Today we have excellent joviality from Josh, plus some commercial video commentary on those poor souls in San Francisco that are about to deal with their first significant snow in quite a long time, which some will undoubtedly view as a “snowpocalypse”. Enjoy!
Sir Paul Nurse is the subject, more on the reason behind this cartoon here.
The SUV haters will love this one:
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Harold Pierce Jr says:
February 28, 2011 at 6:11 am
I have read the comments of Kauffmann. His comments are spot on, but incomplete. He measured the impact of water vapour and CO2 at sealevel, where CO2 absorbs about 8% of the energy and water 92% and in his spectrum the CO2 peak where water vapour is not active is clearly visible.
The percentages are right at sealevel, but change completely when you go up in the atmosphere: CO2 (PDA) remains constant, but RH remains (more or less) constant too, while maximum humidity goes down rapidely with temperature. That means that water is fast reducing in molar/mass ratio to the rest of the molecules the higher you go in the troposphere, while CO2 molar/mass ratio increases. That influences the balance towards proportionally more absorption by CO2 and less by water vapour.
The Modtran program integrates all constituents (water, CO2, CH4, O3) for all (average) pressures between the surface and 70 km high. One can choose between constant RH or constant % water for the calculations. Constant RH seems more appropriate, at least for the lower troposphere. Modtran is based on real absorption lines for lots of variations in water vapour, CO2 and others for different air pressures. It is not based on PDA CO2 levels, but of course calculates the real mass of CO2, based on PDA, absolute humidity and pressure.
As said before, I haven’t seen any problems for CO2 and water drops/rain. What I have read some time ago is that water drops contain only minor amounts of CO2, which cause no changes in CO2 levels when falling down on earth (thus probably little/no change where they are formed). Of course, clouds have a huge impact on radiation budget, which causes troubles to find the best estimates for the “standard” atmosphere with averages for all latitudes and averages for all cloud combinations.
I think I have the same objections against climate models as you have, although I doubt that they only use PDA levels for their calculations (don’t they use Hitran for their radiation budget calculations?). And I am aware of the impact of longer cycles like PDO, NAO, etc… on the water vapor/radiation burget, thus on temperature…
Hello Ferdinand!
In the IR spectrum note the water vapor peaks from ca 600 to 400 wave numbers. These are absorbing most of the IR energy in the 700 to 400 wave number range. The maximum in thermal emission of the earth’s surface for ca 15 deg C is about 500 wave numbers. The spectrometer cuts off at 400 wave numbers but water absorbs below 400 wave numbers and CO2 does not.
BTW the P-E Spectrum 1000 FT-IR has range of 4,500 to 400 wave numbers with resolution of 1 wave number. The coupled rotational-vibrational P and R branches from 2,000 to 1400 wave numbers are spectacular.
“What I have read some time ago is that water drops contain only minor amounts of CO2, which cause no changes in CO2 levels when falling down on earth (thus probably little/no change where they are formed). ”
That is rank speculation by the climate scientists. I live in Burnaby BC right next door to Vancouver. During the rainy sseason (Nov- Mar) the sky is often grey overcast for a week or more, and there can be steady rain for days on end. This rain will certainly wash CO2 out the air. Annual rainfall is about 1200 mm at the airport. However, on the north shore mountains rainfall is several meters.
I’m going to ask Roy Spencer about CO2 in clouds.
I don’t know anything about Modtran and Hitran because I don’t design heat-seeking missles. As I mentioned in real air there no unifrom distribution of the mass of atmosphere and of clouds as shown by weather maps. I can’t imagine these computer programs taking this into account as well as atmospheric tide effects which alter the mass distribution of the atmosphere.
You should check out:
“Cyclic Climate Changes and Fish Productivity” by L.B. Klyashtorin and A.A. Lyubushin. The English translation can be downloaded for free thru this link:
http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes__and_Fish_Productivity.pdf?
NB: This mongraph is 224 pages. This book is not about climate scientist.
By analyzing a number of time series of data influenced by climate, they found that the earth has global climate cycles of 50-70 years with an average of about 60 years which has cool and warm phases of 30 years each. They summerize most of the studies thru 2004 and early 2005 that show how this cycle influences fish catches in the major fisheries.
The last warm phase began in ca 1970-75 (aka the Great Shift) and ended in ca 2000. The global warming from ca 1975 is due in part to this warm phase. A cool phase has started and they predict it should last about 30 years.
Just downloaded the first 2 chapters unless you are really keen on fish. Check
Fig. 2.22 where they show that increasing world fuel consumption does not correlate with cool and warm phase of the 60 year cycle.
During the cool phase La Nina years usually out number El Nino years as was the case from ca 1940-70. EL Nino years were more prevalent from 1975 to 2000 and especially in the 1990-2000 decade.
If the Russians are right, it is going to get cold like really cold.
Harold Pierce Jr says:
March 1, 2011 at 8:25 am
The measured IR spectrum shown by Kaufmann is at sealevel only. That doesn’t tell us anything of what happens at higher elevations. The Modtran program, does calculate the integrated spectra bottom to height (or reverse, backradiation) for 100-1500 wavenumber. That shows the real absorption for CO2, water vapour and others, for different fixed parts and total atmosphere.
The only critique that Steve McIntyre had is about the fixed atmosphere, as the presence of CO2 in fact influences the temperature profile. See:
http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/14/from-lacis-et-al-1981-to-archer-modtran/
Indeed Modtran (and climate) is about averages…
I don’t think that important levels of CO2 are washed out of the atmosphere by rain. Most water vapour comes from warm oceans where water and extra CO2 is emitted together, going up to the height were water condenses, absorbing (some) of the extra CO2. But ask it Dr. Spencer.
For the rest, I do agree with the inability of climate models to take into account (or even “project”) natural cycles at all…
Wow, we emit so little! I wonder what made CO2 concentration get so high after we started burning coal, then…
I´m somewhat puzzled how this cartoon could ever be put up as an honest argument on WUWT. Mr. Watts, you are, as far as I know, perfectly aware of both a) that manmade CO2 constitutes about 100% of the increase in CO2 since about 1750, and b) that it makes no sense to state that “CO2 is only 3% of the greenhouse gases”, since the spectral absorption lines of different gases overlap, and the putative individual contributions thus are not additive. And that is before we start to consider the fact that water vapour is a feedback effect and would not be able to independently force a temperature increase, or that even if we tried to assign individual percentage contributions, that of CO2 would still be 10-30%. As Mr Engelbeen has, once again, stated unambiguously, there is no point to this cartoon. The apparent logic behind it is one of the most basic schoolboy howlers (ignoring the carbon cycle and the net transport), and neither Paul Nurse nor anybody else with some basic scientific training would have the slightest trouble producing the obvious counter off the top of their heads, were they to be confronted with the cartoon argument.
Is this site about trying to present serious scientific objections that will make the real climate science community worried, or is it about providing cheap laughs for the more gullible parts of the less insightful WUWT readers?
@Christoffer Bugge Harder
Well stated, Christoffer. You might notice that the original post is tagged as “humor” & “satire” … but, as you’re well aware, the underlying message is a favorite “skeptic” canard. The high number of “gullible/less insightful” reader comments makes it clear how the cartoon is really viewed by many here, and why your message is spot-on.
I find this type of WUWT reader reaction disturbingly typical and, believe me, that reaction is not discouraged.
Now … prepare for being accused of having no sense of humor …
Thank you, Jack. At least, I am happy to see that a) at least one insightful reader noticed my comment, and b), so far, no “you have no humour” accusations have appeared. 🙂
But honestly: In Danisch, there is a proverb saying something like “If you take serious matters only seriously and humorous matters only humorously, then you have understood both matters poorly”. As you correctly note, the supposedly serious part behind the apparent fun in this cartoon is not serious at all – and the truly funny part of this (at least, for every honest and remotely insightful reader) is really to see someone seriously presenting such a breathtakingly naive and so easily dismissed argument as a perceived “gotcha”. It reminds me of Ali G dismissing the danger of fire when he smoked in front of a chemist by telling him that there was no oxygen in the studio anyway – “Gotcha”! (and then the chemist pointed out that that Ali Gs cigarette was already on fire, and of course, Ali G was scared to death).
I actually once had some of my shy pupils/students having found this site and asked me about the content – I think it was Roy Spencer singing the same “CO2 is natural”-tune. I told them this was complete nonsense and repeated what I had taught them about the carbon cycle. They were actually surprised to discover that they themselves could see the gaping hole in the argument by diagrams in a simple secondary school textbook (this is, of course, a very happy moment for every science educator, and in this regard, I am actually albeit backhandedly grateful to WUWT).
But they were also sceptical about their own insight and asked me “If WUWT is a science blog, why do they then present information that is so apparently easily disproven as false?” I was at a loss back then and told them to make up their own minds. But now, when you see this again (and again) – and when you consider the fact that Engelbeen (and, I think, even otherwise ignorant people as Willis Eschenbach) have pointed out the obvious many times, then one is left to conclude that Anthony Watts does not much care whether anything presented here is true or not.
For the record, I can reveal that I – under the nome-de-blog “Loquor” – wrote approvingly about the polite tone and how the commenters in the Spencer “CO2 is all natural!”-threads set Spencer straight. This was the first time I read this blog, and back then, I was honestly impressed. Now, unfortunately, upon seeing this (and more easily refutable) nonsense again and again, not so much. I am not a regular reader and I do not know if WUWT has taken a turn for the worse since then, but there is no doubt that the owner of this blog must immediately stop this if he wants to be taken seriously by anyone who has ever heard of the carbon cycle. Even if it will be at the expense of the more gullible readers cheap sense of humour.