What we don’t know about Earth’s energy flow

Amen to some common sense.

Is there any doubt that WUWT is the hands-down best science blog on the Internet? One simply does not see this kind of insight and reason on any of the AGW/climate change sites.

In the text.
\pi = π
\approx = ≈
\epsilon = ε
\sigma = σ

Go Duke!
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/index.php

This is an excellent post, and this quote in particular:
“Until all of the physics is known, and there are no more watt/m^2 scale surprises, we won’t be able to build an accurate model, and until we can build an accurate model on a geological time scale, we won’t be able to answer the one simple question that must be answered before we can even estimate AGW:
What is the temperature that it would be outside right now, if CO_2 were still at its pre-industrial level?”
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Is quite outstanding, and right on target, but misses the point of climate models. Of course, we’ll never be able to tell you exactly what the temperature would be outside “right now” from a model of the climate. Everyone in the business, from Trenberth on down will tell you that models will never be right, are never “right”, and will never tell every little detail, especially daily temperatures for you’re dealing with two vastly different scales. But this isn’t the point of models, nor the reason for constructing them or studying them. Models don’t have to be 100% accurate to be useful. The power of a model is if it is useful enough to tell us things that we couldn’t have known without them. Models are essentially maps– albeit dynamic maps. Maps won’t tell you every little detail of the actual territory, every little side street or crack in the side walk, but they can be useful enough, giving you enough of the major features of a territory to allow you to know something useful about that territory.
Could a climate model ever tell you exactly how much colder (or warmer) it might be outside right now if CO2, N20, CH4, and water vapor were at such and such a level? Never. Could a model tell you the probability that it would be colder (or warmer) outside on a given day when comparing two different sets of greenhouse gas concentrations and holding all other variables constant? Absolutely…and that is precisely what they are meant to do.

And in conclusion, when physicists find they have gotten nowhere by writing down Boltzmanns equation while setting thermal mass to a non-physical value , they put down the chalk, and begin to think about breaking the problem down into its component parts , which may be iteratively arranged to produce a computational scheme capable of incorporating the mass elements of the system, and the optical depth integrals of the components of the atmosphere
This is known as a model.
Absent one , the algebra cannot save you from talking nonsense,* or generating something you wouldn’t dare scribble as a comment in a physics blog.
[snip. Try to have a little more class. ~dbs, mod.]
* paraphrase in memoriam John McCarthy

R. Gates says:
“Could a climate model ever tell you exactly how much colder (or warmer) it might be outside right now if CO2, N20, CH4, and water vapor were at such and such a level? Never. Could a model tell you the probability that it would be colder (or warmer) outside on a given day when comparing two different sets of greenhouse gas concentrations and holding all other variables constant? Absolutely…and that is precisely what they are meant to do.”
OK… but… if the model is not calibrated with reality then what’s the point. If you create a model that relates GHG concentration to temperature and the correlation is always positive then the model will show that increasing CO2 concentration increases temperature, i.e. AGW. Models that don’t or can’t account for all the physical variables are worthless unless you are trying to force a specific answer.
The physical universe is the ultimate guru.

R. Gates says:
January 6, 2012 at 9:28 am
“Could a model tell you the probability that it would be colder (or warmer) outside on a given day when comparing two different sets of greenhouse gas concentrations and holding all other variables constant? Absolutely and that is precisely what they are meant to do.”
Yes, but will that predicted probability be correct? What if, instead of a predicted 50% chance of increased average temperatures over a given period of time given a certain initial condition, the real answer is 5%? Or 0.5%?
My personal opinion is that the climate models are not mature enough to provide any reliable predictions. While it’s of academic interest to do what-if scenarios with models, I would NOT base any important economic decisions on their output…
(Of course, we could also discuss how the climate models are constructed, the numerical methods, boundary/initial conditions, source terms and feedbacks, well-posedness etc. but no one ever wants to get into that, and it would distract from the current thread).

Is it fair to sum this up as: The average temperature is a useless parameter? or only mostly useless?

Reality checks about what we do and mostly do not know are always welcome.
Doing research in an ‘unsettled ‘ science subject is far more interesting to keen, young minds than having to follow a ‘settled’ science track where only tiny details are allowed to be looked at and where dissent is discouraged.

Ahhh….the age old problem of linearizing everything (sometimes it is a poor approximation and gets you in trouble) and assuming those terms are “neglible” (ditto). I learned this as an undergraduate engineer and as a practicing engineer. But even if the models are “robust” you need data to initialize them (yet another problem).
The mark of a good scientist/engineer is knowing when NOT to apply linearization or simplifying assumptions.
I would like to point out the handful of comments Dr. Brown made that I think are particularly insightful other than the lecture on the Stefan-Boltzmann Law::
1) “a function of wavelength and not a constant at all” – gave me chills reading that
2) “one should use both and integrate the real temperature distribution (snapshot) — or work even harder.”
My thoughts exactly, I would be very interested in seeing what this result looks like. The latitude 6*dT/T^2 is almost two orders of magnitude larger!
3) “When heat is concentrated in the tropics, T_h is higher (and T_c is lower) compared to T and the world cools faster.”
This highlights the role Antarctica plays in the geologically recent ice ages. Having a continent at the South Pole results in two strong forcing events 1) high albedo over a large area and 2) impenetrable weather system that results in little mixing (high dT).
4) “We don’t know when continental drift will alter e.g. oceanic or atmospheric circulation patterns “enough” for new modes to emerge ”
When Antarctica drifts away from the South Pole, the effects on climate, ocean levels, etc. will be so dramatic that this worrying over AGW will seem pointless. However, we can rest comfortably more many years to come (depending on your perspective I guess). Because I think one takeaway from Dr. Brown’s comment is that the Earth’s weather is somewhat extreme right now as a result of Antarctica. Lots of very hot and very cold places with little mixing that is resulting in high rates of cooling. These high rates of cooling make the Earth’s climate more sensitive to changes in the Sun’s radiation and perhaps more sensitive to changes in the Earth’s atmosphere as well (I am just speculating here)? But I am certain when Antarctica moves off the South Pole the climate will be less extreme and more mild (that’s saying nothing about whether it is colder or warmer).
Dr. Brown asks the interesting question: What is the temperature that it would be outside right now, if CO_2 were still at its pre-industrial level?
Is it reasonable to assume it would be colder? How about the question regarding “extreme weather”? I suppose one could argue that by raising the temperature somewhat, say 1K, could result in increased extreme weather events because of the faster cooling that Dr. Brown outlines. But, to me this is a co-opting of a description of the Earth’s current weather that has nothing to do with human activity.

The day versus night argument (made by some) is based on a misjudgement of what the actual data says.
During the daytime, the peak in-radiation from the Sun is about 960.0000 joules/second, yet the surface temperature only increases by a miniscule 0.0007 joules/second. At night, now there is no 960 joules coming in per second (virtually none) and the temperature is only declining by 0.0007 joules/second.
That is for the surface. For the tropopause and in water, the changes are only +/- 0.00005 joules/second in daytime and at night. The OHC numbers from Schuckmann that we reviewed last week translate into an absorption rate by the oceans of just 0.00000002 joules/second.
As I’ve said, we need to incorporate time into the equations. A Watt/m2 is actually a Joule/second/m2.

First year University physics was a long time ago, but this is a wonderfully clear explanation. Thanks Dr Brown for writing, Roger for highlighting and Anthony for re-posting.

umm?
This article seems to offer a nice semi-numerate argument supporting the unstated but obvious conclusion that the concept of a global average temperature cannot be realized (i.e. have its value measured) with the information we have.
More interestingly it strikes at the heart of what is missing from the Nikolov and Zeller paper: speculation on causation – specifically on what drives the differences they see as driving weather. Essentially they say change in A is related to change in B, and here’s how; but don’t say what causes change in B (local pressures)
A highly speculative possible answer can be derived from the loose couplings between atmosphere and earth, and between atmosphere and solar wind – and that idea nicely reduces the measurement problem this article is about oo.

Interesting post. I always wondered about the proposition that the hotter something is the faster it cools because it seems like an object doesn’t cool in straight line fashion but rather along some kind of exponential curve. If I am interpreting things correctly this means that more slowly rotating objects will be cooler on average because it will have time to achieve higher temps and higher temperatures mean greater cooling. On the other hand this doesn’t seem quite correct because one could conversely say that a more slowly rotating object can achieve cooler temperatures on the dark side and hence there should be slower cooling. My intuition based on the commonplace experience of blowing on hot soup wants to believe that a faster rotating body would be cooler.
BTW, on the subject of earth’s albedo, it has been observed to be variable by monitoring earth shine hitting the moon. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/05/040527233052.htm

Maybe one day.
I will be a personal friend of Tallbloke
after several beers.
I can say:
Our math is bad.
On the other hand.
The physics is essentially correct. (Under discussion)
It is evident that the mass of a body changes the radiation emitted by this.
Two bodies the same surface temperature emit different wavelengths if their masses are different (but this is not the case).
About N / Z:
A question? The Venusian atmosphere complete one rotation in 96 hours ?????

Smokey says:
January 6, 2012 at 12:23 pm
R. Gates,
Since you ignore negative feedback, your ‘simple thought experiment’ is nonsense.
_____
I also ignored positive feedback, as that is not the point of this analogy. As it stands, it quite nicely displays the general nature of models and chaos and how you don’t need to know the details down to the quantum level to have a useful model that still depends on both large scale forces and small scale forces. A model doesn’t have to be right, in term of knowing all the details, in order to be useful. To have a 100% accurate model of the universe, you’d have to have a model the size of the universe, yet we can very nicely model the general formation of galaxies, stars, solar systems etc. without knowing every little detail. A 100% “true” or accurate map of the United States would have to be the size of the United States to get every detail, yet my small pocket map is accurate and useful enough to allow me to get from LA to New York City quite nicely. The climate is much the same.

tallbloke said @ January 6, 2012 at 12:32 pm
“Now, another beer, it’s friday night after all.
Cheers”
There you go; and I thought it was Saturday morning! Make mine a pint of sauvignon blanc 🙂

R. Gates said @ January 6, 2012 at 12:35 pm
“…you don’t need to know the details down to the quantum level to have a useful model that still depends on both large scale forces and small scale forces. A model doesn’t have to be right, in term of knowing all the details, in order to be useful. To have a 100% accurate model of the universe, you’d have to have a model the size of the universe, yet we can very nicely model the general formation of galaxies, stars, solar systems etc. without knowing every little detail. A 100% “true” or accurate map of the United States would have to be the size of the United States to get every detail, yet my small pocket map is accurate and useful enough to allow me to get from LA to New York City quite nicely. The climate is much the same.”
Now here’s a nice example of the simple world of Langton’s Ant:
“Description:
Langton’s ant is a cellular automaton which [sic] poses a problem that is currently baffling mathematicians. The ant lives by three simple rules:
– If it is on a yellow cell it makes a 90° turn to the left.
– If it is on a grey cell it makes a 90° turn to the right.
– As it moves to the next square, the one that it is on changes colour from yellow to grey, or the reverse.
The result is a quite complicated and apparently chaotic motion… but after about ten thousand moves the ant locks into a cycle of 104 moves which causes it to build a broad diagonal “highway”. What’s more, the ant seems to always build the highway (though nobody has been able to prove this yet) even if “obstacles” of yellow squares are scattered in its path, provided it finds enough grey squares on the periphery. Try it out yourself in the applet below.
http://www.annanardella.it/ant.html
Perhaps you could make a name for yourself by solving the Langton’s Ant problem. I believe that if we can get that problem out of the way, then we’ll be able to tackle the problem of climate modelling. But I’m not holding my breath.

Smokey said:
“Climate models still cannot make useful predictions.”
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Would it be useful for a shipping company to know that the arctic might be ice free in the summer months sometime in the relatively near future? Since the first trans-arctic shipments have already been made, and saved the shipping companies no small amount of money in doing so, it seems climate model “predictions” can be useful…and potentially profitable.

R. Gates says:
January 6, 2012 at 12:35 pm
A 100% “true” or accurate map of the United States would have to be the size of the United States to get every detail, yet my small pocket map is accurate and useful enough to allow me to get from LA to New York City quite nicely. The climate is much the same.
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Your analogy is perfect in how models are supposed to act. But the devil is really in the details on this one, isn’t it? For instance, we are modeling the future are we not? So, while the drop of water reaches its destination based on forces we don’t necessarily understand fully, they are happening in real time and it makes sense because we can observe it to be the case and we can actually “predict” it through models that can be verified by our observations. When climate models fail to predict any event or non-event, in this case missing heat, as time goes by, we know that the details are incorrect. We know this because we have yet to observe what the models predict. And, while I could give you a map to get from LA to New York City, it would be preferable if I didn’t route you through Washington state, would it not? In this analogy, Washington state may be interpreted as CO2, if you wish.

thepompousgit:
Thanks for the Langton’s Ant link and info.
Certainly the key to this “puzzle” mathematically is the shape of the basic grid cells (i.e. squares) and the nature of the basic rules for movement. The basic corner to corner symmetry of the square cell must be a key to the eventual diagonal path that emerges. It would be fun to try it with a different set of “rules”, change the basic grid shapes (i.e use hexagrams or triangles instead of squares), put it into 3D space, etc. and see what happens. The amazing complexity that can come from a few simple rules being repeated over and over is truly amazing.

R. Gates says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Climate models do not predict natural variability, as that is not their intent, nor is it even possible, just as map of LA won’t tell me where the daily roadwork is or what bridge is out because of a local flash flood. Climate models can tell me however, that there will be natural variability and even how long periods of natural variability might mask underlying forcing from greenhouse gases.
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Ok, so they can’t predict it…..but they can tell when it will end……
So, when will this lack of warming end?

Justin K says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:05 pm
“When climate models fail to predict any event or non-event, in this case missing heat, as time goes by, we know that the details are incorrect.”
____
You must be assuming that the Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 study is in great error (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022).
I think this assumption in wrong, and that what they found shows in fact that in general the global climate models have it correct and there has not been any slowdown in warming. Moreover, the FR2011 study gives us a specific, verifiable prediction going forward. Excellent science.
The biggest failures in climate models will be in dealing with chaotic events (the little wiggles in the path of the water drop), that could alter the speed at which the water drop moves. These would be the negative and positive feedbacks. Certainly they exist, and will involve everything from clouds to ice to biosphere.

Gates: “and there has not been any slowdown in warming”
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So it would have been colder if not for global warming….
….how do we know that?

“I can’t speak for your program, but I will stand by mine for correctly computing the ‘mean effective radiative temperature’ of a massless gray body as a perfect radiator.”
I couldn’t get past the above enclosed statement since it’s riddled with contradictions.
First, you need to explain how a massless body can radiate with a continuous frequency distribution according to Planck’s Law at absolute zero (no temperature.)
Second, a gray body is one where the surface emissivity is independent of the wavelength and less than one. A perfect radiator has an emissivity equal to 1.
If you want to fiddle with Stefan-Boltzmann Law, you need to fiddle with the frequency distribution in Planck’s Law prior to integration. The only free parameters for SB Law are area and time.

R. Gates says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:38 pm
You must be assuming that the Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 study is in great error (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022).
I think this assumption in wrong, and that what they found shows in fact that in general the global climate models have it correct and there has not been any slowdown in warming.
—————————–
I am. FR2011 was published to explain the “missing heat” problem. There’s just one problem…well…several really, but a big one is, as Bob Tisdale says: “ENSO is not an exogenous factor”. I’m sure you’re also aware of the analysis that shows if you include the coefficients from NCDC Land Plus Ocean Surface Temperature, Hadley Centre HADCRUT Global Surface Temperature Anomalies, RSS MSU Lower Troposphere Temperature Anomalies, UAH MSU Lower Troposphere Temperature Anomalies, then there is not a continuous rise in global temperatures.

tallbloke says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:57 pm
“Arctic ice”
And so yet another potentially interesting thread is hijacked…
About time Gates had an enforced WUWT holiday IMO.
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Relax Tallbloke, I mentioned sea ice once as an example related to the topic at hand. All of my posts in this tread have been quite on topic, or answers to questions related to the topic.

Steven Mosher: GHGs create a system that radiates from a higher colder place. Hence, it loses heat at a slower rate. hence the surface must “warm” or cool more slowly.
The conclusion does not follow from the analysis that precedes it. Substantial energy amounts are transferred from the surface and lower troposphere to the upper troposphere by advection and convection. It is possible for this transfer to be speeded up, and hence for the surface to cool, even as energy is accumulating in the upper layers of the atmosphere.
When you add more GHGs you increase the effective radiating height of the earth system. Raising that height results in a system that radiates from a colder place.
The second sentence does not follow; if the effective radiating height of the atmosphere is increased as a result of more CO2 absorbing and radiating energy, it isn’t necessarily the case that the increased height is cooler. If you add GHGs at a particular high altitude, and the GHGs at that altitude absorb radiation, then the mean temp at that height should increase, not decrease. Isn’t that so?

R Gates: This simple thought experiment shows that we don’t need to know the details of a process to understand a great deal about it and to make useful predictions.
1. You may know and understand “a great deal” and still be unable to make accurate and useful predictions, as with climate science.
2. There is no record of climate science making useful predictions, certainly nothing like the accuracy needed to predict the climatic consequences of CO2 accumulation to 2050.
You are beating a dead horse. The questions you need to address are: (1) is climate science complete and accurate enough to make accurate predictions and (2) is there any record of making usefully accurate predictions?

R Gates: Would it be useful for a shipping company to know that the arctic might be ice free in the summer months sometime in the relatively near future?
Which climate model predicted that. It’s a simple extrapolation of summer ice cover over the last few decades, and the shippers waited until the ice loss was confirmed before scheduling. That’s so, isn’t it? It’s also totally independent of any consideration of how much of the ice loss was caused by CO2 accumulation.
I almost hate to be “ad hom”, but you don’t seem to be thinking about what you are writing.

@Paul Murphy
“A highly speculative possible answer ”
For a moment there I thought you were talking about CO2 😉
@ Steve mosher,
“Raising that height results in a system that radiates from a colder place. That means the radiation loss will be slower as Brown argues.’
Raising the height also increases the surface area of the radiating area, by a factor in relation to the sSQUARE of the change in height.

R Gates said: This simple thought experiment shows that we don’t need to know the details of a process to understand a great deal about it and to make useful predictions. All current global climate models tell us that the additonal greenhouse gases humans have added since 1750 tip the glass off of horizontal and are causing movement in global temperatures. They vary in how much the glass has been tipped (sensitivity) and of course the exact path the water drop will take (natural variation) but they all say the glass is tilted and the drop of water should be moving.
That is somewhat delusional. Your thought experiment actually tells us that a model can mimic the real world to the extent that we can correctly factor in all the relevant variables. (This is probably not so hard for a drop of water trickling down the side of a glass.) In lieu of all the relevant variables a model can mimic the assumptions, biases, prejudices and ambitions of the programmer.

. Remember, there is no real temperature in such of an example for there is no mass. It takes mass to even define temperature. (but most climate scientist have no problem with it and therefore they are all wrong, sorry)
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This claim is utterly wrong.
The definition of temperature has no dependency on mass whatsoever. At the microscopic level to define temperature simply requires a collection of particles whose energy distribution obeys Boltzmann statistics.
Counter examples to this claim are obvious. The temperature of the microwave background radiation for example. In this case the particles are photons and have no mass.

R. Gates says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:59 pm
blah blah blah……….
====================================================
Gates, it’s a simple question……
You said that “Climate models can tell me however, that there will be natural variability and even how long periods of natural variability might mask underlying forcing from greenhouse gases”
All I asked was when do the climate models tell you this period of not-warming will end?
.
,
,
,
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R. Gates says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Climate models can tell me however, that there will be natural variability and even how long periods of natural variability might mask underlying forcing from greenhouse gases.
============================

How does radiation transfer change between a thick, high pressure atmosphere and a thin, low pressure atmosphere.
Photons generated in the centre of the Sun take an average 200,000 years to make it out to the surface. My calculations say the comparable number on Earth is something like 44 hours. The strict speed of light calculation says it should only take 0.0007 seconds in and out.
It seems to me there needs to some marriage between the two concepts of pure radiation transfer and pure atmospheric pressure.
N2 and O2 reflect the average temperature of whatever level of the atmosphere they are in. Yet they do not participate in the pure radiation transfer explanation.
Let’s take another tack to the question and say what would happen if we pulled out all the non-GHG gases out of the atmosphere (the majority 99% N2, O2 and Argon), Then what is the surface temperature?
Assume the 14 to 16 um IR photons are intercepted by 100,000 CO2 molecules, it still only takes 0.5 seconds for these photons to make it back out into space assuming one-quarter downradiation. The remaining blackbody radiation spectrum is in and out in 0.0007 seconds.
The surface temperature would be -18C in the daytime, approaching -110C within a few seconds of the Sun setting. In a matter of seconds, the IR energy at 14 to 16 um migrates its way through the CO2 molecules and has gone off to space. They only hang onto the energy represented these photons for 0.000005 seconds on each interception.
So, it would be similar to the moon’s temperatures.

R. Gates says:
January 6, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Smokey said:
“Climate models still cannot make useful predictions.”
____
Would it be useful for a shipping company to know that the arctic might be ice free in the summer months sometime in the relatively near future? Since the first trans-arctic shipments have already been made, and saved the shipping companies no small amount of money in doing so, it seems climate model “predictions” can be useful…and potentially profitable.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And how did that work out for the Vikings?

This is some good article here. Thanks TB and Anthony.
I damn near understood it.
{Snarky comments about lemming-like believers pre-snipped in the interest of keeping it classy}

Just thinking about Dr. Browns comment, trying to visualize and digest the ideas he has put forward, the thought that the thermal potential of pre-industrial Co2 has some how magically changed just because it doubled in quantity does not mean that it has doubled in temperature.

Bill Illis said:
Regarding the temperature of the Earth without an atmosphere:
“The surface temperature would be -18C in the daytime, approaching -110C within a few seconds of the Sun setting.
—–
Not quite. The daytime temperature near the equator would be more like 130C and the nighttime temperature would fall to -110C within several hours after sunset (assuming no ocean). Cooling of the moon’s suface during lunar eclpises confirms this general rate. The rocks and soil would continue to release stored LW for several hours after the sun went down.

Well I’m not quite sure what magic Dr Brown is revealing here. I don’t know how many times over the last ten years or so, I have pointed out both here at WUWT, and other climate discussion sites, such as Tech central Station (years ago), the importance of the effect of cyclic Temperatures, on raising (always) the effect of a cyclic Temperature over a steady Temperature.
If we write T as (T0 + t) or as T = T0 (1 +t/T0), then T^4 becomes:
T^4 =T0^4 [1 + 4t/T0 + 6(t/T0)^2 + 4(t/T0)^3 + (t/T0)^4 ]
If we now allow (t) to undergo any cyclic variation, such as a diurnal cycle, and we integrate T^4 over the full period of the cycle, then the integral over the cycle of the term 4t/T0 is zero, since T0 is the average Temperature, leaving us with T0^4{1 + 6(t/T0)^2]
Actually, if the Temperature cycle is repetitive, so we can represent the cycle as a fourier series of a fundamental and harmonic components, then ti willl be found that the inegral of the third power term is also zero, and in practical cases (t/T0)^4 is negligible compared to the second order term.
I actually presented a full analysis of this effect to a group of people who were on Marc Morano’s short list he e-mailed to, when he was on Senator Inhofe’s staff. Roy Spencer it turns out was also on that list and probably received my short essay, on “The Importance of Cycles.”. I also sent another essay on “Cocktail Party Physics”, that Roy actually commented on. It made the point, that CO2 molecules in the atmosphere are orphans, and are quite unaware that another like them even exists, since on average, they have about 13 shell layers of surrounding molecules about them before the next CO2 molecule shows up. Consequently they operate in the atmosphere as individuals, and not in ANY co-operative way, at all.
How many times at WUWT have I pointed out that planet earth is cooling fastest in the hottest dryest tropical deserts, in the blaze of the midday sun, and the cold polar regions are quite ineffective in cooling planet earth.
Now I have observed, just watching the evening news weather reports, that a daily Temperature cycle amplitude of 15 to 20 deg C is very common, so that t/T0 routinely is 5 to 7%, and when one looks at the range of the annual Temperature cycle, the value is much greater, and then taking the full range of the Temperature extremes from -90 deg C to around +60deg C, the effect of the always upward offset of the earth’s radiative cooling rate is a significant error in energy balance calculations.
As to Brown’s assertion that there isn’t Temperature without mass, that is quite misleading. There certainly isn’t Temperature without material, but the actual mass of the material shows up nowhere in the calculation of Temperature.
The peak desert gray body emission rate of hot dry desert surfaces, is over twice the 390 W/m^2 that Trenberth et al give in their earth energy budget cartoon, in fact it is over 800 W/m^2, as I posted somewhere here at WUWT within the last week.
If you read ALL of the posts in almost any thread at WUWT, you find it looks like people shopping at the mall. Everyone is going every which way, and it is clear that many posters, simply NEVER read what is already there before they post, and many issues are already answered and ignored, as the crowd simply mills around, oblivious of what others are doing.

RGates, (le trollus)
“Would it be useful for a shipping company to know that the arctic might be ice free in the summer months sometime in the relatively near future?”
Not if the crystal ball prediction is totally incorrect and they had spent MILLIONS preparing for a false prediction!! (oh look , that’s just what is happening.. and IT ISN’T USEFUL !!!!! )
Tarot cards seem to have about the same predictive value as so-called climate models. !!
(feeds the trolls and hope they are still awake at sunrise 😉

The thrust of this post appears to be against the concept of “lumping”, where a diverse system is reduced to averages, loosing accuracy, but gaining analyzability. In fact the climate system is so hopelessly complicated that this is the only method that has any possibility of providing insight.
Also to be considered is the troposphere, which has the wonderful property of mixing up the major part of the atmosphere so that the black-body equilibrium temperature exists somewhere round its upper third, allowing gross generalizations to be not too inaccurate.
In fact an argument against such approximations is really an argument for massive computerised models, which has not currently been shown to indicate anything other than that the approach does not work.
So I would urge both sides of the debate to continue presenting their arguments in a lumped approximate averaged fashion.

AndyG5 says
Not if the crystal ball prediction is totally incorrect and they had spent MILLIONS preparing for a false prediction!! (oh look , that’s just what is happening.. and IT ISN’T USEFUL !!!!! )
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Exxon just paid 15% of the company based on less ice in the Arctic. That would amount to billions. BP wanted to do the same but lost out in the negotiations. Maybe they know something you guys don’t.

thepompousgit says
Sorry LT, you are wrong. A photon has a rest mass of zero. But photons aren’t at rest; they fly hither and thither at the speed of light. If photons were massless, they would be unable to exert pressure.
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Your right of course, though we typically speak of photons as having momentum and energy rather than mass.

Kelvin Vaugn says
All the heat is being convected away from them towards the ceiling. The floor 6″ below the radiators is cold.
What can the problem be?
——–
The radiators are not aimed at the floor. So tilt them over a bit. Ensure the carpet is a dark colour, ensure the radiators are a dark colour, raise the temperature of the radiators.

tallbloke says: January 6, 2012 at 1:57 pm
“Arctic ice”
And so yet another potentially interesting thread is hijacked…
About time Gates had an enforced WUWT holiday IMO.
==============
So this is how to conduct a debate?
Gates is the only sceptic here amongst a sea of true believers (in anti-AGW)
Amazing!!
If anyone needs a holiday it is smokey who has said nothing but denigrating those of different views.
Amazing!

LazyTeenager says on January 6, 2012 at 6:31 pm

AndyG5 says
Not if the crystal ball prediction is totally incorrect and they had spent MILLIONS preparing for a false prediction!! (oh look , that’s just what is happening.. and IT ISN’T USEFUL !!!!! )
———
Exxon just paid 15% of the company based on less ice in the Arctic. That would amount to billions. BP wanted to do the same but lost out in the negotiations. Maybe they know something you guys don’t.

Could you point us to a link that provides some support for that claim?
Isn’t just possible that they have been sniffing the CAGW glue themselves? Indeed, isn’t it also possible that they understand natural cycles and that the Arctic has seen very low ice levels in the past?

R.Gates
“Climate models do not predict natural variability, as that is not their intent, nor is it even possible…”
So a sudden 15C drop like the Younger Dryas is of no concern to you and your models yet, 1C a century warming is catastrophic enough to saddle poor Hansen’s grandchildren with intermittent power, a Medieval economy and enough debt to make the entire world dream about the standard of living that might have been.
What good is a model that cannot see what naturally happens?

ferd berple says: January 6, 2012 at 7:35 pm
The energy radiated by the earth’s surface does not vary as not ((avg(temp)) ^ 4) as climate science teaches. It radiates as the (avg(temp ^ 4)), which is significantly higher. Fore example:
(AVG(2,4)) ^ 4 = 3^4 = 81 (what climate science teaches)
AVG (2^4,4^4) = AVG(16 + 256) = 136 (what physics says)
136-81 = 55 = A travesty of missing heat.
===========
Lets use some real figures -15C night 15C day (much greater than reality)
(I will not bother with your calcs as they are obviously wrong!!)
Convert to K (where zero is a real zero!
night=258
day=288
average 258+288=273
273^4=5554571841
average 258^4+288^4 = 5655236616
An error of 1.8% – i.e. an error bot not gross

R. Gates says:
January 6, 2012 at 12:50 pm
tallbloke says:
January 6, 2012 at 12:26 pm
The biggest problem we have in this debate is that the climate modelers actually believe the guff you are coming out with.
_____
Of course they believe it…their entire careers are based on the advancement of scientific knowledge,
————————————————-
LOL, Of course they believe it…their entire careers are based on procuring their next grant based on the post normal next predicted but never occuring disaster.. Their, fixed.
As far as useful predictions it is quit funny you choose one for industry that BENEFITED them, and not one of the endlessly predicted, always failed to materiale disaster senarios. However model predictions have zero to do with it. Decisions are observation based, not computer mode based, DUH. Now please tell me what disaster predicted by models has manifested.

I am curious to know if the sunlight reflecting off of the moon and striking earth has been taken into consideration. I have seen moon lit nights that have been bright enough that I could read by the light of the moon. This has got to add up over the earths surface to a quantity of energy that I have never seen mentioned even once in my now multi-year climate science research.
By the way, I skip right over R Gates comments. I just don’t trust this person. (I skip “physisist” as well, for a different reason).

Agile Aspect says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:56 pm
“I can’t speak for your program, but I will stand by mine for correctly computing the ‘mean effective radiative
temperature’ of a massless gray body as a perfect radiator.”
I couldn’t get past the above enclosed statement since it’s riddled with contradictions.
First, you need to explain how a massless body can radiate with a continuous frequency distribution according to Planck’s Law at absolute zero (no temperature.)
Second, a gray body is one where the surface emissivity is independent of the wavelength and less than one. A perfect radiator has an emissivity equal to 1.
If you want to fiddle with Stefan-Boltzmann Law, you need to fiddle with the frequency distribution in Planck’s Law prior to integration. The only free parameters for SB Law are area and time.
>>>>
The entire quote was:
“I can’t speak for your program, but I will stand by mine for correctly computing the ‘mean effective radiative temperature’ of a massless gray body as a perfect radiator. Remember, there is no real temperature in such of an example for there is no mass. It takes mass to even define temperature. (but most climate scientist have no problem with it and therefore they are all wrong, sorry)”
You call yourself agile but I see no agility.
A perfect radiator does not need an emissivity equal to 1.0, it must only radiate instantly all it accepts, the remaining is reflected. Zero transmission in this case, we are speaking of a hypothetic Earth in this particular context.
The statement you quoted is not from Dr Brown, that is my statement that Dr Brown was quoting, and, being a physicist, he had already read all of my multiple comments and had interpreted them correctly it seems, and in context. There never was a claim of “radiating at zero K”, of course the back side of such a body without mass to store energy is at zero K and is in fact zero radiation. I was careful to term it as the ‘mean effective radiative temperature’ as climate science term it, no sense of mass involved, but they calculate it, and use it, anyway. The emissivity was not 1.0 but was included in the calculations of 0.955 that this statement was referring to.
More on, a gray body does not need “per frequency” analysis for it follows the Planck curve perfectly by definition thought not of full intensity per the emissivity.
No one is “fiddling” with Stefan-Boltzmann Law further than current climate science fiddles with it, well… that is not correct, it is usually used as a black body, not a gray body, and black bodies never occur in the this real universe. All applications of S-B in context were in fact applied correctly.
And above all, you even took that single sentence out of context. Shame!
Seems you are not too agile today Agile Aspect, you need to go way back and read what most here have already read and get a concept of this discussion, this time in context. See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/30/feedback-about-feedbacks-and-suchlike-fooleries/

Refreshing to see a physicist assertively publicly challenging bad assumptions made either naively or deceptively (ugly, unacceptable, & trust-busting either way) by delinquent mainstream colleagues:
“The sanity checks suggest that one simply cannot assume that the Earth is a ball at some uniform temperature without making important errors” / “Are there candidates for this sort of a gun? Sure. Albedo, for one. […] An even better one is modulation of temperature distribution.”
And this is exactly what EOP (Earth Orientation Parameters) tell us empirically, so perhaps there’s something to this variant of physical abstraction, which is at sharp odds with the usual mainstream narratives which definitely don’t match the data.
I offer Dr. Brown 2 cautionary notes:
1. Don’t ignore land-ocean spatiotemporal contrasts.
2. Be aware that the major ocean gyres are wind-driven and that the thermal wind is driven by temperature contrasts.
Please see the climatology animations listed here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/25/solar-terrestrial-power-update/#comment-843523
(I’ll add a 3rd cautionary note in the future. A majority of the community first needs to grasp cautionary note#2.)
Regards.

George E. Smith; says:
January 6, 2012 at 6:00 pm
“Well I’m not quite sure what magic Dr Brown is revealing here. I don’t know how many times over the last ten years or so, I have pointed out both here at WUWT, and other climate discussion sites, such as Tech central Station (years ago), the importance of the effect of cyclic Temperatures, on raising (always) the effect of a cyclic Temperature over a steady Temperature.
If we write T as (T0 + t) or as T = T0 (1 +t/T0), then T^4 becomes:
T^4 =T0^4 [1 + 4t/T0 + 6(t/T0)^2 + 4(t/T0)^3 + (t/T0)^4 ]
If we now allow (t) to undergo any cyclic variation, such as a diurnal cycle, and we integrate T^4 over the full period of the cycle, then the integral over the cycle of the term 4t/T0 is zero, since T0 is the average Temperature, leaving us with T0^4{1 + 6(t/T0)^2]
Actually, if the Temperature cycle is repetitive, so we can represent the cycle as a fourier series of a fundamental and harmonic components, then ti willl be found that the inegral of the third power term is also zero, and in practical cases (t/T0)^4 is negligible compared to the second order term.”
>>
First George, thanks for clarifying that for me. I seem to seen where the crossover in the math occurs.
But you also said:
“Actually, if the Temperature cycle is repetitive, so we can represent the cycle as a fourier series of a fundamental and harmonic components, then ti willl be found that the inegral of the third power term is also zero, and in practical cases (t/T0)^4 is negligible compared to the second order term.”
Doesn’t the integral of third power term in the Fourier series mean it has no periodicy at all in time since it is zero and therefore is always present at all times. I didn’t understand your point there. To me that is exactly what Dr Brown is saying, this maximization of radiation as temperatures are separated to an ever increasing degree and does not depend on time (invariant in time), even if the body is revolving. As he, no magic, I see no cycles in this factor either.

Just because you disagree with R. Gates would never be a reason to ban his posts on WUWT. From all appearances, Anthony does not ban posters who post different ideas than his. We will leave that for other sites to do.
R.Gates@10:01:
You are reading much more certainty into models than exists at present. You have admited that models do well in a static atmosphere. We do not live with a static atmosphere.
You understand that the models do not do well with the Younger Dyas. They do not do well with the warming of the early 20th century either. Nor, in fact, do they do well with past climatic type events.
The resolution of the current models is not even close to good enough to represent time scales of decadal, nor century time scales. They seem able to present an existing trend, but cannot delineate a change in that trend.
Prof Brown: Thank you for a very thought provoking article.

The Arctic has been ice free for approx 4,000 years of the Holocene period.
The Arctic has had substantially less ice than present during 7,000 years of the Holocene period.
It would only make sense that companies know this, and will develop the Arctic, as the preponderance of evidence shows that haveing large quantities of ice is not the norm, but abnormal.

R.Gates
“Climate models do not predict natural variability, as that is not their intent, nor is it even possible…”
So if variability of the climate is totally (or even close to totally) natural, then the climate models are TOTALLY USELESS..
THANK YOU R’GATES… YOU FINALLY UNDERSTAND !!!! YIPEEEEEEEE !!!

Good post.
The earth is not a sphere with a uniform surface or even a surface of the same material. Every day one hemisphere has completely different heat qualities to the other due to its rotation and the fact that one half, approximately, is water the other land. To state that heat loss/gain at any time can be modeled is a claim too far. To also make assumptions about pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 content to be lower than today’s is also wrong. They may have been higher, according to measurements in the 1890’s they certainly were.
I will stick with Nikolov and Zeller at the moment.

Regarding my comments above at January 7, 2012 at 3:55 am, about Venus and being in the Sun, I redid my calculations and the numbers would be more like 470C. By contrast, Venus’ surface temperatures are 460C.

Concerning models in the IPCC reports, I think this says it all:
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2012/01/don-miss-this-devastating-criticism-of.html

If you want to claim that CO2 did not play a part in all these temperature changes, then you need to read these scientific papers and email them your reasons why they are wrong.
“GEOCARB III: A REVISED MODEL OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 OVER PHANEROZOIC TIME” ROBERT A. BERNER (http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~ajs/2001/Feb/qn020100182.pdf).
“CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate” — D. Royer et al, GSA Today, March 2004 (http://droyer.web.wesleyan.edu/GSA_Today.pdf)
“CO2 forced climate thresholds during the phanerozoic”, Dana L. Royer 2005 (http://droyer.web.wesleyan.edu/PhanCO2(GCA).pdf)
“Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature”, Andrew A. Lacis, Gavin A. Schmidt, David Rind and Reto A. Ruedy, 2010 (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6002/356.abstract)

Well, heck, I certainly never expected this response to what was just supposed to point out that any models that assume that Stefan-Boltzmann based reasoning with a presumed constant/average temperature would make a systematic error biased towards less cooling than really occurs, all other things being equal.
Let me just add that
a) this wasn’t intended to be a model. Sure, if you take this and dress it up and turn it into a really big computer program (one that is indeed suitable for running on a good old beowulf:-) you could do a calculation with it. You could then make a lot of assumptions — assumptions about the insolation, the albedo, the exact feedback produced by water, the upwelling, the effect of the ocean and it’s thermal cycle with it’s many time scales, and the precise layout and shape of the continents. If your model didn’t have all of that in it, and correct, then it is pretty unlikely that a hydrodynamic computation — presuming one could do one at all, even with a beowulf — would (for example) spontaneously discover the ENSO, PDO, NAO, AO, etc. with all of the correct periods and with all of the correct feedbacks and couplings to (still unmodeled) solar state.
Is this a problem? In a chaotic system it is. Visit this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
and take a peak at the two figures on Lorentz Attractors and the bifurcation diagram just below it. Then visit the shorter article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organized_criticality
I would assert that it is perfectly obvious that the Earth’s climate system — not its weather, its climate — is a very large SOC system, one with many, many attractors, some of them nearly always critical on at some scale. The many attractors means that it is at least multistable, quite capable of flipping from one predominant mode of oscillation to another. The “self-organized critical” bit means that there are negative feedbacks galore (and some positive ones) and the time evolution of the system can actually push the attractors themselves around.
Multistability is clearly supported by the climate record. It isn’t a picture of simple central limit theorem oscillation, simple negative feedback oscillation around a single fixed mean. It is a picture of flipping to a locally quasistable mean temperature, hanging there for decades to centuries, flipping (fairly rapidly) over to another quasistable mean temperature, staying for a while, flipping again. Even periods of relatively long warming or cooling tend to work by quick jumps followed by stabilization and fluctuation, followed by a quick jump. Bob Tisdale has been hammering this point in his graphs, and of course he is dead right.
The jumps in his graphs are usually well correlated with chaotic events events associated with the named oscillations (which are all, incidentally, named attractors in a generalized phase space), which is why there is an oscillation in the first place). All of this emphasis on “detecting the warming signal” by removing the effects of the oscillations is like removing the cause of the warming signal in order to detect it.
The emphasis on global mean temperature also hides another problem — the global mean isn’t really what matters. What matters is the distribution of global heat. The earth itself can be cooling while the arctic is warming. The tropics could get hotter and the poles could get colder if the earth itself overall was warming. It’s a complex system, self-organizing itself to lose heat by stabilizing a set of coupled oscillations that themselves can move around and appear and disappear, with profound local and global effects on the climate.
b) When I asked the rhetorical question, could we tell what the temperature is supposed to be outside right now I did not mean in the sense of 48.3F at my house. Don’t be silly. What I meant was could you e.g. predict the thirteen month smoothed global mean temperature? Well, no, the GCMs can’t do that with any skill. Can you predict the 11 year smoothed mean temperature? No, GCMs can’t do that with any skill either, certainly not on millennial time scales. Can they explain the LIA, the MWP, or all of the other named periods of heating and cooling on geological time scales? No. Can they predict El Nino — location, strength, period? No. Can they predict solar state and accurately incorporate solar state as an influence in their time evolution. No again. Can they — did they — predict that the stratosphere would have dried out significantly over the last decade so that the greenhouse feedback from the stratosphere would be significantly reduced? I believe that the answer is no again — at least the NASA article that presents the results presents them as a surprise. Do they account for the fact that the 20th century was a Grand Solar Maximum, the most intense century of solar activity since 9000 BCE? I don’t believe that they do, since they assert that solar state is nearly irrelevant to global climate all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
So let me ask the question in a way that is perhaps easier to understand. Do the GCMs have any skill whatsoever in predicting the quantitative time evolution of any of the major structures (climate oscillations) in the non-linear system that self-organizes to lose heat at differential rates under differential forcing, so that they can actually predict — hindcast or forecast, ideally both — the last 2000 years of suitably coarse grain averaged global temperatures?
I don’t think that they can. I don’t think they can at all. Historically, alteration — or even just alternation — of the major climate cycles has had a profound effect on global temperatures, suggesting that there are heat gain and loss mechanisms capable of producing delta-Ts consistent with current observations with periods that range from decades to centuries. We don’t have observational data of any quality, even by proxy, sufficiently reliable to even know what they all are, or may be. If the Gulf Stream ticks a few degrees South every 400 years or so for a period of 100 years, it could drop the Arctic into the freeze box any decade now.
My objection, you see, is to call all of this “settled science”. If and when people are honest with their error bars and uncertainties, “catastrophe” goes from the certainty presented in the public debate to a long shot that isn’t being borne out by the observational data, which stubbornly sticks to levels that, extrapolated, do not lead to any sort of catastrophe. The catastrophe arises from one thing, and one thing alone: A presumed (unproven! unmeasured!), strong, positive climate feedback.
In a self-organized critical chaotic system, such things are always to be feared. As I said, small changes can alter the patterns, the attractors themselves, merging or splitting poincare cycles, causing the system to move from oscillation around one to predominant oscillation around a different one. “Catastrophe” in the sense of mathematical catastrophe theory is always a possibility, and in the climate record happens (remember, these aren’t “human” catastrophes, they are sudden switches between chaotic regimes) catastrophes are the order of business — they happen all the time. They are clearly visible in Tisdale’s data and analysis — things like SST don’t go smoothly up or smoothly down like a differential linearized model would predict, they jump up a little (often pushed by El Nino) and then stabilize or even slowly drop, jump down a little and stabilize. Many, many attractors, and big oscillations carelessly swatting global circulation and oceanic circulation around between them.
Nevertheless, there is more than enough evidence already to reject the extreme values of climate sensitivity that would lead to catastrophic warming in the linearized/smoothed models. The climate scientists themselves recognize this, and say it bluntly in Climategate2. The fact that the global temperature hasn’t cooperated by going up over the last decade plus is a disaster, not for weakly forced anthropogenic global warming (that nearly everybody acknowledges is occurring, I certainly do) but for catastrophic AGW. Sure, something really unexpected could happen, oceanic methane could go bloop, Yellowstone could become active — but the all things equal solutions no longer support catastrophe of the human sort. Seriously, dudes, like stop worrying!
To this one has to add — if one considers the non-linear, self-organized critical chaotic time evolution with all of the correct (self-consistent) contributions from all of the important timescales out to perhaps 1000 years (complete oceanic turnover) and the unknown but compelling evidence that Mr. Sun may not just be a wild card, it may be in the driver’s seat altogether, it is almost as likely that our next climate catastrophe will be catastrophic cooling as it is catastrophic warming. The trend of the Holocene for many thousands of years — very nearly since that last Grand Maximum — has been generally downward, and somewhere out there in climate phase space the set of attractors collectively known as “the next Ice Age” are self-organizing and strengthening. So far, there is a sufficient barrier between warm-state attractors and cold-state attractors — the major climate bifurcation clearly visible in the record — but that barrier is lowering, in response to variable and parameters we are in nearly complete ignorance of.
So from my point of view, what is lacking in the global political discussion of CAGW is simple honesty. This is a hard problem. Calling it “settled science” to advance a political agenda does a disservice to humanity. The actual papers that study climate science often (but not always) do present the uncertainties of their results honestly, but those uncertainties never seem to make it into the AR reports of the IPCC, perhaps because the scientists are currently being told what to put in them before they even get together to go over the science.
Nature, like Honey Badger, just doesn’t care (google up “Honey Badger doesn’t care” and watch the youtube video:-). Neither does the progress of science and technology. Nothing we do with “Carbon Futures” now will have anything like the impact on CO_2 required to prevent catastrophe if egregiously positive feedback is correct. Nothing we do with Carbon Futures now will alter the fact that over the next three decades, economic scarcity will all by itself drive 1/2 to 2/3 of the world’s energy production into non-carbon based sources, or into recycled carbon based sources, which will have the kind of impact required to perhaps avoid catastrophe.
If climate feedback is neutral to negative — as it appears to be given the actual evidence so far — then there is no need to panic. If it is weakly positive, there is no need to panic or take much action beyond supporting the continued development of carbon alternatives — we have plenty of time before catastrophe becomes likely, and plenty of time to take urgent action if it is ever required. Only in the egregious case do we need to be worried, and as I said, the entire climate record stands as evidence that we do not have egregiously positive feedback in the climate system. Even where there are sudden jumps, they are not to be understood from the linearized view of positive feedbackc, but rather from the point of view of appearing and disappearing turbulent rolls, variations in the self-organized chaotic major circulatory oscillations that ultimately and empirically heat and cool the Earth in relatively rapid bursts every few decades, in response to a changing sun and solar system more than any other single thing.
rgb

Fred berple says:
“Why? Because the earth itself is a full-sized model. And if you ran the identical earth two times, time it would have a different climate.”
________
I want to make sure I fully understand what you are implying by this, because if you are saying what I think you are, it highlights a fundamental error that many people make when they think about climate, natural variability, chaotic systems, etc.
I you are suggesting that if we took two identical real Earth’s (identical in every smallest detail), and “let them run”, or exist in some kind of parallel universe’s, that they would end up with different climates because of “natural variability”, then you are absolutely dead wrong. Climate, and the universe is not a random walk, but, does in fact evolve in a most deterministic, yet chaotic way. “Natural variability” does not mean random, but the rather the behavior of complex chaotic system. The gross error that many uneducated make related to chaos is in thinking that is means “random”, when of course, quite the opposite is true. Chaos is a deterministic process. There was an inevitability to the comings and goings of glacial and interglacial cycles based on precise laws of physics. Because we may not understand in every detail those processes, we are understanding enough to see how Milankovitch cycles have been a key initiator.
The fact that chaotic systems are deterministic, leads of course to even greater philosophical questions far beyond climate. Questions which lead to perhaps religious or even spiritual discussions. Other questions are related to free will versus determinism, and ultimately, many may find solace in believing that at least our consciousness may be rooted in quantum events– perhaps even the so-called random fluctuations in the quantum foam of space-time itself where virutal particals come in and out of existence at the small units of time imaginable.

Robert Brown said:
“All of this emphasis on “detecting the warming signal” by removing the effects of the oscillations is like removing the cause of the warming signal in order to detect it.”
______
This is not what Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 did. They wanted to see what signal was left over when natural fluctuations were removed. Everyone knows that ENSO, volcanoes, solar cycles cause natural fluctuations in temperature, and cerrtainly over a period of time, they will average out to no long-term warming signal. Now, it is true that there could be some other longer-term natural cycle signal that they found, as opposed to the anthropogenic warming signal, and I remain open to this possibility, though currently think it very unlikely as it would have to be something fairly big that has been missed by thousands of researchers looking at the climate.

R. Gates @ 9:50:
Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 showed that they do not understand the “chaotic” nature of climate.
They were trying to prove something that everyone who examines the data already knows. WE are, have been, and continue to be in a warming trend since the LIA.
They have ignored the long term implications of the Solar Maximum, to just name one item.
This is an exciteing time to study climate. The results of observations are showing that the current understanding of how the climate functions are not correct. Now that we are finding the errors, much attention must be deployed in understanding why these errors exist, their causes and the effects.

Camburn says:
January 7, 2012 at 10:00 am
R. Gates @ 9:50:
Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 showed that they do not understand the “chaotic” nature of climate.
They were trying to prove something that everyone who examines the data already knows. WE are, have been, and continue to be in a warming trend since the LIA.
They have ignored the long term implications of the Solar Maximum, to just name one item.
______
Then, perhaps in some skeptics minds, it was just a curious “coincidence” of history that the end of the LIA happen to coincide with the beginning of the industrial revolution, such that the 40% increase in CO2 since 1750 has had no (or very very little effect), and all the warming right up to today has been due to solar and ocean (delay solar) effects?
What then, explains the divergence in solar activity and temperatures since about 1980?

Wow. Brainy stuff.
What my less-than-rocket-science experience has taught me, is that this world, with its infinite external and internal influences and reactions to such, will be something that mankind will likely never fully grasp. We don’t know what we don’t know. The physics and mathematical models are great exercise, but my estimation is that any predictability will be simply guessing at what we think we know…and living with the results of those things that we don’t.
Thank God we are built to adapt. 😉
To believe that mankind can predictably change our unpredictable climate, reeks to me of hubris.

wayne says:
January 6, 2012 at 9:42 pm
Remember, there is no real temperature in such of an example for there is no mass. It takes mass to even define temperature. (but most climate scientist have no problem with it and therefore they are all wrong, sorry)”
;———————————————————————————————————–
You need go to the library and check out a book on modern physics and review Bose-Einstein statistics and Planck’s radiation law. And look up the definition of emissivity while you’re there.
Briefly reading the rest of the post, letting P denote the flux (which has units of Watts/m^2 not to be confused with power)
P=kT^4
where k is a constant (which will drop out latter.) Then
dP= 4k T^3 dT
and
dP/P = 4k dT/T
or
dT/T = 1/4 dP/P
That is, assuming the changes are linear and can be approximated by a differential, then the relative error in the temperature is 1/4 the relative error in flux measurement.
This result should be familiar to people who have passed an undergraduate physics lab.
And the result is INDEPENDENT of the climate model. It only depends upon the functional form of P so you can make up any fairy tale you like to go along with it.
Note, AGW relies on demonizing carbon dioxide and endowing carbon dioxide with magical properties – AGW doesn’t claim the Sun is causing global warming.

Richard M and Doug Badgero, thanks for the comments.
Robert Brown says:
January 7, 2012 at 9:10 am
I think that you have highlighted an important problem.

Gary Mount says:
January 6, 2012 at 9:17 pm
I am curious to know if the sunlight reflecting off of the moon and striking earth has been taken into consideration.
;———————————————————————————————————————–
The moon has the luminosity of coal so it’s unlikely.

Camburn says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:29 am
R. Gates:
Also, as Dr. Masters indicates, there is correlation between the sun and jet streams. This is not understood as of yet, but most deff there.
_____
I think progress in this area is moving along faster than most realize. The relationship between EUV radiation, ozone, and stratospheric jet streams has progressed to the point that is is quantifiable enough to be put in to global climate models. See:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n11/full/ngeo1282.html
for example.

Thank you for the link R. Gates. It is appreciated.

This is not what Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 did. They wanted to see what signal was left over when natural fluctuations were removed. Everyone knows that ENSO, volcanoes, solar cycles cause natural fluctuations in temperature, and cerrtainly over a period of time, they will average out to no long-term warming signal.
We’ll have to discuss fitting multivariate nonlinear functions sometime. Especially in systems with substantial covarance, multiple cycles interacting (not just ENSO) and chaotic noise. Especially on a thirty or forty year baseline. Seriously, are you trying to suggest that those results mean anything at all? I spent several years working through fits of different parametric nonlinear forms to data, over and over again, and learned quite well that one can not just sometimes but often, usually, frequently, get whole families of equally good fits with sets of parameters that have wildly different physical interpretations, because if there is covariance, there is more than one way to skin a cat, or get the same signal from very different underlying assumptions.
Also, how in the world could everyone know that ENSO, volcanoes, solar cycles, average out to no long-term warming (or cooling) signal when historically then have done nothing else? That’s precisely what is wrong with the current CAGW theory. A glance at the correct (not MBH, the correct) global (coarse grain) average temperature over the Holocene shows that it has never been constant — it is always going up, going down, and the natural variability of precisely the oscillations, volcanoes, and solar variation matches or exceeds today’s temperature excursion, many times in the past. Sadly, you’re probably correct. Something that “everybody knows” who believes in the religion of CAGW isn’t actually true, and reasoning from false premises of course can lead one to all sorts of false conclusions.
rgb

u.k.(us) says:
January 7, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Bill Illis says:
January 7, 2012 at 3:55 am
“Now throw in Venus’ thick atmosphere and strong winds spreading the energy around to the darkside and we can explain Venus temperatures to the T.”
=================
I just read……somewhere…… that Venus has no wind.
Was it just more mis-information, or what ?
I always read your comments carefully, but after a bit of research it seems the winds on Venus are rather weak. (at the surface).
Please be more careful, I read your stuff.
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Some atmospheric layers on Venus have winds of 700 km/hr.
The surface winds are lower because the pressure is so high. At 10 km/hour, 90 bar pressure, that is still a massive movement of mass. AND it is faster than the rotation rate in fact so indeed the energy is being moved to the dark side.

pompousgit says.
January 6, 2012 at 2:14
No need to change any rules. The lesson here is that even obeying a simple set of rules, the ant takes us into irreducible (so far) complexity of
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But you just explained to us that the behavior eventually becomes simple.
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The “simple” rules quantum physics can predict the behaviour of hydrogen, but beyond that you are in “ant country”.
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No. I would say your knowledge of this is 50 years out of date.
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The “simple” rules of chemistry can predict the behaviour of only the simplest of biological chemistry. Beyond that, you are in “ant country”.
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No. I would say you knowledge of this is 25 years out of date.
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Climate depends on the “simple” rules of physics, chemistry and biology. It is well and truly into “ant country”.
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False analogy.