Via the GWPF, an essay by Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT:
The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.
For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century.
For warming since 1979, there is a further problem. The dominant role of cumulus convection in the tropics requires that temperature approximately follow what is called a moist adiabatic profile. This requires that warming in the tropical upper troposphere be 2-3 times greater than at the surface. Indeed, all models do show this, but the data doesn’t and this means that something is wrong with the data. It is well known that above about 2 km altitude, the tropical temperatures are pretty homogeneous in the horizontal so that sampling is not a problem. Below two km (roughly the height of what is referred to as the trade wind inversion), there is much more horizontal variability, and, therefore, there is a profound sampling problem. Under the circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that the problem resides in the surface data, and that the actual trend at the surface is about 60% too large. Even the claimed trend is larger than what models would have projected but for the inclusion of an arbitrary fudge factor due to aerosol cooling. The discrepancy was reported by Lindzen (2007) and by Douglass et al (2007). Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus, Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community.
It turns out that there is a much more fundamental and unambiguous check of the role of feedbacks in enhancing greenhouse warming that also shows that all models are greatly exaggerating climate sensitivity. Here, it must be noted that the greenhouse effect operates by inhibiting the cooling of the climate by reducing net outgoing radiation. However, the contribution of increasing CO2 alone does not, in fact, lead to much warming (approximately 1 deg. C for each doubling of CO2).
The larger predictions from climate models are due to the fact that, within these models, the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds, act to greatly amplify whatever CO2 does. This is referred to as a positive feedback. It means that increases in surface temperature are accompanied by reductions in the net outgoing radiation – thus enhancing the greenhouse warming. All climate models show such changes when forced by observed surface temperatures. Satellite observations of the earth’s radiation budget allow us to determine whether such a reduction does, in fact, accompany increases in surface temperature in nature. As it turns out, the satellite data from the ERBE instrument (Barkstrom, 1984, Wong et al, 2006) shows that the feedback in nature is strongly negative — strongly reducing the direct effect of CO2 (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) in profound contrast to the model behavior. This analysis makes clear that even when all models agree, they can all be wrong, and that this is the situation for the all important question of climate sensitivity. Unfortuanately, Lindzen and Choi (2009) contained a number of errors; however, as shown in a paper currently under review, these errors were not relevant to the main conclusion.
According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86% of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons and ozone), and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2 is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far, even if all the warming we have seen so far were due to man. This contradiction is rendered more acute by the fact that there has been no statistically significant net global warming for the last fourteen years. Modelers defend this situation, as we have already noted, by arguing that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming (viz Schwartz et al, 2010), and that models adequately account for natural unforced internal variability. However, a recent paper (Ramanathan, 2007) points out that aerosols can warm as well as cool, while scientists at the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Research recently noted that their model did not appropriately deal with natural internal variability thus demolishing the basis for the IPCC’s iconic attribution (Smith et al, 2007). Interestingly (though not unexpectedly), the British paper did not stress this. Rather, they speculated that natural internal variability might step aside in 2009, allowing warming to resume. Resume? Thus, the fact that warming has ceased for the past fourteen years is acknowledged. It should be noted that, more recently, German modelers have moved the date for ‘resumption’ up to 2015 (Keenlyside et al, 2008).
Climate alarmists respond that some of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past decade. Given that we are in a relatively warm period, this is not surprising, but it says nothing about trends.
Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly implies that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished. However, a really important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. all depend not on some global average of surface temperature anomaly, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind. The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal (a leading modeler refers to it as essentially guesswork). Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring are almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts of famine for the 1980’s, global cooling in the 1970’s, Y2K and many others. Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean. Much of this variation has to be independent of the global mean; otherwise the global mean would vary much more. This is simply to note that factors other than global warming are more important to any specific situation. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.
In view of the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past 4 years. When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence, and donations are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true. After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for ‘saving’ the earth. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. But, by now, things have gone much further. The case of ENRON (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative in this respect. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, ENRON had been one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to over a trillion dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions. Hedge funds are actively examining the possibilities; so was the late Lehman Brothers. Goldman Sachs has lobbied extensively for the ‘cap and trade’ bill, and is well positioned to make billions. It is probably no accident that Gore, himself, is associated with such activities. The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to one’s carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant. The possibilities for corruption are immense. Archer Daniels Midland (America’s largest agribusiness) has successfully lobbied for ethanol requirements for gasoline, and the resulting demand for ethanol may already be contributing to large increases in corn prices and associated hardship in the developing world (not to mention poorer car performance). And finally, there are the numerous well meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.
With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased and that the case for such warming as was seen being due in significant measure to man, disintegrating. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.
References:
Barkstrom, B.R., 1984: The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 65, 1170–1185.
Douglass,D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D. Pearsona and S. F. Singer, 2007: A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions, Int. J. Climatol., DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651
Keenlyside, N.S., M. Lateef, et al, 2008: Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector, Nature, 453, 84-88.
Lindzen, R.S. and Y.-S. Choi, 2009: On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data, accepted Geophys. Res. Ltrs.
Lindzen, R.S., 2007: Taking greenhouse warming seriously. Energy & Environment, 18, 937-950.
Ramanathan, V., M.V. Ramana, et al, 2007: Warming trends in Asia amplified by brown cloud solar absorption, Nature, 448, 575-578.
Santer, B. D., P. W. Thorne, L. Haimberger, K. E. Taylor, T. M. L. Wigley, J. R. Lanzante, S. Solomon, M. Free, P. J. Gleckler, P. D. Jones, T. R. Karl, S. A. Klein, C. Mears, D. Nychka, G. A. Schmidt, S. C. Sherwood, and F. J. Wentz, 2008: Consistency of modelled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere, Intl. J. of Climatology, 28, 1703-1722.
Schwartz, S.E., R.J. Charlson, R.A. Kahn, J.A. Ogren, and H. Rodhe, 2010: Why hasn’t the Earth warmed as much as expected?, J. Climate, 23, 2453-2464.
Smith, D.M., S. Cusack, A.W. Colman, C.K. Folland, G.R. Harris, J.M. Murphy, 2007: Improved Surface Temperature Prediction for the Coming Decade from a Global Climate Model, Science, 317, 796-799.
Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov, 2007: A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, Geophys. Res. Ltrs., 34, L13705, doi:10.1029/2007GL030288
Wong, T., B. A. Wielicki, et al., 2006: Reexamination of the observed decadal variability of the earth radiation budget using altitude-corrected ERBE/ERBS nonscanner WFOV Data, J. Climate, 19, 4028–4040.
Richard Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the GWPF’s Academic Advidory Council
“This analysis makes clear that even when all models agree, they can all be wrong, and that this is the situation for the all important question of climate sensitivity. Unfortuanately, Lindzen and Choi (2009) contained a number of errors; however, as shown in a paper currently under review, these errors were not relevant to the main conclusion.”
I was under the impression that Lindzen looked at sea surface temperature in the tropics along with satellite measurements of outgoing radiation and observed that when it gets warmer, more outgoing radiation escapes to space which has a cooling effect. Lindzen concluded that negative feedbacks actually suppress surface warming and our planet has a low climate sensitivity of about 0.5°C.
What Lindzen is trying to do is calculate global climate sensitivity from tropical data. The tropics are not a closed system – a great deal of energy is exchanged between the tropics and subtropics. To properly calculate global climate sensitivity, global observations are required. Several studies have performed the same analysis using near-global data and one study found that small changes in the heat transport between the tropics and subtropics can swamp the tropical signal. They conclude that climate sensitivity must be calculated from global data (Murphy 2010).
The near-global data find high climate sensitivity and the authors conclude that the tropical ocean is not an adequate region for determining global climate sensitivity (Chung et al 2010).
Hopefully his new paper that he mentions will use a global dataset and we can see if this also shows a low climate sensitivity.
PAUL JONES:
Excellent idea: New York Times, Washington Post, Times of London, The Guardian etc etc.
If someone sets this up I shall certainly contribute. This could be the means to effect a breakthrough among the political classes (`hope ever rises`!).
Thanks, Dr. Lindzen. Very good article.
Yes, the models got it wrong!
“”””” Smoking Frog says:
January 18, 2011 at 5:23 pm
Roger January 18, 2011 at 6:19 am
“approximately 1 deg. C for each doubling of CO2″
I’m surprised that Dr. Richard Lindzen wrote this. Is he not aware that the relationship between concentration and temperature is logarithmic, not linear?
What he wrote describes a logarithmic relationship. With a linear relationship, the increase per doubling would not be constant. “””””
Well with less than 1/3 of one doubling of actual real world measured; non-proxy data; and probably way less than that; since anything pre 1980 is suspect because of the errors in oceanic Temperature sampling methodology; how could anyone tell the difference between a linear, and a logarithmic relationship; when the IPCC itself says that the line depicting that relationship has a slope uncertainty of 3:1. That is nominal +/-50%
Then of course we have :- ln(1+x) = x – x^2 /2 + x^3 /3 – …
So for small values of (x); (small CO2 ratios), there is little difference between the logarithmic function and the linear one.
So for (x) = 0.3, ln (1 + x) = 0.3 – 0.045 + 0.009 or about 0.3 (1- 0.12) .
So for the possible increase in CO2 of 30% over all the recorded data in the CRU data base; or GISSTemp, there’s only a 12% difference in “Climate Sensitivity” between a linear model and a logarithmic model yet that value is unknown within a 3:1 ratio.
So it is quite preposterous to say the relationship is either linear or logarithmic based on any actual measurements.
Actually, if we take the best CO2 data known; the Mauna Loa record, it starts out at 315 ppm and we will give them today’s number of say 390.6. That’s a ratio of 1.24.
So ln (1.24) = 0.24 – 0.0288 + 0.004608 = 0.24- 0.0242 = 0.24(1- 0.1008)
So for the actual CO2 ratio given by ML data, we only have a 10% difference between a linear and a logarithmic function.
And of course I’m taking the total difference between the two functions. When you statistical prestidigitators get a hold of that; I presume, you can cut the difference between them by a factor of two (+/-).
And as for clouds being a warming influence, the last few days to a week or so, have been quite illuminating. A week ago I had ice all over my car in the mornings. The last few days; no ice; but the car was dripping wet with dew (at 7:00 AM) and the sky was totally overcast, in fact with clouds all the way down to the ground (some call it fog). By about 9:30 AM after doing some early morning banking, the sun was shining through, and the ground level clouds were evaporating in front of my eyes, to reveal a very wispy high cloud layer with very little cloud density; and some of it clearly jet vapor trail originated. By 11:00 AM when I took off for an early lunch, there was nothing that even looked like a cloud anywhere in a clear blue sky. Now there also was no wind ; so those clouds didn’t just go somewhere else; they simply disappeared, indicating that the upper atmosphere had warmed to the point where the C-C equation allowed for no discernible condensation, even with all of that dripping dew vanishing into thin air.
By sun down, those high wispy clouds were starting to reform; and then this morning, the zero-zero clouds were back, over my dripping car. I have a sponge mop that I use to remove a heavy dose of dew before I take to the road.
Clearly the upper atmosphere was NOT being warmed by conduction and convection from the ground; which had not yet seen the sun, because of the ground level fog. Direct solar heating of the upper atmosphere due to H2O and likely some CO2 interception of sunlight in the 0.7 to 3-4 micron range, is what drove away those high wispy clouds, and the surface fog eventually. I could actually see the low fog clouds that had broken up, literally vanish before my eyes, as I drove down the freeway to work; almost spooky.
And all of that solar energy, that never made it to the ground because of the H2O and CO2 interception, helped keep the surface cooler; and only about half of it could ultimately make it to the surface, as atmospheric thermal emission as LWIR radiation. The rest was lost to space.
And lets not forget that beautiful blue sky that filled the many gaps between that high broken wispy clouds early on. Somewhere, somebody knows how many Watt’s per m^2 that blue sky sends earthwards. I use that wording cautiously; rather than say “emits”, since in fact it isn’t being emitted by the sky; but by the sun; and it is merely Raleigh scattered by the atmosphere; so it isn’t absorbed by the atmosphere and doesn’t really contribute to the atmospheric warming. (OK go on and say it isn’t zero warming; but it’s small potatoes compared to the water absorption or even the CO2).
BUT !! remember that that beautiful blue sky looks the same when you are looking down; as when you are looking up; so the blue radiation to space from the blue sky, is about the same brightness, as the blue sky is looking up.
My handy dandy Air mass one, and air mass zero solar spectrum plots give a peak Solar spectral radiance of about 2.0 kW/m^2 per micron wavelength; for AM0 and 1.5 for AM1. Ok, the actual AM0 peak is about 2.2, due to the anomalous solar spectrum in the UV-blue region. The 2.0 number is taken from the best fit black body radiation curve.
So that says that the surface AM1 solar peak (sea level) is about 25% lower than the extra-terrestrial value. But that drop, which I attribute largely to the Raleigh scattering loss, is concentrated around the peak of the solar spectrum, and not spread uniformly across the whole energy range. So I would say that the 25% loss of peak spectral irradiance; puts a 25% upper limit on the total solar energy loss due to Raleigh scattering.
Now these are beach sand stick sketches; rather than super computer models, so take them as approximations.
But as TSI is now 1362 W/m^2, then something less than 353 W/m^2 is being lost to Raleigh scattering; and the rest is due to absorption by the H2O and CO2 components of the atmosphere. There is also a significant but not large Ozone absorption in the 0.5 to 0.65 micron range; it is hard to discern from the total solar graphs but easily dreamed up from those spectral calculator programs which I don’t have access to.
But I am not seeing or feeling any pronounced surface warming due to those high clouds that form over night. As I have said before; it is the conditions on the ground during the day, that lead to those clouds; not the other way round; so I still don’t see how clouds can create warming; in the sense that more clouds over climatically significant time scales (30 years); which absolutely must reduce total solar energy reaching the surface, can possibly cause the mean global temperature to go up, instead of down.
But if you keep modelling clouds as a positive feedback, I guess even the superest of super computers, is going to come up warmer rather than colder. Even totally dumb computers do what you tell them to do, and if you tell them to do the wrong thing then they will give you the wrong result; the super computers will of course give you the wrong answers much faster than a dumb computer.
George;
nicely observed and analysed. Raleigh scattering: another energy flux that escapes the GCM parameter netting?!?
George, you are correct, clouds do not create warming but middle level clouds sure do mean a warm night in my semi-alpine climate at nearly 2000′. After a hot summer’s day I always check the cloud condition before retiring. A clear night will send a 34C day down to 15C by 5am, a middle level cloud will mean an uncomfortable night staying in the mid 20’s.
The mean goes up because the minimum goes up.
This is very pronounced where I live, it may be less so at sea level.
US Agencies Still Fiddling Temperature Record, Reports SPPI
Washington, DC 1/17/2011 05:49 PM GMT (TransWorldNews)
“NASA and NOAA, which each receive close to half a billion dollars a year in taxpayer funding, have been systematically fiddling the worldwide temperature record for years, making “global warming” look worse than it is, according to a new paper by the Science and Public Policy Institute. The findings are reported by Joe D’Aleo, a leading meteorologist.”
…
“The problem of data integrity has recently been commented on by MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen, “Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data…That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community.” Mr. D’Aleo’s paper is a damning exposé of the inner workings of two agencies of the US Government – …”
http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?storyid=671981&ret=close
This is a serious allegation.
One that if proven to have a factual basis could irreparably destroy any remaining credibility for the idea of man-made global warming.
George E. Smith January 19, 2011 at 3:09 pm
I don’t know whether I should thank you for the honor of having all that analysis directed at me, or complain that I was only correcting what seemed to be a mathematical misconception on Roger’s part.
“”””” George, you are correct, clouds do not create warming but middle level clouds sure do mean a warm night in my semi-alpine climate at nearly 2000′. After a hot summer’s day I always check the cloud condition before retiring. “””””
Well I don’t disagree; but my point is that it was that hot summer’s day before hand, that created both the clouds and the subsequent warmer next AM.
The standard Climatism 101 textbooks teach that:- Low level clouds cool; medium level clouds neither cool nor warm; and high level clouds warm; and evidently the higher the cloud the more the warming.
Their argument for this is that the high level clouds don’t block very much incoming sunlight; but they still do trap outgoing LWIR radiation; ergo positive feedback warming. Of course that is all BS, for the very same reasons that the high level clouds don’t block very much sunlight, they also don’t block very much outgoing LWIR radiation; because the air density and GHG and cloud density goes down as the clouds get higher.
And what YOU describe is LAST NIGHT’S WEATHER it is not a CLIMATE CHANGE. As I said, if a cloud increase persists for any climate meaningful time frame, it simply has to result in global cooling; no matter where those clouds are; because the sum total of all the incoming solar energy; whether at direct solar spectrum wavelengths; or spectrum shifted to the thermal spectrum by atmospheric gas absorption; that is able to reach the ground and get stored (mostly in the ocean system) must go down; it never goes up for ANY increase in CO2 or H2O or any other gas that absorbs at solar spectrum wavelenghts like Ozone for example.
What subsequently happens to some of that energy that DOES reach the surface, in the way of re-emission as surface thermal radiation, to be partially (spectrally selectively) captured by GHGs of any ilk, is of course the subject of much debate; but it doesn’t change the simple fact that every single water molecule increase in the atmosphere in any phase of ordinary matter, must result in a reduction of ground level solar energy input; no matter what, as Dr William Schockley would put it.
And I believe that even that effect is somewhat irrelevent; because the work of Wentz et al on the increase in atmospheric water, and evaporation/precipitation for a one degree C rise in mean global surface (lower tropo ?) Temperature, is simply huge, and the necessary accompanying cloud increase shuts off any attempt to make the Temperature go higher.
Beautiful, amazing, impressive and unfortunately WRONG.
Lindzen has failed to take into account the delay in reaching equilibrium.
“…According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86% of what one expects from a doubling of CO2…and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2 is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far”
It implies nothing of the sort, Lindzen and this website should immediately release a correction and apology. His article is based on a false premise that destroys its implication. Going on the responses on this website I would presume that this now means all SKeptic science is wrong and that this is now the nail in the coffin for those that do not believe in climate change.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-case-study-in-climate-science-integrity.html
One of the important techniques that skeptics need to learn is to criticise our own experts. You must undermine their work. Jim Cripwell understands this. Lets say we all exclaim, “Wow, Richard Lindzen is so good, his explanation shows that AGW is wrong!”. This is a big mistake. Once you’ve done that, all some AGW nutcase has to do is publish a paper showing why Lindzen was wrong – and then where are you?
So what skeptics need to do is question absolutely everything. Anthony does a good job questioning land based temperature measurements, but unfortunately there are satellite temperature records as well. Jim Cripwell goes with the “greenhouse effect” isn’t real, probably because it contravenes the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Another good one is to question that rising CO2 levels are caused by humans.
So while you might appreciate the job Richard Lindzen is doing, don’t be too enthusiastic in endorsing him, because it doesn’t leave any wriggle room.
/sarc>
George,
The statement that “high clouds block outgoing radiation, ergo positive feedback warming” is just plain wrong. It is well known that the atmosphere’s temperature reduces with altitude (albeit not linearly), therefore a higher cloud cannot warm anything lower (2nd law of thermodynamics). What night cloud does do is reduce the rate of cooling, in exactly the same way as a bed blanket reduces your rate of cooling.
Reducing the rate of cooling is very different from warming, as the former implies a thermal energy transfer blocker, whilst the latter implies a thermal energy source.
Also, Michael, what delay are you referring to. The AGW theory claims that outgoing IR is absorbed by CO2 and immediately re-radiated. There is no delay as CO2 cannot store energy. Only water vapour can store heat energy and cause such a delay. This therefore rules out CO2. Moreover, what about all the incoming IR that the CO2 should absorb and re-radiate, presumably half back to space. In that case, wouldn’t CO2 be a cooling agent, as the more there is, the more will be prevented from reaching the surface?
George, I should say that I’m not saying you are wrong, but agreeing with the statement about high cloud that you said was wrong (BS). Apologies if that wasn’t clear.
Fundamentally, CO2 has very little impact on temperature, but water vapour has a far higher impact. Given that, it’s surprising that the UN/IPCC/Al Gore doesn’t want to ban water vapour and clouds instead of CO2, which, given the recent floods in Australia, Brazil and Sri Lanka, would do much more for preventing human suffering than reducing CO2.
This reminds me of the activity that had a large number of delegates to the recent Cancun climate (i.e. wealth re-distribution) conference signing a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide, a substance used in so many dangerous and dirty industrial activities. This was of course a spoof, as this is H2O, i.e. water, but the number of delegates who just didn’t think about it and blindly signed ‘because they wanted something done about it’ (the precautionary principle) was staggering.
There is so much money to be made (and is being made) from carbon trading that turning this thing around is going to be very difficult. Governments, large corporations and rich and powerful individuals are doing every thing they can to maintain the AGW lie. We sceptics and deniers are in for a long hard fight. There may be tears.
Yarmy @ur momisugly 113
The Lindzen 2010 update can be found at http://www.legnostorto.com/allegati/Lindzen_Choi_ERBE_JGR_v4.pdf – I have heard nothing on the publication status. Geophysical Research Letters, which published his 2009 paper (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL039628.shtml) got quite a bit of flack regarding the various errors getting through review, and may be a bit leery of running it unless it gets a good review.
It certainly wouldn’t receive a good review from me, given that they are still using a geometric extension of tropical values to global values (as per their 2001 paper, which got at least three direct rebuttals), ignoring things like ENSO that move 10x times the energy they discuss between tropics/subtropics, or that running their own analysis using global data provides a much higher climate sensitivity number than they calculate.
KR,
I’ll believe you’re sincere when you also attack Michael Mann for using the upside-down Tiljander proxy in order to get his hockey stick graph. Without Tiljander’s sediment proxy (where the sediment had been overturned due to road construction) Mann’s graph could not have had a hockey stick shape.
Mann was informed before he published that the Tiljander proxy was corrupted. But he used it anyway. And it was hand-waved through the peer review process by referees who didn’t dare to question the Mann.
So, are you ready to admit that Mann is corrupt? A fraud? And that the climate peer review system that he games is corrupted? Or are you simply jumping on what you believe are Prof. Lindzen’s errors? Do you really think politics isn’t involved in journal rebuttals?
The use of the word alarmist seems a bit biased coming from the author.
Pretty interesting read, skimmed some of the conclusions at the end though.
otter17,
If not “alarmist,” what word would you use to describe those promoting the baseless scare tactic that the increase in a tiny trace gas will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe?
I’m not referring to those who think that radiative physics implies that some warming will occur due to the rise in CO2 [most readers would agree with that, I think]. I’m referring to people like Gore, Mann and Trenberth, who know better but spin their horror stories anyway, because alarming the populace results in government grants.
Alarmists deliberately alarm because it brings in grant money. But they will not be looked upon kindly by our kids and grandkids, who will be paying for the results of their alarmist nonsense. As Prof Lindzen says:
I call those people ‘alarmists.’ But ‘scam artists’ would work just as well.
Smokey
I haven’t looked into the Tiljander proxies in any detail. I have, however, looked at multiple temperature reconstructions with and without said proxies, and there is no significant difference from that one proxy of 1200. That’s what happens when you have robust redundant data – a few bad points (if they exist) don’t destroy the results.
Mann’s sensitivity analysis demonstrates that their omission would have little effect on the overall reconstruction in any event was the summary at least one analyst made.
You might also take a look at the much more recent Ljungqvist 2010 reconstruction for the Northern Hemisphere – http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0459.2010.00399.x/pdf – where Ljunggvist states “”Although partly different data and methods have been used in our reconstruction than in Moberg et al. (2005) and Mann et al. (2008), the result is surprisingly similar. The inclusion of additional records would probably not substantially change the overall picture of the temperature variability.”
If you don’t believe those, there’s an interesting blog post here (http://www.skepticalscience.com/Tai-Chi-Temperature-Reconstructions.html) with publicly available data sets where you can run your own reconstruction. It won’t be properly area-gridded for a quickie reconstruction, but it’s easy to do and the results are quite similar to all the other paleo-climate reconstructions.
So – corrupt? A fraud? Nope – I don’t start by assigning evil/deceptive motivations to scientists. I consider that kind of pre-judging a complete mistake. My comments on Lindzen’s papers are based upon my own evaluations of their relevance and accuracy.
KR,
Your first sentence shows that your mind is already made up regarding the science. So let’s talk human nature, shall we?
I’ll quote Craig Loehle: “Although hidden by the instrumental data, Mann ’08 is the only one showing a huge temp spike in recent decades, which goes away if you drop the upside-down tiljander sediment proxies and the stripbark trees.”
Your argument that Tiljander didn’t matter is falsified. Mann ’08 made it central to his paper – and then began backtracking and playing down the bad proxy after he was caught using it by Climate Audit.
Since Mann was informed before he published that the Tiljander proxy was absolutely no good, why did he still use it? Answer: because it was central to creating a hockey stick shape, and Mann’s pals control the climate peer review process. Do a search for “Tiljander” on Climate Audit, and prepare to have your eyes opened. Michael Mann is thoroughly debunked as a conniving charlatan.
So yes, Michael Mann is a corrupt fraud. Honesty is not in him. That’s my evaluation, based on my knowledge of human nature. Deliberately using a known bad proxy – and not making note of it until after he was caught – is dishonest. It amounts to scientific misconduct. As does his hiding of data that would have falsified his original hockey stick.
You have a crooked HE-RO. Read The Hockey Stick Illusion. You will never again view Michael Mann as honest.