CERN Finds “Significant” Cosmic Ray Cloud Effect
Best known for its studies of the fundamental constituents of matter, the CERN particle-physics laboratory in Geneva is now also being used to study the climate. Researchers in the CLOUD collaboration have released the first results from their experiment designed to mimic conditions in the Earth’s atmosphere. By firing beams of particles from the lab’s Proton Synchrotron accelerator into a gas-filled chamber, they have discovered that cosmic rays could have a role to play in climate by enhancing the production of potentially cloud-seeding aerosols. —Physics World, 24 August 2011
If Henrik Svensmark is right, then we are going down the wrong path of taking all these expensive measures to cut carbon emissions; if he is right, we could carry on with carbon emissions as normal.–Terry Sloan, BBC News 3 April 2008
Henrik Svensmark welcomes the new results, claiming that they confirm research carried out by his own group, including a study published earlier this year showing how an electron beam enhanced production of clusters inside a cloud chamber. He acknowledges that the link between cosmic rays and cloud formation will not be proved until aerosols that are large enough to act as condensation surfaces are studied in the lab, but believes that his group has already found strong evidence for the link in the form of significant negative correlations between cloud cover and solar storms. Physics World, 24 August 2011
CERN’s CLOUD experiment is designed to study the formation of clouds and the idea that Cosmic Rays may have an influence. The take-home message from this research is that we just don’t understand clouds in anything other than hand-waving terms. We also understand the effects of aerosols even less. The other things to come out of it are that trace constituencies in the atmosphere seem to have a big effect on cloud formation, and that Cosmic rays also have an effect, a “significant” one according to CERN. –David Whitehouse, The Observatory, 25 August 2011
I have asked the CERN colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them. That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters. –Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN, Welt Online 15 July 2011
Although they never said so, the High Priests of the Inconvenient Truth – in such temples as NASA-GISS, Penn State and the University of East Anglia – always knew that Svensmark’s cosmic ray hypothesis was the principal threat to their sketchy and poorly modelled notions of self-amplifying action of greenhouse gases. In telling how the obviously large influences of the Sun in previous centuries and millennia could be explained, and in applying the same mechanism to the 20th warming, Svensmark put the alarmist predictions at risk – and with them the billions of dollars flowing from anxious governments into the global warming enterprise. –-Nigel Calder, 24 August 2011
Jasper Kirkby is a superb scientist, but he has been a lousy politician. In 1998, anticipating he’d be leading a path-breaking experiment into the sun’s role in global warming, he made the mistake of stating that the sun and cosmic rays “will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century.” Global warming, he theorized, may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature. Dr. Kirkby was immediately condemned by climate scientists for minimizing the role of human beings in global warming. Stories in the media disparaged Dr. Kirkby by citing scientists who feared oil-industry lobbyists would use his statements to discredit the greenhouse effect. And the funding approval for Dr. Kirkby’s path-breaking experiment — seemingly a sure thing when he first announced his proposal– was put on ice. –Lawrence Solomon, National Post, 23 Feb 2007
barry, you still don’t understand. I never discussed a “rebound,” so that’s just a red herring argument, and I don’t move the goal posts. I have simply been pointing out the mendacious claims of the climate alarmist crowd. And I back up my assertions with verifiable facts – which you do not. You just express your opinions. That’s weak.
You say, “Explanations of climate change with no physical basis for them are useless.” So tell us, barry: what, exactly, is your evidence-based, testable, replicable “physical basis” of climate change?
Provide us with testable, empirical evidence, per the scientific method. We’re tired of the hot air and the vague generalities, so please inform us of your putative exact causes of “climate change.” Based on testable, empirical evidence, of course. Don’t forget that the null hypothesis has never been falsified, so make the evidence real good. If, in fact, you have any evidence.
Thanx in advance.
That’s the problem. I’m trying to have a discussion with you, not crowds of other people. And i’m talking about the science, where you’re more interested in the politics.
You asserted that there has been a continuing warming phase out of the LIA, buttressing your comment with a graph of HadCRU temp trend since 1850. I replied that the first 60 years of that trend is cooling, not warming. I provided a graph using the same data. You did not respond to that.
Instead you replied that you had no opinion on the cause of the ’emergence’ from the LIA.
I tried again to get you comment on the 60 year cooling period. Again you ignored that. Instead you remarked on the psychological impact (‘scary’) of establishing a zero line on a time series chart.
Smokey, i’m not interested in the psychological or political on this subject, only the science. You appear at first to be talking about the science, but then you say your purpose is to “point out the mendacious claims of the climate alarmist crowd.”
My purpose is to separate fact from fiction, politics from science. Join me if you’re interested. My reply to your assertion awaits your attention. I will repeat it for the third time and see what happens:
I dispute that the global temperature record exhibits a continued warming trend from the LIA. The graph linked below is a very straightforward analysis, and is exactly of the time period you have asked me to comment on.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1840/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:1910/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/trend
The 60 year period 1850 to 1909 exhibits a very slight cooling trend of -0.01C/dec. It seems clear that the modern warming period commenced from ~1910.
Would you agree?
barrry,
You wrote: “i’m talking about the science, where you’re more interested in the politics.” I agree completely. Because the CAGW scare is fueled by grant money, and has nothing whatever to do with science. It may have started based on a question of science, but that is long past. Now, it is entirely political. But you have been patient, so I’ll respond regarding the science as I understand it.
The rise in T from the LIA is, of course, not a straight line. There are cycles upon cycles, causing random, unpredictable ups and downs during the gradual warming trend. But you can surely see the overall warming trend from the LIA, can’t you? And the never-falsified null hypothesis indicates that this warming is natural, and that CO2 is not a significant factor. The planet has gone through much more severe changes throughout the Holocene and before, without CO2 rising appreciably. So CO2 has to be a very minor player.
You say “It seems clear that the modern warming period commenced from ~1910.” OK, fine, stipulated since you used the term ‘modern’. But that is not the question. The question is: did CO2 cause that particular warming cycle? If you believe it did, post your evidence.
Regarding your complaint that I didn’t respond to the 60-year cycle, in fact I did, here. It’s all natural. You can see that it goes in cycles.
Now, can we agree that CO2 is both harmless and beneficial?
My view is that it is warmer now than during the LIA. There are various periodic fluctuations within the climate system (PDO, NAO, ENSO, AMO etc) these shift energy around within the system. While they may affect the ups and downs of global temperature, they cannot be responsible for long-term trends. I intend first to show that with two popular themes amongst skeptics – the sun and the PDO. I’ll use woodfortrees, the HadCRU temp record (because you did), and I will use time periods no less than 30 years, to establish strong statistical significance with respect to the temperature data. The topic of this post is attribution, and I’m spending time on it because you seem to dismiss it our of hand.
The sun
The linear trend for solar activity (sunspot count) from 1904 to present is positive, which is in agreement with the long-term temperature record. (graph) I was constrained to select 1904 as the start date because the SIDC monthly sunspot index at woodfortrees starts at 1900, and at 1904 sunspots are of similar count and phase to present.
However, for the last few decades, solar activity has been the opposite sign to global temperature. Again, I was constrained in my choice of start date by matching phase with the beginning and end of the time series – ie, I don’t want to start the series with a high sunspot count and end with a low sunspot count or that would skew the results (by increasing the negative trend in this case). Therefore, here is the trend comparison from 1956 to present, and for 1978 to present. You can pick any cycle for your start point for the last 60 years and get the same result, which is: in the last few decades, solar and global surface temperature trends are anti-correlated. The sun has not been causing the warming since about the middle of last century.
Pacific Decadal Oscillation
Again, we have data from 1900. It is difficult to discern where phases begin and end, so I will go with the phases of the temperature record. First of all, though, the full PDO record. (graph) There is no trend at all in the PDO index, which is kind of obvious, as it is an oscillating system (but see further down). Like all internal ocean/atmosphere systems, it fluctuates around a mean. It can’t work as a forcing agent for global temperature in the long term, it just shifts energy around the system. In the parlance of the IPCC, it is not an external forcing.
However, there appears to be good correlation with global temperature fluctuations, even if a trend is not apparent. It would be tempting to posit that PDO is a 60 year cycle, but it exhibits no particular cycling for the first 30-40 years, and the phase shifts thereafter are not temporally symmetrical. Nevertheless, let’s see how it correlates with the various phases of the temperature record. The classic climate shifts of the 20th century to now are, roughly, 1910 to 1940, 1941 to 1975, and 1976 to 2005, or to present. Let’s plot trend lines for those periods. (graph) Correlation is good until the last 30-year climate period, where the trends diverge.
It should be pointed out that the JISAO (PDO) index data is detrended from global warming, and some people argue that this effectively (and unfairly) takes PDO out of the running as a cause for long-term climate change. I think these arguments are specious, as PDO does not create energy, it just moves it around. In any event, the argument is moot, because the linear trend for the last 30 years (1981 to 2010) in HadCRU is 0.15C/decade, and the trend of PDO for the same period is -0.48/decade. Even if you put the global warming trend back in the PDO, the last 30 years would still wildly diverge. PDO is not the cause of the warming of the last few decades.
These experiments are simple. There are other factors to consider, like delays in warming (lag) for example, but all this has been done before and continues to be done. Where you declare the warming is natural by default, scientists have been examining that possibility in great detail for decades. The reason confidence has grown since the first IPCC report that CO2 has been warming the planet is that natural factors have been more intensely studied, and for the last 30 – 40 years have almost universally been in the wrong direction to cause warming.
Apart from the empirical evidence I detailed and you agreed with last week, there are signatures of greenhouse warming that provide further evidence that CO2 is currently the main driver of global temperatures. The stratosphere has cooled. In the last 60 years, nights have warmed faster than days and winters faster than summers. Satellites have recorded less long-wave radiation escaping to space in precisely the spectra absorbed by CO2 (that is some serious empirical evidence). The troposphere has increased in height.
We know CO2 traps heat. We know we have added almost all the CO2 that has accumulated in the atmosphere for the last 100 years or so. We know global temperature has increased. We have predicted, since at least 1856, that global temperature will increase if atmospheric CO2 does. The earliest, crudest GCMs of the last century didn’t predict with great accuracy the temperature rise, but they were in the ballpark. We have intensely examined natural causes of climate change and found that they cannot account for recent warming.
We have a scientific literature of tens of thousands of documented studies, from spectral analysis to temperature records converging on the conclusion that industrial emissions of CO2 are warming the planet. We have the mechanism of cause, and the corroboration of correlation, and confirmation also from empirically observed data. We see patterns of warming specific to GHG warming, and not other forcings. At this point, to my mind, the null hypothesis is that increased CO2 is warming the planet, and this has now to be disproved by a very cogent argument, answering all the fingerprints of CO2 warming that are evident. A study that explains why the troposphere is warming, but can’t explain why, for example, the stratosphere is cooling, or why there is less long-wave radiation escaping to space in the spectral bands absorbed by CO2, is not enough. Not nearly enough.
Smokey, i think that pretty much all skeptics only ever fix on whatever the meme du jour is, and never ever ever consider the whole picture. There is now multiple lines of evidence and direct observation. It isn’t a house of cards, it’s a house of solid walls. Models are not needed to determine that increasing CO2 causes warming, and indeed, no serious, qualified earth scientist disagrees with that. Lindzen, Spencer, Pielke’s Snr and Junior, Christy, Lomborg – the skeptic scientists, particularly the atmospheric and earth scientists we are familiar with, and who are critics of the IPCC, do not deny this simple fact.
Notice, in this post I have not claimed any future catastrophe.. I am not advocating you lower your greenhouse emissions. I haven’t relied on models. I am not interested in politics or psychology. The whole issue boils down to the science. The rest is pointless if the science is misunderstood.
CO2 beneficial/harmless? It’s plant food and keeps us from freezing. If it makes the planet warm quickly, that could destabilize agriculture and water resources and change the surface of the planet in some places faster than those populations could deal with comfortably.
Smokey, I’m guessing you’ll want to respond to the last paragraph. Please respond to my comments on attribution as well. That was the major effort in the post.
Smokey, the “very tiny trace gas” CO2 proportion of the atmosphere, the maximum of 0.00028 that pertained for nearly a million years before the industrial revolution, is responsible for the mean temperature of the atmosphere during interglacial periods being some 18 deg C higher than it would otherwise be. You have no evidence that the increase to 0.00039 that has accompanied man’s emissions since 1750 will be beneficial. Oh yes, you would like us to wait and see.
You write: “You cannot produce any empirical, testable evidence showing global harm from increased CO2, therefore CO2 is harmless; QED.” Where is your evidence that it won’t cause global harm? Again you are suggesting we can afford to wait and see.
“And there is voluminous evidence showing that more CO2 increases agricultural productivity, therefore more CO2 is clearly beneficial.” Where is this voluminous evidence? On the contrary, experiments conducted in artificial atmospheres with slightly higher proportions of CO2 show plants producing more and bigger leaves, but lower crop yields.
800 years happens to be the approximate lag between a naturally-induced temperature rise and the accompanying increase in CO2 levels, as shown in ice core samples. The closeness to the 1,000-year time difference between now and the medieval warm period is coincidental.
You ask: ” ‘Previous warmings have always had a different trigger mechanism to start them’. And how would you know that for a fact?”
Well a rise in atmospheric CO2 levels that occurs after a temperature rise obviously has not caused the temperature rise. If B has followed A 800 years later, then B cannot have caused A. Therefore something else must have caused A. I have drawn attention to the known property of water to give up some of its dissolved gases when warmed. It is a logical sequence of cause and effect. You can suggest another one if you like. Or you can challenge the logic. But don’t just dismiss this, like everything else, as a “natural cycle”.
You finish that posting: ” ‘Warmed sea water will give up some of its CO2 to the atmosphere, which in turn causes an enhanced greenhouse effect, which in turn causes the sea to warm further, which…’ &etc. That is simply another evidence-free assumption of the belief in runaway global warming, for which you have no testable, empirical evidence.”
Either provide testable evidence per the scientific method supporting your conjectures, or expect them to be rightly dismissed as baseless opinion.”
Well I have given an opinion based on long-known properties of the atmosphere, CO2 and water. On the other hand, you have suggested nothing scientific, just a vague belief in “natural cycles”. All natural cycles have causes: to be take seriously you need to specify the precise natural cycles to which you refer. We know about some of them, such as variations in the orbit of the earth and its angle of tilt, which we can predict but not influence. There are others such as solar cycles which we know happen, but we don’t know their precise causes, and certainly cannot influence them, nor predict them exactly. Other, less regular cycles include the El Niño Southern Oscillation, which meteorologists struggle to forecast. Volcanic eruptions are even harder to predict. But all of these events influence annual global temperatures. The job of climate statisticians is to eliminate the random variations and those with other known causes, and to correlate the man-made pollution with its consequences. They are having some success.
barry says:
“…If it makes the planet warm quickly, that could destabilize agriculture and…” &etc.
barry me boi, you shoulod know better than to engage in evidence-free “what ifs.”
.
4caster says:
“Where is your evidence that it [CO2] won’t cause global harm?”
You’re almost too sly for me, trying to get me to prove a negative. So, where is your evidence that ghosts don’t exist, eh?☺
Next, regarding the benefits of added CO2, you ask, “Where is this voluminous evidence?” Glad you asked:
click1
click2
click3
click4
click5
Got more if you want ’em. But I think we can agree that more CO2 increases agricultural productivity. Therefore, more CO2 is beneficial, ipso facto.
And since none of the catastrophic scare stories about rising CO2 have panned out, along with the fact that there is no evidence of any global harm resulting from the rise in CO2, then we must conclude that CO2 is harmless.
Therefore, more CO2 is harmless and beneficial. QED.
If you really want, I can just as easily deconstruct the rest of your beliefs. But I’m losing interest. There are more current articles I want to read.
Smokey,
I specifically asked you to answer the 95% of the post that was science based, guessing correctly that you would focus on the one sentence that was conjectural. Unfortunately I’ve wasted a few hours constructing posts on the science, hoping you would be able to elevate your thinking beyond the ideological and political. Apparently not. This is not the first time you have avoided a facts-based conversation.
You can’t have an informed opinion if you don’t understand the science. You not only do not understand it, you avoid it if it doesn’t suit your opinion. That is a shame.
barry,
Sorry you wasted a few hours [?!?] writing your posts arguing with me. Is it so hard putting together a comment? You need to write a little faster. My posts are constructed in a few minutes – and IMHO they make my points better, clearer, and more concisely.
And your opinion that I ‘don’t understand the science’ is pretty weak tea, considering your admission that your own comments are only ‘conjectural’. If & when you can competently refute my assertion that CO2 is harmless and beneficial, wake me and we can play some more.☺
It’s very easy putting together a comment. They’re all over the net and a dime a dozen.
Understanding and/or explaining climate science – any science of complex systems – takes time. You have to knuckle down and do some actual work. When corresponding with you, I don’t regurgitate talking points. I construct my replies based on what you’ve said. You use the HadCRU temp record? Fine, I’ll go with that. You are interested in temp data from 1850? OK. You assert that the warming is natural? Then I’ll deal with that point. From these points I can make a post that is science-based and propaganda free. Some graphs took ten minutes or so to fiddle with scale, offsetting etc, in order to make it as clean as possible so the results could be seen easily. I also had to re-read and edit out non-substantive content that I figured you would pounce on, ignoring the substantive stuff. Half the exercise when talking to you is trying to get you to focus on the science, and to focus on the points YOU’VE made when I reply to them. But you don’t seem to be able to concentrate.
Like Lucy sweeping the ball away from Charlie Brown when he goes to kick it, you reply to the one non-substantive comment in my post (which was a reply to a politically framed question from you – more fool me for trying to reply comprehensively to you), and ignore the 95% of the rest of the post that was substantive.
You like short posts and sound-bytes because you’re not interested in the science. You want to win points, not understand them. I want to have a constructive conversation but it’s impossible. You want to tell me about the mendacious alarmists. I want to talk about facts – the scientific underpinning that is the nuts and bolts one needs to be familiar with before one can make an informed opinion. This takes time, and you don’t have time for it apparently. So you’ll never learn anything. Not from me anyway. And I’ll never learn anything from you, because when I take up a point of yours, you move on to the next talking point. Nothing gets discussed.
So that’s it I guess. I know when I’m licked.
(This post took 10 minutes. I spent some time thinking of the clearest, most honest way to say what I wanted to say)
Thank you Barry, you have not wasted your time. Smokey will not try to understand the basic science, which has rested undisputed for well over a century.
In 1824 a Frenchman, Joseph Fourier, discovered the greenhouse effect, whereby gases in the atmosphere trap heat like glass in a conservatory.
And 37 years later, an Irish physicist, John Tyndall, identified carbon dioxide as one of its causes.
In 1894-95 a Swede, Svante Arrhenius, took a year to calculate that doubling the amount of the gas would cause global temperatures to rise by 5C-6C. Extraordinarily, that is almost exactly the conclusion reached by today’s scientists, armed with superfast supercomputers.
I would like to conclude with a short, step-by-step, scientific explanation of the mechanism of anthropogenic climate change.
1. In order to maintain a constant average temperature the earth needs to radiate outwards exactly the same amount of energy as it absorbs from the sun.
2. Carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases are transparent to the mainly short-wavelength incoming solar radiation, but opaque to the outgoing radiation from the earth (which is longer-wave because the earth is cooler than the sun, and cooler bodies emit radiation at longer wavelengths than hotter bodies like the sun). These relationships are not new, but were discovered by 19th century scientists such as Stefan, Wien, Planck, Kirchoff and Boltzman.
3. For nearly a million years until the industrial revolution, the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere has varied from 180 to 280 parts per million. (If there were no CO2 at all, the earth’s average surface temperature would be minus 18 degrees C.) The 180 ppm levels have been associated with ice ages, and the 280 ppm values with interglacial periods such as the present one. For the last 10,000 years the average surface temperature has been close to 15 degrees C, in a range that has been conducive to the development of mankind.
4. In the 250 years or so since we started burning fossil fuels (which have been locked into the earth’s crust for some 300 million years) the CO2 level has risen to 392 parts per million. That is an increase of 37% over the 1,000,000-year maximum, and the rate of increase is accelerating. We presently emit 17 million tons of CO2 daily, which contains 7 million tons of carbon atoms.
5. Terrestrial temperatures have risen since the industrial revolution, subject to natural variations such as El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and known recurring solar cycles. The rise since the 1970s is particularly well-documented.
6. We can forget the natural greenhouse gas emissions, because they are in equilibrium with the natural absorptions, which cannot be expected to counter our emissions in addition!
The onus is on disbelievers to prove that this sequence of cause and effect is flawed.
barry,
There is a lot of psychological projection in your last comment. I posted this chart more than once, but you completely ignored it.
That one single chart [and I have plenty of others showing the same thing] deconstructs all the other pseudo “science” purporting to claim that the planet’s temperature has begun rising fast as a result of rising CO2.
You need to look at the big picture, not just ΔT from 1900 to current. The big picture shows that nothing unusual is happening. In fact, we are currently in an extremely benign climate.
.
4caster says:
“In 1894-95 a Swede, Svante Arrhenius, took a year to calculate that doubling the amount of the gas would cause global temperatures to rise by 5C-6C. Extraordinarily, that is almost exactly the conclusion reached by today’s scientists, armed with superfast supercomputers.”
What 4caster conveniently omits is Arrhenius‘ 1906 paper, which recanted his 6°C rise for 2xCO2, and replaced it with a very mild ≤1.5°C rise. Such a rise for a doubling of CO2 [which is anyway very unlikely] is no problem at all. A warmer planet would open millions of arable acres in Canada, Siberia, Mongolia, etc. The alarmist crowd always ignores the 1906 Arrhenius paper because it confounds their narrative. Where’s the grant money for a degree or so more warmth – especially since that warming would occur primarily at night, in the winter, and in the higher latitudes?
4caster lists known factors, which I have no problem with [other than using big scary numbers, instead of comparable percentages]. But he presumes those factors cover all known and unknown climate forcings, and then he concludes with a logical fallacy: “The onus is on disbelievers to prove that this sequence of cause and effect is flawed.”
Wrong: ei incumbit probatio, qui dicit, non qui negat; cum per rerum naturam factum negantis probatio nulla sit – The proof lies upon him who affirms, not upon him who denies; since, by the nature of things, he who denies a fact cannot produce any proof.
Regarding the claim that CO2 produced by human combustion of fossil fuels is causing “unprecedented” global warming, the onus lies entirely on the alarmist contingent. Regarding the belief that a rise in CO2 will cause a 5 – 6°C rise in global temperatures, the onus lies entirely on those who claim that is so; not on scientists skeptical of that evidence-free belief.
Finally, the planet itself is falsifying the preposterous 5 – 6°C claim. So whom should we believe, the alarmist crowd’s self-serving but evidence-free claim? Or the IPCC’s still highly exaggerated scare numbers? Or should we look at observational evidence of what is actually happening in the real world?
4caster says:
August 31, 2011 at 8:34 am
” …The present simultaneous increases of both are clearly not subject to this lag. In that respect, this time is really different. …”
You can’t possibly be sure of this, unless You were present at previous times … Especially when NO ONE has been able to demonstrate that carbon dioxide is the primary reason why the temperature HAS risen (not rising), due to human activity! If a (natural) event is repetitive and relatively similar each time, it is difficult to say that the latest change is caused by the artificial reason. Especially when it can’t be proven! Unless someone has a wild imagination or an agenda … Also, try to understand the concept of (repeating) cycles …
“I have another issue with SasjaL. He discounts the CO2 measurements from Mauna Loa on the grounds that even dormant volcanoes emit CO2. Even if this is the case (I am a meteorologist, not a vulcanologist), there is another series of measurements from Mace Head in Ireland, going back to 1992, and many other sites have begun to record data since then. The correlation between these data is very high.”
First, if I was a “He”, we (I) need some gender bending … [OT] Sasja (including Sasha, Sacha and Sascha) is certainly a Russian male nickname for “Alexandr” (sic!), but this is (normally) in Russia! Outside of Russia it’s a nickname for the female form of “Alexander”, ie. “Alexandra”. I am baptized and officially registered as “Sasja”, because my parents thought it was a beautiful name … My closest and only relationship to Russia is a couple of acquaintances, who were born and raised in Siberia and now lives in the same country as me, here on the Scandinavian peninsula … Nothing else. [/OT]
Secondly, You’re missing the point! Measuring carbon dioxide levels at a vulcano, would be something like measuring the same thing at a highway (with traffic) … If You can’t, have possibility to or even want to separate what You intend to measure from the contributing sources of error, there is NO WAY that You can manage to draw a correct conclusion … As a meteorologist, You should know this! (As a meteorologist, You must also know and understand that it is not possible to predict the weather (locally) with sufficient precision, longer than five days into the future, because weather is EXTREMLY complex and chaotic. It’s then perfectly illogical when You try to predict the climate for a period of one hundred years or so into the future (globally), when it’s EVEN MORE complex and chaotic … In short, it’s nonsense!)
Also, You should have looked more closely at what is measured at Mace Head … A look at their mission (http://agage.eas.gatech.edu/mission.htm), You’ll find the following:
CFCs, bromocarbons, N2O, CH4, CO, H2, CH3Cl, CH3Br, CH2Cl2, CHCl3, OH radicals via CH3CCl3
but CO2 is not mentioned … Why? Well, if You take a look on the start page, You’ll find the following:
“The AGAGE is distinguished by its capability to measure over the globe at high frequency almost all of the important gases species in the Montreal Protocol (e.g. CFCs and HCFCs) to protect the ozone layer and almost all of the significant non-CO2 gases in the Kyoto Protocol”
Note that it specifically states “non-CO2” … Ie, measuring carbon dioxide levels is not their “mission”!
However, there are some information about they had previously been measured carbon dioxide levels, but the information indicates some few periods with no direct continuity.
(Then there’s another thing if concerned gases actually destroys the ozone layer. It is questionable, as some observant people have realized that both ozone holes, north and south, existed much earlier before they were discovered, probably at simular sizes as present …)
——
Excuse me if any of the following I have written, already has been commented by someone else (like Smokey), but this can never be mentioned too many times (as opposed to political and religious dogma) … but I have unfortunately not been able to read all recent comments yet …
I’ve noticed something in one of Your comments in reply to Smokey, regarding Your arguments about prehistoric levels:
“But it is unlikely that mankind would survive, over much of the earth, any recurrence of temperatures associated with his high CO2 values.”
Explain then why the tomato producers who use carbon dioxide levels up to 1200 ppm in their greenhouses, without getting themselves any harm. This happens in real life … They can even increase this a lot further, without any problems. (Try even explaining to a tomato producer that carbon dioxide is harmful. You will probably be laughed at or at least be regarded as a madman, a corrupt politician, a religious fanatic or even a combination of these …)
“It is no accident that mankind first started to thrive and multiply less than 10,000 years ago, but did not do so during earlier interglacial periods.”
Correct, it is no coincidence, but not for the reason You think. You’ll realize it if You learned anything about biology, specifically on anthropology and evolution of species. (You should have received a dose of this during Your period in school …) You also commit a logical somersault, when You don’t realize (or is it deliberately?) that the predecessors of the modern human (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) were not sufficiently developed to accomplish something similar to what happened the last two thousand years of human history … Linguistic development is of great importance in this context, as the design of the human throat and specifically the vocal cords is quite unique and this is relatively late developed. I hope You realize that if we not have progressed further in development than our “cousin” (the chimpanzee) regarding communication, we would never have this discussion or anything close to it …
In addition, the more people who gathers and exchange ideas and experiences, the greater is the possibility that it leads to something new and to further development (but unfortunally also it leads to the opposite like the AGW concept) … This possibility was extremely limited for the modern human’s predecessors. Furthermore, biological evolution are often driven by mutations and have a guess about what causes them …? This is a very slow and self-regulatory process (as GMO advocates clearly don’t understand …).
If all species were developed at the same rate as humans have done the past two thousand years, the world would have looked very different. How much different, the wildest imagination would not be close to it.
“It is caused by mankind’s DAILY emission of 17 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, containing 7 million tons DAILY of carbon.”
So what …? All the green species on the Earth loves this! It (still) represents only 2-4% of the total net! (And this is only a rough estimation! Try to figure out why this is basically impossible to measure correctly …) The rest are natural sources. Don’t You realize the proportions? (As I tried to explain in my previous comment.) The greener the Earth gets, the more oxygen we have the opportunity to use … “Forgot” this?
“Warmed sea water will give up some of its CO2 to the atmosphere, which in turn causes an enhanced greenhouse effect, which in turn causes the sea to warm further, which …. You get the picture.”
Warmed sea/ocean water will evaporate and cause far more “greenhouse effect” then the carbon dioxide, when it gets into cloud formations … Also, the “green stuff” will also compensate this. You don’t get the picture.
“It’s called Positive Feedback.”
In a system, regardless of type, where the sum of all the feedbacks are positive, it will soon reinforce itself in an uncontrolled manner. This is not happening with the climate and we have seen this happening before from traces of previous cycles. … (It’s self-regulating) Compare with acoustic feedbacks, then You might understand what it’s all about … (Nevertheless, an acoustic feedback is largely limited by the the speaker (elements) and amplifier designs respectively, but it gives You an idea how it works.)
Even later You wrote some funny stuff:
“The closeness to the 1,000-year time difference between now and the medieval warm period is coincidental.”
Just as man’s industrial development coincides with the third rise in the Vostok curves … (Third time’s a charm!)
barry says:
August 31, 2011 at 5:49 pm
“The great thing about this is that the 20 – 30 year minimum is a statistical, not an arbitrary result.”
Then You don’t understand the concept of statistics and science … For a human being, 20-30 years might be considered as a long period, but from a climatic point of view, it’s extremly short. Regarding the full time span that has to be involved, 20-30 years are concidered as statistical noise (ie. within error margins.). With a period of 20-30 years, basically You can prove anything about the climate … This is a presentation technique (aka “smokescreens” and “cherry-picking”) that is common among politicians, when they want to hide something that’s unlikely to accepted by the public. This also applies to bluffing companies …
SasjaL,
You write very well for someone whose first language is not English. [I should mention, however, that “You” is not normally capitalized.]
The several corrections you made to 4caster’s misinformation indicates that he is engaging in psychological projection [imputing his faults onto others] when he accuses others of not understanding basic science.
I can forgive the occasional error as an absent minded mistake. But 4caster’s numerous, flagrant and basic errors indicate he has picked up bits and pieces of misinformation at Warmist blogs, and posts them here, trying to appear knowledgeable on the subject. I’m not so sure that MLO data is wrong, but you pointed out several other instances of misinformation that 4caster tried to pass off as facts.
People like 4caster come here regularly from Warmist blogs, convinced that they’re going to set everyone straight with their error-prone, scanty knowledge of the subject. The beauty of WUWT is that unlike most alarmist blogs, it allows all points of view to be posted un-censored. In the ensuing discussion, the truth is separated from pseudo-science like wheat from chaff, and the purveyors of pseudo-science usually just drift away, leaving readers with what is as close to the truth as we can get given our current knowledge.
Smokey says:
September 4, 2011 at 5:18 pm
You’re saying I project my own shortcomings on to you. I said that you ignore the substantive points I make and keep throwing up other ones. And so you do. I’ve made a post about attribution of temperature change. Was this because i ignored a point you made? Nope. You asserted that the warming since LIA is natural – or that is the default position because ‘the null hypothesis is not disproved’. Ever since, I’ve been trying to engage you on that assertion, but you’ve avoided that and been cycling through talking points. My last substantive post was 12 paragraphs, complete with graphs on attribution. Your entire response to that was based on one sentence, which was not what the post was about, and which I told you in the post you’d probably be most incline to reply to. I was exactly right. You replied.
“barry me boi, you shoulod know better than to engage in evidence-free “what ifs.””
12 wasted paragraphs of substance and science. What happened to you there, Smokey?
Now you demand I pay attention to more of your assertions. But why would I? You’ll just ignore the substantive response and cycle to the next bunch of talking points. You’ll discuss nothing.
And now the proof of what I’m saying, and proof that I’m not projecting. here are the answers to each of your points from your last post, having ignored the substance of several posts of mine. You won’t reply substantively. you won’t delve into the point. you’ll say something smart-alecky, or respond to something else in this post, but you won’t deal with the rebuttals to your assertions in any substantive way.
Ready? here we go.
“I posted this chart more than once, but you completely ignored it.”
The chart is of a total of 8 locations. It does not, and cannot represent global temperatures. It is well known that local temperature records have more amplitude and climate variability than global averages. Furthermore, whatever point you are trying to make with the graph is quite obscure. If it is that different locations show different temperature trends, then, you have shown us nothing new. Of course they do. the global is not a featureless billiard ball where the weather and climate change at the same time and in the same way everywhere. That chart, for these reasons, and because there is no analysis of any kind attached to it, is completely meaningless.
In the “big picture” chart, the first words are “it is said that our current global warming is unprecedented”. But that is not what is said. What is said to be “apparently unprecedented” is the rate at which CO2 is going into the atmosphere, and the rate at which the globe is warming. That morphing chart of Greenland ice core data begins with an utter straw man, and is, again, just one location on Earth. The first claim is false, and the data is not global. Fail.
The chart of “nothing unusual” shows the Mauna Loa CO2 record above the HadCRUt global temperature record. The immediate problem is that the downward trend at the end of the record is 10.5 years of data. As I discussed in another post to you at length (which you also completely ignored), this is way too short to establish a climate trend. The mid-century flat or cool period is also 17 years shorter than it should be. There is no explanation for the choice of start/end points of trend analyses, and it is patently obvious that selecting 1958 as a start date and 1977 as the end will emphasise a negative trend mid-century. When a temperature trend line is run for the entire Mauna Loa series period, the correlation looks like this. We don’t expect monotonic rise of temperature with incrementally increasing CO2. Weather factors will dominate for short time periods. Graphs without explanation or physics don’t cut it. And that is all you are offering – charts and no commentary. You are interested in getting out a message, not investigating what stuff means.
Finally, the “benign climate” graph, the third with no explanation, shows a temperature graph covering the last glacial maximum up to the current interglacial. Our civilizations have flourished in moderate stable climatic conditions. You have implied the obvious, but as there is no discussion from you on this, no reply can be made. It is the fourth in a series of non-sequiturs that you appear to believe construe an ‘argument’. Nope, it’s just propaganda.
Ok, all your points answered. Prediction: you will do anything but deal on point and substantively with what I’ve written in reply to your ‘points’, such as they weren’t. And if you had the wit to observe yourself fulfilling my prediction, you’d see that there is no projection from me onto you, just clear observation of your behaviour.
If we’re lucky, your reply will be interesting.
First, an apology, SasjaL. Being ignorant of the gender of your name, I should not have referred to you as “he”. I should have written “he or she”. (I never use the plural pronoun “they” to refer to a singular person of unknown sex, like many do. In attempting to be politically correct, they become grammatically incorrect.) I agree with Smokey about one thing: your excellent English. I would like my fluency in any second language to be one tenth as good.
You question my statement: ” …The present simultaneous increases of both [CO2 concentrations and mean air temperatures] are clearly not subject to this lag. In that respect, this time is really different. …” I was referring to the substantial warmings which started various inter-glacial periods in the last 700,000 years, and the associated atmospheric CO2 increases as measured by analysing air bubbles in ice-cores in Antarctica and Greenland, from which it has been observed that temperature rises precede CO2 increases, typically by eight centuries.
You write: ”You can’t possibly be sure of this, unless you were present at previous times …” If that is the case, then none of us can be sure about anything that we have not personally observed. I was not present to see dinosaurs, but archeologists say they existed, and I am sure they are right, just as I am sure that ice-core analysts are right.
The delayed CO2 rises following the warmings at the end of ice ages are not part of the argument that CO2 is an important greenhouse gas. On the contrary, these ice-core observations are an inconvenient obstacle to that argument, cited by people who are ignorant of air/sea interactions in order to discredit the causal link between CO2 and global warming. I wrote about it merely to anticipate and pre-empt such a comment.
Atmospheric analysis at Mauna Loa was begun in 1958 for the purpose of measuring emissions from its volcano. There have only been two eruptions since then, a minor one in 1975 and a more substantial one in 1984. Neither is identifiable on the biennial CO2 concentration graph. Mace Head may have been established to measure other gases, but the CO2 measurements have become a valuable by-product, and agree closely with those from Mauna Loa.
SashaL also writes: “Warmed sea/ocean water will evaporate and cause far more ‘greenhouse effect’ than the carbon dioxide, when it gets into cloud formations …” I can agree with that (also before it gets into cloud formations, because water vapour in unsaturated air is a greenhouse gas too). But the magnitude of the warming due to water vapour is difficult to assess. That is the job of cloud physicists and those who create climate models incorporating their advice. The most sophisticated of computer models will not predict every puff of cumulus, even in the short term. But the parameterisation of air convection has improved, and I believe it will continue to improve.
“Also, the ‘green stuff’ will also compensate this. You don’t get the picture.” To make this argument you need to predict quantities, and to demonstrate that this extra “green stuff” will exceed that being destroyed by man through, for example, tropical rain-forest destruction. You expect increased “green stuff” to absorb 17 millions tons of CO2 daily in addition to the natural emissions with which they were in balance until mankind started burning fossil fuels.
barry,
Your WFT graphs can be scaled to show anything. By going back before 1959 and re-scaling, looky here. Not so scary now, is it? And here’s a chart by an internationally esteemed climatologist with an impressive CV. Don’t you think the AGW alarm is way overblown? Preposterous, even? Looks to me like everything is normal, and we’re very lucky to be in a benign, naturally warming part of the Holocene.
There is no evidence, per the scientific method, showing that the rise in CO2 is any more than coincidental with the rise in temperature since the LIA. You cannot show that it isn’t an artefact. The null hypothesis and Occam’s Razor tell us that what is happening now is routine, natural, normal, and minor compared with much more severe past episodes of warming and cooling. You’re trying to peddle an argumentum ad ignorantium by assuming that since you can’t think of any other reason besides CO2 for the rise in temperature, then it must be due to CO2. But we are far from knowing everything about what drives the climate. There are certainly more unknown unknowns, and it is hubris to presume anyone understands all the forcings and feedbacks.
So there’s the scientific method in action. CO2=AGW is simply an unproven hypothesis, and all the horse manure about our “carbon footprint”, “sustainability”, and the rest of the eco-crap is just so much nonsense. The whole enviro agenda is explicitly designed to grab more tax money and more political control. “Climate change” is just the ostensible veneer to give ruthless people and organizations necessary cover for their plans.
barry, there is as much testable evidence, per the scientific method, that CO2 causes global warming as there is for ghosts [I don’t happen to believe in ghosts. But I do think that CO2 causes some minor warming. But the benefits far outweigh any problems – even though there is still no empirical evidence showing that CO2 does cause warming. I base my thinking on radiative physics, while keeping in mind that we don’t know very much about how the earth’s overall climate actually works]. So if you’re trying to convince me to unquestioningly accept a hypothesis for which there is zero physical evidence, you’re arguing with the wrong guy.
Finally, you denigrated the chart I posted because it shows ‘only’ 8 locations. OK then, here is a chart showing 150 locations all around the globe. Most urban locations that are affected by UHI, but even so, there’s nothing scary about the trends – which pretty well match the chart showing 8 locations.
barry, to support your position you’re going to have to produce testable, empirical evidence directly connecting AGW to what appears to be natural climate cycles and temperature changes. Otherwise, you should be a skeptic of AGW. Because as we know, a skeptical scientist is the only honest kind of scientist.
Smokey,
at least i’m not projecting. You didn’t respond to my points, except to tell me i jigged my graph.
You keep asking me for empirical evidence. I gave it to you a week ago, and you even said you agreed with the points.
Also you say in one paragraph.
And in the same paragraph.
You are incoherent. Either CO2 warming is superstition, or you base your belief on radiative physics. Not both. What sloppy reasoning!
You’ve offered up yet more graphs with little explanation. It’s the visual form of talking points. What on Earth are we supposed to make of a bunch of locales’ temperature records? Some have mighty temperature rises over climatic periods, much greater than the global record, and some don’t show much or any warming at all. So what? This is a mess of data that could be interpreted by anyone in any way. Meaningless, until some propagandist spins a story out of it.
Let’s stick to one topic and really discuss it, shall we? I’d like to see you try to defend the extraordinary claim that there is no empirical evidence for AGW. Answer the following, please.
Empirical evidence (here we go again).
1) Earth’s atmosphere contains CO2
2) CO2 absorbs long-wave radiation
3) Increasing the amount of CO2 in a volume of atmosphere receiving steady heat, will make that volume warmer
I remind you that you agreed with these points a week ago. Based on empirical evidence, the null hypothesis must be that more CO2 makes the atmosphere warm. Re-read points 1 – 3.
There is more empirical evidence – this you also agreed with a week ago.
4) Human industry has increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by nearly 40% since the industrial revolution
5) The Earth has warmed
6) Satellites have observed the spectra of radiation that CO2 absorbs darkening over the last few decades – CO2 is retaining more heat in the atmosphere.
These 6 points are empirical evidence. This is how we know that increasing CO2 warms the atmosphere.
So, Smokey, how on Earth can you hold that there is “no empirical evidence” for AGW? I really want to know.
@- tallbloke says:
September 6, 2011 at 3:52 am
“It is not a logical impossibility that clouds are causing temperature change and temperature change is causing cloud change simultaneously. The world is a big place, there are many different processes going on in it.”
There are indeed and clouds causing temp changes and temp changes causing clouds are all part of that.
But however big the world you DON’T get two things that are the primary cause of each other.
Causal chains are unidirectional. It is a logical impossibility for A to be the #1 cause of B, AND B to be the #1 cause of A.
The dispute here is over whether the pattern of events seen in the ENSO cycle is caused by the movement of thermal energy in the pacific over several years which then causes changes in the wind and cloud patterns.
OR whether the cloud patterns cause the slow movement of thermal energy through the ocean.
There is no dispute that the cloud patterns CAUSED by the ocean thermal changes modify the total ENSO cycle – just as a cough may add irritation to an infection. But there is no dispute amonst MOST rational observers that the oceans cause the clouds, NOT the other way round.
And it is just logical nonsense to claim that causation can run BOTH ways.
Oceans are the cause, clouds are the feedback.
@- tallbloke (-Re: the claim that GCR has negligible effect on low altitude clouds.)
“Interesting assertion, which you haven’t backed up with any argumentation here. Anyway, GCR’s are not the only way cloud might be affected by another factor other than temperature.”
I quoted the sentence from the abstract in the thread discussing this –
-”We find that ion-induced binary nucleation of H2SO4–H2O can occur in the mid-troposphere but is negligible in the boundary layer.”-
perhaps you missed that ?
barry,
You’re playing word games by cherry-picking a part of my quote that you want to argue with. That’s a strawman argument. Here’s my verbatim quote: “I don’t happen to believe in ghosts. But I do think that CO2 causes some minor warming. But the benefits far outweigh any problems – even though there is still no empirical evidence showing that CO2 does cause warming. I base my thinking on radiative physics, while keeping in mind that we don’t know very much about how the earth’s overall climate actually works.” [my emphasis]
See, barry, I think that CO2 causes some very *mild* warming. But I point out that there is no testable, empirical evidence per the scientific method showing a direct connection between AGW and CO2. All we have so far is correlation. Reading comprehension, barry me boi. You needs it.
You appear to have no real understanding of the scientific method and its rigorous application. You simply want to believe in climate alarmism like some folks want to believe in ghosts. Earth to barry: there is nothing unusual happening. Nothing. All current climate parameters, including temperatures, rates of change, and trends are well within the past parameters of the Holocene. Read up on the null hypothesis, it’s a function of the scientific method that you don’t seem to understand. It clearly demonstrates that the wild-eyed AGW predictions are bunkum. Nothing unusual is occurring. You want to believe what’s not there, barry. That’s religion, not science.
The so-called “evidence” you presented is not evidence of AGW at all, it is simply correlation. Correlation does not meet the standard of the scientific method. Further, real world evidence shows that there is little correlation between the steady rise in CO2 and changes in temperature: click That lack of correlation indicates that the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 has been wildly exaggerated.
You’re trying to sell us a bill of goods, but when we ask you to prove it, all you can do is show correlations. Considering the $billions wasted every year to “study climate change”, that’s not nearly good enough. We need direct, testable evidence that CO2=AGW, but there is none.
Finally, my basic argument is, and always has been, that the rise in CO2 is harmless and beneficial. Provide verifiable evidence of global harm directly attributable to CO2, and you will have a tenable argument. Otherwise, you might as well try to convince us that ghosts exist.
Smokey,
<blockquote.The so-called “evidence” you presented is not evidence of AGW at all, it is simply correlation
No, it is not. You asked for empirical evidence. Do you know what the words mean?
Emprirical:
a. Relying on or derived from observation or experiment: empirical results that supported the hypothesis.
b. Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment
I gave you a list of 6 empirical results derived by observation and experiment. They are well verified, and you agreed that they were so a week ago. The first 3 points alone are evidence enough.
Evidence
The available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid
I gave 6 verified facts as evidence that the proposition of AGW is valid. The first 3 points alone validate the proposition.
I answered your challenge. Exactly as you wrote it.
Don’t link me up to graphs, don’t talk about whether CO2 is benign or harmful. Tell me how I have failed to show empirical evidence that CO2 will warm the planet. Stick to the point, please.
Let’s keep it really simple. Tell me what is wrong with the first 3 points. Are they not empirical data? Do they not constitute evidence?
(Prediction: you will shift the goalposts instead of admitting you are wrong)
barry,
Reading comprehension, me boi. You needs it. You can’t just pick out two words and leave it at that. The scientific method doesn’t work that way.
I’ve repeatedly pointed out that there is as much testable, replicable evidence per the scientific method that anthropogenic CO2 causes global warming as there is for ghosts. I know you want to believe in AGW, but there is no testable, replicable evidence directly connecting human-emitted CO2 with global warming.
See, if there was definitive evidence, then there wouldn’t be this endless argument over whether human-emitted CO2 changes global temperatures. The reason that the argument is endless is specifically because there is no quantifiable, testable evidence that X amount of CO2 raises the global temperature by Y degrees.
The onus is on you and the rest of the alarmist crowd to show conclusively that human-emitted CO2 causes the global temperature to rise. Sorry you don’t have any testable evidence, but you just don’t. And neither does anyone else – thus the interminable argument, where climate alarmist True Believers try despearately hard to convince scientific skeptics [the only honest kind of scientists] that correlation equals causation.
The charts I’ve posted show that the ΔT appears to be irrespective of the steady rise in CO2. When U.S. postal rates show significantly greater correlation to temperature than CO2, you’ve got a credibility problem. I understand that you fervently believe in CO2=CAGW. But it’s an internalized Belief system. When you can provide quantifiable, replicable proof of causation, I’ll sit up straight and pay attention.
In the mean time, remember that the ultra-rational Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, truly believed that invisible faeries lived in his garden. Today, he’d probably be squarely in the alarmist camp. Now, we use the scientific method to weed out the believers in ghosts, witch doctors and CAGW.
Major troll infestation
Sean Peake says:
September 6, 2011 at 5:55 pm
Major troll infestation
=========================
Like invasive, opportunistic unwanted pests, they do tend to swarm, don’t they?
So if they infest and attempt to “overwhelm” the opposition by volume and number, their reasoning, the opposition will wither.
Guess again, “swarm.”
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
barry never responded to Ole Humlum’s thorough deconstruction of AGW in his Climate4You website that I referenced. Dr Humlum has invested a lifetime of research studying climate forcings. barry constantly accuses me of ‘moving the goalposts’. That is clearly barry’s own psychological projection at work. If barry truly wants to get up to speed on the subject, Dr Humlum’s informative site is a great place to begin.
barry needs to produce testable, empirical evidence directly connecting AGW – in what otherwise appears to be simply natural climate cycles and temperature changes – to “carbon”. But he can’t, because there is no such evidence! If there were, we would certainly hear it trumpeted 24/7/365 by the alarmist claque.
So barry argues and argues. But he can’t produce. Poor barry. Another alarmist lacking facts to support his
ghost storiesBelief in catastrophic AGW.