This is how Slashdot breaks the news from Forbes article: “New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism”. When it hits Slashdot, you know it has gone viral.
New NASA Data Casts Doubt On Global Warming Models
from the but-scientists-love-models dept.
bonch writes:
“Satellite data from NASA covering 2000 through 2011 cast doubt on current computer models predicting global warming, according to a new study. The data shows that much less heat is retained by carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere than is assumed in current models. ‘There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans,’ said Dr. Roy Spencer, a co-author of the study and research scientist at the University of Alabama.”
Note: the press release about the study is somewhat less over the top.
izen says:
July 29, 2011 at 4:01 am
@- Konrad says:
July 28, 2011 at 10:35 pm
“We know that back scattered LWIR from CO2 cannot heat the oceans accounting 70% of the Earths surface, which invalidates the case for CAGW.”
Could you provide some evidence for this claim? WHY does downwelling LWIR not warm the oceans when it is from CO2 but does when it is from clouds – or are you claiming that cloud cover has no effect on ocean temperature at night?
—————————————————————————————————————–
That is very simple. Not only are the oceans composed of liquid water, which renders them incapable of absorbing the discrete wavelengths emitted by CO2, mono-molecular CO2 is incapable of “backscattering” wavelengths unless they are smaller than the molecule. And you will probably lose your mind at the very thought of this statement. but it is obvious if you know the subject; the oceans will not absorb the majority of resonance line emissions from what is referred to as water vapor. Magnetic entanglement caused by the molecular bonds shifts the resonance lines to different wavelengths. And it is actually the oceans, both surface and atmospheric, that heat CO2, not vice versa. Finally, and not meaning to get bogged down in trivial details, but CO2 cannot “heat” (via EM IR emissions) the land surface either.
What you think you know about the cause of the “greenhouse effect” is not, in fact, a description of the manner in which the atmosphere increases air and surface absorption of solar EM energy above the level which can be accounted for by measurements at the TOA. What has been described to you is the manner in which the computer codes were written in attempts to SIMULATE the actual physical processes involved. Back in the day, when everybody coded in FORTRAN (some old coots still do), your hard drive was a 512k magnetic tape cartridge, and a 256k memory card had a footprint larger than today’s laptops and cost over $5000; it was simply impossible to run code based on Mie theory (even a simple dielectric sphere code was out of the question), or radiative transfer theory, or any of the many variations of them. So they settled for absorption-only solutions, coupled with a Monte Carlo emission direction solution, in place of the full Mie solution, which computers at the time simply could not run.
So where do we stand several decades later? We have people who believe that models are closer to reality than empirical evidence (actual measurements). We have people who believe that CO2 can absorb EM emissions from H2O or SiO2 (it can’t). We have people who believe that IR EM waves are some magical entity also referred to as “heat”, which somehow no longer obeys the rules of the rest of the EM spectrum. And we have people all over the internet who don’t understand that “backscattered” means REFLECTED! Making the entire mess even more intolerable is the pernicious habit of publishers of hiding everything behind those insufferable paywalls.
100% of the greenhouse effect is due to H2O gas, H2O vapor, H2O liquid, and H2O ice, which are all present in the atmosphere. So how could it be a feedback? That would require it to simultaneously be both cause and effect .
Someone already mentioned Trenberth, so let me demonstrate just how simple it is to calculate the earths energy budget at the surface. Only 2 values are needed.
K&T1997 total atmosphere and surface absorption of solar = 235W
(235×0.66)+235=390W
TFK2009 total atmosphere and surface absorption of solar = 238.5W
(238.5×0.66)+238.5=396W
If you’re curious about the factor 0.66, it is the ISCCP mean cloud fraction from 1983 to (almost) the present. You can’t get much simpler than this. “Reflect” on it for a while, you’ll get it.
Cheers.
izen:
I hope everybody here has studied your comment at July 29, 2011 at 4:32 pm because it clearly demonstrates your attempt to ‘muddy the water’ with the intention of obtaining the result described by dan at July 29, 2011 at 5:51 pm (i.e. onlookers get confused instead of informed).
My post at July 29, 2011 at 5:50 am provided you with a direct quote from the paper which refutes your assertion. Your response is to cite the first sentence of that direct quote which says;
“Central to the difficulty of feedback diagnosis is the very different time-dependent relationships which exist between forcing and temperature, versus between feedback and temperature. ”
Thus, you claim, the quotation supports your argument because it states a problem.
YOU KNOW THAT CLAIM IS A FALSEHOOD.
The sentence introduces a problem which the paragraph answers by explaining that problem is overcome by analysis of “the radiative feedback response to temperature” which “is nearly simultaneous with the temperature change”.
The entire quotation says;
“Central to the difficulty of feedback diagnosis is the very different time-dependent relationships which exist between forcing and temperature, versus between feedback and temperature. While there is a substantial time lag between forcing and the temperature response due to the heat capacity of the ocean, the radiative feedback response to temperature is nearly simultaneous with the temperature change. This near-simultaneity is due to a combination of the instantaneous temperature effect on the LW portion of (the Planck response of 3.3 W m−2 K−1), and the relatively rapid convective coupling of the surface to the atmosphere, which causes surface temperature-dependent changes in water vapor, clouds, and the vertical profile of temperature.”
Such quotation out of context is usually malign and it is certain that your use of it is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent th analysis of Spencer and Braswell.
Richard
All this paper does is to confirm that the Stefan-Boltzmann Law is alive and well and applies to the Earth’s climate as well as everywhere else.
It is good to see this discusssion about belief systems emerge. I get regularly attacked for having beliefs. One professor called it my ‘epistemiology’…or ‘lets see where this guy is coming from’ and then lampooned my published views about yoga, shamanism, homeopathy and astrology – all apparently ‘belief-systems’, while not mentioning that he himself was a Presbyterian. In fact, I work hard on not having any beliefs – sticking to my experience and observations – which range wider than most of my fellow biologists/ecologists.
I just read Roy Spencer’s views on ID and found them rational and open….he could do with a better knowledge of paleontology and punctuated evolution – there are example of intermediate forms often enough, and still a lot of gaps – but what is happening are periods of acceleration usually linked to rapid environmental change. One major acceleration occured about 40,000 years ago when the human – which had remained as it is today for about 100,000 years, suddenly accelerated in intelligence – using symbolic art, followed by religion, language, music, dance, deceptive politics and eventualy the science of climate change.
There is much that cannot be readily explained by natural selection. And Spencer is simply stating that ‘science’ can’t simply abdicate at the so-called ‘beginning’ of it all and say from then on it is a ‘self-assembly system’ – the energy for the ‘big bang’ had to come from ‘somewhere’ beyond normal time and space, and who is to say that it did not contain an evolving blueprint that included a few tweaks from that beyond, as well as the basic mechanisms of which natural selection is a consequence? In any case, even ID misses the point – the apprehension of divinity is not an intellectual exercise – it is a matter of the heart, which has its own rules and intelligence.
What is of relevance here is that one’s ‘beliefs’ or thoughts about creation are used as weapons of attack but only if they clash with the normative – which is either the atheism of science, or judao-christian orthodoxy. Nobody challenges John Houghton – ‘father of the the IPCC’ for being a Christian!
What should matter of course are the arguments put before peers and thrashed out according to the rules of observational science. Once authority is gained in that realm – nobody cares what you believe (Newton was not only a creationist but also an alchemist and an astrologer, as were the founders of the Royal Society).
The problem is that AGW is based upon soothsaying by computer simulation….in itself now evolved into a belief system,the equivalent of a state religion supported by governmental bureaucracy and propagandist evangelical ‘green’ campaigners – and any critics are labelled ‘sceptics’ much as Christians labelled their earliest competitors as ‘gnostics’ thus ending any possibility of dialogue. That is the point of labelling or branding ‘the enemy’.
Scientific truth, as with other truths, only exists where there is a willingness to meet, to listen and to have dialogue – it is a continuously evolving process. Roy Spencer is to be congratulated in his willingness to a) meet the opposition on their own ground in the science literature; b) stay open about his thoughts in areas where he knows the evangelicals will attack.
“Mike Mangan says:
July 29, 2011 at 4:56 am
Hello! The same article was on Drudge Report as of late afternoon yesterday. Drudge is on someone’s laptop in every major newsroom in America. He’s far more important than /. It’s the overall effect you get here when Yahoo News+Forbes+Drudge+a cascade of popular sites brings a meme into the world. That’s how millions of people begin to form a new opinion by osmosis. A few months from now it’s the combination of stories: reputable paper+impending Maunder-type minimum+results of CLOUD experiment. Wait till you see the opinion polls on climate change next spring. Heh.”
It seems to me that the passion is now with the sceptics. When I read the comments I get the feeling that the AGW crowd responses are often just lashing out or trying to draw the cutains to keep the light out, whilst sceptics are moving forward, trying to understand and bring light into the debate. This difference in attitude will win the debate and win converts.
Follow up to that story has been published on Slashdot, would this be an anti-viral story then?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/07/29/1844224/Followup-Anti-Global-Warming-Story-Itself-Flawed
Rúnar says:
July 29, 2011 at 12:30 am
“This article on intelligent design (if true) ( http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/roy-spencer-on-intelligent-design/ ) unfortunately makes him look like a total nutcase”
Well, that’s your opinion and, uninformed as it it, you’re certainly entitled to it. I’m the author of that article on Uncommon Descent, by the way.
@- Richard Epsom Courtney says:
“….you claim, the quotation supports your argument because it states a problem.
YOU KNOW THAT CLAIM IS A FALSEHOOD.
The sentence introduces a problem which the paragraph answers by explaining that problem is overcome by analysis of “the radiative feedback response to temperature” which “is nearly simultaneous with the temperature change”. ”
No, S&B specifically state that the problem is NOT overcome because –
“Diagnosis of feedback cannot easily be made in such situations, because the radiative forcing decorrelates the co-variations
between temperature and radiative flux. For example, no matter what feedback is specified when the simple model is only radiatively forced, the regression coefficient at zero time lag for a sufficiently long model simulation is always near-zero.”
They are refering to Roy Spencers’ ‘simple’ model in this case, others have had other descriptions than ‘simple’ for it –
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/just-put-the-model-down-roy/
Read the paper Richard, it claims little more than that feedbacks are NOT diagnosable from satellite data and that if you take models with very variable skills at simulating ENSO events, average over a hundered years and remove any warming trend the regression coefficients of the smoothed data do not match just ten years of satellite data.
Now linked to all this is Roy Spencer’s strange idea that cloud variation is a forcing not a feedback in ENSO processes which is why I still hold my shorter version –
Over a ten year period ENSO variations were larger than AGW forcings so it was impossible to measure the positive feedback effects that might amplify the radiative forcing from higher CO2.
Is a reasonable, if not rather flattering summary of the paper conclusions. I note that you have not taken up my challenge to provide your own summary of the paper, but have simply re-quoted a section which really does NOT say what you think it does.
Richard S Courtney says:
“Such quotation out of context is usually malign and it is certain that your use of it is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the analysis of Spencer and Braswell.”
The quote was not out of context, I made a specific effort to provide the context.
I am making a delibrate attempt to represent my understanding of the S&B paper, I am sure it is not perfect, but it is a lot better than the Talyor/Heartland press release. If you want to show how much better you can do at summerizing your understanding of the paper please do so. It might be more worthwhile than asserting I am knowingly making false claims or deliberately misrepresenting the science.
I assume that the “Brian” who occasionally comments is from Monty Python’s film, “Life of Brian”. As his mother says, “He’s not the Messiah…He’s just a very naughty boy”. He is amusing, much like Mr Magoo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Magoo . Notice how I added a reference as that makes me a scientist doesn’t it?
Gavin Schmidt says in his criticism of the S and B paper, “Climate sensitivity is not constrained by the last two decades of imperfect satellite data, but rather the paleoclimate record.”
Does Gavin Schmidt ever put his brain into gear before engaging his mouth?
Why trust an on-board precision platinum resistance thermometer when you can infer temperature by measuring sediment depths and tree ring widths?
Perhaps he and Mike Mann are designing a new satellite system. They probably believe the accuracy can be improved by removing the thermometer and planting a bonsai forest of bristlecone pines within the housing. Then they could further improve the sensitivity by getting a gerbil in a miniature spacesuit to periodically chew and strip away the bark.
What’s his job at NASA, making the coffee and buying the donuts?
I wouldn’t pay him in washers
Andy MC
The finding in Spencer and Braswell’s new paper 2011 paper “On the Misdiagnosis Of Surface Temperature Feedbacks From Variations In Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” that the earth’s atmosphere resists forcing changes (loses more heat or less heat to stabilize planetary temperature rather than to amplify forcing changes) makes sense physically (positive feedback does not occur in natural systems as it makes the system unstable and is purposely ensured to not occur in man made systems.)
Comments:
1. A writer above stated that man made system with positive feedback can be stable. That statement is not correct. He then linked to this Wikipedia article on Root Locus analysis to determine if the system will be stable. The Root Locus analysis is used to determine likelihood of stability however the analysis is for systems that have negative not positive feedback. (See the Wikipedia article link, not there is a minus sign which indicates one subtracts rather than adds the feedback component.)
2. I see a writer above bring up “Intelligent Design” which has nothing to do with Spencer and Braswell’s paper of feedbacks. I would assume you are trying to distract us from the finding that in validates that alarmist AWG hypothesis. As I have noted Spencer and Braswell’s finding is supported by Lindzen and Choi prior published findings.
3. It should be noted the planetary temperature data indicates the planet has stopped warming. The Live Science article rather than quoting Real Climate blog writers and their friends comment that they were surprised Spencer and Braswell’s paper was published (i.e. They hoped their buddies would block it during secret peer review) could have noted the planet has stopped warming. Observation evidence and logic supports Spencer and Braswell’s finding.
4. It is interesting that there has been a series of recent papers trying to explain the lack of warming.
5. I see the “Livescience” writer appeals to the three other scientists who they contacted that the “extreme AWG” is still valid. I would assume the Livescience writer and three scientists contacted are aware the planet has stopped warming. It seems the Emperor has no clothes and no one to be connected with “deniers” or the evil “Heartland Institute” a libertarian think tank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_locus
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL039628-pip.pdf
On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data
By Richard S. Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in the outgoing radiation budget from the latest version of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data. It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoing radiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated with relatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite of the behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the same SSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE, though it is difficult to pin down such high sensitivities with any precision. Results also show, the feedback in ERBE is mostly from shortwave radiation while the feedback in the models is mostly from longwave radiation. Although such a test does not distinguish the mechanisms, this is important since the inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem in climate prediction.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.
Just a few weeks ago, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.
Richard S Courtney says:
July 30, 2011 at 1:30 am
“I hope everybody here has studied your comment at July 29, 2011 at 4:32 pm because it clearly demonstrates your attempt to ‘muddy the water’ with the intention of obtaining the result described by dan at July 29, 2011 at 5:51 pm (i.e. onlookers get confused instead of informed).”
If onlookers might be confused by which of us is attempting to ‘muddy the waters’ they can always ‘get their hands dirty’ and go and read the paper and make their own minds up.
@- Richard Epsom Courtney says:
“….you claim, the quotation supports your argument because it states a problem.
YOU KNOW THAT CLAIM IS A FALSEHOOD.
The sentence introduces a problem which the paragraph answers by explaining that problem is overcome by analysis of “the radiative feedback response to temperature” which “is nearly simultaneous with the temperature change”. ”
No, S&B specifically state that the problem is NOT overcome because –
“Diagnosis of feedback cannot easily be made in such situations, because the radiative forcing decorrelates the co-variations
between temperature and radiative flux. For example, no matter what feedback is specified when the simple model is only radiatively forced, the regression coefficient at zero time lag for a sufficiently long model simulation is always near-zero.”
They are referring to Roy Spencers’ ‘simple’ model in this case, others have had other descriptions than ‘simple’ for it –
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/just-put-the-model-down-roy/
Read the paper Richard, it claims little more than that feedbacks are NOT diagnosable from satellite data and that if you take models with very variable skills at simulating ENSO events, average over a hundred years and remove any warming trend the regression coefficients of the smoothed data do not match just ten years of satellite data.
Now linked to all this is Roy Spencer’s strange idea that cloud variation is a forcing not a feedback in ENSO processes whcih is why I still hold my shorter version –
Over a ten year period ENSO variations were larger than AGW forcings so it was impossible to measure the positive feedback effects that might amplify the radiative forcing from higher CO2.
Is a reasonable, if not rather flattering summary of the paper conclusions. I note that you have not taken up my challenge to provide your own summary of the paper, but have simply re-quoted a section which really does NOT say what you think it does.
Richard S Courtney says:
“Such quotation out of context is usually malign and it is certain that your use of it is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the analysis of Spencer and Braswell.”
The quote was not out of context, I made a specific effort to provide the context.
I am making a deliberate attempt to represent my understanding of the S&B paper, I am sure it is not perfect, but it is a lot better than the Talyor/Heartland press release. If you want to show how much better you can do at summarizing your understanding of the paper please do so. It might be more worthwhile than asserting I am knowingly making false claims or deliberately misrepresenting the science
-possible double post- system crash on first posting – .
Peter Taylor says:
July 30, 2011 at 4:47 am
“I just read Roy Spencer’s views on ID and found them rational and open….he could do with a better knowledge of paleontology and punctuated evolution”
Not as much as you could do with a better knowledge of same. It’s punctuated equilibrium (Stephen Gould et al) you meant to say. ID itself does not dispute evolution, per se. It disputes the notion that evolution is the result of a random dance of atoms. ID is also not confined to biology. Cosmological ID disputes the notion that the finely tuned universe (google “the fine tuning problem”) is the result of a random event. Dig it. The atheist belief is that 14 billion years ago there was nothing then “poof – an incredibly complex universe with finely tuned interdependent immutable laws and machine-like operation according to those law just appears as if by magic”. I don’t believe in magic and as an engineer I’ve never seen a machine appear out of nothing nor increase its organization of its own accord. Ostensibly the universe is a closed system and due to the law of entropy it then cannot have order greater today than at any time in its past. This would require input from outside the universe which is, by definition as a closed system, not allowed. This then raises a very interesting question. If the order in the universe today is no greater than it was in the instant of the big bang, where did that order come from? To me it beggars belief that all the order in the universe today suddenly appeared out of nowhere 14 billion years ago. If you want to swallow that particular just-so story that’s your perogative, of course. I’m a bit more demanding in the way of evidence to support narratives like that. I’m just as demanding of any design explanations. All I know is the universe exhibits all the characteristics of design and there is no evidence as to the nature of the designer. I don’t like being in the dark any more than the next person but I don’t deny my ignorance by making up stories and through positive reinforcement and repetition come to believe that they are anything more than narrative.
Latitude says:
July 29, 2011 at 8:12 am
The problem with the satellite data is how to analyze it. Since there is the question of indirect measurement, one must know what’s measured and how it affects the search results.
This gives an indication of what satellites measure:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Atmosfeer.png
(Study the temperature curve)
————
pwl says:
July 29, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Tried to comment, but it failed for some reason (was logged in at the same time …)
@ur momisugly 19:27
“Additionally, if I recall, the data is That He’s Been pulling is only a small chunk of the total data. This is a common thread Among climate-change deniers, And Among evolution deniers, to take one tiny chunk of data, claim thats it Does not make sense, and refuse to see the Remaining information. ”
This is the fundamentals that applies to AGW-faithful “scientists”. How he expresses himself is what in psychology is called projection. (Furthermore, “if I recall” – he is not sure …) What is actually happening, is that they “analyze” a few hundred years of incomplete data (and at times adjusted) and suggests indirectly that this is representative of the earth since the atmosphere and the climate occurred, a few billion years ago … It is not!
@ur momisugly 19:48
“See, in Science, Going Into research or interpreting data with a Severe Political, or religious bias is pretty much just Asking for Trouble.”
Here he talks about (unconsciously) the IPCC and CRU …
@ur momisugly 20:35
“Tragically, Many hide behind the guise of” Then Prove it wrong, “Which as anyone with two ounces of sense in Their heads know is a logical fallacy: The burden of proof is on the shoulders of the people making the claim.”
Here he does the same (classical) error as @ur momisugly 19:27. This obviously applies only for AGW skeptics but not AGW believers …
————
Malcolm Miller says:
July 29, 2011 at 3:49 pm
“… where do you put the thermometer?”
Everywhere! Temperatures vary between places (even with short distances in between) and between different times … The ability to draw correct conclusions increases with the number of measurement frequency and points. (Someone who starts to realize the hopelessness of this …?)
pwl:
The quotes are from various posts by Tristan Noel …
Richard G says:
July 29, 2011 at 8:38 pm
“Clouds (and CO2) at night do not warm the ocean, they slow the rate of cooling.”
No, that’s not right. CO2 does nothing except increase the rate of evaporation which goes on to form the clouds. Clouds change the temperature gradient between ocean and cloud. The energy in the DLR which falls upon the ocean surface is translated into latent of vaporization i.e. a molecule of liquid water at temperature X become a molecule of water vapor at temperature X. The energy is not sensible with a thermometer which is why it’s called latent heat. When the water vapor rises and finally condenses into a cloud the energy becomes sensible again. So where you would have had cold air you now have a warm cloud with a shallower temperature gradient below the cloud and a greater gradient above it. If we lived in the clouds this might be of some concern but down at the surface where we live and breathe nothing has changed with regard to sensible temperature. If had been a land surface the DLR energy would be absorbed and would indeed slow the rate at which the ground can give up heat resulting in warmer air near the surface since the air is always warmed by the surface whether it’s a land or water surface.
@ur momisugly peeke says:
“That is not how the greenhouse effect works. The effect may best be understood by painting your central heating radiator black.You’ll find it looses energy far fastier and while the wife might disapprove of the gloomy look of the room you’ll find real noticable difference in the energy bill.
CO2 may be a small amount of the atmosphere, paint is also a small fraction of the entire radiator. Yet it’s effect is noticable by changing the infrared colour of the atmosphere.”
Following through on your radiator analogy.
If we take June’s CO2 391ppm atmospheric concentration, we get 391/1,000,000 = 0.000391
If we then take a typical radiator of frontal area 1500mm x 500mm this gives us a surface area of 750,000mm^2.
If we multiply 750,000 x 0.000391 = 293mm^2.
If we then take the square root of that area we get a square with 17mm x 17mm sides.
If we arrange all the molecules of the various gases making up the atmosphere pressing down on the surface of the radiator under consideration into individual groups, we would find the total CO2 component occupies that 17mm x 17mm square.
If we then further subdivide that 17mm x 17mm area into what is attributed to naturally occurring CO2, say 300ppm for arguments sake, and that added by man’s activity, the area remaining representative of man’s activity, at 91ppm, which translates into an area of 8mm x 8mm.
If we then stick a square of 8mm x 8mm insulator material on the 1500mm x 500mm surface of the radiator, that would sufficiently represent the effect of man attributed CO2 to the rate of energy transfer from the surface of your radiator…
William says:
July 30, 2011 at 7:33 am
“4. It is interesting that there has been a series of recent papers trying to explain the lack of warming.”
Did you miss the memo? The bandwagon called “climate science” has concluded that China is the responsible party. Using too much “dirty” coal, you see. The sulfate particulates (aerosols) rise up into the atmosphere and act like a patio shade reducing the amount of warming sunlight that can reach the surface.
The irony in that is just so delicious. If it weren’t for the environmentalists we wouldn’t be scrubbing particulates out of fossil fuel combustion emissions and there wouldn’t be any global warming but rather, as was the dogma circa 1970, we’d have global cooling instead, but still anthropogenic nonetheless. You see there always has to be an enemy for the climate boffins and environmentalist whackos and those enemies are invariably any and all people who don’t share their world view. At any rate, the irony is the same chuckleheads who made nuclear energy plants prohibitively expensive with regulatory burdens and nightmare scenarios of nuclear proliferation, and the same boneheads who regulated sulfate emissions out of combustion exhausts, actually created the global warming they are now bitching about.
Personally I think global warming is a good thing for life on this third rock from the sun. Plants don’t grow well in ice and snow and they don’t grow well in low concentrations of CO2 either.
@- Dave Springer says:
July 30, 2011 at 8:25 am
“No, that’s not right. CO2 does nothing except increase the rate of evaporation which goes on to form the clouds. Clouds change the temperature gradient between ocean and cloud. The energy in the DLR which falls upon the ocean surface is translated into latent of vaporization i.e. a molecule of liquid water at temperature X become a molecule of water vapor at temperature X. The energy is not sensible with a thermometer which is why it’s called latent heat. When the water vapor rises and finally condenses into a cloud the energy becomes sensible again. So where you would have had cold air you now have a warm cloud with a shallower temperature gradient below the cloud and a greater gradient above it. ”
So which would emit more energy, the warm sea surface, or a cooler water vapor molecule condensing to a cloud droplet?
Fun facts about ocean heat budget:
Input energy is 100% from sunlight. Output energy is 70% evaporation, 20% radiation, 10% conductive.
The thing about downwelling longwave radiation from greenhouse gases is they must have upwelling longwave radiation in the first place. The ocean doesn’t provide much in the way of upwelling radiation since it loses energy primarily through evaporation. Evaporation doesn’t transport energy as sensible heat (i.e. what you read off a thermometer) but rather as insensible heat called latent heat of vaporization.
Another fun fact of ocean heat budget is that sunlight penetrates and warms the water to a depth of about 30 meters but cooling only occurs at the surface mostly through evaporation. The interesting part is that the warmed water below the surface doesn’t get back to the surface as easily as sunlight reaches down to warm it. Thus solar energy during the summer months is stored and released in the winter months which is why seasonal temperature variation of the ocean is far less than seasonal variation over land at the same latitude (a phenomenon called “continentality”). The reason why the ocean releases heat faster in the winter and slower in the summer is that the air is dryer in the winter and evaporation rate is faster.
It’s all about the water cycle. CO2’s role as a greenhouse agent is limited to land and since land is only 30% of the earth’s surface if you don’t take into account that its effect is insignificant over the ocean then you’ll end up with grossly inflated predictions of global average temperature rise due to it. Climate boffins, at least the smarter ones, are very well aware of what I stated above so in order to keep the CAGW dogma alive they concocted a narrative about how the increased rate of evaporation causes more clouds and more clouds cause more warming. All the while the data is telling us that clouds are neutral when it comes to surface warming. While it’s true that non-condensing GHGs should cause more clouds over the ocean it’s also true that more clouds will deprive the ocean sunlight which will slow the rate of heating and thus lower the rate of evaporation and cloud formation. This a negative feedback and it results in a stable system where cloud cover self-regulates and stays more or less constant regardless of atmospheric GHG concentration.
I want to emphasize again that I’m not denying that CO2 has a greenhouse effect. I’m saying that because it isn’t operative over the global ocean the effect is only about one third of the modeled claims on a globally averaged basis. Adding insult to injury to the models due to horizontal energy transport from lower to higher latitudes the warming that actually is caused by CO2 falls mainly where it is most welcomed in the form of milder nights and winters in latitudes that do not have year-round growing seasons effectively lengthening growing seasons. Longer growing seasons allow two crop cycles instead of one and/or allow crops that need a longer growing season. For example the Vikings used to grow apples in Greenland in the Medievel warm period which cannot be done today and they also were able to graze cattle and store silage to keep the livestock alive through the winter. They can’t do that today either.
Adding yet more insult to injury for the models is that plant growth stops below 200ppm CO2 and increases, more or less, for most plants up to around 2000ppm. We are far from the optimal level of atmospheric CO2 for plant growth and dangerously close to the point where plant growth halts.
Yet another insult for the CAGW narrative is that plants become more efficient in water use as CO2 levels rises. That’s because water loss in plants happens primarily during gas exchange where CO2 is taken in and O2 is expelled. Plants regulate the exchange through pores called stomata. These stomata have irises which open wider to increase the exchange rate or narrow to decrease it as needed. These irises are the closest things to muscles that plants have. Anyhow, when the stomata is open that’s when water is lost through evaporation. When there is more CO2 in the air the gas exchange happens faster and thus the stomata aren’t open as much and less water is lost during the gas exchange. Cool stuff.
So that raises the question of exactly what downside there is to increased CO2. A rising ocean is one of them but the ocean rises so slowly that there is plenty of time to adapt to it. So called climate disruption may or may not be a concern. I doubt it will as the normal natural variation from year to year in regional weather, which is already dealt with, vastly exceeds the much longer term potential for variation engendered by anthropogenic CO2. At this point in time I’ve seen no convincing evidence that the incidence rate of adverse weather is any different now than it was prior to the industrial revolution. If anything it’s less severe because adverse weather includes long harsh winters and I don’t believe it has been possible to go ice skating up and down the length of the Thames in quite some time…
izen:
You assert:
“It might be more worthwhile than asserting I am knowingly making false claims or deliberately misrepresenting the science.”
OK. I concede that you have reading comprehension difficulties because that is the only other explanation for your so-called “short summary” of the paper.
Richard
Much to your probable consternation and surprise, the latter. Heat of phase change from condensation is a couple or orders of magnitude greater than from temperature change in liquid.
John A says:
July 29, 2011 at 1:12 am
“It’s true that Dr Spencer knows nothing about evolutionary biology, and should shut up about it. He gave a gift to climate alarmists everywhere when he spoke up about ID, which is creationism-in-disguise, and they won’t let anyone forget about it.”
A gift that keeps on giving. It encourages the pseudo-scientist climate boffins to make ad hominem attacks. It does nothing but expose the vacuousness of their argument, ignorance of ID, anti-religion ideology, lack of ethics, and incapacity to argue the evidence.
“ID, which is creationism-in-disguise,”
Actually if you go read the bigger Scientific Creationism websites like Answers In Genesis you’ll find they don’t associate themselves with Intelligent Design. In fact many churches won’t have any association with it because its umbrella is too big. Virtually any belief system, or none at all, is accomodated by ID. I know this all too well as I the adminstrator, lead moderator, and most frequent author on the most popular ID site on the intertubes for a few years. The so-called Theistic Evolutionists, with people like Francis Collins (the top cheese at The Human Genome Project) also distance themselves from ID. There’s pretty much something for everyone to hate about ID because the only belief system it doesn’t accomodate is positive atheism.
I won’t try to deny that the vast majority of ID proponents are Christians but given that ID is largely limited to the United States where 80% of the population are self-professed Christians it would be rather silly to expect that the vast majority of ID proponents would not be Christians. Any organization that is a random sample of the population in the US is going to be 80% Christians. These people all take that rather large step from saying the universe and life bears the hallmarks of design to attaching a name and persona to the designer.
I’m an agnostic myself and don’t believe there’s sufficient evidence to either discount special creation or embrace it. Who am I to say a billions of Hindus and a Buddhists have the wrong story. The thing to keep in mind is major religions are all just stories. One of them might be right or, more likely in my opinion, none of them are. Atheism and theism are both based on faith – diametrically opposed faith but faith nonetheless. Faith has no place in science and my religion, if any, is science and engineering.
FYI – here is the definition of ID that I chose to display on the most popular ID site (it’s still there even though I left it a few years ago):
http://www.uncommondescent.com/id-defined/
About the only thing you can accuse Spencer of for spending a couple of years looking into ID and coming away believing it had merit is that he, unlike you, did his homework and has an open mind.
Any questions?
Brian H says:
July 31, 2011 at 1:57 am
“Much to your probable consternation and surprise, the latter. Heat of phase change from condensation is a couple or orders of magnitude greater than from temperature change in liquid.”
Actually it’s incalculable in terms of temperature because there is no sensible temperature increase associated with the phase change. The simplest thing to keep in mind that is that it takes one BTU (British Thermal Unit) to raise the temperature of one pound of water by 1 degree fahrenheit. It takes 970 BTUs to turn one pound of water at 212F into one pound of steam at 212F. All those BTUs are referred to as water’s latent heat of vaporization. Changing from ice to water with no rise in temperature takes 144 BTUs and is called latent heat of fusion. The phase transitions of water take up or release an incredible amount of energy.
turn a pound of water at 212F into a pound of steam at 212F while it takes only 1 BTU to raise the temperature of a pound of water by on degree F.
izen says:
July 30, 2011 at 9:08 am
@- Dave Springer says:
July 30, 2011 at 8:25 am
“No, that’s not right. CO2 does nothing except increase the rate of evaporation which goes on to form the clouds. Clouds change the temperature gradient between ocean and cloud. The energy in the DLR which falls upon the ocean surface is translated into latent of vaporization i.e. a molecule of liquid water at temperature X become a molecule of water vapor at temperature X. The energy is not sensible with a thermometer which is why it’s called latent heat. When the water vapor rises and finally condenses into a cloud the energy becomes sensible again. So where you would have had cold air you now have a warm cloud with a shallower temperature gradient below the cloud and a greater gradient above it. ”
So which would emit more energy, the warm sea surface, or a cooler water vapor molecule condensing to a cloud droplet?
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Pound for pound, the cloud. By a factor approaching a thousand times greater.