial alteration of the Earth’s atmosphere is harmless, remains with those who would continue that alteration.”
WRONG ANSWER!! The AGW theory holds that mankind’s emissions of CO2 are causing an increase in global temperature. Therefore the burden of proof lies with the proponents of the hypothesis. Ours is not to attempt to prove a negative.
Ralph says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:09 am
“I presume those high CO2 readings in the 1930s were due to outgassing from the oceans. The 1930s – 40s were a warm period, when the oceans could not hold as much dissolved CO2.
ie: Atmospheric CO2 concentrations follow temperature, and not vice verse.”
🙂 My thoughts also, but then the CAGW theory states we’re putting CO2 in the atmosphere causing the temps to rise. There seems to be a paradox in play here. Well, if we eliminate the possibility of the CAGW theory being incorrect, that is.
.
CO2 is increasing at a slightly exponential rate. It is growing at 1.97 ppm per year and that rate is accelerating at 0.0017 ppm per year. So, next year it should increase at 1.987 ppm per year.
These rates have been fairly consistent for the last 60 years but CO2 does increase slightly faster in warm (lets say El Nino) years (with a slight lag behind temperatures) and it increases less fast in cooler years. The last time CO2 actually fell was in WW II when it declined by about 2 ppm from 1940 to 1946.
So, the IPCC has two main forecasts (with lots of little versions within each main group) and the higher one, A2, has CO2 increasing to about 835 ppm by the year 2100.
The more realistic A1B scenario (which is the one more commonly cited when they say temperatures will be +3.25C in the Year 2100, they are using the A1B scenario) which has Co2 rising to 715 ppm by 2100.
If you take the current growth rate and the current acceleration rate, however, which has been fairly consistent throughout time – CO2 will only get to 652 ppm by the year 2100.
The other thing to keep in mind that oceans and plants are absorbing about 50% of our emissions each year and, as our emissions have increased over time, that 50% ratio seems to continue in place. The ability of oceans and plants to absorb CO2 seems to rise along with the concentration in the atmosphere. So, it is reasonble to assume that the current growth and acceleration rates of CO2 will continue (until we start running out of coal or new technology slows our emissions). If we do slow our emissions, it is reasonble to assume plants and oceans will then start to absorb more than 50% of our emissions each year because it is probably more the concentration of ppm in the atmosphere that determines their absorption rate rather than human’s year to year emission rate.
So, we are not going to get to the IPCC CO2 numbers (but it is going to go up until we cut our emissions by 50%), and then it will stabilize or possibly even decline slightly since the absorption rates by oceans and plants will likely be high enough to more than offset our emissions.
Very O/T. No need to post my heads-up but worthy of broad dissemination. Steve McIntyre received a heads up re a paper by McShane and Wyner, titled “A Statistical analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures Over the Last 1000 Years Reliable?” Based on a quick scan, the conclusion is that they aren’t! After reviewing the authors’ CVs, their credentials as statisticians and modelers are first rate. Again, no need to post this but please check it out. Well worth the effort of one of WUWT’s or CA’s regulars to interpret for we non-statisticians!!! Off to read the paper in depth. Tks, RayG
climateaudit.org/2010/08/14/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/
Alexej Buergin says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:58 am
“If we look at liquid water that is boiled and escapes into the air, the answer is yes and yes. The water molecules replace others, mainly nitrogen (76%) and oxygen (23%), which makes moist air lighter than dry air; the replaced molecules have to go somewhere else (up).”
Hmm, Alexej, I’m not bashing or anything, just trying to understand the implications of your statement. Isn’t the total H2O in the earth’s atmosphere basically fixed? Are you stating this moves the O and N out into space? Doesn’t that imply we’re making matter and the earth is shedding other matter to make room for it? I’m either not understanding your assertion or more clarification is necessary for me to accept it.
Thanks.
If youre going to compare two satellite records. start at the same start point otherwise it looks like cherry picking
[SNIP. You know why.]
GeoFlynx:
At August 14, 2010 at 9:47 am you assert:
“The contention and absolute burden of proof, that the continued artificial alteration of the Earth’s atmosphere is harmless, remains with those who would continue that alteration. Sadly, the changes wrought on this planet in the last half century have rendered that position untenable. Margaret Thatcher herself would agree that we have a duty and obligation, for the benefit of future generations, to end this experiment as quickly and thoroughly as we can.”
This seems to be a new meme being promoted by AGW catastrophists. Perhaps you could tell us from whence it originates?
Anyway, I recently answered it in another thread (at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/10/study-climate-460-mya-was-like-today-but-thought-to-have-co2-levels-20-times-as-high/)
where I posted the following at August 11, 2010 at 1:12 am:
“GM:
Your series of postings are inflammatory, insulting and juvenile. Importantly, they are completely mistaken.
At August 10, 2010 at 9.29 pm, you say:
“Why is that I am the only one realizing the deep irony of a bunch of anti-science lunatic wackos criticizing me for not providing references for well known facts”.
OK. If that is your view then – in hope that you will start to discover the magnitude of your misunderstanding – I will present a series of “well known facts” and leave you to find the pertinent references (but I can provide them to you if finding them proves too difficult for you).
In science the null hypothesis is that nothing has changed unless a change is observed to have occurred.
The null hypothesis is the governing assumption unless and until empirical evidence of a change is obtained. Adoption of any other assumption is not science.
(In fact, adopting an assumption other than the null hypothesis in the absence of empirical evidence of a change is a denial of the scientific method).
So, what do we observe concerning climate change?
The global temperature seems to vary in cycles that are overlaid on each other. The cause(s) of these cycles is not known but some are associated with known phenomena (e.g. ENSO, NAO and PDO) although the causes of these phenomena are not known.
There is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that provided
the Roman Warm Period (RWP),
then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP),
then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP),
then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and
the present warm period (PWP).
And there is an apparent ~60 year oscillation that provided
cooling from ~1880 to ~1910,
then warming from ~1910 to ~1940,
then cooling from ~1940 to ~1970,
then warming from about ~1970 to ~2000,
then cooling since.
These oscillations form a pattern of climate change over time.
And if this pattern continues then either
(a) cooling will continue until ~2020 when the ~60 year oscillation will change phase and warming will resume until global temperature reaches the levels it had in the RWP and the MWP
or
(b) the ~900 year oscillation will change phase and the globe will start to cool to the temperatures it had in the DACP and LIA.
There is no observation that indicates there has been any change to this pattern.
And, therefore, the only scientific conclusion is that the null hypothesis applies:
i.e. nothing has changed global climate behaviour in recent decades or centuries.
Only “anti-science lunatic wackos” and the mentally deranged would dispute this conclusion.
Richard”
Richard
“They see “everything” as absolutes; black/white, on/off, one/zero, right/wrong and believe there is nothing that can not be “digitized” and computer analyzed. And whatever comes out of the computer is sacrosanct!” – Milwaukee Bob
How right you are, and this extends well beyond Climate Science.
As it turns out, a large part of the problem at AIG can be traced to computer models.
Based on a three part series in the Washington Post, the site TPM writes:
“According to computer models devised by Gary Gorton, a Yale Business Professor and consultant to the unit, there was a 99.85 percent chance that AIGFP would never have to pay out on these deals. Essentially, this would happen only if the economy went into a full-blown depression, in which case, the AIGers believed, the counter-parties would be wiped out, and therefore would hardly be in a position to demand payment anyway. With the backing of Cassano, then the COO, Savage greenlighted the deals. Credit default swaps were born.”
AIGFP is AIG Financial Products, the group that wrote all those derivatives contracts. Cassano, who became head of the unit, had neither the training nor experience to verify this risk assessment of near zero, nor did he commission a second opinion. It was apparently too good to check.
Armed with his Yale calculation of near-zero risk, Cassano then cut loose his band of young, eager, Ivy League traders to wreak contracts of at least 60 trillion, including billions in profits and tens of millions in bonuses. Since there was “no risk”, at no time was a reserve established or rights to collateral sought.
In the annals of destruction caused by computer models, this one surely ranks above even those that informed Al Gore’s predictions of 20-foot sea level rises and iceless polar caps. The IPCC has only cost us several billion so far and we have got 160 billion into AIG, not including a few related matters. The 160 billion actually went through AIG and onward to Goldman, Deutsche bank and several dozen others to pay off CDS contracts, the failure of which would have been otherwise assured, Yale risk assessment notwithstanding.
In the old Soviet Mayday parade, the joke goes; one man marched alone after the battalions of soldiers and the ranks of tanks and artillery. When asked about it, an old hand remarked: “That is the economist; he has more destructive power than anything you have seen so far.”
Perhaps we should now update this old joke and include computer models.
When you compare the NOAA deseasonalized CO2 concentration to the UAH satellite global temps, how does that relate to the surface temperatures?
In other words, what should we be seeing on the ground as the sucessive progression of C02 increase keeps going down?
Ralph says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:26 am
Only Westerners can be evil bogey-men, in the eyes of AGW Greenies, while all other nations are as pure as the driven snow.
That is why you need to give all your wealth to the Third World, and become as poor and backward as they are.
====================================================
You have to laugh at the way the UN and IPCC stacked the deck, and then called a vote.
250 countries, all you guys have to say is that you believe in global warming, and that you need to be paid for damages.
OK, let’s vote. LOL
results: 250 to 15 in favor
Ralph says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:26 am
“Property is theft..”
Yes, that sounds familiar. Now where have I read that before…..hmm….well the name escapes me but I recall it was in really old German and rather lengthy.(A total of 4 volumes!) But the point is, the book said that “rent” was bad and didn’t add value to anything.
So, to alleviate your temptation to charge rent for the property you own, obviously the answer is to alleviate you of your property. You should thank them fellows for trying to help you!
have declared him Public Enemy No. 1 and have made him the target of some of the most vulgar personal abuse I have ever read, including the person who declared they would like to feed him a teaspoonful of DDT to punish him for his views on how to combat malaria.
That’s funny. When we were cleaning out my aunt’s house in preparation for sale, we came across a bag of DDT.
So, believing that I had an obligation to put my mouth where my money was, of course I had to sample a teaspoonful . . .
I was expecting it to have a salty taste, but, to my mild disappointment, it was rather bland.
In the two graphs comparing IPCC scenario A2 to NOAA data the IPCC data as presented by Lord Monckton are way above the NOAA data. If on simply overlays the NOAA data on the actual IPCC plot
, as done in this plot, one gets excellent agreement between the scenario and the NOAA data. The data sources a given in the image.
I would appreciate a comment by Lord Monckton on this.
Could someone on either side of the debate give me what weather conditions over an agreed period of time, that would then turn the observations so that they could be called climate, which would then either confirm catastrophic warming or confirm natural cause and variation. Until then I realise its just political wrangling for the money and control and will live my life as I chose taking the changing weather as the natural variation it has been since the beginning of the Earth’s weather up until Mr Mann gave us a dubious hockey stick.
Believe it or not, CO2 levels existed prior to 1960.
You are actually willing to accept Beck and Frieburg uncritically? Have you looked at their graphs? What would be the mechanisms for such a massive release of CO2, and then its reabsorption into environmental sinks – and in such a tiny period of time? Almost none of the other proxies even remotely reflect this massive amount of CO2. You’d need to do a lot of accounting for all this to show how it would work.
All the IPCC’s “scenarios” are based on computer climate models. The first person to try to make a computer climate model was Edward Lorenz. He found that tiny changes in the initial conditions, – changes to the fourth, fifth and sixth places after the decimal point, – made huge differences to the outcome ( the “butterfly effect.”) Since measurements of initial conditions, ( temperature, pressure etc,) can never be made to that degree of accuracy, he concluded that computer climate modeling was not possible in principle. ( Deterministic Non- Periodic Flow, Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 1963.) This paper has been seen to be the foundation for the mathematical theory of Deterministic Chaos. As one of the scientists writing the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC wrote: ” In climate research and modeling, we should realise that we are dealing with a coupled, non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that long range forecasting of future climate states is not possible.” ( 3 AR Sec 14.2.2.2.) Of course, computer climate models are still used in forecasting and they give fairly accurate forecasts for about three days in advance. For three days to seven days they are more speculative, and beyond that. the Old Farmer’s Almanac is just as likely to give you an accurate forecast. The UK Meteorological Office has acknowledged this as it will no longer issue seasonal forecasts after last years debacle. In 2009 they forecast a “barbecue summer.” ( It turned out cold and wet with record flooding in some areas.) This was to be followed by a ” mild winter;” (record snowfalls and record low temperatures.) Now the Met Office issues forecasts for one month in advance, updated weekly.
“The precautionary principle states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action …..(Wikipedia).”
GeoFlynx – Smokey, this principal was drilled into all who studied under a certain Prof. Robert E. Riecker in the late sixties. It forms the foundation of risk analysis in Civil Engineering and many other disciplines that have brought society great benefit. While most who will read this post have expressed a great affinity for carbon dioxide, there are many others who have indicated that our continued dumping of some 28 billion tons yearly into the Earth’s atmosphere is changing the environment in ways we are only beginning to understand. By requesting unsalable proof that these changes are harmful you are, in kind, reversing the meaning of this long held tenet of science and engineering.
Monckton and Fox News, now that makes sense.
[moderators…could you check the black pit of lost comments, please]
(I have posted the data/math behind this statement on this forum before.) The simple fact is there is not enough fossil fuel available to us to sustain an exponential increase in CO2 to the end of the century.
With regard to GeoFlynx’s (August 14, 2010 at 9:47 am) rather tired old “prove me wrong” challenge I would suggest that the real danger is of the proposed mitigations (of the un-proven hypothesised cause of future potential harm) causing more certain harm than the thing they propose to avoid.
GeoFlynx says:
“…our continued dumping of some 28 billion tons yearly into the Earth’s atmosphere is changing the environment in ways we are only beginning to understand.”
Well, try. Try to show any actual damage resulting. And keep in mind that your scary “28 billion tons” is only a few percent of the total.
Find the CO2. ☺
Peter Whale says:
August 14, 2010 at 11:25 am
Could someone on either side of the debate give me what weather conditions over an agreed period of time, that would then turn the observations so that they could be called climate, which would then either confirm catastrophic warming or confirm natural cause and variation
=======================================================
Peter, zip zero zilch
I hate to keep bring it up, but it’s such a good one I can’t help it.
The American dust bowl lasted for almost a decade. If that happened now, even most un-believers would believe it.
But what happened right after it?
Almost the same people that are now claiming catastrophic global warming, were predicting catastrophic ice age….
Hansen just got bit in the rear on that same thing.
His predictions of only 20 years have made him a joke.
So if a decade drought and heat, is followed by predictions of an ice age, is followed by 20 year predictions that are wrong….
And anyone with any common sense can look back at the record and see what good shape we are really in….
My guess would be around 500-1000 years.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_full
I’m afraid that the good Lord is cherry picking when he claims that CO2 is increasing linearly. The long term data suggests a slow growth in the rate of growth which is not characteristic of a linear increase.
We are quick to accuse the alarmists of cherry picking data so lets not fall into the same trap, it just gives them an easy target.
Drat! I want more CO2 because I am a biologist and more CO2 means more life–animals as well as plants.
I think it also means more longevity.
Esther Cook
Smokey says:
August 14, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Well, try. Try to show any actual damage resulting. And keep in mind that your scary “28 billion tons” is only a few percent of the total.
GeoFlynx – Try typing in “environmental damage due to anthropogenic co2” into Google Scholar. I got 23,600 hits that would meet your request.
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:34 am
“Have a look at the recent trends in CO2 emissions from Mauna Loa, and they don’t look anything like linear. Of course, if you cherry pick a couple of years from the record, it’s very easy to make them look like they aren’t increasing, but when you look at the whole record from 1960, it is VERY apparent that they are increasing exponentially. But hey, don’t believe me – check for yourself: Full Mauna Loa CO2 record.”
year ppm/yr
1959 0.95
1960 0.51
1961 0.95
1962 0.69
1963 0.73
1964 0.29
1965 0.98
1966 1.23
1967 0.75
1968 1.02
1969 1.34
1970 1.02
1971 0.82
1972 1.76
1973 1.18
1974 0.78
1975 1.10
1976 0.92
1977 2.09
1978 1.31
1979 1.68
1980 1.80
1981 1.43
1982 0.72
1983 2.16
1984 1.37
1985 1.24
1986 1.51
1987 2.33
1988 2.09
1989 1.27
1990 1.31
1991 1.02
1992 0.43
1993 1.35
1994 1.90
1995 1.98
1996 1.19
1997 1.96
1998 2.93
1999 0.94
2000 1.74
2001 1.59
2002 2.56
2003 2.29
2004 1.55
2005 2.56
2006 1.72
2007 2.17
2008 1.66
2009 1.89
I checked.
Looks highly un-correlated to CO2 increase (maybe to temperature though) to me. eg.
1982 0.72
1983 2.16
and
1998 2.93
1999 0.94
stand out to this mark one eyeball, not exponential anything.
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 11:31 am
“You are actually willing to accept Beck and Frieburg uncritically? Have you looked at their graphs? What would be the mechanisms for such a massive release of CO2, and then its reabsorption into environmental sinks – and in such a tiny period of time? Almost none of the other proxies even remotely reflect this massive amount of CO2. You’d need to do a lot of accounting for all this to show how it would work.”
Beck and Frieburg do make a compelling statement but I don’t accept very much uncritically. Why to you(by implication) reject it in an out-of-hand manner? Wouldn’t this point to factors in the climate we don’t fully understand yet? The fact is I was merely pointing out that atmospheric CO2 existed prior to 1960. I gave to two examples of higher CO2 levels by other peoples’ assertion.
It has been stated plant life is maintained by atmospheric CO2 being > 150 ppmv. Given our understood history of the planet, or even the history of mankind, does it stand to reason to you that our CO2 levels were static? How is it through all of the campfires, smelts, coal consumption, volcanoes, forest fires, exhaling, ect. that from say, 10,000 BC to 1960 AD the CO2 level never exceeded what is today? Is is logical to believe CO2 levels started at 150 and ever so slowly graduated to 300 by 1960? Not to me. It is not. The thought doesn’t stand to logic.
If it were me arguing CO2 levels are coming to dangerous levels, I’d probably feel compelled to endeavor to find examples in the past where one may draw those conclusions instead of trying to pretend the history of CO2 didn’t exist before 1960. Given man’s inability to create elements such as Carbon and Oxygen, I’d be inclined to believe the changing of C and O into various forms would have happened sometime in the past given that the climatic conditions of the earth has been and always will be volatile. But that is only if I were advocating significant social and economic change of the earth’s inhabitants.
It’s easy to see that the rise in CO2 has been greater than linear for many decades – simply projecting this increase forwards as a mathematical exercise would get it to ~660ppm in the year 2100 (there is no legitimate reason to choose a linear projection, as Monckton has done, when the historical rate of increase hasn’t been linear).
However, it’s extremely unlikely that a simple mathematical projection for 90 years into the future is of any value. Considering the climate chaos already being seen from the ~100ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 so far, the fact that fossil fuels are getting harder and more expensive to extract, and all the other constraints associated with growth, ‘business as usual’ for global industrial society for the next 90 years seems unlikely.
As far as the rise in global temperature is concerned, this is proceeding at around 0.18°C with no sign of any change in this warming trend. Any analysis of global temperature based on 10 years of data is of course completely worthless, as the signal of any long-term trend would not be distinguishable from the noise of interannual variability. The current global warming, which Monckton acknowledges, is more than enough to be alarmed about, given its effects so far and the fact that more warming is inevitable for some decades to come, regardless of what happens (from the unrealised warming of the current radiative imbalance, plus whatever increase comes from continued rise of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity in the next few decades).
bluegrue says:
August 14, 2010 at 11:24 am
Your chart is the A1F1 scenario which ends up being the highest one. Here is a short table of all the main IPCC CO2 scenarios. 2010 will around 388 ppm, so one can see the A1F1, A2 and the more commonly cited A1B are a little too high right now. The out-year growth rates will make them far too high by 2100. The “B” slow-growth group looks to be closer.
http://www.ipcc-data.org/ancilliary/tar-isam.txt
Monthly global Co2 levels to the end of June are here.
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_gl.txt
Monckton of Brenchley says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:09 am
In answer to R. Gates, I did not state in my posting that the CO2 concentration graph for the past ten years was “linear”: merely that it was “very close to linear”.
Summing the absolute differences between the monthly NOAA data and the corresponding points on the least-squares linear regression trend generates a very substantially lower value than similarly comparing the monthly NOAA data and the IPCC’s lower-bound exponential curve.
Furthermore, I did not confine the analysis to the linear regression trend. I also determined the exponential curve over the past decade that would give the closest fit to the NOAA data, and, as I explained in my posting, that curve would reach 614 ppmv by 2100 – not much above the 570 ppmv towards which the linear trend is heading.
My conclusion was, and is, that if the current decay of the NOAA data from true exponentiality – which has persisted now for a dozen years – were to continue, a substantial fraction of the anthropogenic warming that would otherwise have been expected to occur over the 21st century on the basis of the IPCC’s methods will not in fact occur. That is the central point demonstrated by our CO2 graph
_______
Thanks for the reply. I’d be very curious to get your response to these two graphs. The first is a log transform of the whole data set for CO2, which, as you know, if it is not straight, will show if there is an exponential growth rate to CO2. The graph looks like this:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/mloco21.jpg
Which of course shows that there is an exponential growth rate, and perhaps this is what you mean by “nearly linear”, though you’ve only looked at 10 years. But a second graph seems to be far more interesting, as it is a log transform the the complete CO2 data set, which will show us not just if there is an exponential rate of growth in CO2, but how that growth rate (over the longest term) is changing. Here’s what is shows:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/logco2.jpg
It would appear that not only is there definitely an exponential growth rate, but that growth rate seems to be changing in an exponential fashion as seen in the log data.
Doesn’t it seem more accurate to take this longer term perspective, when we can smooth out shorter term noise form shorter term climate fluctuations, that might show up in a 10 year chart such as you’re using?
Also, the IPCC presented several scenarios for future climate projections, of which the A2 scenario was only one, and none of them represent any actual forecast or predictions, and some of them show temps and CO2 more in line with the 600-650 ppm for CO2. Why did you chose one several IPCC scenarios over the others, when none of them are any more valid than another, and several have similar model points that match what we’ve actually seen happen over the past decade?
Finally, I do want to say how pleased I am to actually get a chance to converse with you, as I’ve followed you for several years, and though I am one of the few AGW “warmists” here on WUWT, I disagree with some of your positions related to climate, I do respect the fact that your efforts do generate honest thought and dialog on these topics, and as usual, hats off to Anthony for creating this opportunity for that dialog.
GeoFlynx says:
August 14, 2010 at 11:40 am
“The precautionary principle states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action …..(Wikipedia).”
Which is exactly why we shouldn’t proceed with any of these alleged cures for CO2 levels.
The advocates of the CAGW theory are asking us to shut down our industrial growth. The implications are far reaching as to land use and movement of social and economic goods and services. Further, by applying the various suggestions in an attempt to lower global CO2 emissions, this necessitates stunted growth in 3rd world nations and would preclude them from the benefits of industrialization, such as cheap and reliable electricity, and water plants able to make water potable, power for computers and servers, communication, ect. With this in mind, the 3rd world nations’ problems would necessarily expand to the rest of the world in terms of civil and uncivil unrest.
Therefore, applying the “precautionary principle”, I say we should avoid the restructuring of the social-economic systems of the planet. I think the dangers far exceed any potential gain. But then, that isn’t for me to make the case, it would be for the ones advocating such things as “cap and trade”, the shut down of coal fired energy plants, the withholding of aid to impoverished nations for energy advancement, ect.
GeoFlynx,
Please. You can type just about anything into an internet search and get thousands of hits. That means nothing.
Try to give a verifiable, testable observation that shows an increase in CO2 is causing measurable damage. If you can.
R. Gates: put this in your non-“linear” pipe and smoke it.☺
GeoFlynx says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:47 am
The contention and absolute burden of proof, that the continued artificial alteration of the Earth’s atmosphere is harmless, remains with those who would continue that alteration. Sadly, the changes wrought on this planet in the last half century have rendered that position untenable. Margaret Thatcher herself would agree that we have a duty and obligation, for the benefit of future generations, to end this experiment as quickly and thoroughly as we can.
—-
What exactly are you talking about?? Ever since passage of the Clean Air Act in the 1970’s (signed into law by Pres. Nixon), vast strides have been made in reducing the burden of particulates, aerosols, and compounds including sulfur and mercury to the atmosphere.
According to your Precautionary Principle, the trial is over, the data is established, so let’s now save the world despite the fact that the costs will likely drive the already fragile global economy into a tailspin.
Sorry, I’ve worked in climate change science for over 30 years (natural wetland and manure methane mitigation), and I don’t buy the CAGW argument. Destroying the world’s wealth to chase chimeras like that is supremely counterproductive, and it doesn’t appear that many world citizens are lining up to participate.
As we say in Chicago, “stick a fork in it”….it’s done.
Duckster,
What appears to you as exponential is a segment of a natural wave near it’s minimum and rising. I have analyzed the raw flask data from all over the globe and have come up with a global model for the natural background. What Scripps reports as monthly averages is natural background because they do not include in their averages the measured high values that could potentially be anthropogenic. Do the math. First convert time to radians by multiplying by 2*PI. Then regress the monthly averages on the following cycles. The annual cycle at Mauna Loa has a saw tooth form which can be expressed as sine(x-0.81)-sin(2*(x-0.81)/4. Four other statistically significant cycles have the form sine(x/a+b). The x term is 2*pi*year. The a term is wave length in years and the term b positions the wave length. The four pairs for the cycles are: 307.5 and -.18, 20.5 and -1.28, 9.93 and 2.5, and 5.1 and .65. The global model accounts for the changing shape and position of the annual cycle and has an R square of better than 0.99. Extrapolating this model into the future suggests that CO2 at Mauna Loa will max out within 2 ppmv of 499 in March of 2091. Since I won’t be around then, pick a date within about 15 years and see how well the model is at predicting. I’ll bet it will do a lot better than exponential and a little better than linear.
There has been an amazing paper in the Annals of Applied Statistics that may put the final stake in the “hockey stick” graph. “Robust” is an understatement.
http://www.e-publications.org/ ims/ submission/ index.php/ AOAS/ user/ submissionFile/ 6695?confirm=63ebfddf .
It can also be found at Climate Audit. Just for a few laughs I posted at Climate Progress regarding this paper. Anyone want to give me odds on Romm actually letting it got through moderation.
PJP that is a brilliant summary I was looking for. Thank you too to James Sexton and Steve. Being a regular reader of WUWT I had absorbed bits of the picture but not put it together into a coherent picture. I think all science is in the end an extension of using common sense and in the end the only science worth taking seriously is science that is understandable to anyone willing to be sensible. But it is possible to have the wool pulled over ones eye’s by scientists who are dishonest.
So I think that honesty is the other half to common sense, it really is not sensible to trust someone who inverts graphs twice or sets out to deceive about the number of papers they have written. Anyone who is dishonest on such a basic level is not going to be a trustworthy source. This alone rules a non scientist ever being able to take the hockey stick graph seriously.
I am an artist by trade and my work involves finding patterns that are consistent, I do not know if a pattern is consistent in nature until I have seen it maybe hundreds of times. For instance I will sit in front of the television and draw faces for three hours every evening, and in the end I see patterns in the faces that are common to all faces, these consistent repeating patterns become the basis of all my drawings of faces. I believe a chess player sees the chess board in terms of patterns too. Surely science is the same, you can see any number of patterns in nature but only a few are consistent. When you see a pattern jumping out at you again and again you know it has some fundamental truth to it.
The C02 theory has no consistency, it is a pattern we may see once or twice but when you look for it again it simply is not there anymore. It is an illusion.
It has been submitted, not yet published, my bad.
Ralph says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:26 am
That was followingg Ralph’s observation
Ralph says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:26 am
“……….
Only Westerners can be evil bogey-men, in the eyes of AGW Greenies, while all other nations are as pure as the driven snow.
……..”
PJP says:
“The AGW proponents realize that on its own, increasing CO2 concentrations are not going to make a huge difference, so they have to include other factors to multiply the effect a small temperature increase due to increasing CO2. Typically, they assume that increasing CO2/temperature will drastically increase the concentration of water vapor, and that will make the big change in temperature.”
Humidty table does not support the positive water vapor feedback mechanism. Air at 14 deg C, one atm. pressure and 100% humidity has 12.1 g of water vapor per cu. meter. If the temperature of this air is increased to 15 deg C, one cu. meter wiil now contain 12.8 g of water vapor, an increase of only 0.8 g per cu. meter or about 16 drops of water from an eye dropper. Air only has 100% humidity if there is rain, snow, or heavy fog.
So how does the enormous amount of water from surface waters enter the atmosphere? The wind is the major force that transports water into the air.. A strong wind can transport water into air by 1-2 orders of magnitude compared to evaporation. Even though a strong wind will cool the surface water, the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen have so much momentum that they just blast water molecules right out of the surface water.
Air pressure also controls the transport of water into the air. High pressure cells have dry air whereas low pressure cells have moist air and often bring rain, snow sleet and hail. The lake effect is an example of a strong wind that moves water form the lake surface onto the land.
The ever decreasing low pressure of hurricane as it moves over warm water causes it to “flash evaporate” into the air.
See how easy it is to shoot down the AGW hypothesis.
Sorry, all bets are off, it disappeared from moderation already. I posted at Tamino’s blog, I am sure it, too, will disappear, as if ignoring it will make the paper go away.
Dear Lord Monckton,
Thank you so much for this article! You are illustrating quite clearly the failure from the IPCC on predicting both the increase of the mass fraction of CO2 and the “anomalies” of the tropospheric temperature.
In your article, you have pointed at the criticism for not including the whole path length in your assessments; we have been criticized also for the same reason when assessing on other issues. We have granted meticulous theoretical analyses that include path lengths and we have demonstrated that our approach on ground is not significantly different from the outcome obtained by considering the whole length of the troposphere’s column. We have demonstrated that even on Venus, a planet with an atmosphere loaded by 95% of carbon dioxide, the latter cannot cause such “greenhouse” effect.
The real problem is that those people do not listen to the truth, they do not recognize facts and they do not know about reality because their set of beliefs is like a religion which confers to them such fabulous dividends that they are compelled to maintain their pseudoscience by denigrating honest scientists.
They are a bunch or science illiterates that have inundated the Media and the Internet with their false “theories” and weird “algorithms” that, when confronted against experimental and observational information, fall down to misery. They solitary purpose is denigrating to real scientists.
Those people continue ignoring science and they continue spreading their pseudoscience through diverse means. The rea$ons are more than obvious. This is why they get angry at any honest scientist who enlightens them on real science and shows them how the real world works.
Thanks again for your brilliant article and thanks to Anthony Watts and his team of collaborators for allowing Lord Monckton to share his knowledge with us.
All the best,
Nasif S. Nahle
Monckton: Why current trends are not alarming
To the contrary: there is a trend which is alarming indeed, not of the global warming but of another 1960’s cooling or worse during next 15-20 years. Winters’ heating energy requirements will be huge.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Driver.htm
Driver impulse is required to keep up the temps, if it is not there or low (eg. 1640-1700) or not frequent enough temps may fall to the LIA levels.
I wish climate science behaved more like medical science. I understand medical science. Medical science constantly tests and retests various and sundry hypotheses and is constantly making adjustments according to the findings (i.e. empirical data). This is where we get the concept of “evidence based” medicine.
The AGW theory has been extant for at least 20 years. To date it remains an unproven theory. It has become heresy to dare challenge this theory. So let’s look at medicine as an example. Twenty years ago the theory that peptic ulcer disease may be due to infection with Helicobacter pylori was a novel idea (back then it was called Campylobater pylori)…microbiologists earn their Ph.D.s by redefining taxonomy. Jeepers…turns out a couple of Australian FPs were right and the entire world of gastroenterologists were wrong. Most peptic ulcer disease actually IS due to infection by H. pylori. But it goes far beyond this.
Twenty years ago it was believed that antidepressants were ineffective in cases of reactional depression. Turns out they were, indeed, effective. Twenty years ago every med student was taught that beta-adrenergic blockers were absolutely contraindicated in cases of CHF. There was pretty sound pharmacologic theory to back this up. Today beta-blockers are a mainstay of treatment of CHF. In the interim billions of dollars have been wagered by pharmaceutical concerns on each side if the debate.
What stuns me is that climate science remains so rooted to a single, unprovable hypothesis…CO2 will heat up the planet. Even with the most convoluted proxies, anthropogenic CO2 has NEVER been PROVEN to cause global warming (or “climate change” if you prefer). It’s all theory backed by no empiric evidence. Using structure-activity relationships I can design a drug in a computer model. Do you think I could bring it to market without empirical evidence of efficacy? Why do we but this crap?
Asked another way…would you travel a bridge designed by Michael Mann?
Shorter sentences, or at least semi-colons breaking up comma-containing list items, please. And, speaking, of commas, less of, them.
Fred H. Haynie says:
August 14, 2010 at 1:28 pm
“……..What appears to you as exponential is a segment of a natural wave near it’s minimum and rising. …………”
That’s brilliant Fred, and much more plausible than the alarming exponentials. It is certainly worth further consideration & I’ll look forward to seeing it borne out in the years to come. Just for the sake of this argument though, it is good that Christopher is giving the IPCC as much benefit of the doubt as one possibly can, before considering more likely scenarios such as you suggest. One hopes he might consider taking this on board though.
Gone from Tamino also. Romm and Tamino are cowards.
Bill Illis,
thank you for catching my mistake. When I did the screen-shot of the IPCC-pdf I slipped into the wrong column. It does not materially change the graphical impact in the period 2000 to 2010. Here is the corrected version:
http://bluegrue.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/co2-ipcc-a2-scenario1.png
In addition, here are the IPCC scenarios you kindly provided the link for and the NOAA data plotted from 2000 to 2010.5, using the same scaling as Lord Monckton’s ten year plot.
http://bluegrue.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/co2-ipcc-vs-observation.png
Again, a stark contrast to the depiction by Lord Monckton.
Since people are fitting lines, and following up on what I said about the widget scaling of CO2 versus UAH temperature since 1979, I invite people with spreadsheet tools and annual CO2 data and UAH data since 1979, to plot the annual CO2 scaled by 0.01 with 350 subtracted, against the 9-year running average UAH temperature since 1979.
It is somewhat amazing agreement, showing that
UAH9 = 0.01*(CO2-350)-0.1
to a good approximation.
That is, the 9-year running mean temperature increases by 0.1 for every 10 ppm CO2 increase. Nice round numbers to remember too. As I mentioned, this is consistent with a feedback factor of 3. I hope someone with a Web page can plot this calculation to show.
The numerics in this thread are interesting. I have worked with the Mauna Loa CO2 data too, quite carefully I think, and have found that a very good fit indeed can be produced by first “deseasonalising” the monthly values to give what I call monthly differences. A preliminary step is to fit a simple regression to these data and generate the residuals. Plotting these against the time axis clearly invites modification of the model, and looks rather as if a quadratic would do a good job. Given the numbers involved it is useful to centre the time axis data, (central date is May 1984), before generating the squared term. Now, fit the “Monthly differences” to Centred Decimal Year and its square, and you get a very good fit indeed to the observations. The adjusted Rsquared statistic which seems to be favoured in the climate business comes out at 0.9986, a staggering value. Extrapolating to 2050 gives a value that translates to 492 ppm at 2050 and 675 at 2100. The 95 % confidence interval is about 5 units at this date!
These values seem to fall between Lord Monckton’s and those of the IPCC lower limit.
Now, no-one would seriously believe these figures. They are simply what comes out if you do the sums carefully /and/ assume that the current behaviour of factors influencing CO2 concentration will remain the same. This of course might also mean that the primary increases in CO2 generation caused by significant newcomers to the fuel burning scene would also be at a “constant” rate. Neither of these is likely to be true in practice, I guess.
So, we do careful projections but they are almost sure to be invalid.
Ho hum!
@Dr. Dave says:
August 14, 2010 at 2:12 pm
—–
Nice to meet you, Doc! Thanks for the post, the comparison to medicine is very compelling. The H. pylori story is a good one!
Back in the old days, folks thought bad smells and gases (miasmas) caused infectious illnesses. One of my heroes of history, Dr. John Snow, proved the relationship between contaminated water and cholera in London in 1854.
Did Snow over-react? Here’s a brief read on the topic:
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/removal.html
At least Snow had some sound data, was dealing with a lethal disease (unlike AGW, which hasn’t even been proven to exist, much less have deleterious effects) and backed up his policy with good, no B.S. politics and public relations.
The AGW team? Not so much….
From “A New And Effective Climate Model” (Stephen Wilde, Watt’s Up with That, April 6 ’10) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/06/a-new-and-effective-climate-model/
“Despite a substantial increase in the power of the Sun over billions of years the temperature of the Earth has remained remarkably stable.
My proposition is that the reason for that is the existence of water in liquid form in the oceans combined with a relatively stable total atmospheric density. If the power input from the sun changes then the effect is simply to speed up or slow down the hydrological cycle.”
“A change in the speed of the entire hydrological cycle does have a climate effect but as we shall see on timescales relevant to human existence it is too small to measure in the face of internal system variability from other causes.”
From “The Thermostat Hypothesis”, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/ (Willis Eschenbach, June 14, ’09)
The Thermostat Hypothesis is that tropical clouds and thunderstorms actively regulate the temperature of the Earth. This keeps the Earth at an equilibrium temperature.
Several kinds of evidence are presented to establish and elucidate the Thermostat Hypothesis – historical temperature stability of the Earth, theoretical considerations, satellite photos, and a description of the equilibrium mechanism.
In response to Bluegrue, who says that the NOAA data falls within the bounds of the IPCC’s A2 projection, while on the SPPI graph the NOAA data fall below the projection zone, the SPPI graph is zeroed so that the projection zone commences from the left-hand (lower) end of the linear-regression trend-line. This is the clearest way to see whether the direction the data are taking is consistent with the projections, and that – as I have explained often before – is the purpose of the graph. No conclusion is to be drawn (or is drawn) from the fact that on our graph the data do not fall within the projection zone at the left-hand end.
In response to Geoflynx, who cites Wikipedia as authority for the “precautionary” “principle”, in common with many universities I do not cite or use Wikipedia for any purpose, since it has justly been described as “the encyclopedia that any idiot can edit but only a cretin would credit”. That is not meant as an ad-hom against you, but Wikipedia is not an authority on anything. As for the “precautionary” “principle”, it is neither precautionary nor a principle. It is a political expedient, and a costly and undesirable one. Before taking precautions, one should of course also take steps to ensure that the precautions themselves will not cause more harm than the supposed catastrophe that they are intended to prevent. The failure of the international community to remember that the “precautionary” “principle” should also be applied to the precautions themselves led directly to the deaths of some 40 million people, most of them children, from malaria when DDT was carelessly banned. It was only on 15 September 2006, long after those responsiple for this murderous ban had retired or died, that Dr. Arata Kochi of the World Health Organization was able to say, “In this field, politics usually comes first and science second. We will now take a stand on the science and the data.” He lifted the ban on DDT and the WHO once again recommended it as the first line of defense against the mosquito. Mutatis mutandis, much the same could be said of the “precautions” against “global warming” today: there has been insufficient attention paid to the cost of the “precautions”, and the supposed consequences of “global warming”, as well as the extent of “global warming” itself, have been exaggerated. That is not a good or mature way to make policy.
In response to R. Gates, who asks whether there is an exponential growth rate for CO2, yes there is, but in the past dozen years there has been a decline from exponentiality in the direction of linearity. On any view, CO2 concentration is not rising at anything like even the lower-bound exponential curve projected by the IPCC on the A2 scenario. The implications for the final quantum of 21st-century warming are considerable: there will be a lot less of it than the IPCC projects, if the present decay towards linearity continues. Of course, it may not continue: but that is how things stand at present.
Icarus says:
August 14, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Icarus says,
“Considering the climate chaos already being seen from the ~100ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 so far”
Icarus, the rest of your post is intelligent and constructive, but this statement is just asinine. Nobody has seen anything but weather, so far. Our only view of climate is into the past and that is peering through a lens almost opaque.
The data of IPCC scenario A2 as stored at ippc-data.org does not correspond to the thick blue line in Lord Monckton’s third plot:
http://bluegrue.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/overlay-monckton-notalarming3-vs-a2.png
The data does however correspond to scenario A2 as depicted in fig. 10.26 in the IPCC AR4 on page 803.
I downloaded the Mauna Loa CO2 monthly data from March 1958 through July 2010 and plotted it (Interpolated) using a common spreadsheet program that has trending analysis functions built in. There are 629 monthly data points.
Results-
Linear Trend
Y=0.1201x+308.62
R^2=0.9771
Exponential Trend
y=310.13e^0.000x
R^2=0.9822
The conclusion, based upon the data, is that the monthly level of CO2 increase at Mauna Loa can be accurate represented by either a Linear Trend or an Exponential Trend, with the Exponential trend having a slightly higher R^2 value.
However, the plot for the month to month Delta PPM is hardly convincing that the rate of change is growing alarmingly.
For the monthly rate of change in Delta PPM (Interpolated) results are as follows-
Linear Trend
y=0.0002x+0.0566
R^2=0.0009
Julian in Wales
I wrote a non-tech bit as to why the shape of a molecule does or does not contribute to that molecule’s role in being a GHG. This is from an Aug. 5th post (No.2) about CO2. The post and comments are a bit tough to follow but if you use some of the terms you have now to search, there are many papers on the web for various levels of expertise. Anyway, I wrote:
“Here is a very rough analogy. Recall the small hand exercise thing shaped like a V with a spring. Squeeze the handles, let go, and the thing springs back to its original shape. Think of your squeezing as the absorption and spring-back part as the release of that energy. Think of this as a CO2 molecule. Now cut two 25 cm long pieces, one blue and one green, from wood broom handles. Blue can be N2 and green can be O2. There is nothing to squeeze together. No squeeze – no energy absorbed. So, think of the nitrogen and oxygen gases (major components of earth’s atmosphere) as having no role to play in this little game. Only molecules with particular characteristics (read the post for them), and CO2 is one such, can play in this game.
August 5, @ 7:11 am http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/co2-heats-the-atmosphere-a-counter-view/
A man with outstanding credentials such as the ones mentioned in the link below, and the knowledge in Biochemistry to cure his ailment, will have my vote anytime.
http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/1675-christopher-a-man-of-many-talents
2008-present: RESURREXI Pharmaceutical: Director responsible for invention and development of a broad-spectrum cure for infectious diseases. Patents have now been filed. Patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Graves’ Disease, multiple sclerosis, influenza, and herpes simplex VI. Our first HIV patient had his viral titre reduced by 38% in five days, with no side-effects. Tests continue.
PJP says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:26 am
Thanks, PJP, for that interesting and informative description of feedback. The only issue I might take with it is that you describe a feeback of 10x, or 1000%. This would be exceedingly rare in most systems. I would expect a feedback to be below 100% in most cases, or any ‘movement’ would be wildly exaggerated.
Also, as I understand it (and that understanding may well be limited) any feedback below 100% will not result in a runaway feedback loop, as it will reach a plateau. Take 10% feedback, the steps go 100%, 110%, 111%, 111.1% I believe, as you only get additional feedback on the feedback (if that makes sense).
BTW, the scenario with the microphone feedback, although a well-known one, is not ‘typical’ as there is a powerful amplifier in the system itself generating many times the original signal.
I fully agree, that without the imagined forcing and feedback, there is little or nothing to worry about. In fact, only if the feedback itself is massive, ie over 100%, would any scary scenario be possible.
Sorry in that last comment of mine it should read.
Exponential Trend
y=310.13e^0.003x
R^2=0.9822
Let’s remember that not only are the IPCC main CO2 assumptions/projections/scenarios / whatever RealClimate wants to call them, likely to be too high by the year 2100, the temperature response to that increased CO2 is only half of that currently being projected.
This discussion should be mainly directed toward the temperature response per unit CO2 increase, not the CO2 increase. I may have inadvertently participated in that.
Now RealClimate says some model runs don’t have much warming in the last ten years so they accurately reflect the current 50% response trends (and somehow that says the models, as a whole, are therefore accurate). Well, that really says that the low temperature growth models/runs are the more accurate models so we should throw out the high temperature growth ones and focus on the low temperature growth ones. Or more accurately, we should be using the accurate almost-no-temperature-growth models.
CO2 (and Methane) are / will be lower and the temperature response per CO2 have been / will be lower.
To paraphrase James Sexton (August 14, 2010 at 12:59 pm) and CRS, Dr.P.H. (August 14, 2010 at 1:19 pm) on GeoFlynx (August 14, 2010 at 11:40 am)
a) The precautionary principle does not trump the scientific method.
b) Not withstanding a) Any proposed action in mitigation of the hypothecated CAGW must itself pass the precautionary test.
The burden, Mr Flynx, remains yours.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
August 14, 2010 at 4:04 pm
I cannot see why this, which seems to be the main point, is so hard to get across. Many seem to be either just not reading properly, or being wilfully ignorant. The projected exponential curve is just not being sustained.
I see on further reading of comments that my last was also paraphrasing the author of the post. My apologies for the omission your Lordship.
Phil’s Dad says:
August 14, 2010 at 5:55 pm
To paraphrase James Sexton (August 14, 2010 at 12:59 pm) and CRS, Dr.P.H. (August 14, 2010 at 1:19 pm) on GeoFlynx (August 14, 2010 at 11:40 am)
a) The precautionary principle does not trump the scientific method.
b) Not withstanding a) Any proposed action in mitigation of the hypothecated CAGW must itself pass the precautionary test.
The burden, Mr Flynx, remains yours.
——-
Well spoken, sir! You paraphrased me nicely!
Don’t forget the admonition of Hippocrates to “first, do no harm.” (this was attributed to him, but never actually appears in the Hippocratic Oath, see:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/greek/greek_oath.html
The AGW crowd believes “first, do something/anything to reduce reliance upon fossil fuels, and worry about the economic consequences, scientific proof, and impact upon society later.”
James Sexton says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:16 am
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:34 am
So I can assume your failure to mention evidence of past CO2 levels much higher than today isn’t an example of “cherry-picking”, but rather an oversight? Believe it or not, CO2 levels existed prior to 1960. I know, it’s strange, but true nonetheless.
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf and
At bottom of PDF file:
Quote: This is an unofficial extract of E-G Beck’s comprehensive draft paper and is for discussion not citing
Mods, would you please correct my link in the preceding post? An extra ) appears at the end of the link, which should be:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/greek/greek_oath.html
Cheers & have a happy weekend!
Lord Monkton, thanks for your contributions to this conversation!
[SNIP. This mod is tired of the ad-homs. Comment on the science. ~dbs]
Well, this has been a nice and illuminating discussion.
thechuckr says:
August 14, 2010 at 2:34 pm
“Gone from Tamino also. Romm and Tamino are cowards.”
No shocker there. You didn’t really expect them to post that, did you? They have to call a group meeting and do a talking points brain storming session with the other chicken littles.
Speaking of cowards, I’ve got to say I’m incredibly disappointed that many of Christopher Monckton critics have passed on an opportunity to directly challenge his assertions. Many times in the past, when WUWT does an article about Monckton, they are all over the page whining about this or that or stating he’s been proven wrong about this or that. Yet, today, when Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, former Science advisory to Margaret Thatcher, gives them a chance for dialogue, proofs and counter proofs, very few even bother to show.
Brad Beeson, Geoflynx, Bluegrue, and, of course, R. Gates were the only ones to directly ask for more clarity in, or directly challenge, his assertions.(as far as I can tell.) For them, well done, it isn’t always easy to challenge or make statements you know will be met with certain disagreement by the majority of people posting thoughts here or anywhere.
I guess the rest really belong at RC or Romm’s blog where they can safely remain cheerleaders. I’ve heard of intellectual cowardice before, but never really saw it until today.
I did have one other disappointment today, though. I didn’t get my wish, nor even a response to one of my prior posts which I was sure would elicit something. I thought it a hoot, I didn’t expect Christopher to actually mention it here, but it would have been fun.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/14/monckton-why-current-trends-are-not-alarming/#comment-456847
Off to finish reading about a terrible mishap on an ice rink. It seems someone went berserk, took a man’s hockey stick from him and slapped him so hard with it the hockey stick broke.
Cheers.
Monckton of Brenchley,
Thank you for posting this interesting analysis and also for responding to comments.
You have already acknowledged and partially addressed what is one of my main criticisms of your analysis; namely, that you are displaying and analysing temperature records for as short a period as a decade. Your defence appears to have been twofold: 1) you also published a graph that doesn’t suffer from this alleged defect, and 2) somebody else made a statement involving an even shorter time period.
However, I would suggest to you that citing other graphs or somebody else’s statements does not excuse the shortcomings of that particular graph. The latter defence is anyway like comparing apples to oranges, as that other person’s statement did not involve your practice of calculating a warming rate from the temperature data.
It is the calculation of warming rates over too short a time period that is the real issue for me. If the time period is too short then shorter term temperature fluctuations and analysis uncertainties can drown out longer term climate trends. This means the value obtained for the warming rate has some randomness and that it also depends greatly on the specific start and end dates. In short, a rate analysis done over too short a time period is not robust. Presenting analyses that are not robust is not good scientific practice.
This lack of robustness can be illustrated by doing a rate analysis over a time period even shorter than the decade period of your analysis, as follows.
According to the widely quoted analysis of NASA’s GISS, the average global surface temperature in calendar year 2008 was 0.44 degrees C above the average for the 1951-1980 base period, while that for 2009 was 0.57 degrees above that base. The difference between the two most recent calendar years, i.e. 0.13 degrees C over one year, is readily seen to correspond to a warming rate of 13 degrees C per century when expressed in the units you use.
You continue to perform temperature rate analyses over shorter periods than are recommended as good practice. Given that, what would be your objection, if any, to somebody presenting the above analysis over only one year as evidence that global temperatures are in fact rising at the rate of 13 degrees C per century and, hence, the IPCC has gravely underestimated the rate of temperature rise?
I am peeved that James Sexton didn’t include me among the Lord’s critics.
Anyway, another try. It was conceded that the current CO2 increase rate was 200 ppm/century, and also the current temperature trend was 1.4 C/century. These add up to a feedback factor of 2.5 when you do the calculations. Of course, Monckton realized he was conceding something like this and attributed the warming to a “natural” cloud variation. However, the generally accepted reason for the brightening is the “manmade” aerosol reduction that went with various national clean-air acts, together with a lack of recent large volcanoes. Nobody has shown a scientific basis for how natural cloud variation can account for something of this magnitude.
So you might think, a-ha, the warming is because aerosols are still decreasing. Well, take that to its limit of reducing to pre-industrial aerosols, is the temperature returning to those levels? No, it is going to be warmer. Why? CO2, I would suggest.
Jim D says:
“Nobody has shown a scientific basis for how natural cloud variation can account for something of this magnitude.”
We don’t really know that much about what drives the climate. But we’re learning. Prof Richard Lindzen has a peer reviewed paper on the iris effect, in which clouds moderate temperature.
Check out the latest WUWT article. The McShane & Wyner paper states:
Natural climate variability is not well understood and is probably quite large.
You will learn that Michael Mann was just winging it, and got caught.
And if you learn something about the Scientific Method, you will begin to understand that the burden is on the alarmist contingent to provide a convincing argument for their
theoryhypothesisconjecture. So far they have failed.s. wing says at August 14, 2010 at 7:39 pm … basically that the time period is too short.
No, the time period is exactly right to provide information on recent events. And yes, that information may not be “robust” as you indicated. However, it is what it is and nothing more or less. Extending the time period, however, is also not robust if one is looking for indications of recent changes.
There is no right or wrong way to look at data. The key is to make sure you don’t go beyond the data used in one’s conclusions. Your example did exactly that whereas, the presentation above, clearly added the proper caveats.
@Fred H. Haynie
Extrapolating this model into the future suggests that CO2 at Mauna Loa will max out within 2 ppmv of 499 in March of 2091.
It’s clever that you are able to get your model to show this. Wouldn’t global atmospheric CO2 content be determined largely by what Co2 we are adding to it? And the ability of carbon sinks to absorb the difference? Otherwise it just seems like wishful thinking.
Bill Illis says:
August 14, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Now RealClimate says some model runs don’t have much warming in the last ten years so they accurately reflect the current 50% response trends (and somehow that says the models, as a whole, are therefore accurate). Well, that really says that the low temperature growth models/runs are the more accurate models so we should throw out the high temperature growth ones and focus on the low temperature growth ones. Or more accurately, we should be using the accurate almost-no-temperature-growth models.
They’re probably the same models, just different initial conditions. In any event, just because one model, or one model run, gets the last 10 years correctly is meaningless.
To use a gambling analogy … I could write two simulations of playing blackjack. One would use a good counting technique and the other would use only basic strategy. If I run these sims (models) several times using a random dealing algorithm, I could get exactly the same results over a short time period. However, over a long time period they will diverge significantly (one is a winner and the other a loser).
If one claims both programs accurately model a good counting technique then a short duration run cannot provide any verification one way or the other. This is so simple and obvious I find it hard to believe that anyone would claim climate models behave differently.
You probably noticed by now that a reduction in cloud cover, if related to global warming, would be a positive feedback, opposite to what Lindzen and Willis have suggested. If I was them, I would be very troubled by that reduction, if true, and they might want to look into it.
Well and succinctly said! Thank you.
JER0ME says:
August 14, 2010 at 5:35 pm
PJP says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:26 am
RE: Feedback.
In a true closed loop feedback system(I don’t belive the climate is one) all Positive feedback systems are unstable(from EE prof @MTU). You have a defined input parameter say speed or temp, which the feedback is added to and sent to the system. So on your house if you set the thermostat at 70 and Subtract(negative feedback) the measured temp say 68, you send a value of 2 to the system the heat turns on. When it gets to 70 you send a 0 and it shuts off. If the temp is 72, you send a value of -2 and the AC turns on. If you have positive feedback, the input is 70, the acutal is 68 you send 138 to the system and it goes into high. As the temp rises the signal to the system increases exponentialy until it blows up(short period of time). Note: Negative feedback systems can be unstable.
DL says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:49 pm
JER0ME says:
August 14, 2010 at 5:35 pm
PJP says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:26 am
RE: Feedback.
Yes, I think I missed that point. Closed loop is another thing altogether, and as you say, the climate does not seem to act as one.
Well yes, anyone familiar with interstitial condensation in the fabric of buildings would know that you can’t apply the simple radiative physics of CO2 to climate attenuation. Earth is a water planet. CO2 must always follow temperature, no need for any of this machination of minutia.
Last time I looked there was no polythene vapour barrier 10 feet above our heads covering the entire planet. Obviously climate “scientists” don’t live in houses and spend far too much time on field jollies in cheap single walled tents!
Bill Illis says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:40 am
CO2 is increasing at a slightly exponential rate. It is growing at 1.97 ppm per year and that rate is accelerating at 0.0017 ppm per year. So, next year it should increase at 1.987 ppm per year.
These rates have been fairly consistent for the last 60 years but CO2 does increase slightly faster in warm (lets say El Nino) years (with a slight lag behind temperatures) and it increases less fast in cooler years. The last time CO2 actually fell was in WW II when it declined by about 2 ppm from 1940 to 1946.
++++++++++++++
I understand from the links provided by this discussion that the methods used to measure CO2 in the 1940’s did not have a resolution of 2 ppm so the claim seems unlikely. The resolution did not reach 1 ppm until 1964.
Further, chemical methods are consistent and show CO2 concentration during the period 1940-1946 was significantly higher than at present, to an accuracy of 1%.
It would be interesting to have your opinion on the decline in CO2 and its rate from 1942 to 1960 and whether or not you can detect a change in the present rate of increase as Monckton has shown here.
Jim D says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:53 pm
“I am peeved that James Sexton didn’t include me among the Lord’s critics.”
My sincerest apologies. Please note, that I’m just a hack poster on this blog. I’m real sorry I missed your critiques. Do come back to another article and I’ll try to get you proper credits.
” Jim D says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:25 pm
You probably noticed by now that a reduction in cloud cover, if related to global warming, would be a positive feedback, opposite to what Lindzen and Willis have suggested. If I was them, I would be very troubled by that reduction, if true, and they might want to look into it.”
Depends on whether the clouds a high or low. You might want to look into the newest book by Spencer.
Dear Lord Monckton,
You write:
quote
The SPPI’s graph of the University of Alabama at Huntsville’s monthly global-temperature anomalies over the 30 years since 1 January 1980 shows warming at a rate equivalent to 1.4 K/century – almost double the rate for the 20th-century as a whole. However, most of the warming was attributable to a naturally-occurring reduction in cloud cover that allowed some 2.6 Watts per square meter of additional solar radiance to reach the Earth’s surface between 1981 and 2003 (Pinker et al., 2005; Wild et al., 2006; Boston, 2010, personal communication).
unquote
Googling around the references, I came upon this:
“Consequently, a much more logical conclusion would be that the primary driver of the global warming of the 1990s was the large increase in global surface-level insolation.” Co2Science
We need to present an alternative theory which lessens the role of CO2 but still preserves the fact of 20th century warming, which accounts for cloud albedo changes and which explains the undoubted fact of carbon isotope variation. If it were also to explain plankton decrease, the collapse of the Newfoundland cod fishery and the paucity of European eels then that would be a bonus.
Might I commend to you the Kriegesmarine Hypothesis? Not only does it have wide-ranging explanatory power, it also suggests solutions which are practical, unlike the economy-killing prescriptions of the CO2 hypothesis.
The carbon advocates have their 19th century Arrhenius: we ocean surface pollution advocates can adopt Benjamin Franklin and his Clapham pond.
JF
Whilst I don’t consider myself qualified to enter into the arcane mathmatical arguments above, i am surprised that no one has made reference to forthcoming paper by McKitrick, Ross; Strazicich, Mark; Lee, Junsoo; with the abstract:
“Total global carbon emission forecasts span such a wide range as to yield little guidance for policy. Global per capita emissions, by contrast, are well-constrained on both theoretical and empirical grounds. We find per capita emissions are trendless around a stationary mean of 1.15 tonnes, and analysis at the country-level indicates any nonstationary tendencies are cointegrated across nations. Gaussian, simulation and Bayesian methods all yield prediction intervals that imply the high emission scenarios currently in use by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are
improbable. Hotelling resource price dynamics in a Ramsey growth model help explain these findings, by showing that income growth does not imply per capita emissions growth, while convergence implies declining average emissions. We conclude that greenhouse gas emission trajectories on the low end of the current forecast
range are the most likely to be observed over the next 50 years. ”
Their conclusion is that per capita emissions have been stable for some time and thus increases will follow population growth.
There are also these telling comments on the IPCC scenarios:
“In developing their forty SRES emission scenarios the IPCC used a qualitative “storyline” methodology where future possible socioeconomic states of the world were narrated. The required time-paths of consumption and output needed to reach the projected end-state were then inferred. The quality of economic analysis underpinning these storylines is difficult to gauge since they are not based on conventional growth theory or theoretical resource models. These scenarios are used as inputs to IPCC climate change simulations directly influence the range of global warming predictions. This, in turn, has an impact on policy decisions (and media coverage) related to climate change, including debates over the Kyoto Protocol. The upper end of these forecasts has been the subject of considerable media and policy interest as well as some criticism. Among other things, the IPCC scenarios have been criticized for making international comparisons based on market exchange rates rather than purchasing power parities, which may bias emission estimates upward”
So we have :
1 Vindication of Chis’s approach
2 IPCC models built on sand. By the way, they all tend to assume continuous growth, in some cases improably so, which can only be delivered over the next 20 years as a minimum by fossil fuels.
3 Population growth is slowing and as third world countries become richer, as the models forecast, the growth will continue to slow. So therefore will emissions
4
Of course, the West can lower its emissions by implementing the barmy policies of Huhne (UK climate change minister) and Obama with the result that our economies are destroyed.
Whoops the missing 4 was
4 All of the IPCC scenarios are based upon the false assumption that CO 2 drives temperature/climate for which it has adduced no evidence.
Cheers
Paul
R. Gates says:
August 14, 2010 at 12:53 pm
“http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/mloco21.jpg
Which of course shows that there is an exponential growth rate”
It certainly does not. What it indicates is rather some sort of hyperbolic curve (one that starts off curving upwards like an exponential but straightens out to a linear relationship). It could also be the rising part of a sine curve.
While I admire Lord M’s relentless work and his command of the facts, I am frequently put off by the arguments he chooses to make, since they often fall somewhat short of bullet-proof.
In this case, the impression one is invited to take away from his post is that carbon-dioxide increase has become less exponential, and he cites certain ten-year differences for that proposition. But other measures bear just the opposite conclusion. When I compute the exponential trends from the data found here ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt, I get trends that start at less than 30% per century for the 1959-68 decade to over 70% per century for the 2000-09 decade. I get increasing trends when I base the calculations on 15-, 20-, 25-, 30-, 35-, 40-, 45-, and 50-year intervals
To me, this is at least as good a test of whether the trend is “decaying from exponentiality,” and to me it suggests more exponentiality (if there is such a thing as exponentiality) rather than less.
” James Sexton says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:45 am
Alexej Buergin says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:58 am
‘If we look at liquid water that is boiled and escapes into the air, the answer is yes and yes. The water molecules replace others, mainly nitrogen (76%) and oxygen (23%), which makes moist air lighter than dry air; the replaced molecules have to go somewhere else (up).’
Isn’t the total H2O in the earth’s atmosphere basically fixed? Are you stating this moves the O and N out into space?”
No. The warmer the air is, the more water it can take, and the water VAPOR can come from the sea, a lake or some source of LIQUID water. When air rises, it cools, can absorb less water, and you get clouds or rain.
And no. When you change some liquid into vapor and add it to the atmosphere, you will have more air, which will have a bigger pressure and go higher up. But of course the difference will be very, very tiny. (We can forget about that).
So if there is global warming, there will be more water in the atmosphere, maily from the sea, which might produce
1) further warming due to more greenhouse gases
2) cooling due to more low clouds
The question is how much 1) and how much 2) and what else?
One more time, just in case it might help those still sitting on the fence – the level of co2 in the air is an effect of temperature rise and NOT a cause. The warmer the more. The colder the less.
DL says:
There is confusion based on the fact that when most climate scientists talk about a net positive feedback, they do not mean that in the same sense that it is used in systems theory (or control theory or whatever you want to call it). Climate scientists often call it net positive feedback if the feedbacks are such that the temperature change is amplified from what would be predicted based on the radiative forcing due to CO2 and the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation alone. However, from the systems theory point-of-view, the response of the system specified by the Stefan-Boltzmann is itself a strong negative feedback (radiative imbalance -> temperature rise -> reduction in radiative imbalance). So, what these climate scientists are referring to as net positive feedback is, from the systems theory point-of-view, a net negative feedback but with the net feedback less negative than applying the S-B Equation alone to the original radiative forcing would predict.
There are some climate scientists who have used the terminology in line with the systems theory view. For example, Dennis Hartmann in his book “Global Physical Climatology” (starting on p. 231) http://books.google.com/books?id=Zi1coMyhlHoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=global+physical+climatology+hartmann&hl=en&ei=uuhnTKjSDsX_lgfKhNSfBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false where he clearly calls the response implied by the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation “the Stefan-Boltzmann feedback”.
It is somewhat unfortunate that the usage by most climate scientists has evolved in the way that it has since it seems to confuse engineers familiar with systems theory to no end. However, such differences in the usage of terms in different fields are not unusual and the way that climate scientists use it does not change the physics of what one gets…as long as one understands this terminology difference.
response to Henry Galt 08/14/2010 12:39 pm et al
PLOT the annual CO2 increase!
First, one can see that the data is all over the place and appears cyclical. Does anyone see any apparent correlations w/ known environmental events?
Second, the best sic fit is linear, which leads to a pseudo-exponential increase in CO2.
=============================================
Great article by Monckton but using only the past 10 yrs of CO2 data as a basis for an argument is falling into the same trap as the believers.
DDT has a very low order of toxicity but long half life, w/ the decomposition product DDE having a higher order of toxicity and longer half life. The problem w/ DDT was the massive over usage by the 60’s because it seemed (at the time) that every manufacturer jumped into production it due to the patent expiring, and no one was making a profit. Therefore, when St. Rachel’s book was published the industry was happy to switch to patented and much more profitable (and toxic) organophosphates.
The suggestion that Munckton be made to eat a teaspoon of DDT is typical cult/religious invective . The dogma must be preserved at any cost.
I am surprised that more of the people here who call themselves “skeptics” are not skeptical of Monckton’s bogus comparisons here. He says with flowery language:
What this flowery language hides is the fact that what he calls the IPCC projection zone has nothing to do with the IPCC’s own projection of global temperatures…and in fact is in direct contradiction to what the IPCC actually projects. Instead, he has decided that he understands what the IPCC ought to be projecting for the temperatures better than the IPCC themselves (on the basis of some very hokey assumptions that he makes) and shows those inflated projections instead.
Or (as detractors of Fox News have noted might be a more accurate slogan and I believe applies here too), “We distort: you decide.”
In response to Monckton of Brenchley’s posting of
August 14, 2010 at 9:54 am:
My Dear Lord Monckton,
Thank you for your kind and prompt reply to my inquiry. It is a pleasure to be able to discuss your findings in a civil and respectful forum such as this, and exponentially more so to receive your detailed explaination of your calculations in person. I don’t post often here, but I try to read everything in hopes of learning more about climate and weather.
One thing I have learned here is that drawing trend lines through cyclical oscillations, especially for trend lines through only part of a sinusoidal cycle, or from a peak to a trough, is somewhat risky. I believe Steve Goddard can fill you in on the details if you missed that post.
Another lesson hammered home here is that solar and ENSO cycles are important sources of variation in the climate system. Yet here you have drawn a long-term 90-year extrapolation, based on 10 years of trend calcuations – less than one solar cycle (and this last cycle has been unusually long), and your ten year evaluation period starts near the peak of the biggest ENSO event in recent history (1998 El Nino).
Taking your method of calculating trends for ten-year periods, applying it the longer Mauna Loa database (which matches quite closely to the NOAA database you cited where they overlap), I found that extending your evaluation period to twenty years gives the opposite result from your conclusion. The 20-year trend in the 3rd derivative of CO2 is positive, instead of negative as you found for the ten-year period. In fact, any period except very short ones show essentially zero slope for the 2nd derivative.
Why is the 20-year slope strongly positive, you may ask? It is strongly influenced by the Pinotubo volcano in the early 90’s, and the 1998 El Nino. If we exclude those obvious extremes, there does seem to be an 11 year solar cycle in the data. There are dips in the 2nd derivative at 1976, 1987, 1997, and 2008. These correspond almost exactly with solar minimums.
It would be interesting to do a similar analysis for the ENSO cycle, don’t you think?
So I would like to ask my question again, slightly modified and extended, thanks to your more detailed explaination of your methods:
Can we safely extrapolate for 90 years the growth rate of CO2 based on the recent trend of its 2nd derivative, when the beginning of that trend encompass a high point of the ENSO cycle, and it ends near a solar minimum?
We had a fellow here in the colonies who had a way with words (although a very different style from your’s), who once said it’s tough to make predictions, expecially about the future. If we take the easier task of making hindcasts, using historcal data, what would your method have predicted about the present?
In other words, using data from 1960 to 1980, applying your calculation of ten 10-year trends, what would your method hindcast for the subsequent decades?
and repeat for 1965-1985, 1970-1990, etc…
I think you would find that your method has little predictive value, even for a few years into the future, much less 90.
Thank you again for your consideration and kindness in answer our questions here,
Sincerely,
Brad
duckster:
At August 14, 2010 at 8:14 pm you ask:
“Wouldn’t global atmospheric CO2 content be determined largely by what Co2 we are adding to it? And the ability of carbon sinks to absorb the difference?”
And the answer to that is possibly but not certainly. Your suggestion would only be true if the reason for the rise is the probably indignificant anthropogenic emission.
However, that is a subject for other threads on this blog (where it is discussed), so there is no proper place on this thread for your prejudice that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is induced by the small anthropogenic emission.
On this thread the only pertinent discussion of atmospheric CO2 change is whether it is reasonable for Lord Monckton to have adopted a near-linear model of the change. And that model is a very reasonable representation of the data.
Richard
The projections you call “hockey” are based on the a2 IPCC projections and sensetivity math as applied to real world observations. The fact is that observations show the IPCC as well as Hansen are incorrect in that they understate ability of the earth to recycle CO2, and overstate the climate sensitivity and feedbacks to CO2
I meant “hokey”, somehow hocky comes to mind discussing climate science.
[snip]
They then proceed to describe modeling uncertainties in the scenarios:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/emission/index.php?idp=25
So, a proper, or better critique of the A2 scenario, rather than just saying it’s wrong (of course it’s “wrong”) would be to compare the observed emission rates with the modeled emission rates and re-run the scenario based on those observations.
Alexej Buergin says:
“Depends on whether the clouds a high or low. You might want to look into the newest book by Spencer.”
This was to my comment about Lindzen and Willis needing to look at their ideas in light of Monckton’s assertion that natural cloud variation can lead to warming.
Since these two say the net effect of clouds in global warming is negative feedback (and I think Spencer believes it too), they would have to modify it to say: Clouds lead to negative feedback, except for periods when they don’t.
So you see the conundrum for Monckton. On the one hand he can’t admit to a feedback factor of 2.5 from his own numbers, but on the other he can’t say this warming is just due to cloud changes, because that hurts his friends’ theories about net negative cloud feedback.
If the warming is not CO2 plus H2O feedback, not reduction of clouds or aerosols, not solar, what is it? Doesn’t leave much. AGW has an explanation, anti-AGW not so much.
Duckster,
The point is that what is being reported in monthly averages is not influanced by anthropogenic emmisions because their exponential changes are statistically insignificant compared with the natural changes of both sources and sinks. It behooves us to better understand the causes of those changes rather than believing that reducing anthropogenic emmisions will have any significant effect on them.
Jim D:
At August 15, 2010 at 9:39 am you say:
“If the warming is not CO2 plus H2O feedback, not reduction of clouds or aerosols, not solar, what is it? Doesn’t leave much. AGW has an explanation, anti-AGW not so much.”
Having “an explanation” is very dangerous when the “explanation” is wrong. It is much better to admit that you do not know the true “explanation”.
Climate has always changed everywhere and always will: this has been known since the Bronze Age when it was pointed out to Pharaoh by Joseph (the one with the Technicolour Dreamcoat). Joseph told Pharaoh to prepare for the bad times when in the good times, and all sensible governments have adopted that policy throughout the thousands of years since then.
That tried and tested policy is sensible because people merely complain at taxes in the good times, but they will revolt if they are short of food in the bad times.
But now the AGW “explanation” is being used as an argument to displace that tried and tested policy that has stood the test of time for millennia. And that “explanation” is the logical error of ‘argument from ignorance’.
This error isn’t new.
In the Middle Ages experts said, “We don’t know what causes crops to fail: it must be caused by witches so we must eliminate them.”
Now, experts say, “We don’t know what causes global climate change: it must be caused by emissions from human activity so we must eliminate them.”
Of course, they phrase it differently saying they can’t match historical climate change with known climate mechanisms unless an anthropogenic effect is included. But evidence for this anthropogenic effect is no more than the evidence for the effect of witches.
Richard
Re: Richard S Courtney: August 15, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Obviously we are in a better position with observations and science than in the Middle Ages, and what we have now can quantify the AGW effect, matching observations to known science in a consistent way. If we had these observations in the MWP, I would bet we would have understood that too in terms of the science we now know.
I expect we will see at least 0.2 degrees C per decade through this century, just extrapolating a fairly solid trend from 1979. I don’t take a position on the broader effect of warming, or whether and how to mitigate it, as it is beyond my knowledge of the environment to judge that, and I leave it for other people to argue alarmist or non-alarmist points of view on its effect, but to me the effect is a given (barring major volcanoes, or something unpredictable of that kind, of course).
Here are two simple Excel charts of that data. The top one shows a linear fit and the bottom an exponential fit. To my 20×20, 70-yeae old eyes, I can’t tell them apart. But, hey, its just climate science.
Since the post’s awaiting moderation and the chart aren’t displaying, use this URL for the charts:
or
http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad87/baltwo2/CO2-2.png
What’s up with that missing portcullis?
Given that Canute gave his sycophants an object lesson in nature’s indifference to lordly words it’s bizarre of Monckton to denigrate erstwhile opponents as “ bed-wetters, hand-wringers, and wolf-criers who populate the Church of Canutism … mesmerized by my status as a member (albeit non-sitting and non-voting) of the House of Lords”
Having four times failed to find a single peer sitting in The House of Lords to vote for his admission, he’s earning a Parliamentary reminder that being a lord no more makes him a member of the upper house than being a white man makes him a member of White’s Does the missing ironmongry reflect his rebuke by Buckingham palace for lese majeste in purloining its armorial portcullis to add to his pink House of Pseuds logo ?
Scientists tend to be indifferent to this rontonomade because like intelligent laymen they can recognize cant when they hear it and cartoons when they see them.
Monckton may stretch the envelope of rubber graph paper performance to limits Yosemite Sam and Albert Gore might envy, but he cannot deflect the course of climate‘s interaction with human history. Just as a rising tide lifts all thrones, rising levels of infrared opaque CO2 raise all temperatures.
This is not to say that peers should hold their peace in public policy debates. Perhaps Mister Watts can arrange comment from some others in the same cohort of scientific competence as Viscount Monckton. The Duchess of York somehow springs to mind.
BTW, the previous posts refer to duckster’s comments.
[play nice Smokey ~ ctm]
I think the IPCC motto is ‘We decide, you report’!
Jim D:
In response to my pointing out (at August 15, 2010 at 3:20 pm ) that you were using the logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’, at August 15, 2010 at 5:29 pm you respond with:
“Obviously we are in a better position with observations and science than in the Middle Ages, and what we have now can quantify the AGW effect, matching observations to known science in a consistent way. If we had these observations in the MWP, I would bet we would have understood that too in terms of the science we now know.”
That is ‘argument by assertion’.
It is NOT “obvious” that we can “quantify the AGW effect” at all (or, if you prefer, better than in the Middle Ages). In reality that magnitude is highly disputed so it cannot be claimed that we can “quantify” it.
Furthermore, my illustration of ‘argument from ignorance’ was:
“In the Middle Ages experts said, “We don’t know what causes crops to fail: it must be caused by witches so we must eliminate them.”
Now, experts say, “We don’t know what causes global climate change: it must be caused by emissions from human activity so we must eliminate them.”
Of course, they phrase it differently saying they can’t match historical climate change with known climate mechanisms unless an anthropogenic effect is included. But evidence for this anthropogenic effect is no more than the evidence for the effect of witches.”
Your post does not dispute the accuracy of my analogy in any way.
And the remainder of your post is unsubstantiated twaddle, too.
So, it seems you are an expert in the use of logical fallacies.
Richard
[SNIP]
I’ve been voting against Al ever since he ran for student council the year I organized Harvard’s symposium on the coevolution of British and American conservatism
Since then I’ve taken time off from science to devote an entire blog and a half dozen Forbes columns and Wall Street Journal op-eds to lambasting its politicization right and left
here for the benefit of more literate readers is a link to my last offering on the other side of the pond :
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB116252563441412312.html
This might have been covered but I don’t see any exponential graphs, only linear. Also there is insufficient info regarding baselines. This is not to aportion blame anywhere just saying.
” Russell Seitz says:
August 16, 2010 at 2:09 am ”
Do I understand you correctly? You offer yourself and the Duchess of York to debate against Monckton? Are you sure that the Duchess agrees with you (we all know she could use some money)?
anticlimactic says:
August 15, 2010 at 7:57 pm
“I think the IPCC motto is ‘We decide, you report’!”
Brilliant!
The WSJ article linked by Russell Seitz says:
<>
I like that. I was recently reading the account of a trip that Samuel Johnson took through the Hebrides in 1773. His witty skepticism at the existence of a number of writings in the Erse language and other things that he is told are supposed to exist, reminds me a bit of the Truman quote above and is perfectly applicable to the endless portents that are attributed to small variations in CO2.
——–quotes—-
Strong reasons for incredulity will readily occur. The faculty of seeing things out of sight is local, and commonly useless. It is a breach of the common order of things, without any visible reason or perceptible benefit. It is ascribed only to a people very little enlightened; and among them, for the most part, to the mean and the ignorant.
[…]
The foresight of the Seers is not always prescience; they are impressed with images, of which the event only shews them the meaning. They tell what they have seen to others, who are at that time not more knowing than themselves, but may become at last very adequate witnesses, by comparing the narrative with its verification.
[…]
We heard of manuscripts that were, or that had been in the hands of somebody’s father, or grandfather; but at last we had no reason to believe they were other than Irish. Martin mentions Irish, but never any Earse manuscripts, to be found in the Islands in his time.
I suppose my opinion of the poems of Ossian is already discovered. I believe they never existed in any other form than that which we have seen. The editor, or author, never could shew the original; nor can it be shewn by any other;
***to revenge reasonable incredulity, by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence, with which the world is not yet acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt. It would be easy to shew it if he had it; but whence could it be had?***
[…]
***To be ignorant is painful; but it is dangerous to quiet our uneasiness by the delusive opiate of hasty persuasion.***
But this is the age, in which those who could not read, have been supposed to write; in which the giants of antiquated romance have been exhibited as realities. If we know little of the ancient Highlanders, let us not fill the vacuity with Ossian. If we had not searched the Magellanick regions, let us however forbear to people them with Patagons.
—end of quote—
–Samuel Johnson: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.
“”” david says:
August 14, 2010 at 6:25 am
Mr Monckton, I do hope you will respond to any comments critical of your presentation. Thanks. “””
Why so formal David? Who else (besides you) at WUWT refers to someone as Mr, or Mrs, or the PC Ms ? You did it twice so I assume it is just habit.
If you really want to be formal; why not address our Guest Poster properly as Lord Monckton; it’s more correct, and not as obvious as Mr.
Richard Courtney says:
“In the Middle Ages experts said, “We don’t know what causes crops to fail: it must be caused by witches so we must eliminate them.”
Now, experts say, “We don’t know what causes global climate change: it must be caused by emissions from human activity so we must eliminate them.”
==================
There is a 15th century German treatise called Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witchcraft) that deals not only with what should be done about witches, but also with what should be done with skeptics, i.e. those who “rashly” doubt the existence of witches or else try to minimize their formidable powers (their ability to conjure up plagues, floods, droughts, and so on). I copy below some quotes from this extraordinary piece of work. The similarities with the current orthodox attitude toward CAGW skeptics are remarkable.
quotes:
[…]
There are others who acknowledge indeed that witches exist, but they declare that the influence of magic and the effects of charms are purely imaginary and phantasmical. A third class of writers maintain that the effects said to be wrought by magic spells are altogether illusory and fanciful, although it may be that the devil does really lend his aid to some witch.
[…] This error seems to be based upon two passages from the Canons where certain women are condemned who falsely imagine that during the night they ride abroad with Diana or Herodias. This may read in the Canon. Yet because such things often happen by illusion are merely in the imagination, those who suppose that all the effects of witchcraft are mere illusion and imagination are very greatly deceived.
[…]
Accordingly, how can it be that the denial or frivolous contradiction of any of these propositions can be free from the mark of some notable heresy? Let every man judge for himself unless indeed his ignorance excuse him. But what sort of ignorance may excuse him we shall very shortly proceed to explain.
[…]
Here it must be noticed that there are fourteen distinct species which come under the genus superstition, but these for the sake of brevity it is hardly necessary to detail, since they have been most clearly set out by S. Isidore in his Etymologiae, Book 8, and by S. Thomas in his Second of the Second, question 92. Moreover, there will be explicit mention of these rather lower when we discuss the gravity of this heresy, and this will be in the last question of our First Part.
[…]
The questions arises whether people who hold that witches do not exist are to be regarded as notorious heretics, or whether they are to be regarded as gravely suspect of holding heretical opinions. It seems that the first opinion is the correct one. For this is undoubtedly in accordance with the opinion of the learned Bernard.
[…]
And yet there are some who rashly opposing themselves to all authority publicly proclaim that witches do not exist, or at any rate that they can in no way afflict and hurt mankind. Wherefore, strictly speaking those who are convicted of such evil doctrine may be excommunicated, since they are openly and unmistakably to be convicted of false doctrine. The reader may consult the works of Bernard, where he will find that this sentence is just, right, and true. Yet perhaps this may seem to be altogether too severe a judgement mainly because of the penalties which follow upon excommunication: for the Canon prescribes that a cleric is to be degraded and that a layman is to be handed over to the power of the secular courts, who are admonished to punish him as his offence deserves. Moreover, we must take into consideration the very great numbers of persons who, owing to their ignorance, will surely be found guilty of this error. And since the error is very common the rigor of strict justice may be tempered with mercy.
[…]
and there are some who, owing to the fact that they are badly informed and insufficiently read, waver in their opinions and cannot make up their minds, and since an idea merely kept to oneself is not heresy unless it be afterwards put forward, obstinately and openly maintained, it should certainly be said that persons such as we have just mentioned are not to be openly condemned for the crime of heresy. But let no man think he may escape by pleading ignorance. […] It is true that according to Raymond of Sabunde
and S. Thomas, those who have the cure of souls are certainly not bound to be men of any extraordinary learning, but they certainly should have a competent knowledge, that is to say, knowledge sufficient to carry out the duties of their state.
[…]
For sometimes persons do not know, they do not wish to know, and they have no intention of knowing. For such persons there is no excuse, but they are to be altogether condemned.
Lucy Skywalker says:
August 14, 2010 at 5:14 am
I have the impression that Monckton
here dealsspecificallywith[presents] theexactmaths, science, [“]IPCC[“], and quotation issues behind the commonest detractors’ [–]comments along the line of“Monckton has been falsified by xxxxxxxxxx” [group].This post therefore
looks like[is] a good resourceto refer such[for] detractorsto. And[,] to remind other [“]Monckton-has-bad-evidence-asserters[“] of thelikelihood[fact] that their assertionscan also be answered – indeed, the likelihood that theyhave already been answeredsomewhereby Monckton.I agree — ; )
In response to Brad Beeson, the central and simple point I make is that the trend in CO2 concentration remains a long way short of the least trend projected by the IPCC on its A2 emissions scenario, which comes close to today’s emissions.
Furthermore, if one takes cumulative CO2 concentration determined by reference to emissions of CO2 from fossil-fuel burning and subtracts total observed CO2 concentration net of the natural concentration, decade by decade since 1960, there is a growing difference between the two, suggesting that an increasing proportion of anthropogenic CO2 is indeed being sequestered both in the biosphere (indicated by satellite data showing rapidly-improving net primary productivity) and in the oceans (where, however, measurements are insufficiently numerous or precise to tell us whether there has been any appreciable global dealkalinization).
It is possible, therefore, that the correct model for future CO2 concentrations, even if they continue at or even above their present gross 4 ppmv/year or net 2 ppmv/year, is exponential decay. If so, one might expect atmospheric CO2 concentration to saturate eventually, and – on one calculation I have seen and am seeking to verify – peaking, on current trends, just 90 ppmv above today’s concentration.
To establish this intriguing case definitively, a great deal of data gathering and analysis will have to be done, and I have asked the distinguished correspondent who has sent the calculation to me to assist in this process. He wrote to me because, in my reply to you demonstrating the decay from exponentiality over the past couple of decades, he saw a glimmer of empirical evidence for the hypothesis he had already formulated. As I said in a previous note, my calculations have not yet taken account of the growing discrepancy between exponentially-increasing emissions and (recently, at any rate) exponentially-decaying atmospheric concentrations. This is something which, in the light of what my correspondent has kindly sent, will need to be addressed.
It may also be appropriate to apply the exponential-decay model, rather than the current logarithmic model, to determination of the CO2 radiative forcing itself. The logarithmic model suffers from the obvious defect that every doubling of CO2 concentration, even ad infinitum, leads to a further equal quantum of warming, when in practice there comes a point when the principal absorption bands of CO2 are saturated, and little or no further warming can occur. Indeed, in the lower troposphere there are indications that the absorption bands of CO2 are already close to saturation; and in the upper troposphere, where the continuing failure of measurements to identify the tripling of the tropical surface warming rate that the models predict, it is possible that subsidence drying – additional water vapor simply subsiding to lower altitudes where its own absorption bands are already saturated – may greatly reduce the water-vapor feedback, even if some CO2-driven warming were to occur at altitude.
In short, the model used by the IPCC tends to exaggerate the radiative forcing from any given proportionate increase in CO2 concentration.
One point I should perhaps have made clearer is that I am not attempting to push the numbers in any particular direction: merely to come to an informed opinion on whether and to what extent the anthropogenic increases in CO2 concentration are likely to cause dangerous warming. It is a long process of enquiry, because – frankly – the data are generally inadequate, the methods of analysis crude and (as with the models that take insufficient account of the Lorenz constraint) over-ambitious, and, regrettably, scientists on both sides of the case seem unduly anxious to impart an angular momentum to the facts, making it far more difficult than it usually is to discover the unspun truth. But it interests me to keep looking.
“One point I should perhaps have made clearer is that I am not attempting to push the numbers in any particular direction: merely to come to an informed opinion on whether and to what extent the anthropogenic increases in CO2 concentration are likely to cause dangerous warming.”
=====
The point, at CO2 levels far higher then we are able to accomplish by burning everything to the ground for the next century, it will not create a tipping point.
Beyond this, we have yet to develop a “Global Awareness” of the opportunities.
Re: Richard S Courtney: August 16, 2010 at 2:09 am
From your previous posts on this thread, it seems you even doubt that the observed rise in CO2 is manmade, despite the isotope signature that proves this new carbon is of the fossil fuel kind. Does this evidence still make it an “argument from ignorance” that CO2 increases are manmade? To gauge what you take as a starting point for “assertion”, I would also ask whether you believe at all in Pielke Sr.’s, post here linking CO2 to warming. If you doubt that, are you also taking theirs as an “argument from ignorance.”? Or is the “ignorance” just the exact value of the feedback factor, even if observations suggest one? It is obviously hard to debate when there is absolutely no common ground for assertion, which seems to be the problem here.
Jim D.August 16, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Read my presentation http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf for a different interpretation of the isotope depletion data. The oceans and forests are a much greater source of organic carbon than anthropogenic emissions and they change naturally as evidenced by the annual cycle.
Re: Fred H. Haynie: August 16, 2010 at 6:46 pm
I come to WUWT to read these interesting contrarian views, and this is one for sure. Basically it says that warming of the Arctic Ocean reduces the CO2 sink, and is responsible for the current rise in CO2, if I get the gist right. It begs the question as to what caused the Arctic to start rising in temperature, and can quite small local sea-surface temperature changes drive global CO2 so quickly?
I prefer the view that 280 ppm represented a long-term equilibrium between land/ocean/atmosphere reservoirs. In the last century, emissions have put out something like enough to double the CO2 in the atmosphere, and the equilibrium can’t be restored that quickly because the surface ocean is replaced by deeper water slowly, clouds and rain can extract CO2 only inefficiently, and vegetation can grow only so quickly. So, we now have 390 ppm, which is said to be more than has been in the atmosphere for 15 million years, and this would be a very unnatural variation to have taken place spontaneously, and coincidentally when we started burning fossil fuels. We can agree that equilibrium exchanges between the reservoirs are large compared to emissions, but changing the actual equilibrium level is not so easy, in my view.
How many years were there between 1 BC and 1 AD?
[Snip. O/T.]
Jim D:
Your post at August 16, 2010 at 6:18 pm asks a series of questions that are not pertinent in any way to what I have written on this thread. This is yet another use by you of a logical fallacy (in this, case ‘straw man’).
Three logical fallacies from you and still counting.
Richard
Jim D
August 16, 2010 at 10:06 pm
The idea that the earth is somehow in dynamic equilibrium and that anthropogenic emissions disturb that equilibrium is at the heart of CAGW modelling. It is a bad assumption. The ice core data tells us the earth has allways been in a state of change that goes in cycles. The observable wave lengths of these cycles ranges from 24 hours to millions of years associated with plate techtonics. In between we have such things as el-Nino and other oceanic temperature cycles and seasonal changes that are not in any way associated with anthropogenic emissions. The 280 ppmv “equiblibrium” value that you prefer comes from measurements of trapped air bubbles in ice cores and that is only for the last 10,000 years. The accuracy of both estimated time and magnitude is poor and does not agree with more accurate chemical measurements for the same time periods of the 19th and 20th century.
My Dear Lord Monckton,
Thank you for your response.
To be brief, your “central and simple point” about the CO2 trend is based on a simple mathematical error. You have conflated the IPCC’s projection of a continued exponential increase in CO2 emissions with an exponential increase in total atmospheric CO2 concentration. These two are not equivalent… let me explain:
The existing atmospheric CO2 concentration consists of a pre-industrial equlibrium of about 270-280 ppm. On top of that, anthropogenic emissions have added, at an exponentially increasing rate, an additional component, totalling about 120-130 ppm to date. But your calculation method requires both components to increase at an exponential rate, which is not an accurate physical representation of what is happening, and not what the IPCC has projected.
In other words, the human contribution has grown exponentially, with a doubling time of about 30-40 years (in line with the growth of the fossil-fuel-based world economy), but it is unphysical to expect the pre-existing equilbrium CO2 reservoir to also grow exponentially. The IPCC, in their A2 scenario, projects human emissions will continue doubling at about the same rate, and the human component of atmospheric CO2 will continue to double at its current rate (after about 50% is absorbed by natural sinks, as in the past) for the next 20-30 years, but they do not project that the 275 ppm baseline amount will grow at all.
Your projection, on the other hand … “368*e^(10/100) ln(836/368) = 399.5 ppmv in 2010”… is not the correct mathematical formula to represent this scenario. Instead, you should break up the two components of CO2 into two seperate terms. One that is constant, representing the pre-industrial equilibrium, and a second that grows exponentially… the human contribution. Something like this:
CO2 = 275 + 2^((year-1780)/33.5)
As a result of your incorrect math, fitting an exponential curve to total CO2 concentration gives you the wrong answer, and explains why your estimate of the IPCC scenario A2 differs from theirs, as you demonstrate here in your OP:
“Secondly, the exponential curve most closely fitting the NOAA data would be barely supra-linear, reaching just 614 ppmv by 2100… ”
and here:
“However, given the IPCC’s projection that CO2 concentration will grow exponentially from 368 ppmv in 2000 towards 836 ppmv by 2100, CO2 should have been 368e(10/100) ln(836/368) = 399.5 ppmv in 2010”
If, instead, you had modeled the constant equilibrium CO2 term and the exponentially growing human term seperately, you would have found a very close match between A2 projected and 2010 actual CO2 concentration -> 389ppm.
Another corroborating point… extrapolating backwards using your method, past CO2 levels are not accurately modelled (as pointed out by Jim D on August 14). But the corrected formula above is valid throughout the historical CO2 record back to pre-industrial levels. This is true even if you use only the last 10 or 12 years of NOAA data, as you did in a later comment, so even the most recent data points support this method, and do not show any deviation from the exponential trend of the human contribution to CO2.
Fortunately, you have presented your findings here, where you can benefit from a rigorous evaluation of your methods and data to correct little problems like this. I am sure the other contributors here would have pointed out this mistake soon, but I am happy to be of service, and to be the first to help you refine the math in this article.
Sincerely, and at your service,
Brad
Though Monckton concludes:
“We report. You decide.”,
what he presents invites another outcome :
He distorts. We deride
You are completely right about the linear trend. If yuou look at the entire Mauna Loa curve from its inception in 1958 that is the only conclusion you can come to. A trend that has been linear that long is simply not going to take off exponentially because Y2K has arrived. But I strongly advise you to check out my book that analyzes the UAH and RSS satellite temperature records. It is illegitimate to draw a single straight line through that record as you do and ascribe a trend to it. The time period of the eighties and the nineties is distinct from what follows and was characterized by temperature oscillations that followed the ENSO system in the Pacific. The average temperature about which these oscillations swing did not change for twenty years and should be shown as a horizontal straight line. The super El Nino of 1998 did not belong to ENSO and brought a huge load of warm water from the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool to South American shores. In four years the global average temperature rose by 0.3 degrees and then stabilized for the next six. Show that as another horizontal line, discontinuous from the eighties and nineties. If you extend it to 2010 it very nearly bisects the difference between the 2008 La Nina and the 2010 El Nino. There is no warming in our future, just temperature oscillations like in the eighties and nineties. The abrupt temperature rise from 1998 to 2002 was not carboniferous but had an oceanic origin. It is the only warming within the last thirty years and is responsible for the first decade of this century being the warmest on record. If you consider that 0.3 degrees is half of the warming attributed to the entire twentieth century by IPCC this should not be too surprising.
duckster @ August 14, 2010 at 7:34 am
RW @ August 14, 2010 at 8:03 am
eddieo @ August 14, 2010 at 12:13 pm
You guys need to plot the data under “Annual Mean Growth Rate for Mauna Loa, Hawaii” at the link you cite, which Henry Galt @ August 14, 2010 at 12:39 pm helpfully reproduces. The leveling off of the rate of rise in the past decade is immediate and obvious.
Brad Beeson @ August 14, 2010 at 8:54 am
Jim D @ August 14, 2010 at 9:28 am
R. Gates @ August 14, 2010 at 9:41 am
Bill Illis @ August 14, 2010 at 10:40 am
Icarus @ August 14, 2010 at 12:41 pm
orkneygal@ August 14, 2010 at 4:42 pm
You guys need to do the same thing.
Richard S Courtney
Obviously, I am not getting anywhere with my last three posts to you. Lets go back to your original statement (at 3:20pm 15th) that an explanation is “dangerous” in some way. Surely explanations mark progress, and only cease to be useful when they are proved wrong, which AGW hasn’t. It is surviving the tests, much in the way other scientific theories do. Satellite data all but proves the CO2 effect with the fingerprint of a cooling stratosphere that other “explanations” fall apart on. So to me, it remains very certainly an explanation.
Re:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/14/monckton-why-current-trends-are-not-alarming/#comment-459403
You are making assumptions about the existence of cycles that themselves are not explainable by any natural means. If you can explain exactly what causes a 308-year cycle, that would help your theory, but I suspect it is a quirk of statistics, and any series can be broken into a few component cycles, which can only be useful if they are seen to repeat several times having predictive value. You expect SST to start dropping soon, so let’s see how that holds up.
Re: Bart
It is noticeable, and not fully explained, that CO2 increases more quickly in globally warm years (especially warm SST years, a thread here called “The Trend” was interesting). Now that warming has resumed after the lull of the 2000’s, I fully expect CO2 to resume in the same way. The warming itself is already back on the pace it has had since 1979.
Bart,
How is this “leveling off of the rate of rise” different from the previous times it levelled off at solar minimums?
(1965, 1976, 1987, 1997, 2008)
Another way to look at the data is to find the cumulative change by decade:
1960’s = 8.5 ppm
1970’s = 12.8 ppm
1980’s = 15.7 ppm
1990’s = 15.3 ppm
2000’s = 19.4 ppm
The recent decade had the largest increase. The “rate of rise” is not always constant, and sometimes has reversed, even for a decade at a time. If you look at the monthly data, the dips at the solar minimums are quite obvious also.
What do you think was responsible for the increasing rate of rise in all those previous decades, and what do you think will be different this time?
Sincerely, Brad
Russell Seitz says:
“Though Monckton concludes: ‘We report. You decide'”…
…Michael Mann tells his media pals: “We decide. You report.”
And they do what they’re told.
Jim D says:
“You are making assumptions about the existence of cycles that themselves are not explainable by any natural means.”
Classic Argumentum ad Ignorantium: ‘Since I can’t explain cycles by any natural means, the only possible answer is that humans are at fault.’
See, Jim, that is a logical fallacy. Maybe this chart by Willis Eschenbach will show you what’s wrong with using that particular fallacy: click
You may be entirely correct in believing that human emissions cause a change in cycles. But you could just as easily be wrong.
And even if you turn out to be correct, the next question is: Is more CO2 harmful or beneficial on balance?
If you believe it is harmful, please point out exactly how the recent 40% increase in CO2 has harmed anyone. OTOH, we know that more CO2 is beneficial:
click1
click2
click3
click4
click5
That more CO2 is beneficial is beyond question. But there is no evidence of any harm. Is there?
Brad Beesen:
Good call, Brad. That indeed seems to be the error in Monckton’s CO2 calculation. I just tried redoing the calculation but used the corrected formula and assumed that the background value of CO2 is 280ppm. Then the expression for the expected CO2 concentration in 2010 reads
([CO2] in 2010) = 280 + (368-280)*exp[ (10/100)*ln([836-280]/[368-280]) ] ,
which gives a value of 386 ppm for 2010, so in fact the rise in CO2 levels that we have seen is a bit above what is expected for the A2 scenario if we assume that the amount above the 280ppm background is increasing exponentially to a total concentration of 836ppm in 2100 and that this total concentration had the value of 368ppm in 2000. Of course, this is more in line with what I have seen in the peer-reviewed literature…i.e., that CO2 concentrations are, running at expectations if not a little higher (e.g., http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Nature/rahmstorf_etal_science_2007.pdf ).
By the way, if one does the same calculation but starts instead in 1990 with the level of 354 ppm (from ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_gl.txt ) then one gets a predicted level of 387 ppm for 2010.
I look forward to seeing Lord Monckton correct this error.
Finally, I will add that I have just used Brad Beeson’s correct exponential formula (with 280ppm as the pre-industrial baseline) to test what the predicted CO2 concentrations would be in 2010 if it were headed to a value of 614ppm in 2100 (as Monckton suggests is a better forecast), rather than 836ppm. What I find is that given the 1990 value of 354ppm, the expected value in 2010 would be 377ppm. If you instead use the 2000 value of 368ppm in the formula then the expected value in 2010 would be 381ppm. Clearly, using Monckton’s expectation for the value in 2100, the correct exponential formula is underpredicting the actual 2010 CO2 concentration. And, the underprediction is getting worse as you try to predict the 2010 concentration over a longer time period (i.e., 20 years vs. 10 years).
By the way, in case someone wants to quibble with the assumed value of 280ppm for the pre-industrial baseline, I will note that the forecasts are only weakly dependent on this. For example, using a baseline of 260ppm instead of 280ppm only changes the two values I give above for 2010 prediction (based on the value in 2000) by +1.1ppm. And, 260ppm is lower than anything I have ever seen suggested before for the pre-industrial baseline.
It looks like Lord Monckton has some serious corrections to make to what he has been posting here and elsewhere.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
The best estimates of added CO2 also include those from cement production and estimated land use changes. However, independent of that issue, if I understand what you say you are doing here by your statement “if one takes cumulative CO2 concentration determined by reference to emissions of CO2 from fossil-fuel burning and subtracts total observed CO2 concentration net of the natural concentration, decade by decade since 1960, there is a growing difference between the two” then the growing difference is not an indication that “an increasing proportion of anthropogenic CO2 is indeed being sequestered both in the biosphere…and in the oceans”. In fact, one would expect that difference to grow even if the fraction of emitted CO2 that gets sequestered were to remain unchanged.
For example, let’s say that 40% our emissions get sequestered and this doesn’t change with time. Then once the equivalent of 100ppm has been emitted, we would be 60ppm above the pre-industrial baseline, for a difference of 40ppm (the amount sequestered). However, once the equivalent of 200ppm has been emitted, we would be 120ppm above the pre-industrial baseline, for a difference of 80ppm (the amount sequestered). This would be a growing difference, just like you mentioned, but it would not be an indication that “an increasing proportion of anthropogenic CO2 is indeed being sequestered”.
Perhaps you meant something different from what I believe that you said…But, it certainly does not seem to mean that the calculation that you describe shows what you think it shows.
Your analysis would also seem to contradict a recent paper reported here at WUWT that showed that the fraction of our emissions that gets sequestered has remained about constant in time. Of course, that paper was touted as a big deal here since there is some belief that eventually some of the sinks will saturate and the fraction sequestered will DECREASE (a positive feedback in the carbon cycle). And, indeed, while it is good news if their analysis is correct and there really is no evidence of saturation yet, I don’t know of any compelling evidence that has been presented that shows that the fraction sequestered is actually INCREASING.
Brad and Joel,
I couldn’t help playing with the numbers. The rates averaged over the last three decades very closely give an exponential with a doubling time of 33.3 years, i.e. eightfold in a century, meaning starting with 370 in 2000 (90+280) gives exactly 1000 in 2100 (=720+280). Food for thought.
Thank you Joel, for your more mathematical and thoroughly clear explaination of my point.
I would also point out that the IPCC did not project an exponential increase in emissions all the way out to 2100. They seem to be limiting the growth rate after about 2040 based on peak oil, and substitution of non-fossil energy sources. So a simple exponential extrapolation using their 2100 end-point will not exactly match their decade-by-decade calculation of CO2 sources and sinks.
http://www.ipcc-data.org/ancilliary/tar-isam.txt
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/emission/data/allscen.xls
In the A2 scenario, the population in 2100 is projected to be 15 billion, and coal use about 10 times current levels. Wow.
RE:Brad Beeson: (August 14, 2010 at 8:54 am) “Similarly, I calculated the linear trend observed at the end of each decade based on Mauna Loa data (subtracting data points 10 years apart, multiplying by 10 to arrive at the century rate of change) :”
“1960-1970 = 85 ppmv/century
“1970-1080 = 128 ppmv/century
“1980-1990 = 157 ppmv/century
“1990-2000 = 153 ppmv/century
“2000-2010 = 193 ppmv/century”
I have found that it is possible to represent the seasonally corrected Mauna Loa CO2 concentration data with relatively high accuracy (0.535 ppm RMS error, 1.77 ppm max) with an optimized, three-segment poly-line approximation. This was optimized using the Microsoft Excel Solver utility and using the Match() and Offset to select and access the applicable segment parameters for every decimal date from the source data.
The two internal break points were automatically selected for least error. The accuracy of this curve is slightly better than I achieved earlier using:
X=decimal_date – 1941.106
CO2=126.146 + 2.721347*SQRT(4516+X^2)
Poly-line approximations work best in cases where the data seems to show a series of stepped slope changes. In this case it seems strange that the CO2 slope went up at the time of the OPEC Oil Embargo.
In contrast to the curves above, my simple single-line linear fit has an average error of 2.59 ppm RMS and 6.65 ppm max
CO2 is increasing at 1.97 ppm per year and that rate is accelerating at 0.00176 ppm per year. So, in 2011, it will increase at 1.97176 ppm. Each 6 years, we add another 0.01 ppm to the growth rate.
One has to take a little longer timeframe in mind because the growth rate does fluctuate around these values quite a bit. It increases slightly faster in warmer years and slightly slower in cooler years. One could look at the last 10 years (perhaps because of the cooling trend) and see the exponential trend slowing somewhat but the numbers are close enough to the historical values that it is too early to make that call.
With the June, 2010 value and the historical trends, we will reach 650 ppm by 2100.
Of course, lots of things can happen in the next 90 years to emissions, to the ocean and plant absorption rate (resulting in the 50% airborne fraction), and to the supply of oil and coal, to the population and to technology.
What could also happen is that the IPCC will recognize their errors soon and rewrite the temperature response per CO2 ppm which is off 50% to date. Perhaps people could comment on that far more important issue rather than the IPCC’s CO2 projections which have a range of 500 ppm by 2100 (in other words, its the side of a barn).
I have posted a response to Monckton’s article here:
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/the-monckton-files-a-bold-monckton-prediction/
Brad Beeson says:
August 17, 2010 at 5:58 pm
“How is this “leveling off of the rate of rise” different from the previous times it levelled off at solar minimums? (1965, 1976, 1987, 1997, 2008)”
Gosh, you’d think maybe there was a connection between solar activity or something that is great enough to overwhelm any anthropogenic input. Nah, couldn’t be!
How is it different? I don’t see your point at all about 1965 and 1976 – you seem to be grasping at phantoms of noise. Try filtering the series. From 1987 or so onward, the rate has continually decelerated, in much the same way it would at the top of a sinusoidal curve. This becomes even more starkly apparent if you remove the outlier year of 1992.
To Brad Beeson and Joel Shore:
To get his temperature response projections, Monckton was feeding in false numbers for CO2 concentration that were supposed to represent the A2 scenario. See here:
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/the-monckton-files-a-bold-monckton-prediction/
But the fact is that the IPCC publishes a table with the central estimate for CO2 concentration every decade. All he had to do was look up the numbers for 2000 (369 ppm) and 2010 (390 ppm) right here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/531.htm
Thus, 4.7 * ln(390/369) = 0.26 °C, and multiplying that by 0.8 you get 0.21 °C. That’s very close to what you guys said, but nobody can dispute that the numbers I quoted for the CO2 concentration are exactly what the A2 scenario projects.
I guess the moral of the story is that Monckton’s guesstimates might be in the ballpark if he didn’t insist on feeding in fake numbers. Of course, he could have just used the IPCC’s own graphs that say what the transient temperature response under the A2 scenario is supposed to be. (But that would mean admitting that the IPCC’s projections are right in the ballpark, and hence, defeat the purpose.)
Barry,
Interesting! So, the take-home message is that Monckton’s calculations, when actually done using correct numbers, support rather than undercut the IPCC’s projections! Maybe this thread should be retitled, “Monckton: Why Current Trends are Very Much in Line with What the IPCC Projects”. I guess it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it though, does it?!?
Smokey says:August 17, 2010 at 6:08 pm
“That more CO2 is beneficial is beyond question. But there is no evidence of any harm. Is there?”
Depends – how do you feel about a high starch, low protein diet?
http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?seq_no_115=155952, Responses of Wheat Varieties Released since 1903 to Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
“…newer varieties did not show a stronger carbon dioxide response when growth and yield were compared at a common CO2 concentration of 290 and 370 ppm.”
“In addition, the newer varieties showed a strong decrease in protein content and baking quality…”
We could eat less bread(not enough gluten) and and drink more beer(plenty of fermentable starch). Sounds harmless to me!
Joel Shore says:
August 18, 2010 at 7:24 pm
‘Maybe this thread should be retitled, “Monckton: Why Current Trends are Very Much in Line with What the IPCC Projects”. ‘
I’m not really paying attention to this because, well, I really don’t care. It’s pretty clear that CO2 is decelerating markedly and it is only a matter of time before it starts decreasing.
But, you two guys sure do seem about to wet your pants over the idea that a fit to a trend tends to have predictive value. It really doesn’t say anything about the underlying hypothesis of what caused the trend, you know.
I guess if the IPCC is projecting “No Warming”, then their projections are meeting the current trends.
The problem here is we are dealing with Math which is a logical, calculation MO. Some of the warmist posters think in emotive terms and hence 0.0C per decade or 0.1C per decade “feels” like 0.28C per decade to them.
Calculate for yourself, how much temperatures have to increase each decade to reach +3.25C in 2100 under A1B. Do the same calculation for the +3.8C under A2. Hint no. 1 : it is 9.05 decades until the year 2100. Hint no. 2 : the temperature has increased 0.7C to date. Show your work.
Re: Bill Illis
It is quite easy to get 3.8 C by 2100 with 836 ppm (A2 number), and a feedback factor of 3.0 typical of IPCC estimates.
Take the increase from 2010
836/390=2.14
ln(2.14)/ln(2)=1.10
CO2-induced warming per doubling =0.94 C
1.1*0.94=1.03 C
Feedback factor 3.0 gives 3.1
Add the current 0.7 gives 3.8
(Myself I would put the feedback factor at 2.7 to match current rates, but that is one way to get the number you showed).
[EDIT: Except the “current” warming isn’t 0.7 and the feedback factor is significantly less than 2.7 (since current warming isn’t anywhere near 0.7, more like half that), so lets try that again… – mike]
Dear Bill Illis,
Here is something that Lord Monckton has never grasped, and you don’t seem to have, either.
Climate models are good at predicting multi-decadal trends, not trends over only a few years. However, the climate models the IPCC uses DO PREDICT that there will be periods of a few years or a decade where there will be no warming, or even some cooling. Look at the IPCC graph at the following URL (the one in the upper left-hand corner is for the A2 scenario, which is what Monckton is supposedly referencing. Look at the individual lines, which are mostly individual model runs.)
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-5.html
So apparently you (and Monckton) are quite willing to pontificate about what the IPCC does and doesn’t predict, even though you haven’t really bothered to read up on what the IPCC says about it.
Likewise, Monckton here has not successfully responded to the charge that he likes to blame the IPCC for predictions about CO2 and temperature that the IPCC didn’t actually make.
mike: I went with the 0.7 from the Bill Illis post. He can defend it. It might be 0.6 in my view. What is the baseline? Feedback factor: using Monckton’s own 1.4 C/century
for 199 ppm/century gives 2.5. This is based on current trends, as is my estimate of 2.7.
4.7 ln (2) is 3.25 C for a doubling as Monckton attributes to IPCC, so I am using numbers that are within the bounds discussed already.
[EDIT: Firstly, using GISS or HADCRUT records is a waste of time since we know they are badly flawed due to UHI siting and homogenization issues, as well as the temporal manipulations that the Hockey Team has imposed upon them. Current UAH Global Anomaly is 0.49 C and trend is 0.14C/decade (where Monckton gets 1.4C/century). You would need to subtract PDO/ENSO/NAO/etc noise from current anomaly AND trend before making long term calculations. – mike]
Oh, Jim D, now you are in my sandbox and won’t win with that kind of smoke and mirrors which doesn’t phase me.
First, the feedback is 2 not 3.
Second, the feedback is not happening to date.
Third, +3.0C warming per doubling of CO2 is = 3/ln(2)*ln(CO2 560/CO2 280)
Fourth, if you want to take the IPCC’s 30 year ocean lag into account, one can change the formula to: = 2.4/ln(2)*ln(CO2 end/Co2 orig) = 2.4/ln(2)*ln(856/280) = +3.8C [under the understanding that it will eventually reach 4.32*ln(856/280)= +4.8C
Fifth, so let’s calculate the 2000 to 2010 temperature increase under A2 = 0.19C; How about 2010 to 2020 = 0.23C; how about 2060 to 2070 = 0.31C; how about 2090 to 2100 0.36C.
Now one should also understand that the A2 CO2 concentration level starts out slow and accelerates more towards the end which is not consistent with actual expectations.
Now how much have temperatures increased from 2000 to 2010; ZERO once you take out the impact of the ENSO cycles.
Barry Bickmore says:
August 18, 2010 at 9:39 pm
Are we really supposed to accept a few outlying model runs that have no temperature increase over a decade as representative of the IPCC’s position?
Some random downturns in a few model runs are now the consensus predictions?
Sorry, that is not reality. 1 out of 100 model runs have a random downturn and that is supposed to validate the models (which on average increase by 0.24C over a decade).
Secondly, one would have to show that some temperature-driving-forcing is not active for a full decade and in the current 2000-2010 decade there is NO negative forcing – there is only positive forcings in the models. In fact, every climate model should be predicting an increase now (since the Aerosols negative forcing should have declined by close to 50% in the last decade).
If “No Warming’ over the last decade is the IPCC prediction, then they should have said so beforehand. Instead, they said something like 0.2C per decade (when it is really 0.24C per decade).
Bart says:
Really? Do you want to make some sort of bet on that?
Interesting. People here weren’t saying that when they thought Monckton was correct. Now that we know that Monckton’s post here is all wrong, all of a sudden it is not important anyway.
Bill Illis:
You seem to be very confused about how systems with underlying trends + noise behave. While it may be true that a minority of the models (although certainly more than 1 in 100) show a negative trend over any particular decade, most if not all of them show that there will occasionally be decades when the trend is negative even when the forcings are increasing. Of course, if one is allowed to cherrypick the starting point (and increasingly the ending point, now that current temperatures are quite high) then it is that much easier to find such periods!
This really isn’t that complicated. As I have noted before, it is not at all unusual here in Rochester to have week or longer periods in the spring when the temperature trend is negative despite the fact that the seasonal cycle (which is very strong here in Rochester) predicts the trend should be strongly positive. The fact that your basic argument could be used to disprove the existence of the seasonal cycle ought to give you pause.
Bill, you aren’t getting it. The point is that climate models are not yet good at predicting WHEN you’ll get downturns, but they do predict that you WILL get them, from time to time. Different models produce different results in terms of WHEN those downturns will be, so the IPCC usually just gives “ensemble averages” as its projections. So like it or not, a decade of temperature data doesn’t say much about the reliability of the models, one way or the other. You have to look at at least a couple decades for it to be significant. (Just try calculating the significance of a trend in the global temperature data over the last decade. It is not significant at the usual 95% confidence level.)
Barry Bickmore says:
¨Bill, you aren’t getting it. The point is that climate models are not yet good at predicting WHEN you’ll get downturns, but they do predict that you WILL get them, from time to time. Different models produce different results in terms of WHEN those downturns will be, so the IPCC usually just gives “ensemble averages” as its projections. So like it or not, a decade of temperature data doesn’t say much about the reliability of the models, one way or the other. ¨
That sounds comical to me. Different models may predict downturns at different times, of different or unspecified magnitudes and durations, and therefore the ¨ensemble average¨ consists in predicting that unspecified downturns will occur ¨from time to time¨ or anytime. What kind of a prediction is that, where every outcome is predicted? Reminds me of that weather bureau that predicted a 50% probability of a warmer or colder winter. Or wetter or drier.
It´s just like that old song: ¨Che sera, sera, what will be, will be.¨ I agree with how the song assesses the future. Doris Day had the ¨ensemble average¨ technique pat down.
RE: Bart: (August 18, 2010 at 8:55 pm) “It’s pretty clear that CO2 is decelerating markedly and it is only a matter of time before it starts decreasing.”
As far as I can tell, the Mauna Loa CO2 data may indicate a decreasing rate of acceleration, much like an automobile that is accelerating up to its maximum self-limiting velocity, but I see no evidence of a slow-down. Of course, an Iran-Israeli nuclear war could make all these predictions pointless.
Joel Shore says:
August 19, 2010 at 5:59 am
“Really? Do you want to make some sort of bet on that?”
Sure. I bet you our respective credibilities. It is a dear bet. I consider mine more valuable than gold.
“Interesting. People here weren’t saying that when they thought Monckton was correct. Now that we know that Monckton’s post here is all wrong, all of a sudden it is not important anyway.”
Don’t conflate ME with everyone here. I haven’t even looked at your argument, and am conceding nothing. Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. I just don’t care because the question is moot, and not as significant as you seem to think it is.
Francisco,
Every outcome (in terms of upward, downward, or flat) is NOT predicted… over sufficiently long times. So if, for instance you picked a 20 or 30-year time period, all the models would have predicted that the global mean temperature would have gone up, but the amounts would be different. That’s why they plot error bars.
If you insist on looking at a single year of data, or 3, or 5, or 10 (like Monckton consistently does) you can get almost any trend you like, whether we’re talking about real temperature data, or model output.
Am I revealing some big secret that the climate modelers don’t want anyone to know? I think not. You can find the same kinds of statements on the Wikipedia page for “Global Climate Model”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOGCM
People who do numerical modeling know that models are always oversimplified, and so can’t predict everything. But they can be good at predicting SOME things, so if you want to challenge a model, you compare it to what its creators CLAIM it’s good for.
When Monckton insists on constantly comparing temperature data from only a few years to model predictions, he’s being dishonest. It makes it worse that he doesn’t accurately reproduce what the model predictions are.
Bart,
The last few years (until this year) have had flat or even cooling temperature trends. The hotter it gets, the less able the ocean is to take up CO2 (that’s basic geochemistry). Put those two facts together, and it is clear why CO2 buildup might be slowing down a little, lately.
But for climate models, data over just a few years might as well be random noise. If you take longer time periods, say 10-year trends in the data, for instance, you find that the rate of CO2 buildup has been increasing! See this commentary on Monckton’s CO2 claims:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/mo-better-monckey-business/
You people need to get it through your heads. Unless you are talking about setting a new record, or something, a few years of data don’t mean ANYTHING in terms of “climate”.
Bart says:
Okay…although your prediction is sort of vague, which is why I thought a monetary bet might pin it down. (Also, you’re semi-anonymous here, which sort of limits the impact to your credibility.)
What sort of behavior of CO2 levels over, say, the next 5 years would cause you to rethink your views on the cause of rising CO2 levels…Or, do you think that that is just too short a period to verify either way?
Well, it is not so much that I think it is significant. However, I do think it is significant for the set of people who take what Monckton says as having any correlation whatsoever with reality. If you are not one of those people, then this whole thread is pretty much moot.
Francisco:
Just to amplify what Barry Bickmore says, modeling of weather and climate has two components that one can distinguish, aspects that are chaotic (extremely sensitive to initial conditions) and aspects that are not. The chaotic components are very difficult to predict because of this sensitivity (because initial conditions are never known exactly): If you take a climate model and perturb the initial conditions a little bit, you will get a different pattern of wiggles in the global temperature. Similar behavior limits the predictability of the weather…and, in fact, for weather forecasting, particularly over the medium range of 6 – 14 days, meteorology now relies on running the forecast models with a whole ensemble of different initial conditions. The results can help to show how reliable or unreliable various aspects of the forecast are.
Climate models are also run with ensembles of different initial conditions and, although the different initial conditions show a different pattern of wiggles, the overall trend in response to a forcing (such as a steady increase in greenhouse gases) is about the same for all of them when one looks over a long enough period that the response is dominated by that trend and not just the wiggles up and down.
The distinction is often made between modeling weather and modeling climate, although as we tend to use those two words, it is not really a very good place to draw the line. For example, a forecast about whether this fall will be hotter or colder than average for some location is often termed a “climate forecast” but can in fact be quite sensitive to initial conditions.
However, a forecast for the change in the climate with a forcing such as increasing greenhouse gases…or a forecast of a change in the average temperature between winter and summer at a certain location with a reasonably strong seasonal cycle…is an example of something that (while not necessarily easy) does not seem to be very sensitive to the initial conditions.
I’m going to show you a few examples of how a climate model is actually constructed and then we will compare the current temperature trends to the projections. This should help bring you out of the spinned explanations of 10 year downturns that you have been subjected to by the spinners.
I’m going to pick on GISS partly because they produce world-class climate models and partly because they actually made the data available (hats off to them on that).
First, the two main components of the 2004 version of GISS Model E – the GHG forcing temperature impact and the non-GHG forcing temperature impact (I can show all the individual components separately if someone wants).
http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/6131/modeleghgvsotherbc9.png
Some small randomness but it follows the script to the letter that “forcings” drive the climate models, not the random butterfly initial condition fluctations.
The big negatives offsetting the big positive CO2/GHG impact are volcanoes (which are clear enough) but the other is sulfur Aerosols (the direct and indirect impact of which).
This is the actual Aerosols forcing built into this world-class 2004 climate model. GISS is the source of the Aerosols forcing used in many other models. It is a joke. It is -1.8 Watts/m2 and it is just made up.
http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/7408/modeleforcing.gif
Let’s compare the Aerosols forcing to the GHG forcing as a percentage. It is also a joke. Aerosols caused all the cooling around 1900 for example and it is really the balancing factor used to make the hindcast come even close to the actual temperatures recorded.
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/6042/modeleaerosols.gif
So let’s exend the various components of GISS Model E out to the future (because these are easy to decifer). GISS Model E would be at about +0.8C today (only 6 years later) while the El Nino-impacted temperature in July is only +0.55C. Next March, when the current La Nina has its biggest impact and temperatures are down a further 0.2C to 0.3C from today, GISS Model E will off by 0.5C or so.
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/2107/modeleextraev0.png
Let’s use the more up-to-date GISS Models that were used in the IPCC AR4. Sure, there is randomness, but there is clearly only positive trends over 10 years. And yes, these models are off 0.2C or so just a few years later and will be off by 0.4C by next March.
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/7442/gissar4forecasts.png
[Unfortunately, I lost the spreadsheet these charts came from and can’t update the charts themselves but it easy enough for one to download GISTemp].
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.lrg.gif
Bill,
I followed you just fine right up until you extended the GHG and non-GHG forcings into the future – purely by extrapolating the curves based on their recent shape? Or did you plug in actual calculated values to make those curves? You didn’t show your work at that point to justify those smooth curves past 2003.
Possibilty 1, you have a data source for those curves… easy to fix, just show the link or cite the paper.
Possibility 2, you fit a curve to the most recent data points, and extended it into the future. Not cool, IMO.
Solar cycle 23 has been longer and TSI a bit lower than recent cycles, China has fired up a whole batch of coal-fired power plants with no scrubbers that have pumped out a lot of aerosols, methane stopped growing suddenly at about that time, etc…
There are lots known variables that have, you know, varied a lot recently. You have assumed that the most recent trends just continued. Your data from GISS ends at the top of solar cycle 23. Extrapolating the nonGHG forcings past 2003 without any data is equivalent, in part, to assuming that cycle 23 never ended, and just kept on increasing. It didn’t.
But I like your approach, overall… just find us some post-2003 forcings data .
Looking at the GISS txt file of forcings, it looks like a deeper than normal solar minimum should be about a 0.15 to 0.2 reduction from the peak. With your GHG forcings at +1.1 (reading off your graph around 2008), nonGHG forcings should be reduced further negative to about -0.5 to -0.6 due to the solar minimum, for a sum of about +0.5 to 0.6… right on the actual temp for 2008 and 2009.
Do you agree?
Brad
Barry Bickmore says:
August 19, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Yeah, that’s about the level of analysis I’ve come to expect of Tamino. Smooth the hell out of the data and don’t tell anyone how you dealt with the endpoints. In fact, don’t explain anything. Just present your data massages and demand everyone bow down before it.
I have plotted the data myself, and I have put it through my filters. What I see is a definite deceleration in the last 20 odd years.
‘… a few years of data don’t mean ANYTHING in terms of “climate”.’
That depends on what it is you are trying to discern, and how large the signal is compared to the noise. Tell me, how precisely did you decide that a few decades of increasing temperatures were enough to declare that the Earth had an anthropogenically induced fever? Especially when there are major climate cycles within historical data which are as long or longer than the record of highly accurate observation?
Bill Illis
“First, the feedback is 2 not 3.
Second, the feedback is not happening to date.”
Let’s just take these two for now. IPCC has CO2 doubling leading to 2-4.5 C. Since CO2 doubling with no feedback is about 1 C, this implies a feedback of 2-4.5. So, 3 is the geometric mean, 3.25 (corresponding to Monckton’s value) is the arithmetic mean. Where do you get 2 from? Obviously 836/390 is more than doubling, so the warming would be easily more than the 3 or 3.25 C doubling estimates.
Second, the UAH lower troposphere warming smoothed to decadal scales (and no UHI for satellites, we should agree), is 0.5 C between 1979 and 2009. From the CO2 change alone, we expected 0.2 C with no feedback. The factor looks like 2.5 to me, and that is ignoring aerosol increases (if any) that would tend to reduce this number.
I would say the present warming rate is consistent with CO2 and significant feedback, and other evidence like stratospheric cooling corroborates the mechanism, while disproving ocean or solar explanations.
Jim D:
Warming of the troposphere has ceased and cooling may well be imminent. On some measures it has already begun.
The stratosphere stopped cooling 10 years ago and now shows slight warming.
Thus proving ocean and solar explanations.
Do catch up at the back there.
Joel Shore says:
August 19, 2010 at 2:18 pm
“What sort of behavior of CO2 levels over, say, the next 5 years would cause you to rethink your views on the cause of rising CO2 levels…Or, do you think that that is just too short a period to verify either way?”
If I saw a large CO2 event, such as the eruption of a volcano, cause an immediate, discernible, and persistent step change in overall CO2 levels, that would influence my thinking. But, it hasn’t happened before, so why should it in the next 5 years?
If I saw some similar spectral characteristics (doesn’t anyone in climate science know how to do a freaking PSD?) between the estimates of anthropogenically released CO2 and the measured CO2, that would give me pause. But, again, it hasn’t happened before, so why should it in the next 5 years?
And, if someone could come up with a reliable method for estimating atmospheric CO2 for at least several centuries before 1958 which showed conclusively that the current runup is unprecedented in magnitude and speed, that would have an impact. Again, it hasn’t happened before, so why should it in the next 5 years?
There are a few other items, but they’re all “it hasn’t happened before, so why should it in the next 5 years?”
Stephen Wilde,
Did you even notice that solar minimum we just had? These tend to cause pauses, but it should be back on track in the next ramp-up. It all makes sense.
Actually I think it is quite interesting about the solar cycle, that in terms of forcing it only can account for 0.05 C peak to peak, but we see 0.15-0.2 C, almost like a feedback amplification of 3 to 4. Why don’t the negative feedbacks favored here affect that too?
Bart says:
That depends on what it is you are trying to discern, and how large the signal is compared to the noise. Tell me, how precisely did you decide that a few decades of increasing temperatures were enough to declare that the Earth had an anthropogenically induced fever? Especially when there are major climate cycles within historical data which are as long or longer than the record of highly accurate observation?
Actually, what impresses me most is the ability of current climate models to do a decent job reproducing known variation during the glacial-interglacial cycles. They would have to be fairly robust to do that.
Brad Beeson,
On the forcings going out from 2003.
The GHG forcing is following CO2 very closely with a certain formula (4.053 ln(CO2)-23 which is actually the temperature response the theory says should happen with a lag of about 20 years in ocean heat up-take so it makes complete sense to me that it would be a simplified form for the more detailed formulae that GISS was using). I have the actual CO2 numbers going out and the trendlines going out so that part is solid [I dropped the impact very slightly to take into account Methane starting to stabilize earlier than expected].
The one big impact from Volcanoes is no longer a forcing. It reached Zero by 2000 and there has been no sulfur Volcanic eruptions since Pinatubo.
Aerosol forcing had been flatlined in the last several years (technically, the sulfur levels collected from ice and ice cores shows that it is dropping fast right now) but I just left it at the forcing GISS had already flatlined.
Land-use, black carbon and the other small forcings had a certain trend so I just extended that. It is slight decline overall.
Solar forcing is a question. The quiet Sun says that it might have gone down but TSI did not actually decline by any more than the usual solar cycle. At one time, I built in a small 0.05C decline but after the SORCE TSI instrument showed TSI going back up up again, close to the usual trend, I put it back in as a small 11 year forcing cycle. It is not a big number +/- over a cycle.
Which was one of my points above in this thread, there is no negative forcing happening right now so the models should be going up. Even black carbon which is increasing in Asia is more of a positive forcing that a negative one.
So, the extension was done the right way in my opinion.
Bart says:
That’s strange…You are proposing something that would change your thinking that, as far as I know, are not things that any of the scientists who understand that the current run-up in CO2 is due to humans would say are possible. In other words, the only way your thinking will change is if the carbon cycle starts behaving in ways that scientists don’t even expect it to. I guess that is a good way to guarantee that your thinking will remain ossified.
What do you mean by similar spectral characteristics? Over what time (or frequency) scales? Of course, the runup in CO2 has very closely much the anthropogenic release…but are you saying that you expect variations in CO2 on time scales of, say, months to match that…even though we know that such time scales are dominated by annual cycles in the carbon uptake? Again, you seem to be proposing something that is in contradiction with the science, guaranteeing that your thinking is not going to change.
That’s already been done to most scientists satisfaction.
It is interesting because it sounds as if even though CO2 will inevitably keep rising, that is not going to change your thinking and you are going to continue to believe that in some not-too-distant future it will change. Good luck with that!
Bill,
Thanks for your thoughtful reply explaining your thinking. I agree with most of it.
In fact one point you made 2 posts ago – that the aerosol and indirect aerosol forcings seem fudged to make the curve fit – I think that is a strong possibility. In the most recent years from the GISS text file of forcings, they have held aerosols, indirect aerosols and black carbon almost constant. Yet we know that China has exponentially grown their combustion of coal and production of cement, which are quite dirty activities. Also the Soviet Union’s dissolution crashed the consumption of energy in the Eastern Block. I would expect these big changes to be reflected in the GISS table, but they are not. They do admit they have no way to measure these forcings directly.
On the solar cycle, I think you are clearly wrong to assume this cycle 23 is different from all previous cycles. Look at the GISS forcings for solar. Each cycle has a regular pulse – a low about 0.1 to 0.2, followed by a peak at 0.25 to 0.27 – why do you think this cycle is different? I don’t think you have justified your assumption at all.
Can you show that TSI at this cycle low is different from previous lows? I think it has declined just as before. Can you show that the reduction has had no effect THIS time? I don’t see how you could possibly show that with a physics-based arguement.
Brad
Sorry, that should read ” a low of 0.1 to 0.12″ for the forcings at the solar cycle minimum… for a peak to valley difference of about .1 to .15
Read too fast Brad, I left it as a normal cycle.
OK, so shouldn’t the non-GHG curve dip down about .1 to .15 from 2003 to 2009 (from -0.39 to -0.54 ish)? You show no dip at all.
Assuming everything else is constant (which I don’t like, given the huge changes is energy use and mix), a decline in solar forcing of .1 to .15 should have dropped your non-GHG forcing curve by the same amount, n’est ce-pas? And if you update the temp curve to the present day, then we seem to be above the GISS model prediction. We spend some time above the model and some time below. Given the unmeasureable forcings, that seems pretty good.
I still agree that the model with unmeasureable forcings is not really very useful, especially if they have ex-post-facto derived those forcings by asuming the model is correct, and calculating what those forcings “must have been”.
I would much prefer a model that shows some ranges for the estimated forcings. Imagine a model that shows the non-GHG line as a wide band, reflecting our uncertainty in what those unmeasured aerosol and black carbon forcings really are.
What do you think?
Joel Shore says:
August 20, 2010 at 8:24 am
“You are proposing something that would change your thinking that, as far as I know, are not things that any of the scientists who understand that the current run-up in CO2 is due to humans would say are possible.”
Ah, I see. So, you are a disciple of the “magic anthropogenic CO2” cult, which holds that anthropogenic CO2 builds up, but natural additions don’t, because, well, it’s just different somehow.
“Of course, the runup in CO2 has very closely much the anthropogenic release…but are you saying that you expect variations in CO2 on time scales of, say, months to match that…even though we know that such time scales are dominated by annual cycles in the carbon uptake?”
You seem to be uninformed about Fourier decomposition and systems theory. If you see a 1 year, 11 year, 20 year, what have you cycle in the input, you MUST see it in the output (as well as possibly integer harmonics of it, depending on the linearity of the system) according to how sensitive the system is to that cycle.
You need to be very specific about what you mean by “dominates”. To the naked eye, you may not see a particular component, but it will come through loud and clear in a spectral decomposition. If you gave me a time series with a sinusoid with amplitude 1,000,000 at 1 Hz and an amplitude of 1 at 5 Hz, I could still very easily show up that 5 Hz signal in a PSD. And, I could create a filter which would isolate it. You do this kind of thing every day when you listen to the radio or talk on your cell phone.
If you had a daily familiarity with such concepts, you would think it very odd that the CO2 system is apparently only sensitive to dc anthropogenic forcing, and almost totally filters out any other cycles.
“That’s already been done to most scientists satisfaction.”
They are not worthy of the appellation, then.
Barry Bickmore says:
August 20, 2010 at 3:39 am
“Actually, what impresses me most is the ability of current climate models to do a decent job reproducing known variation during the glacial-interglacial cycles. They would have to be fairly robust to do that.”
What is essentially a multivariable curve fit, fits the data. Who’da thunk it?
Now I feel really stupid. I just realized that the GISS forcings data is given in W/m^2, while your graph is translating that into temperature effect. Please forgive my confusion, and now I see my questions are totally invalid.
Let me go back and refresh my memory on how to translate W/m^2 into temps before I say anything else stupid…
GISS Model E solar forcing temperature impact is generally about +/-0.025C. I now see I didn’t include that because it would have shown up even though it is exceeding small. I did at one time, maybe I took it out when I made the last change not including a downturn in TSI. (It is essentially flat anyway, since technically, noone can find the solar cycle signal in the surface temperature series. The solar cycle shows up in the high stratosphere temperatures but it is not big enough to rise above the noise even in very sensitive tests. There are hints of one every now and again but there is not enough consistency to be clear. That at least means, it is very small).
Turning W/m2 into actual temperatures, however, is a very, very, very tricky business which is at the heart of global warming theory itself. It is not well known but this is where the biggest potential error factor is in the theory and the climate models.
The Stefan Boltzmann equations say that each extra 1 W/m2 changes surface temperatures by 0.18C.
The same formula says that temperatures in the lower troposphere change by 0.265C for each W/m2 change – the Planck response. If the lapse rate stayed constant (as is assumed in the theory, the surface should warm by the same 0.265C rather than 0.18C). (As an aside, the Stefan Boltzmann equations seem to indicate the lapse rate will change and I think we are seeing that but that is for another day).
Inevitably, there are also feedbacks to take into account beyond Stefan Boltzmann.
1 W/m2 of GHG forcing could translate into more water vapor thus increasing the net effect. There could be an immediate hourly feedback impact, a medium term monthly feedback impact and even a long-term 1500 year impact from ocean heat up-take, glacial melt and vegetation/albedo impacts.
Generally, GISS Model E is using 0.32C per W/m2 as a short-term impact (except for volcanic forcing which is only 0.15C per W/m2 for reasons which are not explained sufficiently in my opinion – the impact is, in fact, less than 0.15C per W/m2 for volcanoes so they have just adjusted it down – all the climate model simulations that say they have reproduced Pinatubo for example have fudged their numbers to take this into account).
I don’t know if the 0.32C value increases in the future year GISS’ simulations beyond 2003 but it must if they are going to reach the +3.0C per doubling. It is not in 2003 at least.
In the long-term, global warming theory says the Charney 30 year lag equilibrium figure is 0.75C per extra W/m2 of additional forcing including feedbacks. This increases to about 1.0C per extra W/m2 after 140 years and it as high as 1.5C per extra W in the long-1500year-term equilibrium (although this figure has not been officially confirmed as a consensus).
I used the actual reported temperatures by GISS in the charts which are generally 0.32C per 1 W/m2.
Bart says:
No. It is just that the volcanic inputs are much smaller. And year-to-year variability in the CO2 rise is more determined by the sinks than the sources.
But, what sort of human cycle is there that you would be looking for? And, how would it be affected by the fact that you have spatial variation as well as temporal variation? I am not saying it is impossible to do such detection. I am just saying that it is not clear that it is possible…and you would have to provide evidence that such cycles should be detectable if the rise in CO2 is anthropogenic (as almost all of us know it is). Arguing that they haven’t detected something that you haven’t demonstrated should be detectable if the CO2 rise is anthropogenic is just talking through your hat.
But, hey, don’t let me discourage you from arguing far and wide that the rise in CO2 is not anthropogenic and that it will start decreasing soon. I am sure this will make a suitable impression on actual scientists and policymakers. They will certainly know how seriously to take anything else you might say on the subject.
Joel Shore says:
August 21, 2010 at 5:11 pm
“No. It is just that the volcanic inputs are much smaller.”
But, we CAN see their effect in the CO2 record. They are transient, and incompatible with the notion of a long residence time.
“But, what sort of human cycle is there that you would be looking for?”
If you do a PSD of the estimates of anthropogenic output, you will see particular frequency spikes. If you do a PSD of the Mauna Loa or other CO2 measurement data, you will see other spikes. It is simply not compatible with the assumption of anthropogenic dominance in the forcing that they should be different.
“I am sure this will make a suitable impression on actual scientists and policymakers.”
That is the whole problem with the politicization of Science. It becomes more important for practitioners to impress other scientists and policymakers than it does to seek the truth, and we reach a point of rampant confirmation bias and censorship of opposing views and data.
Bart says:
Do you have some sort of cite for this?
You would have to show this, together with modeling evidence that the standard carbon cycle point-of-view would predict that you should be able to see the frequency spikes that you claim exist. Preferably, you would also show that your alternate view of the carbon cycle is more compatible with the data.
Nearly everyone on the losing side of a scientific argument think it is because of biases, censorship, or what-have you (for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed ). That is because they have a heard time accepting they truth, which is that they’ve lost the argument because the scientific evidence is not on their side.
You are so far out in the weeds here that you even make someone like Monckton look reasonable by comparison…and that’s saying something!
Do you have some sort of cite for this?
Where do you think all those little (but statistically significant) transients in the curve here come from? I don’t think this is really controversial – I’ve seen graphs of CO2 concentration on RealClimate pointing, e.g., to the Mt. Pinatubo transient.
“You would have to show this,…”
I’ve done the analysis. I’d post the plots if I knew how. Here’s an idea: if you have a genuine interest in seeking knowledge, how about you do it, or find someone you trust who knows how to do it for you? That way, we wouldn’t have to argue over whether I cooked the books in some way.
“Nearly everyone on the losing side of a scientific argument think it is because of biases, censorship, or what-have you…”
Sometimes. And, sometimes those on the “losing side” are found to have been correct years later. I don’t know if you realize this is an admission of insecurity on your part – that you have to seek comfort from some alternative means other than pertinent facts to shore up (no pun intended) your position. If you can put me in a box as a crank, you can dismiss my arguments without having to think them through.
Well, have at it. I am supremely confident that my POV will eventually be vindicated. The only question is how much damage will be done by the alarmist herd by that time.
Bart,
I am fairly sure you are confusing aerosols from volcanoes with CO2. Aerosols have a cooling transient effect that does show up. CO2 variation is most correlated with surface temperature or SST, and its increase rate dips when it is cooler, as it seems to have after Pinatubo. That is, volcanoes (at least of the Pinatubo type) indirectly have a negative effect on CO2.
“Do you have some sort of cite for this?”
Here’s a link of some interest.
Now, I read that as, while the average CO2 output of volcanos over a year is much less than human inputs, individual events can release more than the yearly anthropogenic output. Do you concur? Surely, such events should be observable as steps in the CO2 record, if the long residence time hypothesis holds, which of course I claim it does not.
I noted that some of the largest transients in the data presented at the NOAA link seem to correlate in time with large eruptions of Mount Nyamuragira, as judged by SO2 output. Maybe this is just happenstance, as Mount Nyamuragira erupts on average every couple of years, but it appears to correlate with the largest eruptions, so maybe there is something there, maybe not.
Also, keep in mind that “4–5 · 10^14 moles CO2 yr^−1” is an estimate of “man’s current CO2 production”. Obviously, in years past, it would have been significantly less.
Jim – Volcanos release a huge volume of CO2, also. See above links. And, you can clearly see in the data record that transients are generally touched off by a sudden step up.
But, the “steps” are not persistent, i.e., they are transient, of a duration which is incompatible with the hypothesis of long residence time. That is the point I have been trying to make.
Bart says:
No…I do not (if you are talking about individual events in recent times) because that makes no sense. Just think about it: The average rate was determined to be 1.5 · 10^11 moles CO2 per year over a period of 169 years. That works out to a total release of less than 3 · 10^13 moles CO2. So, how is it possible that one event during that period could have released 10^15-10^16 moles of CO2?
I think the solution to this conundrum is that those 10^15-10^16 moles of CO2 correspond to volcanoes that occur only very infrequently and that none of the ones over the last couple of hundred years has even come anywhere close to that.
Well, I admire your confidence. On the other hand, I already remember that in our past discussions, you were trying to claim that your point-of-view followed from mathematical necessity. It was only eventually that you had to admit that it was not at all mathematical necessity but also relied on your assumptions about the carbon cycle in creating your mathematical model which, needless to say, differ dramatically from how scientists actually understand the carbon cycle to work.
Joel Shore says:
August 23, 2010 at 6:16 am
“It was only eventually that you had to admit that it was not at all mathematical necessity…”
You really are living in a land of make-believe. It was clear that line of reasoning was beyond the faculties of those I was trying to persuade, so I tried another tack. You appear to think that, since I stopped talking about it, I was conceding something. No, dear fellow. It is still mathematically impossible, and my models are still apposite. That is the bedrock which makes me so confident.
“The average rate was determined to be 1.5 · 10^11 moles CO2 per year over a period of…”
I think maybe we would need to get the full paper to see precisely what he means.
In any case… at the least, we should leave this round with the key insight that the form of the rise in CO2 measurements does not match the accumulation of the anthropogenically generated CO2 across a broad spectral range. Thus, the attribution of the measured rise to anthropogenically released CO2 is falsified.
Would anyone care to comment on the recently published rebuttal of Christopher Monckton’s evidence to as Congress?
from http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-scientists-respond-to-Moncktons-misinformation.html
“Recently, a group of 5 scientists solicited responses to Monckton’s testimony from more than 20 world-class climate scientists. Each climate scientist examined the part of Monckton’s testimony related to their particular area of expertise and summarised their responses in the report Climate Scientists Respond. The result is thorough, methodical and devastating. Monckton’s assertions are shown to be without merit, demonstrating a number of obvious and elementary errors and based on a thorough misunderstanding of the science”
Louise,
Let us have a formal debate between Lord Monckton and your “group of 5 scientists” ankle biters… what’s that, you say? Your five scientists don’t have the balls to publicly debate Lord Monckton? Well, that is just typical of the CAGW contingent. Cowards all.
If your so-called ‘scientists’ are too afraid to debate their position against a mathematician, their opinions are not worth discussing.
Smokey – They’re not actually ‘my’ scientists, I thought this was supposed to be a polite forum?
The article in question was written by 20 different experts in their individual fields. I was hoping to find some discussion of the points they have raised rather than the personal attacks that you have made. Are you able to comment on the science?