Only a Century? Ya Wimps!

How can a learned person expect that man can use fossile fuels at the present pace till 2100, let alone till 2500???

when Willis says the “w” word you know it’s gotta be bad…..I sprayed green tea all over my screen.
Hairy palms anyone?

The new IPCC bureaucratic scientese term is “Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) radiative forcing scenarios” …

Another way to circumvent nosey parkers like us? If FOIA still holds, and paywalls don’t stop reasonable inquirers who sense b***s***, then make the script incomprehensible except to fellow-conspiratorscientists.
In the UK at least, there is now a standard, called the “crystal mark“, which is about NOT using this kind of throw-dust-in-your-opponents-eyes use of language, but using “plain English”.
Where have we seen this before? h’mm…the term “Medieval Climate Anomaly” was surely invented precisely to deny or hide the existence of the perfectly sound and properly-evidence-backed scientific term, “Medieval Warm Period”.

My great great great great great great great great……..great…………great great great grandson will be living at Appartment 1033a, 37 Sun Street, North Mars Terraform Unit, Mars, in 500 years time according to my “predict the future” iphone app.

Willis,
Sir,
You remind of a long deceased country man of yours, Mark Twain, and the way he took the piss out of people and society in a nice way. Your ideas about how our climate actually works is actually closer to the truth than most. Go forth and promulgate for those with new thought are rare.

The assumptions behind it are simply that human activity by various means is the primary cause of ocean sea level changes after accounting for the general interglacial process of gradually melting icecaps.
The trouble is that it is hard to see how extra energy in the air from human effects on the composition of the atmosphere could have a significant effect on ocean temperatures and thus sea level changes for anything less than millennia given the thermal capacity of seawater as compared to that of air. That assumes that the energy in the air can get into the oceans in the first place which is not yet a proven fact given the cooling efficiency of increased evaporation from more energy in the air.
I know Willis thinks that such energy can warm the oceans but I have yet to see adequate proof of that.
Now we do know that during the late 20th century the ocean heat content did rise as the troposphere warmed a little but that was far too fast for it to have been a result of human action so where else could we look ?
Furthermore the rise seems to have stopped now whilst the sun is less active. Coincidence ?
I think not.
What we have here is relatively short term ocean heat content variability (and thus sea level changes) arising from natural solar causes and not human activity at all.
The best proposition I can think of is that the amount of solar energy getting into the oceans varies more than previously thought as a result of global cloudiness and albedo changes.
Svensmark attributes cloudiness changes to cosmic ray quantities.
I think it is the surface pressure distribution responding to solar induced changes in the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere as a result of different chemical responses at different levels in the atmosphere as I have explained elsewhere.
Quite simply the more the jetstreams wander about latitudinally (someone here called it ‘loopiness’) the greater is total global cloudiness and a quiet sun allows far more of such wandering about than does an active sun.

What kind of warning would be issued from 16th century America?
Perhaps the more feverish would been witch warnings.
But assuming it was from sane rational folk.
Probably it have to do the importance of building canals.
Concerns about coal reserves for heating, and timber for
ships. And probably something to do with Indians.
Anyone think million of people might live in and on the ocean within a couple
centuries?
Crazy idea? Yeah.
But flying across America on a plane would be pretty crazy
in the 16th Century.

Betcha all the climate zealots in the MWP were saying exactly the same thing. And in the Roman WP. And the Minoan WP. And …

More expensive garbage from the size zero models prowling the Climate Catwalk.

Lennin, knew it, Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, Orwell knew it also in 1984! Control the language, you control the debate, control the debate you control the people!!! Dr James Hanson knows it also, control the past, you control the future (1984)! Greenhouse gas “pollution” has entered the vocabulary for the current “good”, until we change the language & take back control! Don’t let them do it, reclaim the dabte, reclaim our human “rights” to expore, discover, invent & design & finally make!!! Don’t let them tell us what we must do, don’t let them take control, it’s what lights their fire, so let us poor some CO2 & H2O on their flames!
“The red line can be considered to represent business as usual where greenhouse gas emission are increasing over time”. Then again it can “not” be considered to represent……..etc! Then again they don’t say it “must” be or “has” to be. BTW, if it represents something, it isn’t real, it’s a simulation, not of the treal world! Control that language people before they contro you.
On another note peeps, have any of you looked at UN Agenda 21 & seen what they have planned for the good ‘ol USA? Your finished, kaput, done for! They hate you guys, they’re obsessed with your systematic, piecemeal dismantling & disctruction!!! All because you like one nation under God, liberty & justice for all, & enshrine the free-enterprize capitalist system in your constitution!!! (Sure in ain’t perfect but it works). How weird is that? What kind of people hang posters on their bedroom walls of cold-blooded ruthless mass-murderers (why do they always come from upper/ middle-class well-educated & wealthy backgrounds) as iconic heroes for freedom & democracy for the “people”? Lenin & Che Gavara to name two, if you hung a picture of Adolf Hitler or any top Nazi on your wall they would nail you immediately & quite rightly, but not the former two ignobles!!! That’s disturbing IMHO! Oh well off for a well earned lie down in a darkened room ;-))

richardjamestelford says:
October 20, 2011 at 2:22 am
Unable to accept the inevitable long-term consequences of global warming, and ill-equipped to critique the science, Eschenbach resorts to mockery.

I see you’re mightily seasoned at the self same skill, except that it is hollow, and habitual. I don’t need to race in in Willis’ defense, he already has. The things I’d like to say to you, Mr. Telford, will get snipped, and for good reason. Too bad you haven’t figured out what those reasons are.

Models without validation. I prefer fiction, of course.

There once were “intelligent” beings concerned with pin dancers too.

Seen on a jar in a grocery store: “Contains real ingredients.” Ya think?
The loudest ‘business’ and ‘Dragon’s Den” regular on CBC TV was talking derisively about a stagnant stock a couple of weeks ago and exclaimed, “That’s where money goes to die!” It is very hard to resist thinking of the IPCC as, “the place where science goes to die.”
When anyone asks what “Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) radiative forcing scenario” means the correct reply is, “It means anything we want it to mean” and not, “a guess.”
I have an acquaintance who is in the business of being a Serious Leftie and he pointed out the ‘virtue’ of taking this approach which is: post facto reinterpretation of events to leave him in charge. Covers all possibilties, if you get my drift.
To me it means, “an approximation of modelling forecasts of rising CO2 concentrations made while fantasizing that we could find and burn enough carbon-based fuel somewhere on the planet to raise it above 550 ppm and [wait for it] the consequent calculated global temperature increase based on an inadequate understanding of a partially completed mathematical model of the heat engine that is our real atmosphere linked to the real ocean, deduced while simultaneously ignoring significant contributors to the root causes of climate changes such as clouds, variation across the spectrum of Total Solar Insolation and Galactic Cosmic Rays.” Much too verbose. So, put your tongue in your cheek, call it RPC and follow it with a large number.
Perhaps we need another competition. Predict some of the content of the next IPCC Report. Submit a sentence of not less than 10 and not more than 15 words in which 8 words are identical to any actual 10-word string published therein. I am choosing 8 words to eliminate no-brainers like, “It is worse than we thought” and “Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) radiative forcing scenario.”

as you may have guessed, in quasi-bankrupt Greece, it was reported as news: “The sea will rise by the year 2500”. Many attempts to buy waterfront properties form threatened owners were rejected. Thet did not believe the news.
Usually, papers and sites publishing such science fiction get ads and banners for Siemens wind generators on green meadows with blue skies

Willis, good article and smart counter of “richardjamestelford” who acts on the side of big money (solar, wind and governmental grants).
Quite funny indeed to find someone who defends people who are “cooking” data to produce convenient results, identify trends out of these wrong results that have failed to come true short term – and now return with a 500 yr outlook. This is true belief, not science.
Always a nice read, Willis!
Rgds from Chile, Matt

I think you will find that ‘Busted’ make this prediction long before this group
Busted – Year 3000 lyrics
One day
when I came home
at lunchtime
I heard a funny noise
went out
to the back yard
to find out
if it was one of those rough boys
stood there
was my neighbour
called peter
and a *?*
he told me he built a time-machine
like one in a film I’ve seen(yeah)
he said I’ve been to the year 3000
not much has changed but they live underwater
and your great-great-great-granddaughter
is pretty fine, is pretty fine
he took me
to the future
in a *?*
and I saw everything
boy bands
and another one
and another one
and another one
triple
pretty women
swimmin round town
totally naked

Meh… we’ll be living on Mars by then.

How dare you scoff at this paragon of modern science, Willis. After all, “Their model has been adjusted back to the actual measurements and then used to predict the outlook for rising sea levels.”.

Aslak Grinstead, if you are still viewing the discussion, I have two questions:
I welcome your graph because it provides an element of falsifiability as to the contribution of CO2 to the understanding of current warming (a warming which I will accept if we do not talk about absolute values or spatially averaged data). Would YOU agree that it’s a shame the graph does not show in detail the period 2000 to 2100?
To me (and apparently many others) it seems patently obvious that significant reduction of human emissions of CO2 is going to be impossible unless there is a very high degree of certainty that the consequences of continuing to emit CO2 are much worse than the consequences of business as usual (BTW that puts the onus of that proof on those advocating a change). If we continue on your green curve into the future but sea-level persits rising at 3mm per year – at what date will you consider your hypothesis incorrect?
Massive sea-level rise is the biggest billed consequence of human emitted CO2, but the data on global sea-level rise over the last few decades shows NO evidence for such massive sea-level rise. In fact, if anything, in spite of a near-exponential increase in human emissions of atmospheric CO2 the rate of sea-level rise appears near linear or maybe even close to peaking. That does not negate the possibility of a future massive sea level rise, but it does require a very dramatic pick up in the rate of sea-level rise to fulfill the dire predictions for 2100 and we have monitoring programs to detect that rise should it eventuate. I know several engineering professionals who openly anticipate about 2m of sea-level rise before the end of this century, but there is scant SCIENTIFIC evidence for that view. The’catastrophist’ view is even more prevalent in the wider community and the media (though clearly those with beachfront properties aren’t buying in just yet!). Why is the scientific community not tempering these views? It seems to me that it is inconvenient for funding and careers that real observations do not support a catastrophic view that was tenable (maybe) around the late 90’s, but not now, 10 years later, with no appearance of the doomsday scenario, nor any signs of it. Surely Haiti, the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004, New Zealand and Japanese earthquakes show that the world faces catastrophes enough without inventing new false ones to frighten the gullible.

Sorry the second question should have referenced the “RED” curve, not the green one. I think we’ll probably observe the green one with continued increases in human CO2 emissions 🙂

Mr. Author of mocked paper, your relationship of rising CO2-warmer world-rising sea level has been spliced onto the natural rising sea level, has it not? Since natural conditions have not changed prior to the recent advent of anthropogenic CO2, and are still operating as far as I can see, you seem to be saying that natural sea level rise has ceased (and the conditions driving it) and has been overtaken by AGW sea level rise. What evidence do you have that natural drivers have ceased operating?
However, isn’t it conveniant that the current proposed anthropogenic sea level rise measurements exactly model previous natural sea level rise. Nonetheless, if you are going to show that we should be worried about this change from one driver to another, I suggest using some kind of nature trick when splicing previous natural with current anthropogenic sea level rise. You should also find a better proxy for natural sea level rise so that you can more clearly distinguish between the two drivers and show that natural sea level rise was just a regional myth. If you are unsure how to proceed, I know of one or two esteemed scientists who would be happy to help you.

richardjamestelford says:
October 20, 2011 at 2:22 am
“Unable to accept the inevitable long-term consequences of global warming, and ill-equipped to critique the science, Eschenbach resorts to mockery.”
What science? More mumbo-jumbo computer models? Present some genuine science containing actual reasonably well-confirmed physical hypotheses and I will provide a useful analysis of it.

Aslak Grinsted says:
October 20, 2011 at 3:21 am
“Here is a causal chain of events as i see them, and I would appreciate if you man up, and acknowledge exactly what it is you dispute:
1) Increased CO2 -> Increased radiative forcing
2) stronger radiative forcing -> increased heat / warming
3) Heat/warming -> shrinks land-based ice, and expands the world oceans.”
Thanks for posting here! To express causal chains, arrows won’t do the work. You need some reasonably well confirmed physical hypotheses. These are universal generalizations that, when combined with statements of initial conditions, actually imply the phenomena, ocean rise, that you intend to explain scientifically.
Your reasonably well confirmed hypotheses have to go beyond Arrhenius’ work. From Arrhenius’ work, it is not possible to infer more than a modest rise in temperature. No CAGW is to be found in Arrhenius’ work however far out you take it. In addition to that reason for going beyond Arrhenius, we taxpayers would like to see that climate science has actually produced some science. If you have no reasonably well confirmed physical hypotheses that go beyond Arrhenius’ work then you have produced no new science.
If you depend on models then you are not practicing science at all.

Dear Willis
I am a coauthor on the study. I take no offense at your mockery, because that is pretty much the level of debate that I expect from WUWT (sorry, if that offends you).
Lets try to find some common ground for discussion. I assume you agree about the following observations (concerning on average over the 20th century):
* Sea level has been rising
* Earth has warmed (Global Mean SATs)
* Ocean heat content is increasing (since observations has been available= 1955)
* CO2 is increasing.

Two out of four…what does that mean?
Earth has “warmed”. Dang, I keep having to repeat the same mantra, over and over and over again. 1 Cubic Foot of Air at 86 F and 60% in MN has more ENERGY in it that one cubic foot of air in AZ at 105 F and 10% RH. Unless you account for humidity, unless you account for urban heat island, you have NO IDEA WHAT THE NET ATMOSPHERIC ENERGY IS. And none of these WONKS even makes an ATTEMPT to calculate that.
In a similar vein: “Ocean heat content is increasing.” Can we dispense with this “Gobels moment”? The measurements from 1955 to the Argo Buoys are garbage. They are a complete
fabrication. There is NO WAY to compile the sparse data available and come up with a reliable
record. That marvelous little graph with the continuous increase was as bogus as the Mann tree rings.
The “miraculous flattening” found with the Argo buoys can simply be explained by the fact that the “Ocean heat” has not changed a WIT…and one can figure this out simply by the net density of the ocean, and doing a simple engineering calculation assuming the complete 0.9 watts per meter sq. of Hansen, et. al. (2006 publication) has gone into the sea..one would have a 0.009 F rise in temp. of the ocean (assmuing 15,000′ average depth. For a variety of reasons we have to realize the “Ocean” turns over and moves energy from the top to the bottom over the decades involved.
The sea level as been rising. In a miniscule manner by the satellites. And I’m NOT GOING TO TRUST THAT NUMBER until we have say, 2 or 3 systems running at the same time. Why? Because there are DRIFTS that occur in that instrumentation. The plots I see have a signal tendancy which, alas, as an engineer “older than dirt”…I’ve seen far too many times in long term A/D data gathering systems…to put total confidence in the measurement. (And I HAVE worked with some sophisticated stuff, starting with 8 bit A/D and going to 32.)
CO2 is increasing. Yeah, so what! We get into the whole “forcing factor”. On this I will put my “line in the sand”, and make the individual claim…that CO2 is NOT a controlling “Atmospheric Effect” gas. (HA HA, Why do I NOT use the term “Greenhouse” gas? Any idea on that from your Sea Level people. Quiz question, if you don’t know the answer to that you don’t know MUCH at all!) Rather, as Elsasser “S.W.A.G’ed” in his 1942 “On the IR Heat Balance of the Atmopshere”, and I have been ratching towards in my study of radiative transfer in a “grey gas”, up to some limit (2500 PPM, 3500 PPM) when distributed with the gradient H2O, CO2 acts as a “net exchange agent” in the troposphere. I.e., every quanta of I.R. in the 6 and 12 Micron range, absorbed, is re-emitted when the high end of the Boltzman distribution of energy O2 and N2, excite a CO2 molecule to a translational/rotational vibration mode and the CO2 “relaxes” emitting IR.
Max

A model walks into an error bar….

Like all religions, they are waiting for future predictions that never happen.

@Aslak Grinsted
>I am a coauthor on the study.
I am impressed that you are here and reading. Most authors of papers we discuss read and hide because of the sound arguments and serious discussions. We are of course used to the trolling and humour/derision that is inevitably provoked. You have to make allowances.
>I take no offense at your mockery, because that is pretty much the level of debate that I expect from WUWT (sorry, if that offends you).
We are toughened by years of abuse at the sites like RC and SkS. However I don’t think Ellis mocked you at all. I certainly hope I only mock actions, not people.
>Lets try to find some common ground for discussion.
That is what Anthony wants, and why the site does not delete anything that happens to contradict a particular paradigm. As you are no doubt aware, it is far more likely your works will be read here than anywhere else.
The skeptical approach take my most reders here is captured well by Spender, “Of course, this evidence also supports one of the main conclusions of our Remote Sensing paper published earlier this year: there is a large discrepancy between the IPCC climate models and observations.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/10/our-grl-response-to-dessler-takes-shape-and-the-evidence-keeps-mounting/
>I assume you agree about the following observations (concerning on average over the 20th century):
* Sea level has been rising
* Earth has warmed (Global Mean SATs)
* Ocean heat content is increasing (since observations has been available= 1955)
* CO2 is increasing.
Well that is the main point isn’t it? From the style of your argument above, I presume you take these as ‘givens’ and thus the conclusion you seek is simply a matter of putting a scale on it. That is fine around a coffee table but it is not how one makes a scientific investigation. Anyone well read on the subject will know:
* Sea level has been rising for far longer than any causal link to CO2 can be mooted and there is no meaningful (statistically significant) correlation between CO2 and sea level, particularly over the past 1000 years.
* The Earth has warmed and it has also cooled and warmed again just within the past 110 years and the corrleation between temperature and CO2 is less than 0.6 while the correlation between tempeature and solar activity + clouds (GCR) is much better.
* The ocean heat content is poorly known and it has not (detectably) risen to match the expected temperature rise that has been suggested by the rising and falling air temperatures, and now it is falling as the temperature stablises. Not so? According to you both should be rising.
* CO2 is increasing but the increase is not entirely from anthropogenic sources. The balance between natural and human sources has not changed at all. Thus natural fluctuations must be considered and the lack of correlation to temperature explained. There is wide disagreement on the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere – by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude.
>Here is a causal chain of events as i see them, and I would appreciate if you man up, and acknowledge exactly what it is you dispute:
To remain civil and get a response from Ellis I suggest you don’t ask him to ‘man-up’. He wrote an analysis and put it on a public site where it is well known that 99% of posts of all types are allowed by the moderators.
>1) Increased CO2 -> Increased radiative forcing
Ellis and everyone I know agrees with this. It is a basic fact of life. It is more accurate to describe it as an increased forcing potential. If the IR has already been absorbed, there is no additonal heating available. Increased CO2 does not necessarily mean increased temperature in all possible cases, for example high ozone or water vapour levels will render the additional CO2 meaningless. It is also recognized that the temperature response to CO2 (even alone) is logarithmic, decreasing with increased concentration: 6 deg C for the 0-20 ppm and 0.04 deg for 700-840 ppm. Adding CO2 is NOT like adding insulation around a hot cup of coffee. The insulation is a fixed material and the CO2 is in a free flowing, open ended atmosphere. I assume you are already aware of the invalidity of that ‘insulation’ comparison.
>2) stronger radiative forcing -> increased heat / warming
There you are making a logical error. Stronger forcing potential for a particular component of the atmosphere does not mean an elevated response by the whole system. Not at all! And that is before auto-compensating system losses to space are calculated, such as was done by Prof A Bijan who used Constructal Theory to describe the behaviour of the atmosphere as a heat engine with an enormous capacity to vent additional heat if it was available. First you must deal with the actual response to additional CO2 within the whole system when its forcing potential rises. Basically, if there is no more IR to absorb, there is no more IR to absorb and if there is a temperature response, the atmosphere responds by dumping heat from the hotter zone faster into space.
>3) Heat/warming -> shrinks land-based ice, and expands the world oceans.
This is admitted by all. It is the physics of thermal expansion. You are probably aware that during certain climate cycles the total heat in the atmosphere is concentrated near the equator and the poles are frozen all year, and during others the heat is more evenly spread. As the heat from the sun is virtually constant (taking a long term view) and there is plenty of evidence that the ice comes and goes from the poles, an attempt to attribute any temperature change (up or down) to anthropogenic CO2 emissions must first assess, quantify and explain the natural variation for which there is so much evidence. This is not a delaying tactic, this is the baseline against which you have to show any AGW. I presume you are aware that the summertime temperature in the Arctic has not changed at all as the ice goes and comes (think: ocean currents + wind).
>Perhaps you do not dispute any of these points and agree with our projections.
Subject to my interpretations of them, I agree.
>From your mockery it sounds as if your only question the value of multi century projections in general. Please clarify.
I certainly question the value of multi-century projections based on defective premises. If you changed your stated premises to capture reality more closely, your projections would have very much larger error bars.
>“Lukewarmers” usually agree with all of the points above but only question whether the “climate sensitivity” in step 2 of the chain is really as large as climate models imply.
This is incorrect. Any ‘lukewarmer’ would know that there is a huge difference between an increase in forcing potential and forcing realised, same as in a heat engine. They question the sensitivity but in a broader manner. There is a (free download) programme available from Los Alamos Lab for determining the behaviour of any heat engine including all types of Stirling Engines and thermo-acoustic refrigerators (which is a class of Stirling). If you were to acquaint yourself with this programme it would serve to show that putting additional heat intput into a balanced system (one that is not ramping at the time) can often give very little to no change in the system parameters other than to increase the heat lost to the cooling side. This is particularly true for systems that have large radiative components in the heat flux, even when they are closed, which the atmosphere is not.
>In our study we avoid any uncertainty in climate sensitivity, by simply looking at the relationship between radiative forcing and sea level rise directly.
On that score you have failed and Ellis was correct to point it out. The rise in sea level taken on a decadal scale shows it is tapering down and CO2 is still ramping up. At any level of time delay, there is simply no good CO2 explanation. If you subtract the sea level rise that existed prior to industrialisation, factor in the temperature rise that was already occurring as we rose from the last ice age, and then examine the remainder as a function of CO2, what do you get? You will quickly see there is no visual correlation. This should incline you to assume that there is no close link between any sea level change and CO2 but it has not. The root of your problem is the assumption that the premises are valid at all times and therefore the challenge is to project the resulting assumed relationship.
When you correct your assumptions will give a very much broader range of projections. The result will be highly unreliable for predicting the future sea level.
Sincerely
Crispin

All I have to say is that any projection of the future is not science. It is at best extrapolation and more then likely when you are extrapolating at the scale of 500 years as seen here is nothing but fortune telling.
To even ATTEMPT to call it science is nothing but ignorance or malice. I will give the people who call fortune telling science the benefit of the doubt and call them ignorant in this case, because obviously they forgot as Willis said the high school level stuff they “should know.”
Regardless, computer modeling is never going to be real science. In science you confirm and test, you do not merely show that something is possible. This is not science, this is just some backwards attempt to fortune tell. Crystal balls? Yes, I think this is what this is.
Sometimes I read other things on the internet and just sigh because it is not just climate science that is going down the road to “non-science” but other disciplines as well. I think in the end computers will be the death of us all through scaring us to death through stories that “could possibly maybe be true.”
And to call that science? Hardly, more like fortune tellers who are peddling their stuff in the guise of science. I have no problems with them peddling scary stories or fortunes, but they should put in their papers “warning, no science involved” and they should not be taken seriously.

Aslak Grinsted says:
October 20, 2011 at 3:21 am
“I am a coauthor on the study. I take no offense at your mockery, because that is pretty much the level of debate that I expect from WUWT (sorry, if that offends you).”
Right. And we expect you to want to beat the crap out of Willis like Ben Santer wanted to beat the crap out of Pat Michaels. That’s what we expect from you alarmist boffins.
“Lets try to find some common ground for discussion.”
The first bit of common of ground should be to agree to agree that each side of the debate has its share of clowns and other assorted dimwits who couldn’t find their ass with two hands.
” I assume you agree about the following observations (concerning on average over the 20th century):
* Sea level has been rising”
Sure. But I’d like to hear how you account for it not rising in the warmest decade (2000-2010) on record. Averages are nice and all but the devil is in the details and the devil for you is in this bit of detail.
“* Earth has warmed (Global Mean SATs)”
Sure it has. Like it has many times in the past. They’re still finding human artifacts underneath retreating glaciers. In and of itself a warming planet means nothing other than good times because living things suffer when it cools.
“* Ocean heat content is increasing (since observations has been available= 1955)”
This is speculation and doesn’t belong in a reasonable discussion. Unlike troposphere temperatures with close to global coverage 24/7 for the past 30 years we have no comparable information about the average temperature of the global ocean which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.9C. What we do know with some small degree of confidence is the mixed layer isn’t as warm as the vaunted GCMs predict hence Trenberth’s infamous “missing heat”. Y’all let me know when you find it, eh?
“* CO2 is increasing.”
Thank God. The indisputable testimony of the geologic column is that pre-industrial level of CO2 is ice age level. Plants don’t grow well in ice and wherego the primary producers in the food chain go us. You might think it’s romantic to live in caves and hunt wooly mammoths for a living but I’d rather not thank you very much.
“Here is a causal chain of events as i see them, and I would appreciate if you man up, and acknowledge exactly what it is you dispute:”
Correlation is not causation. That’s what I dispute. Write that down!
“1) Increased CO2 -> Increased radiative forcing”
Very small effect confined to land surfaces. When the ocean is largely liquid it and water vapor control the climate not non-condensing greenhouse gases. However the increased CO2 is beneficial to plant growth and it also reduces the fresh water requirements per unit of growth. Moreover the optimum temperature for plant growth rises when CO2 increases. I realize all these good things are mere correlation with the fact that terrestrial plants evolved over hundreds of millions of years when CO2 levels were many times higher than today and evolution tends to optimize living things around the environment. You do believe in evolution, right? Sorry but I have to ask because the climate boffins never seem willing to acknowledge (in denial of) the earth’s long history of much warmer times with much higher level of CO2.
“2) stronger radiative forcing -> increased heat / warming”
Lost in the noise of other events. The global ocean’s average temperature is 3.9C which can only be explained by the average surface temperature being 3.9C over a period of time long enough for complete mixing to occur like, oh say, one completer glacial/interglacial period of 100,000 years which is long enough for conduction alone to equilized the ocean temperature from top to bottom.
You want me to worry about the air, which has less than a thousandth the heat capacity of the ocean, getting a couple of degrees warmer when the whole damn biosphere today is a thin layer of warmth floating on a bucket of ice water? Get real. Cold is the enemy not warmth.
“3) Heat/warming -> shrinks land-based ice, and expands the world oceans”
Yeah, except that in the most recent decade which is, according to your camp, the “warmest on record”, the ocean drastically slowed its rate of rise. You need to explain that in terms of your theory that a warmer climate causes the ocean to rise. Something doesn’t add up.
“Perhaps you do not dispute any of these points and agree with our projections. From your mockery it sounds as if your only question the value of multi century projections in general.”
Sometimes mockery is the only response left when people are in denial of the facts. I’m sure you understand.
“Please clarify.”
Yes. Please clarify how the ocean rate of rise is the slowest on record during the warmest decade on record. I’m all ears.
“Lukewarmers” usually agree with all of the points above but only question whether the “climate sensitivity” in step 2 of the chain is really as large as climate models imply. In our study we avoid any uncertainty in climate sensitivity, by simply looking at the relationship between radiative forcing and sea level rise directly.

Aslak Grinsted says:
October 20, 2011 at 3:21 am
not very much for a coauthor.
Aslak:
Let’s say that all your points are valid. A sea-level rise that varies between 1.8 – 3.0 mm/yr should produce 0.90-1.50 meters of natural increase over a 500 year period without invoking global warming scenarios.
Your paper indicates up to 5.5 meters over this period.
Questions:
1. How much of this do you attribute to Greenland and Antarctica land ice melt?
2. Can you comment on the Arctic sea ice – roughly when it will disappear entirely?
3. What temperature increase is required to lead to the 5.5 m scenario?
4. Why the sea-level rise is so small at only three times the natural level?
Thanks,
Steve

Aslak Grinsted says:
October 20, 2011 at 3:21 am
Here is a causal chain of events as i see them,
—
I believe Grinsted is confusing causal with correlation. He failed to show causation and made giant leaps on assumptions instead.
Grinsted might also want to take a look at the behavior of the Pleistocene Interglacials, particularly the Eemian. The feared sea level rise postulated by the IPCC for the past 20 years falls well within the normal fluctuations without getting anywhere near the maximums. But the telling thing is that the Late Holocene is behaving much like the Eemian and is in the down trend from the max. Everything points to that, including the recent decadal cooling. Unfortunately for Grinsted and colleagues, the observed evidence does not support their models.

aslak grinsted says:
October 20, 2011 at 8:11 am
“I could only make sense of crispin’s position.”
Good. Recognizing that you have a problem is the first step to a cure. Read some basic works on scientific method. An excellent starting point is Carl G. Hempel’s “Aspects of Scientific Explanation.” If you like to be really challenged, get Isaac Levi’s books. The starting point for Levi is “The Enterprise of Knowledge.”

Steve from rockwood says:
October 20, 2011 at 6:45 am
“A model walks into an error bar….”
The bartender says: You may sit wherever you like, including my station.
The model says: I just love climate science error bars.

[snip – over the top – Anthony]

Sea level was between 4 to 6 metres higher during the last Eemian interglacial, 125,000 years ago.
Temperatures were about 2.25C to 3.0C higher than today in the Eemian, about what is projected from global warming (this wasn’t caused by a CO2 increase however). So, one could surmise that sea level could rise 5.0 metres if temperatures were 2.25C to 3.0C higher.
The high resolution ice core data, however, indicates that the warmest period in the Eemian (the time period when it was 2.5C to 3.0C higher than today) lasted for about 5,000 years. So, one could also surmise it took 5,000 years to melt enough ice and for ocean thermal expansion to reach sea level rise of +5.0 metres.
500 years is 10% of 5,000 years. 10% of 5.0 metres is 50 cms.
There you go. Another estimate (this time based on a real Earth example).

Willis, I don’t always agree with you (where would the fun in that be?) but I like your style, this is the cruelest critique that I have read in sometime. Ouch!!

Aslak Grinsted says:
October 20, 2011 at 3:21 am
Lets try to find some common ground for discussion. I assume you agree about the following observations (concerning on average over the 20th century):
* Sea level has been rising
* Earth has warmed (Global Mean SATs)
* Ocean heat content is increasing (since observations has been available= 1955)
* CO2 is increasing.

Please complete your assertion, by explaining how any of these observations are unusual over the last 10,000 years.
Next, please provide some evidence, that these observations are accelerating and if so – are caused by Anthropogenic in origin.
While I do agree CO2 is increasing (probably anthropologically), why should that fact be regarded with fear. Do you hate plants or just plant food, or just life in general? You are negative about that which enables all higher forms of life. The atmosphere has been dangerously low on CO2 for a very long time and only recently begun to return to more optimal conditions.
Lastly, Why do you assume that present conditions, just so happen, to be the ideal and optimal conditions for this planet?! Why do you believe that climate will EVER be static? GK

Willis,
Not to worry, I am sure they have taken into account all of the potential variables: continental shelf deposition and erosion, ice melt and freeze rate changes, ocean temperature, future meteor impacts, tectonic plate drift and potenial regional plate upwelling and collapse, volcanism, ocean current changes, precipitation changes, solar radiation changes, etc., etc., etc. over the next 500 years. Simple stuff for the enlightened.

When I look at the basic graph and I accept it on face value. It breaks down into nice little 100 year increments. In the first 100 year block of time, society needs only to resolve an estimated 1 meter of sea level rise. Certainly that is reasonable. I can only imagine what sort of technological development will transistion during that time concurrent with that need. so really not much of a chalenge.
The second 100 year period will face a slightly more challenging 2 meters of sea level rise and have 100 years of experience in dealing with such a problem while having up to 100 years to resolve it. So again not much of a challenge.
The following 100 years will face 1.5 meters of rise and have 200 years of experience in dealing with such a problem. Plus sufficient time to resolve it. A no sweat effort for sure.
The next 100 years will face only 75% of a meter of rise and the last 100 period wil face only a half meter of sea level rise. These last two iterations should have no issue at all and may be bored with such trivial problems.
Then again, this seems like some tired speculation and my basic assumption of accepting on face value seems to be a bit naive.

Beth Cooper says:
October 20, 2011 at 9:37 am
Beth, I must say that, of all of the poems I’ve seen on this and other realted blogs, yours is by far the best I have seen to date! Love it!

Aslak Grinsted [October 20, 2011 at 3:21 am] says:
“I am a coauthor on the study. I take no offense at your mockery, because that is pretty much the level of debate that I expect from WUWT (sorry, if that offends you).”

To Aslak Grinsted, please answer one simple question.
In light of this, what do you believe sea-level should be doing today?
[A] :: Increasing
[B] :: Remain static
[C] :: Decreasing

A model walks into an error bar and yells to the bartender “I’ll have an IPCC report, on the rocks and hold the facts.”
It is ridiculous to write a paper calling for catastrophic sea-level rise over a period of twelve generations (to which currently there has been no sudden increase in the rate of sea-level rise and in a world where the in-danger areas are already below sea-level), introduce yourself to the thread as a coauthor of said useless paper and then disappear. It is not necessary to directly engage any of us deniers but you could post a simple summary of your paper for discussion. I for one am curious to know where all this water is coming from. The ice shelves? Greenland? Antarctica? Looking at my back of the envelope calculation I get an Antarctica land-mass melting of almost 10%. Martha, get the boats ready…the research grants are coming.

Chris D and Steve from Rockwood,
I agree Beth’s piece was very good – but isn’t it a parody of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I am the very model of a modern major general”?

see from about 1:05 on.

I once had to prove (in the rigorous mathematical sense) to an engineer that (1) it is possible to create an infinite number of ‘models’ that can fit any arbitrary set of data points, (2) if one adds another finite set of data points to the original set, an infinite subset of the ‘models’ will perfectly accommodate the additional points, and (3) the original set of data points therefore becomes totally useless for extrapolation to estimates of new points.
The only practical use of mathematical models that ‘fit’ empirical data is to provide reasonable *estimates* of *interpolated* values.
Once the measurement has been made. all “bets” are off.

Tom Davidson says:
October 20, 2011 at 12:06 pm
—————————————————-
Tom, I took a one day course on 3-D inversion with Doug Oldenburg of UBC (Vancouver, Canada). Dr. Oldenburg started the course by fitting a series of data points (perhaps magnetic measurements, I can’t recall) to a series of very different models, all to the same degree of accuracy (a least squares error). The first was a series of vertical zones, next horizontal ones, then arbitrary shapes with minimum gradient at the boundaries, then smallest volume and so on. All of these very different models fit the data equally well and all were just as valid.
The point of the exercise was that if you don’t know something about what you are modeling, you can get any outcome you wish. He went on stress honesty about what you do know and what you do not know. Great course, great man. Constraining your model was the most important step.
Interpolation is one thing, extrapolation quite another. I use polynomials for interpolation but they are very bad outside the boundaries of the data used to determine their coefficients.
Models that attempt to predict the future are a form of extrapolation. They are unbounded along the trend of prediction. That is why I made the error bar joke. We have about 50 years of accurate measurements on sea-ice, we barely know if Antarctica is growing or shrinking, we’re not sure if Greenland ice is stable and yet we can predict sea-level rise at 5.5 m in 500 years without a blush. Only stock pickers have more misplaced self confidence.
Sorry about the coffee Willis. Hope you like the punch-line.

Dear Aslak Grinsted,
You attribute sea level rise to CO2 in your press release.
Can you give us your evidence that this, or any sea level rise / lowering, isn’t natural?
Talkin’ ain’t walkin’ …and that is the problem.

Aslak Grinsted:
Where is the bulk of the sea-level rise coming from?
Thanks.

Gotta love the Willis.
Mr Grinsted.
You keep assuming that CO2 makes the sea level rise.
Since the level isn’t rising, and the CO2 level isn’t falling,
I do not know why you would persist in this belief.
The same goes for the warming. It isn’t, so when you say it is, I find that confounding.
Also I believe as others here do, that melting ice and rising sea level are normal positive
climate indicators as they have been for 8 millennia, even if today’s melting and rising
are actually rather feeble.
Maybe y’all should man up and make a 5 year prediction with a signed resignation filed, should your confidently touted predictions fail to come to pass.
At least regale us with some of your more successful, past prognostications
so that it might be possible for the less nuanced observers among us to judge your skill
before we put our beach homes up for sale, or otherwise inconvenience ourselves,
to favor your climate overlords.

More work from Dr. A. Grinsted, and his vision on Geoengineering and See-level rice
http://www.nbi.ku.dk/ansatte/?id=132787&f=3&vis=medarbejder

Miichael Larkin, I kinda hoped someone would notice the Gilbert and Sullivan ‘model,’ metaphor abounds… Chris D and Steve from Rockwood, thanks for kind comments.

Dear Aslak,
Lots of science to deal with here. You have ducked all of it. From you, no science at all, and I really did hope that you would pitch in on the scientific issues. Oh well.
I will respond to your email as soon as I have dealt with another (personal) issue. After which, I will submit my response to you, and to this site. The rest of our exchange remains private, as per our agreement.
Behind a $39.95 paywall? The Danish taxpayer has paid for this. Who else? My advice: total honesty.
Absolutly classic material from Lance “sound barrier”, and the “error bar” the model frequents. Hope they have some real, live, unfiltered, unpasteurised beer in the error bar.
No time limits here. Come back to us when you can. Now time for imput from your co-authors?
Best wishes,
Richard.

Aslak Grinsted says:
Dear Willis
I am a coauthor on the study. I take no offense at your mockery, because that is pretty much the level of debate that I expect from WUWT (sorry, if that offends you).

Mockery, such as, say, this?
As Mark Twain famously wrote of that kind of extrapolation:
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.
And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
It appears that mockery of this kind, and concerning exactly this kind of “science”, has been around for some time, why do you suppose that is?

Lets try to find some common ground for discussion.

Do you mean actual common ground, or ground of your choosing, ground where you believe you control the rules and allowed evidence (and especially, disallowed evidence), and thus are certain of victory?
Is this chosen ground “climate models”? Are you aware of the phrase the map is not the territory”? The most significant climate changes are, obviously, ice ages and the interglacial periods between them, please show how your model explains how ice ages start and end. Please show how your model also explains what caused the modern warm period, what caused and ended the little ice age, the medieval warm period, the dark ages, the roman warm period, etc. If your models and science cannot explain these, the most dramatic climate changes of all, why should I believe either? If your models and science are so poor that they cannot even explain such huge changes, why should I limit my discussion to that? Why should I limit my “common ground” to ground, which obviously has no connection with climate in the real world at all? You will note that these latter climate changes resulted in fairly large temperature swings, large enough to effect sea levels, and that they appear to have happened about every 500 years, please show that you do, indeed, understand what could only have been the natural causes of these (there being no industrialized civilization to have affected them) and show that the causes of these will not effect your 500 year projection. After all, you are a climate scientist, after all, and therefore you certainly must know what started and ended these climate changes, thus you must be able to show that such things have ceased, that they will not come along and screw up your nice little graph, right?

I assume you agree about the following observations (concerning on average over the 20th century):

As I said, you wish to assure yourself that I first agree with your “observations” and only your observations, as you give them. I should not, of course, ever disagree with them, but accept them uncritically, and I must never dare to suggest any observations not on your list! Thus I fight only by your rules, and only with the weapons you supply (if any), and thus cannot possibly win. However, I prefer to do what any good general must, to fight on ground of my choosing, the ground of actual, real world observations, which in this case means actual data taken from the real world and not from some model.
That means I will not ignore the little ice age, or the periodic warming and cooling periods after that. I will take into account La Nina and El Nino events, rather than just blindly lumping them into an “average” and assuming that such events are all caused entirely by CO2. And about average and such statistics:
The average American has one ball and one tit, that is all you need to understand about averages.

* Sea level has been rising

Granted, sea levels have indeed been rising since the end of the last ice age, but you know all about what starts and ends ice ages and can assure me that that is certainly not what is happening now, right?
Granted, sea levels have been rising since the end of the little ice age, and you certainly know what started and ended that and can thus assure me that it is not happening now, right? Or perhaps you can simply deny the little ice age, medieval warm period, etc etc and thus give up any pretense at even being a climate scientist, or any kind of scientist at all, your choice.
Recently, however, not granted, seas have been dropping lately, how do you explain that? CO2 goes up, seas go down, isn’t that the exact opposite of your claim?

* Earth has warmed (Global Mean SATs)

Granted, earth has warmed since the end of the ice age, which climate change you can explain in detail. Oh wait, they didn’t have SAT’s then, never mind. But wait, they had huge glaciers all over, and they don’t now, a pretty good proxy, so I guess you are not off the hook on that one.
Granted, earth has warmed since the end of the little ice age, mostly around say 1880 and 1890, and somehow managed it without resorting to industrialization, and you can tell us all about how this happened, right? And they did have SAT’s then, maybe not as accurate or comprehensive, but they had them.
Granted, the earth has warmed since the 70’s ice age scare, and, of course, you know all about that, right? And we are all certain that you would never have the start of you “rising temperatures” starting right about then, to make it look like it is rising faster than it is, correct? And, of course, you include the warm temperatures before that period, including the record breaking 1938, right? I mean, you would never just sweep such data under the rug, would you?
Granted, the earth has warmed in urban areas, which contain many of the climate stations you are using for your SAT’s, but you know all about Urban Heat Island Effects, right? I mean, you can show that this has not effected your SAT’s, right? And the fact that for a decade or more now, climate stations all over the world have dropped off the grid, so that there are far fewer than there used to be also does not effect your SAT’s, right? I mean, a small number of climate stations at airports surrounded by large urban centers are just as good as a very large number of stations all over, right?
Since 1998 or so, however, the earth has not warmed, despite rising CO2, can you explain that one?

* Ocean heat content is increasing (since observations has been available= 1955)

Not granted, if ocean heat content were increasing, the sea would be rising, it is dropping. In addition, there is uncertainty about such measurements, and more certainty that lately, now that we have more certain means, it is staying steady or even slowly dropping. Also, no secret reservoir of “missing heat” has been found in the deeps.
* CO2 is increasing.
Correlation is not causation. It has been shown that warm periods are followed by increased CO2. So, which is it, CO2 increasing causing warmth, or warmth increasing causing CO2?
However, since we have been measuring directly, there does appear to be increasing CO2, so I will grant that one. Not as much of it as you think may be created by man, but it is there.

Here is a causal chain of events as i see them, and I would appreciate if you man up, and acknowledge exactly what it is you dispute:

There’s that causal thing again, see above.

1) Increased CO2 -> Increased radiative forcing

From CO2 alone, not enough to worry about, combined with water vapor, maybe, but then those cloud thingies get involved. All that shade, wind, rain, transport of heat from down here to up there screws up all the neat calculations. Really, someone should do something about that! Maybe if we cram all the climate into a model, where we can just push a few buttons and make it go away, so much neater.
And really they tell us that all that combined radiative forcing from both CO2 and water vapor is causing effects now, well, if we can see the effects, shouldn’t we be able to measure the increased radiative forcing by now? Are you ever going to even try, or are you simply going to assume that your models are all you need? Is the age of actual experimentation over? Are we to go back to the pre Galileo age, when we make models of the crystal spheres that hold the planets, yet never think to actually use telescopes and look?

2) stronger radiative forcing -> increased heat / warming

Sooo, why aren’t we seeing this increased heat since 1999? I mean, the CO2 is going up, why isn’t the warming here? Could there be something missing from these models? Could the map and the territory be dissimilar?

3) Heat/warming -> shrinks land-based ice, and expands the world oceans.

We have the CO2, yet the seas are dropping, what is wrong with this picture? dropping
If the world were warming, the ice would be melting, and the sea would be rising. The sea is dropping; therefore the world is not warming. Don’t need to be a climate scientist to figure that one out.

Perhaps you do not dispute any of these points and agree with our projections. From your mockery it sounds as if you’re only question the value of multi century projections in general. Please clarify.

See Mark Twain above, other people have made such projections in the past, and been mocked (and been dead wrong and mocked again). If you make similar projections now, you can expect to be mocked as well. And you should be.

“Lukewarmers” usually agree with all of the points above but only question whether the “climate sensitivity” in step 2 of the chain is really as large as climate models imply. In our study we avoid any uncertainty in climate sensitivity, by simply looking at the relationship between radiative forcing and sea level rise directly.

You have not “looked at” radiative forcing, you have made no direct observations of it at all, you only infer it from models that leave out too much to be representative of the actual climate. You also cannot explain sea level rise not in the context of man created CO2, yet it has risen and dramatically in the past before such existed, and is dropping despite it’s existence now.
“Lukewarmers” are called that because they can’t seem to make up their minds. That is because they let you dictate the terms of the discussion to only what you want them to consider. That is because they have not used the scientific method, and looked outside the models, outside the theories, outside what you allow them to look at, and looked at the real world. Once you have, once you have actually seen the direct observations of the actual climate, what it has actually done and is doing, and not just some model somewhere, you give up all that wishy washy stuff.
Once you have seen the territory, you don’t need the map anymore.

gallopingcamel says:
October 20, 2011 at 9:13 pm
The only significant ice remaining is Antarctica and at the current rate of melting it will take a few thousand years.
Pretty sure Antarctic ice overall has increased in recent times. If I remember right the west side has had some melt but the increase of the east side makes up for it 3 X over. Funny how you only hear about the side that has some melt and not that the other side is pushing record amounts. I remember reading this from a researcher who was working the icy side.

Legatus says:
October 21, 2011 at 12:07 am
Got it. My bad. Thanks for the clarification.

Hi Willis
I apologize for overlooking your earlier response on my tiny phone screen. You did indeed answer my questions. So, let me get this straight:
* You agree that added CO2 heats Earth (but argue that cloud feedbacks lessen this effect).
* You argue that this added heat is spent on more thunderstorms, but it will definitely not be heating the ocean, melting any ice, or warming the atmosphere.
It seems like you should write a paper quantifying this anthropogenic impact on thunderstorms. Maybe you can look at extreme rainfall and flooding while you are at it.
Regarding the recent dip in altimetry sea level: It is obviously due to ENSO. Please note, that this ENSO response was predicted before it happened (see Landerer et al. 2008) / find it on google ). So there is a really solid reason to expect the global mean sea level estimates “to reverse their recent downward trend and begin to increase as the La Niña effects wane”. You can consider that a short term prediction from me if you want, since you ridicule my long term projections.
——-
Stephen Brown commented: “Willis, you are a marvel. Every time you strike a match, there’s a bonfire!” – yes, you excel at agitation. To all of the individuals who asked me questions in the comments. I yearn to respond to a few of your questions, but I cannot address a huge agitated mob.

Aslak Grinsted
I have followed this discussion with interest.
It seems to me that you face complete refutation many times over in three major categories
1. methodology of positive science
2. assessment of the downsides versus the upsides of global warming over whatever time-scale
3. assessment of the upsides versus the downsides of any policy action intended to ameliorate the risks of global warming.
I understand that the focus of your paper is only positive questions to do with global warming. However science does not supply value judgments, whereas policy requires them. So even if your positive science were all granted, the only result could be … so what?
1.
You say you could only make sense of Crispin’s position. Yet one of the criticisms was that you have confounded correlation with causation! How could you not make sense of that?
Many criticisms go to the very heart of your methodology, for example your critics have shown you have relied on:
• personal argumentation
• assuming what is in issue
• appeal to absent authority
• confusing correlation with causation
• invalid simple extrapolation
• failing to take into account many relevant variables
• failing to state – in words! – any actual reasonably well-confirmed causal physical hypotheses
• failing to show how your model explains what caused the modern warm period, what caused and ended the little ice age, the medieval warm period, the dark ages, the roman warm period
• etc.
How could you “not make sense” of these criticisms? They represent complete demolition of your entire methodology!
Thus the problem is that not only is your argument not scientific, but it is riddled with fallacies, and therefore it doesn’t even meet the minimum requirements of logical thought.
So you don’t even get to square one in establishing the necessary basis for asking the questions that you want to assume as common ground for any discussion.
In a rational discussion, you would either
a) acknowledge the above criticisms as well-founded, and change your argument so as to take account of them, showing how you have still been able to maintain the same conclusion, or
b) answer them to show they are not well-founded.
But you can’t do either. For you to do a) would require not just a revised “model”, it would require a total change in your whole intellectual method. In other words, you’re wrong!
2.
But let’s assume you’re right. Okay.
So what?
Nothing follows from your hypothesis. You have not established any justification for any policy action whatsoever. It is no more relevant to policy than any other irrelevant fact.
In order to justify policy action, the first thing you, or anyone, would need to show, is that the downsides of global warming would be worse than the upsides.
The basic data set needed to show this, would be the evaluations of the humans interested in using the affected resources now and in the future. These evaluations are subjective, are dispersed in the minds of seven billion people, are constantly changing, and are universally discounted for futurity.
So how are you, or how is anyone, going to obtain knowledge of that data set?
Please admit that you, and any government official or group whatsoever, are not capable of that knowledge, and that without it, any pretension of government to justify policy action is false.
3.
But even if we knew that the downsides of global warming were worse than the upsides – which we don’t – the bald assumption that government is capable of automatically producing a better rather than a worse outcome, is worse than baseless. It is culpable invincible ignorance. For starters, the same data set would be required to know whether policy action would improve, or worsen matters, and government can *never* know it.
The only way government policy could be assumed to produce a net benefit – however you defined the ultimate human welfare criterion – is by simply ignoring the costs. But obviously if you ignore the costs, anything will seem beneficial!
The absurd belief that government can manage the ecology is just a re-run of the belief that it can manage the economy, which has just been proved wrong in the 20th century at a cost of over 100 million deaths.
You should be saluted for being one of the very few of the warmists with the intellectual courage to actually attempt to engage in a dialogue of reason with your critics.
And you should be thanked for openly exhibiting the utterly hopeless and self-interested mendacity of the entire irrational belief system, which is no better than the worst superstition.
But if I am wrong, then kindly let us have your revised reasoning taking into account all the above criticisms, or showing why they don’t apply, and showing how you have still managed to arrive at the same conclusion.

@Aslak
” I cannot address a huge agitated mob”
+++++
I do not consider myself to be agitated nor mobbish but rather, engaged.
Justin J has given us a pretty calm dissertation outlining a number of issues I left aside. They are all, I think, worthy of a response as well. There are a larger number of issues related to climate science in general and I am not expecting you to defend the atrocious work of others. We will take each up with their respective authors.
You will see above a comment was deleted for being nothing more than inflamatory trolling. This is a problem all over the blogosphere. However, think of how we scientists are dismissed as ‘trolls’ when we raise absolutely legitimate issues with papers on the climate and have our comments deleted, binned, boreholed (as RC calls it) or edited (!) post facto as happened at SkS. It is to the discredit of the warmist camp that they chortle with glee as they delete opinion contrary on their CO2 castles in the sand. It is literally farcical.
AGW caused by CO2 is, in my view, a postulate that has run its course. It was entertaining; it brought people together; it raise awareness that mankind is capable of mismanaging and wasting the Commons; it showed people are willing to lie to get money. The billions spent to try to prove its truth have not been entirely wasted, just largely so in my view. We could have done much better by now. Mankind is still spending more than a trillion Dollars per year waging and preparing for war. This is universally (save in Strange States) considered to be a Bad Thing. Spending a similar amount of treasure to continuously replenish a gigantic ‘carbon’ trough into which the accounting, trading and industrial complexes have thrust their snouts is also a Bad Thing if the entire proposition is found (as I believe it has) to be lamentably defective.
Your paper is about projecting sea levels. You are responsible for the science supporting those forecasts. Your work is based on premises that I think you were supplied, not that you derived them yourself. As several contributors have indicated, there are sound reasons to suspect that those premises are inaccurate or wrong. All you have to do is accept the reality of the numbers from the field and rework your projections. No problem. You can still correct that. This is not complicated.
There is advantage to you personally and scientifically to re-cast your work in the mould of these perhaps new understandings. When we stand on the shoulders of giants, we should remember that some are giants of progress and some are gigantic frauds. To question the work of others is not wrong, it is expected. When someone tells me he has a mechanical device that delivers a net thrust http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/2006/TM-2006-214390.pdf I look for errors and misunderstandings, as well as holding out the possibilty that they may be the first to create one.
Above all, I think you need to show that increased CO2 leads to actual warming and actual sea level rise, as that is the core claim of your paper. All the works I have seen which rely on the real measurements available do not support the claim, and all the works which do, are based on models created with the presumption that the conclusion was already known to be true. That is why in the Climategate files one finds the statement to the effect that ‘the data and methods were defective but the conclusion is correct”. Now, what could be sillier, and more unscientific, than that?

Aslak Grinsted [October 21, 2011 at 8:43 am] says:
“I think that my study actually save you guys alot of money as it shows that a 1m rise is pretty much given. With that info, you can avoid the costs in developing areas that will be exposed to the risk in the future.”

How much money? Please give an example scenario of this claim. Not a single person will purchase a property and then live to see one meter of sea-level rise in their lifetime. One meter, two meters, ten meters, are all a ‘given’ over an extended period of time between now and the end of the Holocene. This is not news. Humans still inhabit the same coastal cities that they created thousands of years ago. Even Venice is still here, and Holland, and New Orleans. Whatever tiny sea-level rise has occurred during the whole of human civilization has been adapted to, or simply ignored.
You do have to address that astonishing green line on the plot though. Unless I am misunderstanding the Y-Axis you are trying to say that if emissions are stabilized in 10 years, sea-level will stop rising. Therefore humans, in your opinion, have the ability to completely stop the normal continuous on-going sea-level rise during our current Holocene interglacial. Is this true?
In light of the historical record, exactly what do you *believe* sea-level should be doing today?
[A] :: Increasing
[B] :: Remaining static
[C] :: Decreasing

@Aslak
I have the feeling you are trying to misrepresent what I have written by ‘semi-citing’ it in an amplified and lampooning manner. Please be careful not to do that – we will notice immediately.
I refer to your writing ‘hand-waving hypothesis, that the system will not respond to and forcing that is imposed on it…” What you wrote is a mis-characterisation of what I wrote about a system response. I was pointing you to a free programme of great efficacy that can be used to simulate heat engines and I did this because you might not know such a tool exists. The atmosphere is a heat engine, not a greenhouse and this very early mis-characterisation of warming has caused many people to be confused about how things work. The mention of ‘Mother Gaia’ is irrelevant. That is basically Mother Earth News Goes Global. None of us here, at least the sentient ones, assume that the climate will ‘have a zero response’ to any of the forcings. In fact it is the mis-characterisation of this acceptance (that all forcing have at least some impact) which fills so many warmist blogs as they toss little calumnies back and forth and then giggle. It is like listening to Grade 2 sandbox talk.
Please try not to allow the execerable example of some researchers to refuse to discuss their work and spend all of their time on misdirection. By misdirection, I mean inflating and deliberately misinterpreting things said as a way of trying to avoid addressing the points raised, however inconvenien, in the hope that be generating an emotional response will allow your to depart with some sort of ‘victory’ over your supposed oppoents. Science does not have ‘victors’ it has discussions that lead to a greater understanding of the truth, even if animated.
I am actually surprised by your last post. I thought you were going to attempt to engage at least some of us in a discussion of the most important points we raised. I will be disappointed in you if you exit now without dealing wht at least some of them. There is no point in complaining about the ‘cacophany of views’ as you put it. I felt they were pretty consistent in addressing the premises you used as a departure point, and there were too many that were unnecessarily sarcastic, I agree. This is one of the few well managed sites where all opinions are welcome so you can expect a certain amont of venting. It is my hope that if you do not rise to the bait, but rather to the occasion, our views might help you in your work.
Thank you for answering with your comment about a causative hypothesis. It is important (and much discussed here) that it is indeed a hypothesis, not an accept theory with validation in the field. As you can probably tell, the readers here are widely read and have concluded that the core premises, particularly the one assuming a causal relationship between CO2 and the global temperature is weak. I think any of us can tell you that the R value for correlation is 0.53. I am not sure if your read Dessler’s paper that was drawing a conclusion from a correlation of R=0.01. It would be a mistake to think skeptics are clueless about these matters. On balance, CO2= >T proponents are skating on very thin statistical ice.
Let’s see how a review of the premises (your 4) would affect your forecast sea rise magnitude. As for the 1 meter, that will happen as Greenland continues its slow melt (if it continues) and if Antarctica stops or slows its net accumulation. Someone pointed to the increase on the East side. We already reviewed that paper here. Sea level will continue to rise as it has been for ages, I hope. It is stops we are in FAR more trouble than has heretofore been assumed because it means we really might be going into the (overdue) next ice age. Given the poor and logarithmic temperature response to CO2 and it unpredictabilty (low ‘R’) we will not be able to stave it off.
The hypothesis that we are already causing an additional meter rise of sea levels with our CO2 emissions is not supported by any evidence from this, the last, or any century. None at all. Zero. Sea level change is not related to CO2 nor caused by it. It is a just-so story. The Earth has been a ball of ice (with low sea level) and had very high CO2 and the opposite (no summer ice, mundane CO2). Scary warming makes for vaguely entertaining Hollywood movies but not actual science or policy.

@Willis
Thanks for putting Bejan’s link up. He is a genius. It is a surprise that more is not made of the difference between a heat engine (rapid heat death) and a greenhouse (mechanical interruption of mass transfer retarding heat death). They are totally different systems yet gases are still referred to as ‘greenhouse gases’. They should be referred to as ‘working fluids’ by anyone dealing with atmospheric sciences. Perhaps there are not too many engineers working in that field.
@Aslak
I find Willis’ challenges to you a bit gruff by quite fair. I again compliment you for coming here to discuss your work. The need to stand up for proper science has never been greater. May we all do so together. It may have profound, unexpected results.
Sincerely
Crispin

Aslak Grinsted says:
October 21, 2011 at 8:43 am
“These physical models are certainly much better justified that your hand-waving hypothesis, that the system will not respond to any forcing that is imposed on it …. Well, that just comes across as some hippie “Mother Gaia will protect us”.”
Aslak, you don’t have all the physics you would need to justify running an iterative model 500 years into the future and still posit that its results are in any way meaningful – well, even if you had them, the chaotic properties of weather would render it meaningless; look up the definition of chaos.
After you have called us an agitated mob, I feel free to express my opinion about the kind of paper you produced. It’s charlatanry.

@Spector
Thanks for providing a scientifically sound number set. The Air Force does not play around with climate games, they just want the correct answer. As they say, it is basic physics. Such an additional forcing will drive the heat engine to transport a little more heat into the upper atmosphere, as Bejan shows. I am becoming convinced that clouds are the greatest long term forcing and cooling agent given a substantially stable gas mix. There is just so much cloud cover, the influence is huge. Imagine a comparison between a doubling of CO2 and a 50% reduction in cloud cover. Which would have more influence?

Aslak Grinsted says:
* You agree that added CO2 heats Earth (but argue that cloud feedbacks lessen this effect).
* You argue that this added heat is spent on more thunderstorms, but it will definitely not be heating the ocean, melting any ice, or warming the atmosphere.
It seems like you should write a paper quantifying this anthropogenic impact on thunderstorms. Maybe you can look at extreme rainfall and flooding while you are at it.

I, at least, agree that more CO2 will indeed heat the ocean, melt ice, and warm the atmosphere. However, the thermostat effect of thunderstorms, and the shade effect of clouds, takes place immediately, reducing the warming from the CO2. Thus, the amount of ocean and atmosphere warming and ice melting will be too small to worry about, as will the amount of “extreme rainfall and flooding”. This is because of the immediacy of the clouds effects, when the heat reaches the tipping point, the cloud forms immediately, the shade happens immediately, the surface is cooled by the shade, and that reduces the amount of upward longwave radiation. Reducing the amount of longwave reduces the “greenhouse effect”, less longwave means less for the “greenhouse effect” to effect. result, immediate heat drop and/or slowed rise (usually the former followed by the latter). Now less heat means less evaporation and less cloud formation (less than there would be without the shading effect), thus we only see a smallish rise in cloud formation, thunderstorms, etc, thus, no “extreme rainfall”. This is all reset every day by this thing called “sunset”, result, it never gets so hot or cold as to result in drastic catastrophic changes, such as is predicted by AGW.
And as for that “extreme rainfall and flooding”, it seems if you can’t have your warming and sea level rising, you immediately switch to extreme rainfall and flooding. Are you just looking for a disaster to happen linked to CO2, to allow you to control it and us? This looks like a standard rhetorical trick, if you are bested on one point, rather than concede that you are wrong, or even could be wrong, you point in another direction and say “well…but what about this?” You need to be able to at least except the idea that sometimes, you may be wrong, and/or the other guy may be right (or you could both be wrong). You need to at least be able to look at someones idea that contradicts your own and be at least willing to entertain the thought that they may be right. That does not mean that you have to automatically agree with it, merely that you do not need to automatically get defensive and use any tactic to refute it, honest or not. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle
And how, then, are we to decide which ideas are to be accepted? Well, we could try this newfangled idea called the scientific method. And many people are here, and call themselves “skeptics”, because they first noticed that the proponents of AGW are most definatly not using the scientific method. Instead, we see logical fallacies and rhetorical tricks, deliberately hidden data and methods (even to the point of breaking the law to conceal it), mistaking the map for the territory (complete reliance on models), and just plain old brow beating and name calling. And then finally, we find “climategate”, where we find outright lying and resorting to hurting anyone who apposes AGW (blocking their papers, getting them fired), and we see these actions continuing, and even intensifying. And then, on the skeptics side, we start to see actual use of the scientific method. So, which side should a really educated mind take? If I hear about, say, the thermostat hypothesis, and then see actual data that shows it to be actually happening in real life, and even more, compare it with my actual personal observation of what happens to temperature on a hot day when a thunderstorm happens, should I at least entertain the thought that it may be true? Or should I simply dismiss all that, and say “my model doesn’t predict this, so it cannot be true” (mistaking the map for the territory)? Or should I say “well, none of my peers hold this position, so it cannot be true”? That is reverting to the pre scientific method, which says that it can only be true if some Famous Old Dead Greek Guy said so (“appeal to authority”). Alternately, you could be agreeing with your peers out of simple cowardice. That is, you agree with them because if you do not, they will shun or blackball you or block all your papers or cut off your funding. In that case, what is really happening is not science, it is mob rule. Ask Galileo about that sort of thing. Ask yourself, who turned out to be the scientist in the end, Galileo or his critics? Do you wish to be a scientist? So what actions will you take?

Oops, never mind (re: suspension of belief). I misread. My apologies!

@Crispin
I wrote extensively on the role of black carbon several years ago. Actually James Hansen hisself earlier in his career had at times assigned as much as 50% of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect to soot. Given that northern hemisphere warming is much greater than southern and soot is largely produced in the NH and distance it travels from the source before falling out to the surface is limited to several thousand kilometers and also given that more “global warming” occurs in the winter than the summer and more in higher latitudes than lower it makes the black soot hypotheses quite reasonable on the face of it. It settles out on snow and ice, and it floats and concentrates on the surface getting darker and darker when the snow/ice melts only partially.
Offsetting this however is its effect while it is still airborne and studies of airborne soot over the ocean suggests the shadow it casts causes a cooling effect rather than warming effect and, moreover, when it settles out onto a liquid ocean surface it has no further effect because it is incapable of lowering the albedo of water. Given that even in the northern hemisphere ocean surface is much greater than land surface the shadow cooling may very well be the dominant one in the global picture. This also has great appeal in being consistent with the facts on the ground because, beginning in the 1960’s great efforts were undertaken to limit the production of black soot and these were largely successful. The convenient fact around the black carbon cooling hypothesis is that global temperature started increasing at the same time that anthropogenic soot started decreasing. Given that around the same time as the anti-soot measures were enacted anti-sulfate measures were also undertaken and it’s quite firmly believed that anthropogenic sulfate emissions from fossil fuel combustion have a marked cooling effect from the same sunlight-blocking (shading the surface) principle.
Rather than CO2 from fossil fuel causing some of the warming it is very likely IMO that the real anthropogenic story is more like partial filtering of fossil fuel combustion products, specifically filtering out the soot and sulfates, has tipped the balance from the emissions being surface temperature neutral to surface temperature increasing. In other words there would be no anthropogenic warming if we burned our fossil fuels as God intended and let all the emissions return to nature instead of filtering out some of those combustion products.
In this same vein methane is also largely overlooked. It is now given as being responsible for up to 33% of total AGW and its production is increasing at twice the rate of CO2. There are many anthropogenic culprits for rising methane. Two the largest are rice production and ruminant livestock production. Others include blowoff from oil wells which are too distant from any economical means of collecting and transporting the natural gas (which is essentially pure methane), leakage from natural gas transportation pipelines, abandoned coal mines, fermentation in land fills, composting, incomplete incineration of waste products, and a host of other industrial processes and unwanted anaerobic fermentations.

Aslak Grinsted says:
October 21, 2011 at 8:43 am
“I don’t feel singled out as a victim, because it is like this on pretty much all WUWT threads: I just wanted to highlight for bystanders that adressing WUWT really is like adressing an agitated mob.”
I suppose that’s fair from your POV. From my POV as an agitated mob member addressing the community of climate boffins is like addressing the Vatican. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

@Aslak
So, you’ve explained to me that the recent slowdown in sea level rise is explained by ENSO. That’s fair but it essentially means that predicting long term sea level rise or fall is dependent on being able to predict long term ENSO behavior. So start predicting long term ENSO for me.
Really, Aslak. This is like a economist saying recessions are explained by a drop in the employment rate and then expecting that this answer would not simply raise the question of why the employment rate dropped.
So Aslak, why the recent severe La Nina?
Let me help you along. The La Nina happens in large part because of an increase in trade winds. The agitated ocean surface absorbs less solar energy through increased albedo and also causes it to lose heat faster through increased conduction and evaporation.
Again, that’s a great explanation but it still doesn’t give us any predictive powers about ENSO because now we have to predict trade wind behavior which predicts ENSO which predicts sea level rise/fall.
So start predicting long term trade winds for me, Aslak.

Crispin in Waterloo says:
October 23, 2011 at 9:08 am
Don’t be ridiculous. Everything you see outside isn’t a heat engine or a part of a heat engine. Asinine concepts like this are what give CAGW skeptics a bad name.

Ok, so if this paper by Aslak and his colleagues is fundamentally flawed with newbie high school error, then why not publish a rebuttal paper to the journal “Global and Planetary Change”? You guys seem to have enough comments and questions put together to come up with a two-page rebuttal. Peer-reviewed rebuttals are used in the scientific method to further subject a paper/idea to scrutiny from several other scientists (often with new data/ideas). From what I can tell, this paper has already passed through peer review at “Global and Planetary Change”, so a rebuttal is an option.
What has been done here might have unduly hurt Aslak and his colleagues’ reputations in the public sphere. Instead of using the peer-reviewed rebuttal route and participating in the modern scientific process, this article is posted on a blog in public, accusing them of a high school error. Willis, you have to concede that there is at least a small chance that you are mistaken about your analysis of this paper. Thus, wouldn’t it have been more kosher (and nicer) to create a peer reviewed rebuttal to the paper? Sure, create a blog post about what you might put into the rebuttal too if you like, but maybe keep the language more subdued?

All of this reminds me of playing Space Invaders as a kid. All of these studies are like the never ending stream of aliens. You keep shooting them down and another row pops up. Studies that actually point to AGW have become scarce like the flying saucer that would randomly pop up.
In this respect I classify the studies into two groups. Group one (most of what we see) are the aliens. The studies that are built on the foundation that AGW is real and this is what is going to happen if we don’t change our ways and stop evil carbon. Group two ( the flying saucers) have become impossible to find. Is this because they think that no more work is needed in buttressing up their position or is it that they cannot come up with something that will hold water in the now focused stare of the Skeptic?
All of the group one studies drive me nuts, how can we even begin to estimate the damage when there is no solid proof AGW is really happening. Funding for this segment of climate research should be deleted it is a total waste.
I would love to see more of the group two studies. In a twisted sense the Climate Science field is wide open and if all the researchers would focus on the why instead of the what if we all could learn something. For this area of research I would gladly pay more or better yet just take it from the group one guys….

Willis Eschenbach says:
October 23, 2011 at 10:39 pm
“First, I continue to strive to have my work published in the journals. It’s more entertaining than hitting my head against the wall. Occasionally I’m successful. ”
__________________
Oh, well that is quite good. How many many climate science papers have you published so far in journals?
“But wasting all that energy on a paper this trivial? I’d rather strive to publish my original work, that’s worth the candle.”
__________________
But if this error is so trivial, how did it pass through peer review? I thought that type of stuff was what peer review was supposed to fix. If this paper is propaganda in your mind, it is your scientific duty to send a rebuttal to “Global and Planetary Change” to nip it in the bud and get it retracted. What if a summary of this paper influences politicians or the media?
“Second, impact factor. Consider the relative impact factor of WUWT and what was it, “Global and Planetary Change”. ”
_________________
But science isn’t about impact factor. It is about being correct. It is about being peer reviewed and rigorously tested against the results/data of other the top-notch credentialed experts. What if there are some errors that you make in your articles at WUWT and they are not caught by lay people since they aren’t experts in the particular field you are publishing. Wouldn’t it be better to test your article against all the experts on the subject of historical sea level? They would be much more likely to catch errors that you may have missed. Then, you re-write your article to make it stronger and more effective.
“Third, timing. I write here because I can counter dubious or alarmist claims as they are raised by the AGW supporters.”
_________________
Ok, if there are so many dubious claims, couldn’t you address them as they come and put several rebuttals and papers “in the pipeline” so to speak, such that a few months later you would have a steady stream of rebuttals coming into the journals?
“Fourth, retractions and challenges in the journals are always published in the metaphorical small print, with never the fanfare given to the original paper.”
_________________
No, rebuttals are given equal weight so long as the evidence is there and the rebuttal paper’s writing quality is sound.
“Fifth, editors are protective of their reviewers (“they wouldn’t have missed something obvious”), and they get embarrassed if they publish something obviously wrong … and so they may not rush to publicize that fact.”
_________________
Well, stand up and press the issue with the editors, then. Get some support from fellow scientists.
“Sixth, those journal folks love credentials. I have a library card. Well used to be sure, but that’s it. Instead, I have experience coupled with years of study on my own. Doesn’t open many doors.”
_________________
Well, then go out and get a degree. What is your current education and background? If you are smart enough to see the evidence for what it is, then start taking classes to get a Master’s or PhD. Medicine is practiced by guys with an advanced degree, and so is almost every science field. Science doesn’t reward someone that doesn’t take the painstaking effort to study the breadth of subject matter under the tutelage of an expert professor. Maybe Roger Pielke Sr. could be your advisor?
“Seventh, I’m really bad at writing those dense, long-winded, boring scientific paragraphs. It feels like putting my thoughts in a vice and smashing all the ideas together and squeezing out all the juice and flavor … so I avoid it when I can.”
____________________
Well, then pick up a book or ask someone for help in scientific writing skills. Scientific writing is very precise and can put a distinct meaning to your ideas. Science doesn’t reward someone that doesn’t take the time to improve their skills.
“Finally, I am in an enviable position. Unlike the many researchers who literally must “publish or perish”, I am an amateur scientist with a day job and a wife who works.This frees me to focus on having an effect on the ongoing scientific discussion, rather than focusing on journal publication.”
___________________
That is precisely the criticism of your work that some have. If you want credibility with scientists outside of WUWT, you have to rigorously subject your articles to scrutiny from experts on a specific subject. WUWT will not provide that level of peer review since mostly laymen visit. This blog is not equivalent to a peer reviewed journal. Why else would Anthony be working tirelessly to get his data into the journals? Science isn’t supposed to be some easy hobby that you can do on the weekends. If you don’t like what the peer reviewed journal science is saying, tough. Of course you can decide to not believe it and shun publishing corrections, but that would likely be characterized as anti-science by every credentialed scientist out there. If you have a contribution to make to the science in good faith, do it in the journals.

Willis Eschenbach says:
October 23, 2011 at 11:12 pm
“But that’s why I post here. So that people, including but not limited to the authors whose work I am discussing or criticizing, can step up and show me where I’m wrong. If I’m wrong, their ideas and claims are enhanced. That’s science.”
__________________
No, that is blog science. Not all the authors of the papers that you are discussing even know about WUWT. You really ought to contact the authors for each paper that you critique and ask them to comment on the new “Proceedings of WUWT” article. If you create a journal, then they will likely come to do it. They won’t necessarily comment on a blog since that is not where science is done in any other field (not biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, none of those).
“So your feel-good advice, while it does great credit to your heart, is sadly neglecting your brain. These are people out actively trying to damage the economy, our own in part but particularly the economies of energy-starved developing countries.”
__________________
I always say the golden rule applies, no matter if the people you are dealing with are absolutely crazy or not. It sounds like you need to become an energy economics activist. That is where your primary objections lie from what it sounds. You should focus exclusively on writing articles about politics concerning energy. I have no problem with voicing opinions on energy policy, but I do have a problem with voicing opinions about peer-reviewed science without attempting to participate in the peer review process.
“PS—What are the odds that someone will quote me out of context from this post, as though I wanted to destroy the reputation of innocent scholars? I am a man of science, I think real scientists are great, I have no desire to do anything to their reputations.”
________________
So what is Aslak if not a real scientist in your opinion, an activist? He publishes in the scientific journals and has studied science at a university; any objective person would characterize him as a scientist. I recommend that you become an energy policy activist in order to come up with an energy policy plan that won’t wreck the world’s economy. I recommend you write articles exclusively about energy politics or otherwise create a WUWT journal and get other scientists to participate.

[snip sorry – you don’t get to make the rules, or to project them onto me – Anthony]

Here is a video for William Kamkwamba. Very inspiring.
http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_on_building_a_windmill.html

@Dave Springer says:
October 23, 2011 at 12:35 am
@Crispin
>…soot is largely produced in the NH and distance it travels from the source before falling out to the surface is limited to several thousand kilometers and also given that more “global warming” occurs in the winter than the summer and more in higher latitudes than lower it makes the black soot hypotheses quite reasonable on the face of it. …
Offsetting this however is its effect while it is still airborne and studies of airborne soot over the ocean suggests the shadow it casts causes a cooling effect rather than warming effect and, moreover, when it settles out onto a liquid ocean surface it has no further effect because it is incapable of lowering the albedo of water. Given that even in the northern hemisphere ocean surface is much greater than land surface the shadow cooling may very well be the dominant one in the global picture.
+++++++++++
The shadowing of the earth by BC is only possible if the BC absorbs or reflects the incoming sunshine so the idea that it is net cooling is defective. The ground is shaded, but the atmosphere around the particles is heated by the energy that would otherwise have reached the ground. This was directly measured in the Asian Brown Cloud by 4 remote controlled aircraft which recorded much higher tempearatures than was expected. Do you recall that report? Not that long ago. In short, BC has an overall warming effect because it has a much lower albedo than the ground it shades.
Regarding the atmosphere as a heat engine:
The mischaracterisation of the atmosphere as a greenhouse was a serious mistake and it is misleading a lot of people. There is little that is similar to a greenhouse going on in the atmosphere.
In Bejan’s Ch.5 of Convective Heat Transfer (2005) there is an explanation of how heat moves between a hot plate below and a cold plate above with photos. This is very much like the Earth with its thin, expansive atmosphere. It is mentioned above that the thunderstorms, for example, are discrete heat engines. This discrete behaviour is not because the atmosphere does not behave like a heat engine, it is because whenever there is a large thin fluid between a hotter plate below and a colder plate above, there is an automatic division of the fluid into cells that set up their own cycling of heat (from hot to cold) and these cells can only grow to a certain size based on the physical characteristics of the fluid. If there are no surface features nor strong winds like the jet streams, there is a tendency to divide into square or hexagonal cells that are similar in size and flow characteristics. This is an element of ‘self-organisation’, or more properly, it is inherent in the physics of the fluid.
A heat engine has a hot end, a moving gas that changes in volume, a cold end which draws off the heat, and a storage medium for heat that can transport some in it back to the hot end temporarily in the form of expanded gas. It usually has a ‘regenerator’ which is water vapour in this case. It stores or yields heat in the form of a phase change. A thunderstorm qualifies on all counts as a heat engine. Multiple thunderstorms arising on a hot plain in Africa are represented by the naturally occurring cells between the hot and cold plates.
When the atmosphere is considered to be a heat engine (a Stirling engine with walls of stationary air) it becomes quite easy to see what influence various elements of the atmosphere will have. Any additional heat drives the engine harder. The work done by this engine is the propulsion of air, basically. It transports water and air first vertically in the centre and horizontally at the bottom. Diurnal expansion and contraction also drives the engine.
Bejan’s point about Constructal Law is that the system teeters on the edge of turbulence at all times. This is self-limiting. It is the most efficient at moving heat (doing work). If the temperature at the hot place (ground) is elevated the system responds by stepping its energy flow rate slightly, again staying just inside the ‘developed flow’ boundary and on the edge of turbulence. (Turbulence absorbs a lot of energy so it avoided.) Having dumped the heat upwards at the maximum possible efficiency the system returns to its earlier stable state. His point was that this is so obvious that it is not even interesting to study. If CO2 or Black Carbon or Solar variation or tilting of the Earth occurs, the atmosphere will change its dynamics to dump the heat into space at the most efficient rate with the whole thing stabilising automatically at the point of highest efficiency, which is as I said, on the edge of turbulence.
They are not GHG’s, they are just working fluids with different capacities to capture incoming or outgoing energy during the time which the cells prepare to dump the heat. There is absolutely no greenhouse. Greenhouses heat by interrupting the very mass flows that Bejan points out automatically develop to move the greatest amount of heat away with the least energy. A direct consequence of the heating effect seen 1975-1995 is the drying of the upper atmosphere. That is exactly what a free-flowing heat engine cell would do with water vapour being a major component of the working fluid. All the pretty up-down, in-out, reflected, radiated, absorbed charts are fun to work with, but the engine will cool the atmosphere as soon as it heats up, slowing the transport if it cools below. It takes a catastrophic cooling to induce stratification in the atmosphere strong enough to create an ice age and I favour a GCR inundation as the primary culprit. In other words I favour the cloud hypothesis at the moment because it has the capacity to disrupt the engine’s function (cooling the prime mover).