Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
As I continue to plow through Vol 1 Issue 1 of the new Journal Nature Climate Change, I came to the following amazing statement:
Communicating the value of climate modelling … requires confronting such apparent contradictions as the fact that increasing a model’s complexity — by adding the behaviour of clouds, people or ecosystem feedbacks, for example — may actually increase the uncertainty in climate projections. Atmospheric scientist Kevin Trenberth of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, has explicitly warned that unless such seemingly paradoxical results are communicated carefully, the more complex modelling being used in climate simulations for the upcoming fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may confuse both the public and decision-makers, thereby reducing their willingness to act. [My emphasis]
“Apparent contradictions”? Heck yes, and more than simply “apparent”! The Warmists finally understand that including the major natural cycles and processes that affect climate change in their models will make it that much harder for them to convince the public that human activities are the main cause and, therefore, changing our activities the main solution!
Yet, the title of the paper that includes the above quote is The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks – as if communications was the major problem, rather than the fact it is largely nonsense they are trying to communicate.
They base their opinion on Trenberth’s 2010 paper which includes these equally amazing words:
[An IPCC AR5 chapter] will deal with longer-term projections, to 2100 and beyond, using a suite of global models. Many of these models will attempt new and better representations of important climate processes and their feedbacks — in other words, those mechanisms that can amplify or diminish the overall effect of increased incoming radiation. Including these elements will make the models into more realistic simulations of the climate system, but it will also introduce uncertainties.
So here is my prediction: the uncertainty in AR5’s climate predictions and projections will be much greater than in previous IPCC reports, primarily because of the factors noted above. This could present a major problem for public understanding of climate change. Is it not a reasonable expectation that as knowledge and understanding increase over time, uncertainty should decrease? But while our knowledge of certain factors does increase, so does our understanding of factors we previously did not account for or even recognize. …
Trial and error
It has been said that all models are wrong but some are useful. …
Performing cutting-edge climate science in public could easily lead to misinterpretation, and it will take a great deal of work communicating carefully with the public and policymakers to ensure that the results are used appropriately. … what to do about climate change is a high-profile, politically charged issue involving winners and losers, and such results can be misused. In fact — to offer one more prediction — I expect that they will be.
[My emphasis]
When confused, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
Here is what they say (and what they may be thinking):
- Including important forcings, such as clouds, will increase uncertainty. (Yeah, we were much more certain when our simple models gave nice crisp conclusions that matched our political biases. Then we added some of the complexity of the real-world climate, and now the conclusions are uncertain. Could it be that our political biases are at fault? Nope, we just have to work on our communications tactics and “social and decision sciences” to sell this load of baloney to the great unwashed public.)
- The contradictions are merely “apparent” and the results merely “paradoxical”. (Yeah, if we merely communicate this stuff carefully so as not to confuse the public and decision makers and make them unwilling to act in the politically-correct way.)
- There are mechanisms that can amplify or diminish the overall effect of increased incoming radiation. (OOPS, we forgot about those effects that diminish the overall warming. How can we include them in a way that does not add to public uncertainty about our competence?)
- Scientific knowledge and uncertainty are supposed to increase over time. (So how come we keep looking dumber?)
- All models are wrong, but some are useful. (Why is it that as our models become less wrong they become less useful to our political agenda?)
- Public disclosure of climate science research results can lead to misinterpretation and results can and will be misused. (We better keep our climate research results away from the public until we get a chance to misinterpret and misuse them before the skeptics find out the truth behind our methods.)
Myrrh
I don’t think there is any doubt that CO2 causes warming. The debate is over how much.
If you fill a jar with 100 % CO2 and another one with Nitrogen and expose them to sunlight the CO2 one will get warmer. Disputing the obvious doesn’t convert anyone.
That being said, filling the jar with 380/1,000,000 CO2 won’t cause much warming in the jar or on the earth. The exact amount is difficult to measure because there are so many feedbacks and natural processes that are almost impossible to remove.
The calculated values depend upon many assumptions which may be wrong but I use them as a starting point.
Feedback may in fact make it even less than this “open loop” value.
HAS: Again there is nothing at all startling in Trenberth and Pidgeon& Fischoff’s remarks concerning uncertainties in data. As one commentator pointed out, the more parameters you add each with its own uncertainty, the greater the total uncertainty at the end. This is really a statement of the bleeding obvious to any scientist. What they are pointing out is a that this will need to be explained to nonscientists who think it a paradox. It is not.
It should be pointed out that the uncertainty in the final calculation or model can be lowered by reducing the uncertainty in the individual parameters by better measurements or reduction of uncertainty by other means. For example if mass measurements were made with balance that was state of the art at one time and measured to one thousandth of a milligram, the accuracy and the precision of the measurement would be improved by an updated balance that measured to a millionth of a gram, and any multifactorial calculation involving this parameter would also be improved.
The assertion that climate scientists have not been aware that their data and the models on which they are base do not contain errors is ridiculous. The main object of climate science is to improve upon the understanding of the complex climate system by improvements in data and addition of forcing factors which have earlier been ignored. In 1981 Hansen produced a model based on just three parameters (CO2, solar and volcanic) which in good agreement with temperature records (Fig 5 of this paper)
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_etal.pdf
In 2005 he produced a more complex model based on a dozen forcings which provided a better fit of the observed temperature data.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2005/2005_Hansen_etal_1.pdf
As regard to the argument here about the starting point for doubling of CO2. The relationship between CO2 concentration is logarithmic not linear. The sensitivity factor is taken as the temperature rise resulting from a doubling of CO@ur momisugly from its pre industrial age concentration of 280 ppm in 1750. Let me quote from the abstract of this paper:
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
“Various observations favour a climate sensitivity value of about 3 °C, with a likely range of about 2–4.5 °C. However, the physics of the response and uncertainties in forcing lead to fundamental difficulties in ruling out higher values.”
Note the discussion of the uncertainties here. It takes up most of the abstract Claims that climatologists are not aware of the uncertainties are nonsense. They are working to reduce them.
And from the text:
radiative forcing and is readily computed as a function of the current CO2
Relative to the pre-industrial CO2: ΔT = S ln(CO2/CO2(t=1750))/ln2.
The total forcing is assumed to be the sum of all individual forcings. The sensitivity S can also be phrased as 8–10
S = ΔT0/(1 − f) (2)
where f is the feedback factor amplifying (if 0 < f < 1) or damping the initial blackbody response of ΔT0 = 1.2 °C for a CO2 doubling.
So yes, 1.2 C of that amount is the direct response of CO2 and the remainder from the feedback mechanisms. Which are being further researched in order to better define their contribution and reduce the uncertainty.
Again, that is what the research is all about. That is what Trenberth and the others are saying. That is what so many here fail to undestand.
Philip Shehan,
Observations trump computer models, which greatly overstate the assumed temperature rise.
Who are you gonna believe? Trenberth? Or your lyin’ eyes?
netdr2 says:
April 30, 2011 at 7:24 am
Myrrh – I don’t think there is any doubt that CO2 causes warming. The debate is over how much.
I know there’s a lot of doubt… It follows temp rises by around 800 years, nothing in the line it takes following temp rises gives any indication of CO2 being the cause of the rises or falls, for example Vostok, but there are many other studies which show the same thing, including our own last century… CO2 also cools the Earth, in the same way as the Water Cycle, it takes heat away from the Earth.
You can debate as much as you want ‘how much warming it causes’, but you (AGWScience & Others) have as yet not proved it causes any.
If you fill a jar with 100% CO2 and another one with Nitrogen and expose them to sunlight the CO2 one will get warmer. Disputing the obvious doesn’t convert anyone.
Sounds like a variation of the BBC. Take one jar of CO2 and one jar of Air and heat..
…What temp did you get them to? Did you time it? Did you then time how long it took each to cool? Please show me details of the experiment. I don’t have the wherewithal to test it for myself.
S’far as I’ve gathered, CO2 has a lower heat capacity than Nitrogen, so it will get hotter slightly quicker but also cool down more quickly. Water has a much higher heat capacity than either, it takes longer to heat up but retains the heat longer, that’s why we use it in our radiators, because it’s better for storing heat. Carbon Dioxide doesn’t store heat, it releases it practically instantly.
That being said, filling the jar with 380/1,000,000 CO2 won’t cause much warming in the jar or on the earth. The exact amount is difficult to measure because there are so many feedbacks and natural processes that are almost impossible to remove.
Including that as a real world ‘greenhouse gas’, it also directly cools the Earth, as does Nitrogen and Oxygen and especially Water Vapour; without the Water Cycle the Earth would be 67°C.
In other words, it is not even proven that AGWScience’s ‘greenhouse gases’ warm the Earth to begin with. None of these basic premises used by AGWScience, and seemingly accepted without question by some Others, have actually been shown to be science fact.
So, first let’s have the proof that CO2 drives temperature to cause global warming of the Earth.
I’ve just had a look for heat capacity re this for a reminder and found something else that’s interesting about CO2 and Nitrogen – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity
Nitrogen is not a monatomic gas as is Carbon Dioxide, it acts differently in storing thermal energy because of this.
Scroll down to “Example of temperature-dependent specific heat capacity, in a diatomic gas
It says that on an atom to atom level Nitrogen which is a diatomic gas has a lower heat capacity than a monatomic gas such as Carbon Dioxide. But:
“The heat capacity per atom for nitrogen is therefore less than for a monatomic gas, so long as the temperature remains low enough that no vibrational degrees of freedom are activated.
At higher temperatures, however, nitrogen gas gains two more degrees of internal freedom, as the molecule is excited into higher vibrational modes which store thermal energy., Now the bond is contributing heat capacity, and is contributing more than if the atoms were not bonded. With full thermal exitation of bond vibration, the heat capacity per volume or mole of molecules approaches seven-thirds that of monatomic gases, or seven-sixths of monatomic, on a mole-of-atoms basis. This is now a higher heat capacity per atom than the monatomic figure, because the vibrational mode enables an extra degree of potential energy freedom per pair of atoms, which monatomic gases cannot possess.”
So, even more so. Let us have the details of the heating Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide experiment and the temperature these were heated to.
And, I hope there’s someone here who has easy real science familiarity with all this, so obviously good at the maths.., but does this mean then that on the ‘normal’ tables of heat capacity where, iirc, CO2 is around .84 and Nitrogen 1.04, that is at the lower “mole of atoms basis”, and that if the Nitrogen got very hot that its heat capacity would be more like water?
Is this saying that Nitrogen, which is some 80% of our atmosphere, is, say, on a typical hot midsummer midday at the equator, storing considerably more heat than CO2 is capable of?
Re: HAS April 29, 2011 at 11:55 pm
Why focus on the false statements of Leif Svalgaard, Piers Corbyn, & Kevin Trenberth when it is more productive to focus on their true statements? Are you opposed to being practical?
Philip Shehan, I can understand your frustration with some commenters here who insist on politics over understanding of nature. However, it’s not the simple matter you seem to suggest since fundamentally flawed base assumptions have had an undeserved free ride. For example, Simpson’s Paradox arises in a multitude of ways that are unknowable with ignorance of key conditioning variables, spatial aspects of phase reversals, and complex (not to be confused with linear) correlation. Nonetheless, it is helpful that you challenge some members of the audience here to focus on nature rather than uninteresting politics. (It’s NOT a uniform crowd – far from it!!)
Myrrh
NetDr posted
If you fill a jar with 100% CO2 and another one with Nitrogen and expose them to sunlight the CO2 one will get warmer. Disputing the obvious doesn’t convert anyone.
_______________________
Sounds like a variation of the BBC. Take one jar of CO2 and one jar of Air and heat..
…What temp did you get them to? Did you time it? Did you then time how long it took each to cool? Please show me details of the experiment. I don’t have the wherewithal to test it for myself.
S’far as I’ve gathered, CO2 has a lower heat capacity than Nitrogen, so it will get hotter slightly quicker but also cool down more quickly. Water has a much higher heat capacity than either, it takes longer to heat up but retains the heat longer, that’s why we use it in our radiators, because it’s better for storing heat. Carbon Dioxide doesn’t store heat, it releases it practically instantly.
****************************
The heat capacity of CO2 vs Nitrogen has little or nothing to do with it.
The opacity to certain frequencies of light has everything to do with it.
If both jars are at room temperature and exposed to sunlight the jar portion is the same for both but the CO2 part is not. The jar with CO2 warms more when they come to equilibrium. The rate of warming isn’t a factor when you get to equilibrium is it ?
I am as skeptical as you but facts are facts. CO2 causes some warming. How much is where the disagreement lies.
A wise man once said “You have a right to your own opinions but not to your own facts. “
Philip Shehan April 30, 2011 at 8:17 am
HAS: Again there is nothing at all startling in Trenberth and Pidgeon& Fischoff’s remarks concerning uncertainties in data. As one commentator pointed out, the more parameters you add each with its own uncertainty, the greater the total uncertainty at the end. This is really a statement of the bleeding obvious to any scientist. What they are pointing out is a that this will need to be explained to nonscientists who think it a paradox. It is not.
Trenberth isn’t talking about uncertainty in data he is talking about “the uncertainty in AR5′s climate predictions and projections”.
What he is actually saying is that the more parameters we add to climate models the greater the spread of scenario outputs. This is not a general consequence in modelling per se, but is bleeding obvious to anyone that understands the limitations of current climate models – they seriously underestimate the unexplained, so more parameters are quite likely to reveal more of what they fail to explain.
On the other hand Trenberth and others involved in the policy debate have characterize the scenario output as being synonymous with (or even as estimating) the true variability in the climate (willfully in my view). They have done this to overstate (for political reasons) the certainty in their work. If there is one overwhelming weakness in climate models it is in estimating the true variability in their output (although modeling actual temperature is a challenge for them too).
So he is creating the paradox by claiming uncertainty in model output is the same thing as uncertainty in the climate. If he simply came clean on the limited nature of the models there would be no paradox, but unfortunately his whole enterprise would start to fall to bits. Instead he introduces the mumbo jumbo about uncertainties “having been introduced” so expect greater uncertainty in our ability to predict and forecast the climate.
That uncertainty was always there. It’s just that he and his kind have never been explicit with policy makers and the public about this.
Just on the measurement point you do discuss I’m afraid it isn’t bleeding obvious that adding parameters to a model ipso facto leads to a less certain estimate. It all depends on the interdependence of the parameters being measured etc etc.
There are too many engineers reading this blog and not enough statisticians 🙂
Paul Vaughan at April 30, 2011 at 11:53 am
The practical problem is working out what is really true amid the political rhetoric.
Stop funding them all, I’d say.
Don’t know how I missed this..
Ira says /#comment-650867 to netdr2 April 29 at 8:38 pm
On our side, we have those good folks I call “Disbelievers” (aka “Deniers”, a term with baggage I would rather avoid) who also tend to be non-science-oriented to the point they do not accept the well-established idea that certain Atmospheric gases (mainly water vapor and CO2) are espnsible for the surface temperatures of the Earth being some 33°C warmer that it would be if the Atmosphere was pure nitrogen. In my recent WUWT Topic(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/29/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-molecules-and-photons/) a couple of them spouted nonsense about the Second Law of Thermodynamics preventing a cooler body from emitting radiation in the direction of a warmer body, and also claiming that radiation we call “light” (in the visible and near-visible range) lacked the “oomph” to be “thermal”, so only the radiation we call “heat” (in the mid-far IR range) can actually warm anything. These good people seem to be so driven by political (and in some cases religious) reaction against the CAGW Alarminsts that they have the opposite and equally wrong doctrine of Disbelieving DAGW. Like their CAGW opponents, they are not reachable by science-based argument. Some in the DAGW camp have genuine scientific credentials that they misuse to come up with scientific-sounding nonsense to defeat the CAGW nonsense.
netdr2 – as one of those Ira refers to.. Sadly it is he without any science to back up his claims, please do read the points I made and the requests I made for proof, surely asking for proof is the scientific method, even for those without a science background?
But as an example, Ira refuses to prove that Blue light, any Visible, can heat the Earth’s land and sea to produce the amount of claimed Thermal IR as depicted in the AGWScience Energy Budget KT97, and as above continues to pretend, note, pretend, that such claims are ‘well-established science’, just as here with the claim that CO2 drives temperatures.
I say pretend, because I don’t believe his position in this is genuine. I think he fully understands the arguments made re Light/Heat energies and the 2nd Law, but continues to promote the AGWScience corruption of these deliberately, so people continue to think these are actual real science facts that everyone takes for granted.
I think his is a deliberate campaign to propagandise on behalf of the AGWScience hierarchy. So when he says what he does here about heat and light energies, he deliberately chooses to ignore, and doesn’t respond to, any explanation or reference to the contrary.
Look at this which I posted and noted the reference came from 1987 – before AGWScience propaganda had got into full swing among the adults and to date where it has already corrupted the education of children in the West especially – it used to be well-known scientific fact that heat and light energies were different – that light energies are not thermal as Ira claims in that discussion, see page in the link 2: “Infrared radiation from 756-100,000nm is heat”
http://www.geobotany.uaf.edu/teaching/biol474/biol474-06_lesson24.pdf
So, in 1987 it was still common scientific knowledge that Light energies were not thermal, but Ira claims otherwise.
Now, take a look at Ira’s post to Geoff Sherrington above, /#comment-650883
Notice anything? His meme, the Meme that he is pushing here on behalf of the those who think they rule the world, is the acceptance of lower standards of living for the plebs: less enjoyment of life for those who have modern day higher access through abundant energy supply now by more and more restrictions and which comes as we can already see, a restriction on third world countries such as Africa making use of their cheap energy resources of coal to better their own life expectancy and living conditions.
If he genuinely thinks the Warmistas are blowing hot over nothing very much, then why is he so keen to put restrictions on cheap energy of coal which is abundant everywhere and easily accessed?
He really doesn’t give a toss about any of this, he knows the AGWScience claims are rubbish and he never bothers arguing for them. His brief is to push those two memes only. Enslavement of the people to poverty and restrictions (travel one of them) by those who think they have the power and control to organise such by using the AGWScience Method of twisting real science fact just as a means to that end, because the goal in sight is the dumbing down and control of the population.
Someone called him a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He just ignores it all and carries on churning out these two memes regardless.
We have abundant energy resources for all. The meme that ‘we are running out’ is simply another scam.
Too many want to play God in this and that’s the problem with Ira and his ilk, and I think this the new religion of Hierarchy they’re trying to foist on us built on AGW lies is because of hate for the other, at the very least without respect for the other’s well-being, as the AGWPolitburo minions won’t have to endure any energy or food or health or travel restrictions..
..will you, Ira?
Equilibrium with what?
Translation: If heretofore forgotten, unwanted and/or rejected inputs are considered in climate models (ie: planetary mechanics, coronal mass ejections, cosmic ray flux/clouds, underwater volcanoes and thermal vents, etc.), there will be no sound basis to blame humans for climate change, and nature will be exposed as the cause for all the climate change observed.
It would be interesting to see what kind of climate model Piers Corbin would come up with. But he already has, and it is beating the pants off the predictions of The Met Office.
Myrrh
The point that you miss is that when two jars one with CO2 and the other with nitrogen are heated and come to equilibrium the CO2 jar is warmer. [Thermal mass has nothing to do with it.] That is observation and trumps theory every time.
CO2 causes some warming if only from the infra red
I don’t know what is meant by :
But as an example, Ira refuses to prove that Blue light, any Visible, can heat the Earth’s land and sea to produce the amount of claimed Thermal IR as depicted in the AGWScience Energy Budget KT97, and as above continues to pretend, note, pretend, that such claims are ‘well-established science’, just as here with the claim that CO2 drives temperatures.
All sunlight contains light at many different frequencies including infra red which is heat. When sunlight hits CO2 it causes warming. The only debate is how much.
This seems to me to be what I was taught in college physics long before AGW was dreamed up. Was that incorrect ? Did the professor have an agenda ?
It appears that you still do not get it. ALL the CO2 sensitivity estimates you found via Google are essentially the same when it comes to the estimates of resultant “X”ºC warming, where “X” ranges from 0.2ºC up to 4.5ºC, depending upon who is doing the estimating. That is a very large dynamic range of uncertainty. Look at your Google values for CO2, which range from 275 to 380 ppmv on the starting end, doubling to 550 to 760 ppmv, comparatively a very low dynamic range.
In your original posting that started our conversation, you suggested 1 ppmv doubling to 2 ppmv and then 100,000 ppmv doubling to 200,000 ppmv. What do those extreme and totally unrealistic values have to do with actual and potential CO2 levels on Earth? How do those very high and very low “straw-man” values contribute to the scientific debate between science-oriented Warmists and Skeptics?
They don’t. They only serve to confuse the issue.
I think your use of “peasant” is a bit condescending. On the other hand, I fully agree that the “common man” (and woman of course) has a great deal of common sense, particularly when they are spending their own money. The government, on the other hand, due to political pressure from well-funded and totally selfish special interest groups, has no common sense at all, which is why they waste our money on nice-sounding but essentially dumb ideas like Ethanol and wind power.
I definitely do not believe John (and Jane) Citizen will spend his or her own money on wind-generated electricity unless it is cheaper than the other sources. Currently, the government, urged on by both “green” “environmentalist” pressure groups and corporations that have developed wind-power, subsidizes wind-power and thus forces wind-electricity into the power grid. Under the Carbon Tax as I described it, the government would not pick specific winners at all.
The Carbon Tax would slowly and inexorably raise the cost of all types of fossil-fuel energy, along with products that have high fossil fuel content. Proceeds would be returned to John and Jane Citizen. With that money in their own pockets, they would adjust their buying patterns to whatever they judged (using their own common sense and their own money) to be the best for themselves.
No one would force them to car-pool or use public transit or bike to work, but their own economic interests would tend to push them in those directions. No one would force them to turn down their air conditioning in summer or their heat in winter, or buy more energy-efficient cars, but their own economic interests would tend to push them in those directions.
Manufacturers would also adjust their manufacturing and buying patterns accordingly. They would direct their ingenuity develop products and services that would be more energy-efficient and better compete in the market as fossil-fuel-based costs went up.
The winners would thus be picked not by the political process of government, but by individual people, in their self-interested roles as managers and engineers at market-based, profit-driven corporations, and as their private roles as selfish consumers, trying to get the most for their own money.
Does anyone think government “experts” can pick the winners better than free market forces?
NOTE: My main motivation for supporting a tax on fossil fuels is the high cost, in blood and treasure, to maintain our access to foreign sources.
Paul Vaughan says:
April 30, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Point taken Paul and I was not implying every commentator with a “skeptical” (I object to the idea that those persuaded by the evidence that AGW is real are not skeptics) viewpoint is “guilty” of my objections. Also my statement of the “bleeding obvious” was based on “all other factors being equal” and elsewhere I note how uncertainties may be reduced or otherwise affected.
HAS says:
April 30, 2011 at 1:38 pm
I can only direct you to the review article linked in my 8:38 am post which is all about uncertainty in models. No climatologist is hiding or downplaying this. Non scientists on both sides of the debate take extreme views which they falsely represent as the opinion of scientists which get all the attention but do not reflect what the climatologists themselves say and write.
And I confess to being puzzled by your remark:
“So he is creating the paradox by claiming uncertainty in model output is the same thing as uncertainty in the climate.”
There is no uncertainty in “the climate”. The pysical reality. The climate just is. It would exist free of any uncertainty in the absence of human beings who try to understand it..
Uncertainty exists only in the human attempts to understand the real world climate. This includes uncertainties in models and measured observations. Uncertainties are a human invention. So Trenberth’s statment about uncertainties “having been introduced” is far from mumbo jumbo.
And the term models is another word for theory that long predated the computer age. Bohr’s model for the atom was constructed in his mind. Watson and Crick’s model of DNA was constructed out of bits of metal. Modern models are constructed in silico.
Norse models for climate involved the actions of Thor. Not sure how they dealt with uncertainties in the model. Perhaps “Thor got pissed last night.” (Pissed in either American or Australian usage)
Philip Shehan at April 30, 2011 at 9:52 pm
I was being brief when I said Trenberth” is creating the paradox by claiming uncertainty in model output is the same thing as uncertainty in the climate.” I had thought the context (and my opening para) would have made it clear I was referring to uncertainty in forecasts and predictions.
In terms of “The equilibrium sensitivity of the Earth’s temperature to radiation changes” Reto Knutti1 and Gabriele C. Hegerl: you do understand that climate sensitivity as defined as a simple well behaved parameter is a gross simplification?
I’ll simply note that the bulk of the article interviews climate models to see how it behaves and the authors are reduced to offering their own subjective analysis of is PDF in the absence of anything better in the literature.
Rather proves my point.
Those interested in the historical developement of models and uncertainties should look at the IPCC’s Historical Overview of Climate Change Science. May take a while to download (5MB) but save the pdf and you will have a very useful reference as to what the IPCC actually says rather than what people say it says.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter1.pdf
netdr2 says:
April 30 2011 at 4:48
The point that you miss is that when two jars one with CO2 and the other with nitrogen are heated and come to equilibrium the CO2 jar is warmer. [Thermal mass has nothing to do with it.] That is observation and trumps theory every time.
The point I’m making is that you’re not giving me any details of the experiment and just what do you mean by “Thermal mass has nothing to do with it”?
If you look at a specific heat table for different gases you’ll see that Carbon Dioxide is much lower than Nitrogen, it’s an at a glance comparison of the differences re specific heat, and in physical effects it means that Carbon Dioxide gets hot much quicker than Nitrogen, but that also means that it cools much quicker. In other words, Nitrogen is better capable of storing heat. Carbon dioxide can’t store it at all, it releases it practically instantly.
So your description, or lack of it, in the so called ‘observation’ is meaningless to me. Without the detail of temps reached and times etc. it says zilch, but importantly, it also says rubbish because the different heat capacities of each are very well understood in real science.
Carbon Dioxide does not have the physical ability to store heat. Nitrogen is better able to do so, and from the link I posted to the explanation, the hotter Nitrogen gets the more it is able to store heat because of its particular atomic structure.
As I said, this appears to me the same kind of mangling of an experiment as the BBC one comparing heating a jar of Carbon Dioxide with a jar of Air. The Carbon Dioxide got hotter, and they stopped the experiment. If they’d timed it, and timed how long it took the jar of Air to heat up too, and then timed how long it took for each to cool back down to room temp it would have shown that Carbon Dioxide cools down as rapidly as it heats up, and the jar of air takes much longer to cool down, showing that it has a far greater capacity to store heat. This should also have been done with some idea at least of what proportions of gases the jar of Air contained, because the water content of the jar of Air would slow down its heating and keep the heat longer too. This is what the quick glance at the specific heat tables shows, the higher the number the longer it takes to get hot and the longer it keeps the heat. The BBC audience thought they were seeing ‘by observation’, but it was deliberately manipulated so they had no understanding of what they were seeing.
Water has by far the higher number, it’s greater capacity to store heat as it evaporates from the Earth’s surface as the gas Water Vapour and rises into the atmosphere taking that heat with it until it cools down and condenses out into rain is what makes it the real science ‘greenhouse gas’, it cools the Earth down. Think deserts without water. Globally, it’s the Water Cycle which keeps the Earth from becoming one. The figure given for our Atmosphere without the Water Cycle is that the Earth would be 67°C. Which even if you don’t have the numbers, you can get the concept from understanding what properties water has and what it does in the Earth’s atmosphere. The AGWScience claim that it ‘heats’ the Earth because a ‘greenhouse gas’ doesn’t take into account its main effect which is that it cools the Earth’s Atmosphere globally.
Each time you exhale 4% of your breath is Carbon Dioxide, which is around how much water there is in our Atmosphere so many more ppm than ‘normal air’. Try your own ‘observation’, see how long it takes for you to heat up the room you’re in, choose a small one like the bathroom. You’re emitting around the same amount of Thermal IR from your body as the Earth so if there’s ‘back radiation’ from the CO2 you’ve got head start on ‘doubling causes 4-6°C rise in global temps’ because of the greater ppm of Carbon Dioxide in your breath. Try it with the window closed and open. Keep breathing.
I won’t be making any request for your presence to take the place of my central heating system.. 🙂
CO2 causes some warming if only from the infra red.
But since it also cools down quickly, any that is in the colder higher atmosphere, in the immediate sky above us, will also be helping to cool the Earth, just as Water does, by taking it away from the surface. It will cool down much more quickly than the water in the atmosphere, but both release it to colder regions around them and that is up and away from Earth, heat rises.
I don’t know what is meant by: “But as an example, Ira refuses to prove that Blue light, any Visible, can heat the Earth’s land and sea to produce the amount of claimed Thermal IR as depicted in the AGWScience Energy Budget KT97, and as above continues to pretend, note, pretend, that such claims are ‘well-established science’, just as here with the claim that CO2 drives temperatures.”
Visible Light and the shortwave either side of UV and Nr IR are not thermal, they are not heat on the move as was still understood by scientists even in 1987, as I posted the link above, IRA claims they are, that these are what we feel as heat from the Sun.
He continues to make the absurd claim that his version is the Real, traditional science. Real traditional science knows these are not Heat, so they can’t warm the land and oceans by transferring heat as does Thermal IR; they are Light energies not Heat energies.
I have asked him to prove that these Solar energies of the AGWScience KT97 Energy Budget, of Visible, UV and Nr IR, are capable of directly converting to heat the land and oceans of the Earth to produce the amount of Thermal IR radiated back from the Earth because of this, as AGWScience claims, and Ira continues to promote.
I gave two other references about this in the previous discussion (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/29/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-molecules-and-photons/), one from a NASA page for education on Infrared, and another from an encyclopedia entry which say that physicists are still teaching that Thermal IR heats the earth and this is traditional (my post /#comment-645468)
If something is traditional in Science, then it is not enough to say it isn’t that any more, you MUST show proof that Traditional Science is wrong and you are right. I keep asking for the proof, but it is constantly avoided, deflected.
I know it cannot be proved because this is such well known real science fact about energies from the Sun, constantly in use in real life science, that the AGWScience claim is obviously absurd.
That this ridiculous version from AGWScience has now been introduced even into educating children in the last decades, does not make it true. It makes it a Con.
The NASA site is http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html
Which is being taken down at the end of May because of people like Ira, but it is saved here: http://www.webcitation.org/5y68yeeRD
The URL for the Newworld Encyclopedia quote: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Infrared
And it is archived on: http://www.webcitation.org/5y6Any4VA
This is what the NASA site for education says:
This is traditional, real world, really well understood in practical science the difference in properties between the shorter non-thermal Solar energies and the Infrared thermal. Ira knows he can’t prove this wrong, so he avoids answering. He’s not a real scientist.
I’m asking for proof that the Visible Light energies in the Solar Energy Budget of KT97 convert to heat the land and oceans of Earth to produce the amount of Thermal IR claimed, which it is claimed raises the temperature of the Earth globally etc. To show that Blue light can heat water, for a start.
This AGWScience claim is pure, unadulterated b*llsh*t. That it is believed to be real by people who take it on trust, or have been deliberately as children educated to believe it, is one thing, but for someone like Ira promoting it when it’s obvious he perfectly understands that this NASA traditional science contradicts him, is disingenuous.
He avoids answering directly but continues to push, as above in this discussion, that his deliberately contrived to deceive AGWScience version is correct. He has no integrity as a scientist. He is lying in claiming his version is traditional science. He has to answer to his own conscience for his integrity as a man.
All Sunlight contains light at many different frequencies including infra red which is heat. When sunlight hits CO2 it causes warming. The only debate is how much.
First, the debate has to begin with the original premise claimed by AGWScience as depicted in the KT97, if the premise to a claim is wrong then the rest of the arguments are irrelevant. Light energies do not have the ability to transfer heat as do Heat energies. Each of the wavelengths has different properties and effects on encountering other matter in the real world. The AGWScience claim is that Thermal IR does not heat the Earth, but these Light energies do. Nonsense.
This seems to me to be what I was taught in college physics long before AGW was dreamed up. Was that incorrect? Did the professor have an agenda?
As you can see from my explanation, AGWScience, and Ira promoting, has twisted this around to become the opposite of what you were taught. It is subtle and clever, but it is utterly deceitful and done because the promoters of AGWScience have an agenda.
Your professor taught you traditional real world well-established tested science that infrared is heat.
Ira is teaching that it is the shorter wavelength Solar of Visible and UV and Nr IR which is heat.
Philip Shehan at May 1, 2011 at 12:43 am
If you want to be serious about understanding climate models spend some time at http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/collection/870907, particularly those presentations that have got the most traffic. A couple of useful ones to put the IPCC stuff in context are http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/871991 and http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1083858
If you want to get a feel for how you might use Baysian techniques to estimate the PDF of climate sensitivity without just making guesses have a look at http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1084396
I have searched for predictions from other climate models other than Hanson’s 1988 one which “jumped the shark” about 2007.
Does anyone have a site I could go to to evaluate more than just Hansen’s model ?
In my opinion there is only one way to evaluate a model and that is by comparing it’s output against measured temperatures. No matter how well it is coded or how learned the reasoning it is based on it is predictive results which matter, nothing else.
So far the only example I know of has done very poorly as of 2011.
netdr2 says: May 1, 2011 at 6:46 am
“Does anyone have a site I could go to to evaluate more than just Hansen’s model ?”
briffa_sep98_e.pro:
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
>>
Philip Shehan says:
April 30, 2011 at 2:23 am
Jim. Just tried this method of calculation:
An error of 5% for 2 is ± 0.1 so the value is between 1.9 and 2.1
An error of 5% for 5 is ± 0.25 so the value is between 4.75 and 5.25
So multiplying the upper and lower bounds means the calculated product is between 9.025 and 11.025. Close enough to 10 ± 10% especially if you take the result to 2 significant figures.
<<
So you’re using maximum error. There’s nothing particularly wrong about using maximum error as it’s more likely that the true value will appear between the larger range. You could also use minimum error. It just so happens that the universe doesn’t always show us maximum error or always show us minimum error in our measurements. Generally most engineers/scientists use the standard error calculations. If you’re going to use something different from the standard method, then you’ll have to indicate that in your write ups.
I prefer to stick with the standard methods of calculating errors. Why get fancy when you don’t have to?
Jim
“”””” Myrrh says:
May 1, 2011 at 3:14 am
netdr2 says:
April 30 2011 at 4:48
The point that you miss is that when two jars one with CO2 and the other with nitrogen are heated and come to equilibrium the CO2 jar is warmer. [Thermal mass has nothing to do with it.] That is observation and trumps theory every time.
The point I’m making is that you’re not giving me any details of the experiment and just what do you mean by “Thermal mass has nothing to do with it”?
“”””” when two jars one with CO2 and the other with nitrogen are heated and come to equilibrium the CO2 jar is warmer. “””””
Well that statement is in direct conflict with the zeroth law of thermodynamics. If two bodies are in thermal equilibrium with a third body (thermometer), they are in thermal equilibrium with each other. So the two gas samples; with and without CO2 are at the same temperature if they are in equilibrium with each other (after heating by the same source).
But you see, that is not the correct demonstration anyway.
The greenhouse effect is NOT ABOUT HEATING ANYTHING; it is about irradiating different air mixtures, with electromagnetic radiation with a normal black body spectrum that peaks at about 10.1 microns wavelength, and has a BB source Temperature of approximately +15 deg C or + 59 deg F.
A “light bulb” or a “heat lamp” is not a BB like source at an effective radiating Temperature of +15 deg C (288 Kelvins).
So why don’t you try to “heat” your two gas mixtures; with and without CO2 using a heat source like an ordinary brick that has been placed in the refrigerator and cooled to +15 deg C. Use that to emulate the EM radiation from the mean earth surface; and then report the temperature difference of the two samples.