I’m taking the rest of the weekend off – for two reasons:
1. With 100million views under my belt, I’ve earned it.
2. I’m rebuilding my home personal computer as it is becoming flakey, and such things take three times as long as you figure. Windows doesn’t take well to new mobos, and backup/prep must be done. So I’ll be down anyway.
Talk quietly amongst yourselves on any topic within site policy – don’t make me come back here until late Sunday night whenI start my regular work week. 😉 – Anthony
UPDATE: Sunday AM – My computer rebuild went well, and I learned some valuable things that I’ll share in an upcoming post. I went from an old AMDx2 64 dual core to a Intel I5 quad core CPU, doubled my memory speed, doubled my video card speed, and went from a SATA2 to SATA3 SSD. I can blog even faster now. Speaking of which, my email load this morning contained two stories (one quite dramatic) that I’ve put on auto-scheduled publishing that will appear soon. I’m still taking the rest of the day off though. – Anthony
Good luck with the rebuild!
…and thanks for all of the effort you and the moderators put into providing this wealth of information.
yeah spell check seems on the fritz….
You sure have earned it. You should get away completely for a while and come back refreshed.
2. I’m rebuilding my home personal comouter…
Yeah, them “comouters” need rebuilding every so often, don’t they?
Anyway, take care and here’s hoping it goes well.
[Typo fixed. ~dbs]
Okay, I’m a well known warmist here on WUWT, but I’m open to learning. I’m fairly well convinced that prior to the massive influx of anthropogenic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, that solar fluctuations caused most of the short-term (i.e. non-Milankovtich) fluctuations in climate. These fluctuations can be anywhere in length from sunspot cycles to much longer Bond Event (i.e. around 1500 year) cycles. However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
and crack open a bottle of champagne!
5 Jan: NYT Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin: Still Searching for Republicans With Climate Concerns
The Climate Desk, a collaborative journalism project of Mother Jones and several other publications, has produced a video searching in vain for a Republican presidential candidate willing to make any science-based statements on climate…
Toward the end of the video you hear from a truly rare species, a New Hampshire conservative who sees climate change as important.
Then comes Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who’s been studying possible impacts of greenhouse warming on tropical storms for decades – and who has lately been vocal about his longtime affiliation with the Republican Party.
“Responsibility is a big Republican theme,” Emanuel says. “Why should they not take responsibility for what we collectively are doing to the climate system?”
Oddly, the marching orders for Republican presidential candidates appear to be out of sync with attitudes of most members of their party, outside a small fringe that is obstructionist on anything smacking of an energy policy. This makes the field of candidates deserving of the 2011 Climate B.S. Award (B.S. for “bad science”) that they received today from the environmental analyst and blogger Peter Gleick….
Perhaps once the silly season is over, and the surviving candidate starts seeking broader support, climate-smart energy policies could be mentionable once more. Until then there remains a “fundamental Republican science problem.”.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/still-searching-for-republicans-with-climate-concerns/
dear Andrew, your headline proves u r a fool.
go talk to the Conservative governments running all but a handful of European countries, where CAGW is the Gospel Truth, and where mention of Climategate is taboo, and then re-write your piece. if you bothered to check, Andrew, you might even find that some Liberals, once associated with Mother Jones, including some prominent ones i could name, are now sceptics.
That’s it then?
100m hits and the man gets complacent 🙂
Well done Anthony! Have a very good weekend best wishes to you and yours.
“How do skeptics to AGW explain this?”
As usual by following the money, here in the UK the govt now raise more than £40b a year in environmental taxes – fair enough you would say, its saving the planet
Problem is its all stick and no carrot, they are taking the money but not doing anything to guarantee a reduction in emissions
Gates: Worthwhile question, but, as always, one should examine the premise before answering. So, question to you: Can you provide useful references to credible efforts to show this “divergence” that we can reasonably conclude are not likely to be infected a bias to show that such a divergence is real?
I’m sorry to say, but based on ClimateGate1 and 2, I am now unwilling to believe the scientific research published by most of the “Hockey Stick” team. We really need to look at research from sources not infected with their lack of credibility.
R. Gates writes “temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?”
I can only speak for myself. There are an enormous number of ways in which the earth’s climate and weather change. I am sure there are more unknowns than knowns. So who knows what is causing what. The only thing we can be really sure of, is that whenever we look for a CO2 signal among the temperature records, we cannot find one.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
Okay, I’m a well known warmist here on WUWT, but I’m open to learning. I’m fairly well convinced that prior to the massive influx of anthropogenic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, that solar fluctuations caused most of the short-term (i.e. non-Milankovtich) fluctuations in climate. These fluctuations can be anywhere in length from sunspot cycles to much longer Bond Event (i.e. around 1500 year) cycles. However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
As an AGW skeptic I don’t claim to know exactly how to explain warming or cooling. As someone who believes in a large amount of AGW, how do you explain the lack of warming in the last decade?
No thread so insignificant that Gates won’t try to hijack it. Gotta get my exclude Gates code working again.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
“However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?”
Hansen’s red crayon; and his meddling with pre-Satellite recordings suffice entirely to explain the fabricated trends worshipped by the CAGW church. I don’t know how often we have seen that rural non-airport stations show no warming trend or even a cooling trend. I don’t know how often we have heard how Europe- and US centric the historic thermometer readings are.
And you still think there is a real divergence? That means you still think that the GISS and CRU temp histories for the 20th centuries are valid? What was the average global temp anomaly in 1900? Notice I said GLOBAL and AVERAGE.
The answer is: Nobody knows.
DonS says:
January 7, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“No thread so insignificant that Gates won’t try to hijack it.”
If open threads are insignificant to you, why do you read it?
And: Open threads cannot be hijacked by definition.
Hi R Gates
For me as a very skeptical “computer scientist” with 1960’s University Geology also under my belt, it is not that there appears to be an AGW component or not, but rather the “magnitude”.
It is alos the conduct of the “messengers” that has so tainted the “magnitude” so as to render them incompetent in my eyes.
Also I would ask, why does 1 degree warming from around 1900 to say 1950 when CO2 emissions were relatively low seem “natural” and 1 degree warming ever since when emissions are alegedly “catastrophic” seem abnormal?
It’s also a real shame that since around 1998 despite all the CO2 around, temperatures have refused to budge and some “messengers” even predict a 20-year cooling period.
Given all that, how is a mere mortal (an educated one none-the-less) to decide?
Happy New Year one and all
Andy
Jim:
There is one signal that stands out repeatedly. At the end of each interglacial, co2 keeps rising and temps fall. There has been no variation in that theme that I have as of yet found.
The above is not saying that co2 doesn’t retain heat, it is saying that co2 is not the “driver” of climate that some would believe.
Congratulations, Anthony on your 100 million views. Enjoy your weekend off.
In your surface staions project, you brought out major problems with temperature measurements in the US. I do not understand why so much time is spent trying to get something out of data of questionable accuracy. On your site, you advertise a USB-1 Data Logger, which can measure and record temperature for about $60. Why not put out an array of these data loggers, installed in appropriate “boxes” in high quality locations near existing stations to get an idea of the quality of the data coming from the official station? This does not seem too difficult or expensive to do. Possibly this could be a volunteer effort similar to the surface stations project.
In response to R. Gates…
In engineering, we sometimes use a statistical methodology known as design of experiments (DOE), which is used to ascertain the interaction between primary and secondary factors. It’s been a couple decades since I took the course but as I recall, the technique can only consider a couple interactions.
The Earth’s temperature (if there is such a thing) is dependent upon far more than just the amount of radiant energy coming from the sun and reradiating back to space. All of the heat that ends up being absorbed in the “System” is subsequently transferred to other parts of the “System” through a variety of convective processes in both the atmosphere and the oceans. For example, in the atmosphere we have the Jet Stream, trade winds, Arctic Oscillation, and who knows how many other processes. Similarly, in the Oceans there are ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream and the Japanese Current, short-term events such as the ENSO cycles, and long-term decadal events such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Every one of these factors, and others like them, vary in location and intensity, but it is their combined interaction that determines the global climate. Yet statistical tools like DOE are incapable of considering interactions between so many stochastic processes. In my opinion, that is exactly why climate models are bogus.
History has shown us that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation plays a big role in climate. I would put my money on that factor combined with other convective processes as being responsible for any perceived warming over the past thirty years… or should I say the warming period from the late 70’s to the late 90’s since temperature increases have been largely flat since then…
Congratulations Anthony. There’s a bottle of decent Bubbly in the tip jar for you.
Do we know that this is a unique event? When people point to what they think is the fly in the ointment, the first question I ask is, how do you know? Was the LIA just a solar event? Was the MWP jst a solar event. If you can prove that those two were truly solar and solar alone, then I’ll worry more about the explanation. However, You seem to think you are all by yourself here. I believe that CO2 has some impact on earth temperature. I’ll be darned if I can say how much.
However, it does seem to me that in arguing about technical/scientific details on this site, we often lose track of more important questions.
1) There is a well established reason why CO2 should impact climate. What else might too?
2) In the presence of feedback of many kinds, what is the ultimate impact of doubling CO2?
——end of technical questions——–
3)Will the impact be beneficial or not?
4)Is there any real alternative to just business as usual?
5)Will trying to change from business as usual lead to unacceptable social/political impacts?
6)Does Kyoto amount to more than a hill of beans?
7)Is it cheaper and more sensible to mitigate the impact of climate change rather than try to prevent it?
-Early reference to climate change.. in 1955 in the movie “The Man with the Golden Arm”
I was watching a streaming movie last night and caught a Sinatra movie (not bad) …In the movie a character named Sparrow (Armold Stang) says something to the effect that he’d sit there and wait for the “climate to change”. I was preoccupied and only half watching the movie so I missed the reference… I could not find a clip.
Anyone know of it?
Congratulations on the 100 million mark. Bet the next 100 million doesn’t take nearly so long!!
UN said: have a nice time.
If you recall anything about that course it would probably be the “Table of Contrasts”. In a paper I gave at a conference ten years ago, I suggested putting together a Table of Contrasts for “natural experiments” of which climate change is sure one. DOE can handle many sorts of interactions and factors, and so this seems like a reasonable approach. Itemize as many factors as one cares to, build a table of contrasts, and then go back into history and fill out the factors in each climate change plus the result.
I suspect that what will happen is that we have trouble identifying the factors with the needed precision, and in addition there won’t be enough data. But it seems like a reasonable thing to try.
Since it’s a Hijack free thread…
Global Warming alarmists will run away and hide…when pigs fly!
http://youtu.be/F7Q-41Rd_Bc (mods can you imbed, I suck at it, or just publicly humiliate me so I will learn! you decide, lol)
Flying pigs courtesy of Roger Waters
“If you didn’t care what happened to me,
And I didn’t care for you,
We would zig zag our way through the boredom and pain,
Occasionally glancing up through the rain
Wondering which of the buggers to blame
And watching for pigs on the wing.”
gee thanks!
Congratulations Anthony. I’m not sure rebuilding a flaky computer qualifies as “rest” in my lexicon, but it does verify Paul Simon’s great line:
“Everything put together, sooner or later falls apart.”
(…or runs down… and not just Honda Hybrid batteries)
Enjoy, Good luck, and thanks for the great blog!
Computer rebuild? I hope it hasn’t anything to do with solid state drives, Anthony, as I followed your lead and changed over to such a device. So far, so good.
All the best,
Ian
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
“How do skeptics to AGW explain this?”
Your problem. Not mine. I don’t care other than your ‘Team’ is pi**ing away my tax dollars!
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
Here’s my explanation:
The AGW proponents say the Sun can’t be responsible for late C20th global warming because the amplitude of the solar cycles has been diminishing since the late 1950′s. There are several problems with this view. Firstly, although the peaks of the solar cycles have been getting lower, the cycles were shorter than average (around 10 years rather than the 11 year average) and the upramps and downramps were steep, and the minima between them brief. This means the average sunspot number over the period of about 70 was well above the long term average of around 40. What I have discovered, is that by making empirical comparisons between SST and the sunspot number (SSN), we find that there is a consistent relationship between the sunspot number and ocean surface temperature when the effects of the oceanic oscillations are accounted for. This means two things: Firstly, there is a relationship between solar activity levels and cloud cover, since small changes in cloud cover make a much bigger difference to the amount of sunlight hitting the ocean than solar variation does. Secondly, there must be a level of solar activity, as indicated by the sunspot number, at which the ocean neither cools nor warms. I have empirically determined this to be around the same value as the long term average sunspot number, about 40SSN. Another problem with the ‘solar cycles diminishing since the ’50′s argument is that Dr Leif Svalgaard has used solar magnetic records (derived from geomagnetic records) to determine that Waldmeier, who was in charge of counting the sunspots from 1945 until the mid ’80′s was overcounting by around 20%. Correcting this flattens the previously apparent drop in solar activity a lot.
You might find this thread helps
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/nailing-the-solar-activity-global-temperature-divergence-lie/
I second the congratulations.
My introduction to WUWT was the surface stations project. The first time I read about its inspiration, the Stevenson Screen Experiment, I thought “what a simple question, with a potentially profound answer.” I immediately saw Watts as being a “curious character” in the words of R.P. Feynman.
I think the answer to your implied question about why people bother with data of questionable quality is summed up by a professor of mine. He was known for quotable wacky statements. He once said “I known that this [seismic] data is crap…but there is so much of it!” If there is a lot of poor quality data people often think that statistics will lead to something useful just the same. Or, that even if the stations are badly sited, then the trend might still be significant… and so on. What I find amazing is that no one looked at this data very carefully before the surface stations project.
Paul Westhaver says:
January 7, 2012 at 12:36 pm
Found this..
Kevin Kilty said:
1) There is a well established reason why CO2 should impact climate. What else might too?
2) In the presence of feedback of many kinds, what is the ultimate impact of doubling CO2?
——end of technical questions——–
3)Will the impact be beneficial or not?
4)Is there any real alternative to just business as usual?
5)Will trying to change from business as usual lead to unacceptable social/political impacts?
6)Does Kyoto amount to more than a hill of beans?
7)Is it cheaper and more sensible to mitigate the impact of climate change rather than try to prevent it?
____
All excellent questions, each worthy of a separate discussion in and of themselves.
A note to those who suggest that someone can hijack an “Open Thread”, wouldn’t that be like stealing a box marked “Free Books” that your neighbor left out at the curb?
Mr Gates.
Since there are no reliable global temperature records prior to the thermometer era, how do you know what the global temperatures were in times past, and to what precision?
>>and backup/prep must be done<<
With the price of hard disks being what it is and my time being worth what it's worth, I find it much more efficient to use new drives and restore stuff as it's required from the old drives.
That way you can't possibly miss anything.
“R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am Okay, I’m a well known warmist here on WUWT, but I’m open to learning.”
Now that Rog Tattersall has taught you something you must be feeling a bit cooler.
You might also like to acknowledge that because X is not Y it doesn’t follow that Z must be Y.
You might give Linux Mint a try. You typically do a new install to get the latest version. But it has an app that saves your apps, so after the new OS install, you just restore your apps.
Congratulations Anthony!
Tallbloke,
Thanks for the lenthy response. I would be interested in seeing more metrics like the one you pointed out that show that in fact, solar activity (and potential solar impacts on climate) have not been diverging as much as some might think from global temperatures since 1980.
In addition to atmospheric temps of course is the issue of ocean heat content, which, in my mind, because the tremendous difference in energy stored there versus the atmosphere, is an even better metric for looking at energy balances in Earth’s climate system. OHC continues to rise (though I realize that some skeptics doubt this). One would expect the OHC to show a very signficant drop over the long-term (not just the little fluctuations we see during ENSO cycles), to counter the rather signficant rise we’ve seen over the past 30+ years, if this rise is cyclical, and not due to longer-term energy imbalance caused by the increasing levels of greenhouse gases.
@ R. Gates:
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 1:28 pm
Tallbloke,
“Thanks for the lenthy response. ”
Is it a safe assumption on my part to assume that you are open to a conversation about Climate Change?
The reason for my question is this posting. It is from a totally unrelated blog, but deals with open minded conversations. Everyone should read it.
http://www.lastbornchild.com/2011/12/is-it-still-called-conversation-when.html
Andrew
Thanks for the link TallBloke. I had already read Dr. Svalgaard’s potential corretion concerning sun spots.
Your analysis is very good.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
…….
The AMO old boy, or I should I say Mr. Gates
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GT-AMO.htm
Gates claims a divergence between solar acitivy and temperature after about 1980. Really? What divergence?
Solar-magnetic activity was at “grand maximum” levels until it fell off sharply towards the end of cycle 23. If high solar-magnetic activity causes warming, then warming so long as solar-magnetic activity as high is exactly what we would expect. By pretty much every measure, solar cycle 22 (from 1986-1996) was the strongest on record. Cycle 19, which peaked in the late 50’s, had more sunspots, but 22 had a stronger solar flux and was shorter.
The alarmists say that the sun cannot have been driving warming post cycle 19 because solar activity did not KEEP going up, but that is ludicrous. To heat a pot of water, it is not enough to turn the flame to maximum and leave it there? You have to KEEP turning the flame up? That is how unscientific the alarmists excuses for dismissing solar warming are, and this absurd excuse has gone completely unexamined. There is no argument for it. Dozens of these careless scientists have simply asserted that because solar activity did not KEEP going up, it couldn’t have caused warming.
I started a series of posts on this last year and have some more installments I have to get to soon. My exchange with Solanki and Schuessler on the subject here:
http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2011/04/solar-warming-and-ocean-equilibrium.html
R. Gates:
Here is a simple explanation that explains the increase in temperatures since the LIA: It’s a normal part of the temperature fluctuations that occur on Planet Earth. In other words, the Null Hypotheses.
Here is another thought. The earth’s climate is complex, and can’t be modeled accurately with today’s technology. Maybe millions or trillions of orders base ten in compute power increase are required to model the earth, and maybe vastly more systems need to be included in the models. to model the future climate conditions. Who knows.
Here is another thought. Science ought to be inherently skeptical. Where’s the proof? It seems the proof is evaporating, and the world isn’t behaving as the models predict. Furthermore, the past results seem inconsistent in terms of the proxies. The one I trust the most, borehole data, shows warming well before humans started dumping C02 into the atmosphere, and seems like a continuation of an existing warming. And naturally there are the climategate emails surrounding the Mann hockey stick failures from a statistical perspective, as well as failures of the proxies to be reliable.
Here is another thought. Chicken Little arguments suck. It’s the same with the NASA asteroid thing that plagues on people’s fear of things they don’t understand. It’s manipulative.
Here is another thought. Global Warming Advocates, many of them, try to make disagreement with the science a moral, rather than scientific, issue. Why should people secure in the settled science have to do this?
Here is another thought. AGW is too tempting to politicians, and even to scientists, since it solves a huge social problem. How to unite mankind towards some external enemy. In this case, the enemy is AGW caused by our actions, which require concerted actions.
Here is my theory: AGW the theory is popular not because of its scientific merits, but because of its political merits:
1) It has strong tie ins to religion, with its apocalyptic outcome, manufactured or not, making it a useful tool. It also lends itself to a continuation of government as God takeover by leftists.
2) It has a ready made advocacy group in existing environmentalists, who have long been looking for a way to make their cause accepted, but they are willing to simply force.
3) It’s a wonderful way for socialists to blame individualists that they can’t be individuals, and have some kind of shared responsibility for all of mankind.
4) The one worlders love it.
5) Democrats love it as a way to get in the middle of your utility bill and charge you more self righteously.
6) Democrats love it as a way to redistribute money (remember Obama wanting to redistribute utility bills even more than they are)
7) Democrats love it as a way to tax more regarding manufacturers, etc.
8) Crony capitalists/Big government types love it as a way to pay off their friends and contributors.
9) Big government types love it as a way to bash workers of all kinds into shame and compliance.
The political popularity, of course, yields all kinds of funding to “prove” it, when it is one of those really hard to prove things.
markus says:
January 7, 2012 at 1:22 pm
“R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am Okay, I’m a well known warmist here on WUWT, but I’m open to learning.”
Now that Rog Tattersall has taught you something you must be feeling a bit cooler.
You might also like to acknowledge that because X is not Y it doesn’t follow that Z must be Y.
———————-
Rog Tattersall (Tallbloke) has shown a correlation based on a dubious statistical trick, nothing more than that, IMHO. On the other hand, I could be wrong. Maybe rog Tattersall has something. So, here is my question to skeptics:
If any of these blogospheric studies like Tallbloke’s have any merit, why don’t their authors work them up into real papers and submit them to reputable journals? Surely there must be some open-minded editors who would publish them, as long as the science makes sense.
[Reply] I reach more people via my blog than I would via a paywall. TB – mod
As Anthony takes a well deserved weekend off I’m reminded of another great over-achiever:
Climate Change Happens! 🙂
Congrats again, Anthony.
2) In the presence of feedback of many kinds, what is the ultimate impact of doubling CO2?
Average Global Temperature Data from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, below, indicates no change in the last 13 years, while Carbon Dioxide has risen by about 25%.
Year Deviation from the base period 1961-90, degrees C
1998 0.529
1999 0.304
2000 0.278
2001 0.407
2002 0.455
2003 0.467
2004 0.444
2005 0.474
2006 0.425
2007 0.397
2008 0.329
2009 0.436
2010 0.470
2011 0.356
Source: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt
Carbon Dioxide goes up and the Temperature remains the same
Re: 2) In the presence of feedback of many kinds, what is the ultimate impact of doubling CO2?
Answer: More food. No change in temperature.
After checking Wikipedia to see how long this blog has been running (2006), I loved one description attributed to Matt Ridley of the Spectator:
“metamorphosed from a gathering place for lonely nutters to a three-million-hits-per-month online newspaper on climate full of fascinating articles by physicists, geologists, economists and statisticians”.
May the metamorphosis continue and WUWT grow bigger, more beautiful and more highly regarded.
News from China being leapt on by the Gillard Government is that China is planning to introduce a carbon tax of about $1.5 per tonne targeting coal, oil and gas but at this price seems more like a token gesture much the same as India’s symbolic one dollar tax on coal.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/china-to-tax-carbon-by-2015/story-fn59niix-1226238633181
The Chinese move is at odds with another report that it will refuse to pay the EU green tax on flights into Europe. Strange – the Gillard Government has not leapt on this one:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/07/uk-airlines-carbon-tax-asia-idUSLNE80600Y20120107
We are waiting Hillary.
Adam Gallon says:
January 7, 2012 at 1:14 pm
“Mr Gates.
Since there are no reliable global temperature records prior to the thermometer era, how do you know what the global temperatures were in times past, and to what precision?”
Or in other words: comparing current satellite measurements with the land thermometer era is problematic; and comparing the the land thermometer era with the proxy era is also problematic.
Just like the Hockey stick splice.
Another thought: 2000 year ago there was the Roman Optimum; 1,000 years ago the MWP; now it’s another peak. Looks regular enough.
After the Roman Optimum, there were the Dark Ages and the destruction of the Roman Empire by the Völkerwanderung or Migration Period; Germanic tribes taking a vacation in Italy; seeking warmth, after the MWP, there was Black Death, the 30 year war and the Inquisition – both cold periods full of misery and death.
And the CAGW folks want us to complain.
Mr. R Gates
How does one degree of warming from 1900 to 1950 in ‘low’ CO2 emissions qualify as “natural” and one degree of warming from 1950 to 2010 magically become “” catastrophic AGW”?
Since 1998 all warming seems to have ceased despite desperate fiddling by Climate Scientists”.
Mr Gates … given that the thermometer record spans an infinitesmal portion of Earth’s climate history, I would venture that any variations observed in it, whether accurate or badly recorded, are very likely little more than noise … an 0.01 percent in atmospheric CO2 content the cause of a ‘believed’ climate change event over a statistically meaningless time span ? … no, I prefer to remain entirely skeptical …
John B says:
January 7, 2012 at 1:45 pm
“If any of these blogospheric studies like Tallbloke’s have any merit, why don’t their authors work them up into real papers and submit them to reputable journals? Surely there must be some open-minded editors who would publish them, as long as the science makes sense.”
You have heard of Landscheidt and of Svensmark, have you? Or of Nir Shaviv?
Only because you can only think of IPCC consensus papers doesn’t mean other theories have not been published. And what if tallbloke would publish, say in E&E? You would deride him for publishing in such a disreputable journal in which no righteous climate modeler would ever publish – and probably you can find your personal blacklist of journals to be avoided right in the Climategate e-mails – every journal Phil and Michael and so on discussed strategies of destruction for. Your comment is the usual setup the warmists always use. Next you can say “If your paper had any merit you would be a member of the IPCC, so why aren’t you. You’re not on the IPCC so your paper has no merit.”
Or how about “if you had a point you’d get public funding; you’re not funded so you can’t be right.” Or how about “Richard Black says you stink”.
John B:
It is very evident to anyone who studies climate, reads the papers, and also the mail.
To get published, you have to get past certain preset parameters established by folks who are not interested in science, but dogma.
Looking at the quality of published works as of late, concerning AGW, it would behoove a person NOT to get published as they would have more credibility.
great article from reason magazine
http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/04/postenvironmentalism-and-technological-a
A devastating critique of Malthusian environmentalism is offered by Daniel Sarewitz in his essay “Liberalism’s Modest Proposal, Or the Tyranny of Scientific Rationality.” He begins by citing Jonathan Swift’s famous satirical essay, “A Modest Proposal,” in which Swift suggested that the problem of Irish famine might simply be dealt with by eating Irish babies. Sarewitz argues that Swift’s goal was to show that “pretty much any position, however repulsive, could be advanced on the back of rationality.” Sarewitz argues with regard to the problem of climate change modern environmentalists have adopted a form of scientific rationality in which the fact that burning fossil fuels to produce cheap energy harms the climate suggests that solution is to “make energy more expensive.” Sarewitz then points out that the access to cheap energy is, in fact, “a basic requirement for human development and dignity.” He adds, “This fact is so blindingly obvious that nearly any large developing country has treated the idea of a global agreement to raise the price of energy as a joke of Swiftean character. The difference being, of course, that it was not a joke.”
Sarewitz then identifies the political incoherence that lies at the heart of environmentalism. On the one hand, environmentalists want to avoid the risks of new technologies and on the other Malthusian hand they worry about declining stocks of natural resources. Consequently, environmentalists “find themselves, for reasons of risk, opposing new technologies that could help resolve issues of scarcity.” As an example of this political and scientific incoherence, Sarewitz cites the case of genetically enhanced crops which environmentalists oppose because of their alleged risks to human health although such crops would ameliorate environmentalist concerns about soil and water depletion, pesticide residues, and population growth. Sarewitz cuts through the current incoherence by rejecting the environmentalist scheme to raise energy prices by means of a global cap-and-trade regime on fossil fuels. Sarewitz instead argues for an intensive research effort aimed at developing cheap low-carbon energy sources.
Sarewitz needn’t bother with low carbon energy sources because carbon dioxide isn’t a problem
I have some experience with academic publishing, and the journals are unlikely to accept anything from unaffiliated persons…they haven’t the journal space, there are often large page charges that research grants handle, and, frankly there is the peer review issue, which can take, in the worst case, many years to resolve. Reviewers are very hostile to out-of-the-box, unconventional work, even if it is adequately done. I know, I’ve gotten into total cat fights with unknown reviewers, about papers I was also reviewing, not because of anything specific but with the idea the author might be writing things for the wrong reason! Academic publishing is largely an insider’s game.This wide open stuff on the internet is, even if not correct, interesting and timely.
@R Gates
The following is a lengthy paper by Jeff Glassman which makes the point set out in the subtitle quoted below. If it be true that the temperature record bears the “solar fingerprint” then arguments that the total variance in the solar flux are too small to account for the temperature changes ring hollow. The obvious response is that there simply must be some mechanism of amplification which is presently unknown but which could very likely be discovered if scientists were properly funded to LOOK for it, instead of being funded to “deny” its existence.
THE FINGERPRINT OF THE SUN IS ON EARTH’S 160 YEAR TEMPERATURE RECORD,
CONTRADICTING IPCC CONCLUSIONS, FINGERPRINTING, & AGW
SOLAR GLOBAL WARMING
by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD
3/27/10. Cor. 4/17/10.
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2010/03/sgw.html#more
Andrew says:
January 7, 2012 at 2:04 pm
@ R. Gates:
Is it a safe assumption on my part to assume that you are open to a conversation about Climate Change?
_____
Of course. Why else would I be here? If I wanted to just get one kind of perspective, there are lot of sites offering that (which I also frequent, but far less often than I come here).
Like anyone with a true scientific spirit, I want to know the truth– inconvenient, complicated, unpopular, or otherwise.
I will check out the link you supplied. Thanks.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 1:28 pm
Tallbloke,
Thanks for the lenthy response.
You’re welcome, though I confess it was a cut and paste from this article I wrote:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/what-caused-global-warming-in-the-late-c20th/
OHC continues to rise (though I realize that some skeptics doubt this). One would expect the OHC to show a very signficant drop over the long-term (not just the little fluctuations we see during ENSO cycles), to counter the rather signficant rise we’ve seen over the past 30+ years, if this rise is cyclical, and not due to longer-term energy imbalance caused by the increasing levels of greenhouse gases.
If the ARGO data hasn’t been massaged too badly, then the signs are that large amounts of energy are leaving the ocean from deeper down than ARGO measures. This is the only logic which can account for simultaneously dropping sea levels and rising OHC. Either that or the refreezing of Greenland is worse than we thought…
Ocean heat content is the main thing we have to get a handle on. the atmosphere will follow along behind, the tail does not wag the dog.
I’m about halfway to convincing myself we should reduce CO2 emissions because of the dramatic cooling effect the dissipative CO2 molecules have in “discharging” the thermal energy stored by the real GHGs: N2, O2 and Argon. That combines with my fear of the long glacial periods which are a genuine existential threat to our species. Warm good. Cold bad.
@ R. Gates
Excellent!
What the F do I know?
But if, as seems to be the consensus, that plants use CO2 and give off O2, then if…if…there has been a lessening of CO2 absorbing plants over the last few decades (de-forestation etc) then couldn’t that account for at least some of the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere? Not that that proves anything with respect to the relationship between CO2 and the apparent slight warming that might have occurred over those decades.
A coworker forwarded me http://dvice.com/archives/2012/01/e-cat-household.php which purports to show a design phase image of a E-cat (you know, the cold fusion coffee maker) that may be sold at Home Depot this year. I have my doubts about the “this year” schedule….
The web page says:
I have my doubts about the air conditioning part and I think the water connections need to be bigger.
I haven’t been keeping up with the E-cat stuff for a couple weeks (it’s moving faster than a surging glacier), but there’s a bit more at http://www.e-catworld.com/2012/01/rossi-on-home-depot-talks-no-agreement/
drbob says:
January 7, 2012 at 2:02 pm
Mr Gates … given that the thermometer record spans an infinitesmal portion of Earth’s climate history, I would venture that any variations observed in it, whether accurate or badly recorded, are very likely little more than noise … an 0.01 percent in atmospheric CO2 content the cause of a ‘believed’ climate change event over a statistically meaningless time span ? … no, I prefer to remain entirely skeptical …
_____
Dr. Bob,
You are right of course in the length of time we have thermometer records, and even if we extend the record to include various proxies, the relative length of time for the paleoclimate record is relatively small compared to the age of the Earth, for example. But variations within the record, while appearing as “noise” only are such, based on what kind of signal you’re looking for. The climate is far from being a random walk, and that which is classified as “natural variation” could be seen as noise, only if that is not the signal we are interested in. Solar cycles ENSO, volcanic activity, etc. all can be seen as “noise” in the overall Milankovitch astronomical cycle, yet if we are looking for the ENSO signal over appropriate time spans, then it is no longer noise, and becomes the signal. The time span and what signal you’re looking for is of course the key to what you’ll call “noise” and what you’ll call signal. Some analysis (much criticized by some skeptics, naturally) would indicate that about 17 years is the length of time it takes to definitely see the anthropogenic greenhouse signal amidst the “noise” of natural variations.
{However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?} R. Gates,
how about this from D. Suzuki, about the 22 minute mark:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/The_Nature_of_Things/1242300217/ID=1678474875
Tallbloke said:
“If the ARGO data hasn’t been massaged too badly, then the signs are that large amounts of energy are leaving the ocean from deeper down than ARGO measures. This is the only logic which can account for simultaneously dropping sea levels and rising OHC. Either that or the refreezing of Greenland is worse than we thought…”
_____
I think this merits some discussion. For example, during the current La Nina we are (as is the case for most La Nina’s) seeing a rise in OHC, yet the dropping sea levels really appear as a short-term phenomenon related to a huge amount of water that was moved to the land during last winters La Nina. Australia, Asia, and South America all saw incredible flooding during the same period that La Nina was storing more net heat in the ocean. This makes some sense, as the area of the global ocean that La Nina stores heat (equatorial Pacific for example), is different than the area where the water is being evaporated and moved to land (far western Pacific and south western Atlantic). One would expect to see this water returned back to the oceans during ENSO neutral periods, and that over the long-term, OHC and ocean levels will continue their parallel rise.
Tallbloke sed:
What are your thoughts on how ARGO buoys might be missing all this deep heat as it moves up through the monitored layers? If they can find it going down it seems they should surely find it going up. This has been puzzling me. WUWT?
Rebuilding a computer is a weekend off?!
Did Increasing Solar Activity Drive 20th-Century Global Warming?
Volume 9, Number 29: 19 July 2006
——————————————————————————–
Throughout the 1980s and 90s, one of us (SBI) published several papers wherein he analyzed a number of what he called “natural experiments” in a multifaceted quest to quantify earth’s near-surface air temperature response to perturbations of the planet’s surface radiative balance (Idso, 1998). Subsequently, Nir J. Shaviv of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Racah Institute of Physics took up the identical challenge, similarly deriving a number of pertinent results (Shaviv, 2005).
Knowing that variations in solar activity correlate closely with climatic variations, but that climatic changes attributable to changes in solar activity are much larger than can be explained by changes in solar irradiance, Shaviv realized that an amplifier of some sort must be involved in the solar/climate relationship. What he and many other researchers have suggested, in this regard, is that when solar activity increases and the weak magnetic field that is carried by the solar wind intensifies (providing more shielding of the earth from low-energy galactic cosmic rays), there is a reduction in cosmic ray-induced ion production in the lower atmosphere that results in the creation of fewer condensation nuclei there and, hence, less low-level cloud cover, which allows more solar radiation to impinge upon the earth, increasing surface air temperature (and vice versa throughout).
Shaviv next identified six periods of earth’s history (the entire Phanerozoic, the Cretaceous, the Eocene, the Last Glacial Maximum, the 20th century, and the eleven-year solar cycle as manifest over the last three centuries) for which he was able to derive reasonably sound estimates of different time-scale changes in radiative forcing, temperature and cosmic ray flux. From these sets of data he derived probability distribution functions of whole-earth temperature sensitivity to radiative forcing for each of the six time periods and combined them to obtain a mean planetary temperature sensitivity to radiative forcing of 0.28�C per Wm-2. Then, noting that the IPCC (2001) suggested that the increase in anthropogenic radiative forcing over the 20th century was about 0.5 Wm-2, Shaviv calculated that the anthropogenic-induced warming of the globe over this period was approximately 0.14�C (0.5 Wm-2 x 0.28�C per Wm-2). This result harmonizes perfectly with the temperature increase (0.10�C) that was calculated by Idso (1998) to be due solely to the 20th-century increase in the air’s CO2 concentration (75 ppm), which would have been essentially indistinguishable from Shaviv’s result if the warming contributions of the 20th-century concentration increases of all greenhouse gases had been included in the calculation.
Next, based on information that indicated a solar activity-induced increase in radiative forcing of 1.3 Wm-2 over the 20th century (by way of cosmic ray flux reduction), plus the work of others (Hoyt and Schatten, 1993; Lean et al., 1995; Solanki and Fligge, 1998) that indicated a globally-averaged solar luminosity increase of approximately 0.4 Wm-2 over the same period, Shaviv calculated an overall and ultimately solar activity-induced warming of 0.47�C (1.7 Wm-2 x 0.28�C per Wm-2) over the 20th century. Added to the 0.14�C of anthropogenic-induced warming, the calculated total warming of the 20th century thus came to 0.61�C, which was noted by Shaviv to be very close to the 0.57�C temperature increase that was said by the IPCC to have been observed over the past century. Consequently, both Shaviv’s and Idso’s analyses, which mesh well with real-world data of both the recent and distant past, suggest that only 15-20% (0.10�C/0.57�C) of the observed warming of the 20th-century can be attributed to the concomitant rise in the air’s CO2 content.
In light of these real-world-based observations, plus the multitude of studies that indicate most climate changes of the past were clearly associated with changes in solar activity (see Solar Effects [“] in our Subject Index), the case for anthropogenic CO2 emissions playing anything more than a minor role in contemporary global warming would appear to be fading fast.
Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
References
Hoyt, D.V. and Schatten, K.H. 1993. A discussion of plausible solar irradiance variations, 1700-1992. Journal of Geophysical Research 98: 18,895-18,906.
Idso, S.B. 1998. CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic’s view of potential climate change. Climate Research 10: 69-82.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2001. Climate Change 2001. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA.
Lean, J., Beer, J. and Bradley, R. 1995. Reconstruction of solar irradiance since 1610 – Implications for climate change. Geophysical Research Letters 22:3195-3198.
Shaviv, N.J. 2005. On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget. Journal of Geophysical Research 110: 10.1029/2004JA010866.
Solanki, S.K. and Fligge, M. 1998. Solar irradiance since 1874 revisited. Geophysical Research Letters 25: 341-344.
Don’t feed the trolls .. Miller et al, you know who I mean!
As another warmist renegade on this site, take it easy Anthony, chill out and move to Apple Macs. We may not agree on some things , but we appreciate good debate and the enlightenment you facilitate.
Ohhh….the next counter we should be watching…is the facebook one. It’s up to 3400+. I think it was around 3000 when I ‘liked’ it or friended it or what ever Mark Zuckerberg says we sez we say…or something…anyway…
Everyone should ‘like’ Anthony! Fer real!
Even if you have to set up a stupid fake facebook, just to ‘like’ him…or figure out how to ‘like’ him…privately or something…in case “you are afraid to come out of the closet”…sorry shamless Southpark plug…grrr…spell check strikes yet again on this thread…Mann, funny how that happens sometimes…except when it isn’t.
edbarbar says:
January 7, 2012 at 1:41 pm
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a Winner!
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
==============================
sucker bait……….
Gates, for the most part skeptics do not think for one minute that we know enough about any of it….to explain it….and certainly don’t believe we can design computer games to predict anything.
The fact that the computer games do not recognize natural variability…..says the computer games do not know if it’s CO2? clouds? winds? sun? elephant farts?…..total fail
What we are left with is spending a lot of money on computer games that do what any child can do….extend a trend
…if this trend continues
I would personally like to congratulate R. Gates on overcoming his personal cognitive dissonance and admitting to himself and the world that he is 100% warmist rather that the 75% warmist 25% skeptic that he claimed to be for so long.
As you continue on your personal journey of self discovery R. Gates, perhaps you will learn enough physics to overcome that other case of cognitive dissonance you display so proudly.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 2:48 pm
====================
Weather is not climate, try as one might.
Heat does not place ice on continents.
Grasping at straws does not prevent drowning.
dp says:
January 7, 2012 at 2:54 pm
Tallbloke sed:
If the ARGO data hasn’t been massaged too badly, then the signs are that large amounts of energy are leaving the ocean from deeper down than ARGO measures.
What are your thoughts on how ARGO buoys might be missing all this deep heat as it moves up through the monitored layers? If they can find it going down it seems they should surely find it going up. This has been puzzling me. WUWT?
Have they been missing it? I thought gates was telling us OHC in the measured levels had been rising the last two years. I’m not sure I buy his floods as a reason for sea level fall though. Six mm of world ocean is equivalent to a couple of thousand cubic kilometers of water IIRC.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 2:48 pm
One would expect to see this water returned back to the oceans during ENSO neutral periods, and that over the long-term, OHC and ocean levels will continue their parallel rise.
One would expect that, you. The rest of us expect the unexpected.
Eve Stevens,
Thanks for that info. I’d be curious to see if data on the that solar/climate study was broken down into periods of the 20th Century such as 1900-1950 and 1950-2000, to see if there is a change in the breakdown between the influence of solar and anthropogenic GHG’s. As CO2 has increased dramatically since 1950, I would expect its relative influence versus solar to have increased as well.
Tallbloke:
The floods were one way that the AGW folks were trying to eqaulize the slowing down of sea level rise.
What they failed at is that the normal traverse of water from land to ocean is approx 4.2 months world wide.
One of the longest systems in the world is the Missouri River/Mississippi River system. It has been at normal levels for months now after epic floods this spring.
I am sure there are other areas of the world that are now also dry. Central Plains of the USA/Canada. Urkrane in Europe…just to name a few.
The retained water on land theory doesn’t cut it when dealing with reality.
The OHC has not risen, and in fact looks flat with a negative bias. The XBT data had such wide error bars that nothing of definitive value could be assertained there. Step jump in 2003 when swithcing to ARGO buoys…..and flat since they became predominant.
All in all, the slowing of the rise of sea level is indicative of a cooling ocean. This confirms the slowing down of the sun, as we all know that SW radiation pentrates the oceans, but LWR doesn’t…ok….2 or 3 microns, but evaporation pretty much takes care of any heat.
Warmists spawn new generation.
DirkH says:
January 7, 2012 at 3:57 pm
“Warmists spawn new generation.”
If you’re an American and you have a third grade schoolkid in a public school, you might want to check whether “Kid Pan Alley” activists infiltrate your school. They pretend to “let the kids write a song” which will then turn out to be a warmist or an OWS class warfare song.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
The weather changes day to day without any change in Solar activity. How does one explain this?
Anthony,
Congrats on the excellent statistics! I’ve been here since 2008 so quite a few thousand of your page views are mine 🙂
Regarding the computer rebuild, I agree, it takes time. I just tried to restore an oldish computer with a Windows XP recovery partition, thiking it should work (that is what recovery partitions are for, right?). Wrong, it didn’t even manage to get the graphics card driver to work. 4 bits per pixel is not much…. and don’t even mention the wireless card. Then I tried a Linux LiveCD (Kubuntu), and half an hour later I was browsing the net. Everything just worked.
Thanks for all your efforts, a rest is well deserved!
Tallbloke, you may not “buy it”, but the extra rainfall coupled with the strong La Nina is the mainstream explanation of the short term sea level fall, as reported (though certainly not invented) here:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-fall-2010-basic.htm
tallbloke says:
January 7, 2012 at 3:43 pm
I’m not sure I buy his floods as a reason for sea level fall though. Six mm of world ocean is equivalent to a couple of thousand cubic kilometers of water IIRC.
======================================================
360 km³ of water will raise the oceans 1 mm X 6 mm = 2160 km³
..It’s hiding in the deep ocean with the missing heat and the unprecedented droughts
Tallbloke said:
“Have they been missing it? I thought gates was telling us OHC in the measured levels had been rising the last two years. I’m not sure I buy his floods as a reason for sea level fall though. Six mm of world ocean is equivalent to a couple of thousand cubic kilometers of water IIRC.”
______
I would never expect you to buy anything I said without some research. All that missing water from the oceans wasn’t due to thermal contraction, and it certainly didn’t go to building up the continental glacial mass of Greenland or Antarctica. Where was the “missing” ocean water?
Fortunately, the Grace satellite data shows us quite nicely that it went mostly to the continents of Australia, South America, Asia, and the far North American continent:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-262
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/grace/earth20110823b-full.jpg
Easily enough water was dumped in these regions to account for the 6mm ocean drop, as the Grace data clearly show. Usually most of the water evaporated from the oceans falls back on the ocean itself, but during La Nina periods, weather patterns often drop more of it on land. Of course, as this water drains back to the oceans, the ocean level goes back up, which is exactly what the latest reading shows. After the dip of 2010 into early 2011, there has been a rebound as some of that water has already drained back into the oceans:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Does anyone have an estimate of how much heat was added to the troposphere by popping off thousands of nuclear devices between 1945 and 1998?
[REPLY: Atmospheric tests may have numbered less than 1000. Start here. -REP]
ferd berple says:
January 7, 2012 at 4:03 pm
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
The weather changes day to day without any change in Solar activity. How does one explain this?
_____
Daily weather patterns (except for diurnal changes) can be considered “noise” to the longer-term solar changes, just as the longer-term solar changes can be considered “noise” to the very long-term Milankovitch cycles.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 4:16 pm
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Ah, duelling sea level graphs. What fun.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TJRV2_iLHUg/TrZDLi9qcEI/AAAAAAAAB_0/eog1N-_P_gk/s1600/Searise.gif
Camburn says:
January 7, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Tallbloke:
The floods were one way that the AGW folks were trying to eqaulize the slowing down of sea level rise.
What they failed at is that the normal traverse of water from land to ocean is approx 4.2 months world wide.
____
Do you not believe the Grace satellite data, or is this one more corruption brought about by the evil Dr. Hansen? Interestingly, the 4.2 months lag is about the time lag we’ve seen between when the the ocean levels were hitting a short-term bottom in early 2011, and when they started rebounding significantly in later 2011. Seems to confirm that the Grace satellite data and the ocean level data probably had it about right. All that “missing” water went to the continents and then began draining back. Give me a scientific reason to doubt this…
Camburn says:
January 7, 2012 at 3:55 pm
The OHC has not risen, and in fact looks flat with a negative bias.
I’ve published a series of graphs made using the Argo viewer. The oceans of the world from 70N-70S, down to 2000 meters. Have a look for yourself (check out the next/prev buttons at the top)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/57706237@N05/6615701073/in/photostream/lightbox/
There is no trend in the Argo data beyond that one would get from reading tea leaves. The only OHC increase I’ve heard of is that channeled by Trenberth and Hansen. By subtracting Argo from the Climate Model Oracles, they have determined that the deep oceans are warming.
The fact that the satellites confirm that the deep oceans are not warming, because sea levels are not rising, well that just proves that the satellites are wrong. The climate models cannot be wrong because they rely on computers and computers do not make mistakes.
“R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?”
1980 is when anthropogenic CO2 started to rise. See easy to answer. Wot? It started to rise many years before then? No surely can’t be true. Oh there must be a delay mechanism. Maybe the CO2 has to practise catching and returning those nasty little photons for several years before it becomes proficient enough to make a difference.
Plot lost. Reboot. Reboot…
If there is someone here who can speak from an expert level on the difference between the two sea-level graphs that Tallbloke has presented, please post something.
Note: Saying Nasa, CU, Hansen, Trenberth, etc. etc. etc., are lying is not going to hack it. I’d really like an experts opinion.
BTW, the CET temp has dramatically dropped these five years or so:
http://junksciencearchive.com/MSU_Temps/HadCET_an.html
Tthe GISS temp has dropped by as much as 0.5 degC from Nov. to Dec. 2011:
http://junksciencearchive.com/MSU_Temps/MSUvsGISTEMP.html
And now GISS is lower than UAH! Is this real??
tokyoboy,
Odd that you would stop at 2009 with CET, as 2011 saw the 2nd warmest year on instrument record for Great Britain. MIght want to update your junksciencearchive data…
Have a pleasant rebuild Mr Watts. I find that those go better with beer instead of champagne but up to you. Congrats on the milestone.
Mr Gates: I would first need to know your data sources as a lot have been “homonginized” or “adjusted” in very arbitrary ways.
There is nothing unusual about the 1980 to present climate. Check this out for a bit of perspective:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data/
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 4:35 pm
“If there is someone here who can speak from an expert level on the difference between the two sea-level graphs that Tallbloke has presented, please post something.
Note: Saying Nasa, CU, Hansen, Trenberth, etc. etc. etc., are lying is not going to hack it. I’d really like an experts opinion.”
Nils-Axel Mörner about Jason/TOPEX
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2011/Winter-2010/Morner.pdf
But don’t ask me why they haven’t corrupted Envisat the same way, after all, it’s an EU satellite. Maybe a Kommissar asleep at the wheel.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 4:35 pm
If there is someone here who can speak from an expert level on the difference between the two sea-level graphs that Tallbloke has presented, please post something.
I’d really like an experts opinion.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/sea-level-scare-stories-simply-scandalous/
“In 2003 the satellite altimetry record was mysteriously tilted upwards to imply a sudden sea level rise rate of 2.3mm per year. When I criticised this dishonest adjustment at a global warming conference in Moscow, a British member of the IPCC delegation admitted in public the reason for this new calibration: ‘We had to do so, otherwise there would be no trend.’”
Out of the mouth’s of IPCC experts…
Ken Coffman says:
January 7, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Hi Ken
On another thread I tried to get a response from commentors to a connundrum I have (to no avail so far), maybe you could oblige (or any one else)
In order to keep heat from penetrating the space shuttle nose cone, the inside of the cone and various instruments housed therein are painted/covered with low emissivity substance, usually gold.
http://contrails.iit.edu/DigitalCollection/1960/WADDTR60-773article14.pdf
For instance, if I have a box with an internal heater and I wish that box to retain the heat where it is, I would paint the box inside and out with low emissivity paint (LEP).
Contrastingly, if I wanted the inside of the box as cool as possible for as long as possible, I would paint the box with high emissivity paint (HEP).
Here is another link about heat transfer
http://www.energyideas.org/documents/factsheets/PTR/HeatTransfer.pdf
Here is the conundrum:-
According to the GH Theory, the atmosphere is heated FROM THE INSIDE by the surface. Imagine the atmosphere as a box with the earth surface as the heater.
If I want to keep the inside of the box as cool as possible, I would “paint” the box with HEP. But since I can’t paint the atmosphere, the next best thing I could do is to infuse the atmosphere with High Emissivity gas molecules……CO2
What is wrong with the above?
thnx in advance
“”[Reply] I reach more people via my blog than I would via a paywall. TB – mod””
You will never appreciate just how much dopey lay people like myself appreciate your efforts in global education of the climate paradox.
“R. Gates says: January 7, 2012 at 4:42 pm
tokyoboy, Odd that you would stop at 2009 with CET,…”
Sorry but I don’t think the end year is 2009. It appears to be 2011, from the update date, see bottom right.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Daily weather patterns (except for diurnal changes) can be considered “noise” to the longer-term solar changes, just as the longer-term solar changes can be considered “noise” to the very long-term Milankovitch cycles.
Exactly my point. Climatic changes on a scale of 1000 years are simply noise in the 100,000 year scale. To humans with our relatively short lifespans in climatic terms, what we see as climate change is simply noise in the longer climate signal.
As our paleo records have improved in resolution we now know that there is nothing unusual about the past 50 years in climatic terms. The earth has been warmer within the past 10,000 years, and has experienced much more rapid changes in temperature.
R Gates@4:29PM
1. I didn’t know that Dr. Hansen was evil. Can you confirm this?
2. 4.2 months has been the accepted lag time for water basin recycle since I was in college..and that was a long time ago.
3. Grace data. I have not researched Grace for some time. I know there were problems with its data concerning Antarctica. There was a paper published on this that I posted at SkS once. I hope that you read it. As far as recent data, I won’t dispute nor confirm it. Burned once……won’t be burned again.
4. Envisat data covers more of the world than the Colorado site.
5. Precipitation patterns in the NH, where most water is stored because it has the most land mass, have been below normal levels for over 5 months. During the summer, the water flows easily and is not locked by ice etc. The NH winter so far has been one of very little snow on average in the NH and one of less than average precip in the SH as well.
6. There has now been more than ample time for the precip fallen during sping in the NH to have flowed back to the oceans. The sea level has not recovered, which indicates there is a reason that it hasn’t.
7. This is something that can be measured/observed on a short time span. Sea level recovery has not been apparant by either Evistat nor Colorado, hence the volume of water has to have shrunk.
8. We all know that water flow from Greenland has increased. Altho, in the mean mass, the volume while up, is not a large volume. Antartic Ice Volume, in your opinion, has gone down. Yet, the oceans are not reflecting the increase in water from said volume.
Don’t know if this is scientific enough for you, but it is something observed.
Ferd Burple said:
“The fact that the satellites confirm that the deep oceans are not warming…”
_____
Some amazing satellites, for sure, seeing down 2000, 3000, 4000 meters and more.
Evaporation is a far more effective way of removing water volume than thermal contraction, and as the Grace satellite data showed, that’s exactly what happend during the 2010-2011 La Nina.
Gates: consider this. To measure the sea surface to within a few mm using satellites, you need to know where the satellites are in space, to within a few mm.
Have a think about it.
Then think some more.
Then read this:
http://www.john-daly.com/altimetry/topex.htm
“R. Gates says: January 7, 2012 at 4:42 pm
tokyoboy, Odd that you would stop at 2009 with CET,…”
The numerical data says the end year for the graph was 2010, not 2011.
As you say, the 2011 temp is much higher than 2010 (sorry…..).
Envisat sea level with no adjustments………
http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ScreenHunter_57-Dec.-07-07.45.jpg
“Camburn says:
January 7, 2012 at 4:52 pm 8. We all know that water flow from Greenland has increased. Altho, in the mean mass, the volume while up, is not a large volume. Antartic Ice Volume, in your opinion, has gone down. Yet, the oceans are not reflecting the increase in water from said volume.”
Here is some recent anecdotal evidence suggesting Antarctic Ice volume has gone up.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/douglas-mawson-centenary-trip-to-antarctica-frozen-as-cold-reality-sets-in/story-e6frg8y6-1226227156367
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 4:35 pm
I’d really like an experts opinion.
If sea levels were indeed rising, then the marine charts of the world would have on them a datum showing the correction. It is as simple as that. They have datum on every other change that might make them inaccurate. This is clear proof that sea level change is not occurring, from the foremost experts on earth. The ocean cartographers.
I spent nearly 20 years sailing the Pacific and Indian Oceans on a 40 foot sailboat. We visited hundreds of remote coral atolls. Most of our charts were copies of British Admiralty Charts, drawn 150-250 years ago, drawn by the likes of Cook, Bligh, Vancouver, Flinders, etc. These areas have never been resurveyed as they are too remote.
If there has been any significant sea level rise over the past 150-250 years, it would be apparent in the charts. Unlike modern scientists, these charts were drawn by men whose very lives depended on getting the measurements right.
Cooking the sea level data……….
http://www.real-science.com/cooking-sea-level-data
Hmmm, the latest ESA sea-level data that I can find seems to confirm the CU sea-level data. We had a fall in sea-level during the 2010-2011 La Nina (as Grace data confirmed a lot of that water went onto the continents), and then we have had a recovery of some of that sea-level in late 2011 as that at least some of that water has drained back to the oceans:
Eurpean data:
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_EN_Global_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.gif
Versus CU data:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Now, we would not expect all of the water to drain back, as some would be soaked into the ground in areas that have experienced drought prior to the big rains of 2010-2011, such as in Australia.
And the latest ocean heat content shows that once more, during the recent La Nina, the oceans are once more storing heat:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
From a scientific standpoint, I can’t see any conflict in any of this data. It all seems to make sense.
Being an open thread I would like to add my two cents worth. The closed shop of the hockey team and the abuse of science for personal and political gain has been outed.
We can thank them for their narrow view and corruption of science, as it has led to a plethora
of real scientific endeavour and recent discoveries are uncovering many of the mysteries of climate.
This rush of real science will give us a real picture of planetary climate, thus forever abolishing
the carpet baggers who’s alarmism frightened gullible MSM and politicians into expensive stupidity.
People like R.GATES et al have done the world a favour as it prods people in the direction of real science.
AGW will die a death of a thousand cuts as more and more diligent scientists release their findings. The internet has been the only source of dissent as the cabal controlled information,
the next global problem for freedom will be keeping the internet free of political control.
One can only hope that the lessons learned in climate science will spread to other disciplines
of science that allow no dissent from the consensus view.
An old proverb that measures the hockey team rather well.
“What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive” Thank you to all here whom are untangling the web.
Baa Humbug says:
January 7, 2012 at 4:45 pm
“Here is the conundrum:-
According to the GH Theory, the atmosphere is heated FROM THE INSIDE by the surface. Imagine the atmosphere as a box with the earth surface as the heater.
If I want to keep the inside of the box as cool as possible, I would “paint” the box with HEP. But since I can’t paint the atmosphere, the next best thing I could do is to infuse the atmosphere with High Emissivity gas molecules……CO2
What is wrong with the above?”
Gases don’t radiate like blackbodies. They absorb and emit only in their characteristic absorption lines. Absorption and Emission are equal under local thermal equilibrium.
However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
Define “solar activity”.
Simply put, there has only been serious study of the sun and it’s various kinds of activity done or even been possible for a few decades now, since we have been able to measure all that it is doing, directly (solar wind, UV changes, magnetism etc) and indirectly (changes in cosmic rays). During that time, there has been no significant change in “solar activity”. By significant, I mean on the order of magnitude of those during the little ice age and the Maunder and Dalton minimums. The small changes seen since 1980 hardly count as ‘solar activity”.
However, there is significant and growing evidence that, in the next solar cycle, we will indeed see another minimum. Then you will see actual “solar activity. Until then, you haven’t really seen it.
Wait a few years here, and, if the information is not censored completely by then to prevent you from finding out, you will know. If it is, you will still know, because it will be cold.
“In 2003 the satellite altimetry record was mysteriously tilted upwards to imply a sudden sea level rise rate of 2.3mm per year.”
That is because the land was discovered to be rising at 2.3mm per year.
Of course it is a scientific fraud, because it makes the oceans appear to be rising when in fact they are simply keeping pace with the rising land. In the same time the oceans rise 1 meter, the land will also rise 1 meter.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:10 pm
“Hmmm, the latest ESA sea-level data that I can find seems to confirm the CU sea-level data. We had a fall in sea-level during the 2010-2011 La Nina (as Grace data confirmed a lot of that water went onto the continents), and then we have had a recovery of some of that sea-level in late 2011 as that at least some of that water has drained back to the oceans:
Eurpean data:
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_EN_Global_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.gif
Versus CU data:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
”
Looks like you’re comparing non-seasonally adjusted Envisat data with seasonally adjusted CU data. As the Envisat gif has no legend I can’t tell for sure but that’s how it looks like.
“R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 4:54 pm
Some amazing satellites, for sure, seeing down 2000, 3000, 4000 meters and more.
Evaporation is a far more effective way of removing water volume than thermal contraction, and as the Grace satellite data showed, that’s exactly what happened during the 2010-2011 La Nina.”
All whole lotta water has disappeared, much more than would be needed to fill aquifers from a 10 year drought.
Precipitation occurs in volumes to lower sea levels whilst the oceans are thermally expanding and experiencing deep ocean warming.
Is this the current (ever changing) AGW theory?
Late to the party, as usual…
But there was this:
R. Gates says (January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am)
“…Okay, I’m a well known warmist here on WUWT, but I’m open to learning…”
Step one – admission that you have a problem.
“…I’m fairly well convinced that prior to the massive influx of anthropogenic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, that solar fluctuations caused most of the short-term (i.e. non-Milankovtich) fluctuations in climate. These fluctuations can be anywhere in length from sunspot cycles to much longer Bond Event (i.e. around 1500 year) cycles…”
So before the “massive influx of anthropogenic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”, there were natural causes to weather and climate changes. Agreed – we’ve been saying that for years.
“…However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity (as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?…”
In about the same way that climate scientist have explained the divergence between global temperatures and proxy results. Wait – they ignore that.
But maybe you’ll answer a question – can you mention exactly when (month/day/year) that GHG’s became the main driver of temperatures (overriding natural drivers)? For example, if there were massive floods in Queensland Australia in the 1800’s, and in the 2000’s, which was was driven by CO2, and which one by natural causes?
To paraphrase an old saying: “Those who ignore extreme weather in the past are doomed to say that current extreme weather is unprecedented”.
DirkH says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:16 pm
What is wrong with the above?”
Fill a box with CO2 and heat it with IR and it will warm faster than air. Fill a box with moist air and it will warm slower than a box of dry air when heated with IR. The opposite of CO2.
We know that water vapor warms the atmosphere due to GHG effect, so it must be true that CO2 is having the opposite effect.
Latitude says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:08 pm
Cooking the sea level data……….
http://www.real-science.com/cooking-sea-level-data
______
So this graph, that Tallbloke presented (note: I don’t blame him for the content of the graph) is a an extreme case of the Picking of Cherries:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TJRV2_iLHUg/TrZDLi9qcEI/AAAAAAAAB_0/eog1N-_P_gk/s1600/Searise.gif
Try it some time. It’s better than ***.
And when you get bored with that, you can start sampling different flavors of Linux.
..and more cooking the sea level, ring of fire, gravity
and why is all the satellite sea level rise above Australia where gravity is pulling the satellites down
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/discussion-so-far/
R Gates, our welcomed devil’s advocate:
You forget the most important part of the controversy.
We discuss the significance of tenths of a degree (!) statistics
as if it had anything to do with the last thirty years of apocalyptic alarmism,
with Al Gore’s ludicrous movie, and the relentless BigGovt tax push.
Can’t you smell the stench of self-interested rent-seeking?
Can you really tell me that you, as someone committed to Science,
are on the same side as the utterly corrupt Hansen, or Mann?
Do you really want all coal plants shut down right away?
Do you cuss out every SUV you see? I think not.
Surely, Mr. R, you don’t advocate economic lunacy.
What true scientist would?
Without prosperity, which collectivism always kills,
we couldn’t afford any Science.
One last thing, dear R:
If the Alarmists actually cared about ‘the planet’,
they wouldn’t be so rabidly opposed to geoengineering,
so much so that they shot down the harmless Stratus Project.
Only fear of the truth could motivate such fanaticism.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:25 pm
================
Gates I know you’re not a well puppy….but they agree
http://www.real-science.com/shock-news-sea-level-high-years
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:25 pm
“So this graph, that Tallbloke presented (note: I don’t blame him for the content of the graph) is a an extreme case of the Picking of Cherries:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TJRV2_iLHUg/TrZDLi9qcEI/AAAAAAAAB_0/eog1N-_P_gk/s1600/Searise.gif
”
No; it is the entire time series from Envisat. You can blame him for not doing a Mann and splicing tide gauges to satellite data; but you can’t blame him for the length of the Envisat measurement.
So my Open Thread question is, if sea levels are adjusted for glacial isostatic rebound, why is the corresponding sea level change from glacial melt not corrected for ??
DirkH says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:16 pm
Thanx Dirk.
Where on Earth can I find these “local thermal equilibrium” locations?
Also I understand that blackbodies are a theoretical concept only so they don’t exist in reality.
Similarly, various coatings used as high or low emissivity are better at some wavelengths and not in others, just like gasses.
I’m not sure how your response answers my conundrum.
ferd berple says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:25 pm
“Fill a box with CO2 and heat it with IR and it will warm faster than air.”
Has this ever been demonstrated? I don’t dispute that CO2 absorbs IR; but I hold that it instantly re-emits it. Any valid experimental setup should NOT use standard glass jars. CO2 is an IR fog.
Dirk H:@5:28
Tell me more about this seasonally adjusted sea level data?
As in, why in the world do they need to adjust the data for seasons? The tidal guages are not adjusted for seasons, they show what they show.
This is a new development that I was not aware off, but bears investigation.
Thank you in advance.
Anthony, as a frequent reader but rarely comments, enjoy your weekend. Now, about that comouter, I asked my investment adviser about it and he was clueless, but assured me he would investigate it.
Enjoy your weekend off, great site!
“”ferd berple says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Fill a box with CO2 and heat it with IR and it will warm faster than air. Fill a box with moist air and it will warm slower than a box of dry air when heated with IR. The opposite of CO2.
We know that water vapor warms the atmosphere due to GHG effect, so it must be true that CO2 is having the opposite effect.””
I filled 3 1ltr drink bottles, 1 x dry air, 1 x 1/2 water, 1 x Co2. With little stick thermos on each bottle, I warmed them by a radiator to the same temp.
Temp was lost first by the Co2, followed by the water, then the dry air (which took twice as long to cool as the Co2.
How many people know that when Envisat was launched, the first 22 passes showed sea levels falling…..and they didn’t believe it, so they fudged it
..and it was tuned/calibrated to match Jason 2, which was failing and the main reason for launching Envisat
Ever wonder why Envisat matched Jason 2 so closely….and even with all their “adjustments” it’s still drifting away……
Envisat RA2/MWR ocean data validation and cross-calibration activities. Yearly report 2008
NODC has not published an explanation for the large adjustment in OHC. Does anyone know why?
http://i41.tinypic.com/fwodfl.jpg
WHERE IS THE BOOK ON THE FACT THAT PALEOCLIMATE EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT delta-T LEADS delta-CO2?
I would love to have this book of scientific documentation to point AGW-Believers to….
THIS is simp,y one of the weak points in the AGW-skeptic briefing.
Who will help us remedy it?
No the real problem is doing the splicing in a way that isn’t readily apparent, and doing it when the apparent correlation between the two breaks down.
Baa Humbug says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:37 pm
“Where on Earth can I find these “local thermal equilibrium” locations?
Also I understand that blackbodies are a theoretical concept only so they don’t exist in reality.”
The stratosphere should be in LTE.
I don’t know how close you can come to a perfect blackbody but anything black is a good approximation. Just give something a good black paint job. You disable something from reflecting light so it has no choice but emitting IR to get rid of the excess energy.
Baa Humbug says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:37 pm
“I’m not sure how your response answers my conundrum.”
I was thinking about this “CO2 cools the atmosphere because O2 and N2 can’t radiate IR to space” – what would happen if Earth had no H2O and CO2 in the atmosphere? Would O2 and N2 heat up to 100,000 degress like the corona of the sun?
No; LWIR would leave the Earth unhindered because nothing in the atmosphere would stop it on its way to space.
Now when we add greenhouse gases, what they do is absorb LWIR photons, and re-radiate them, in equal measure upwards and downwards. The process repeats multiple times and in the end about half the photons leave to space, half come down to the surface again.
Meaning that now half of them come back down, that’s the greenhouse effect, explaining those 33 centigrade of warming.
When we add more CO2 it neither warms us more nor cools us more because the entire mechanism does not depend much on concentrations.Half of the LWIR leaves to space, half comes down. Without greenhouse gases, all would leave to space.
Good luck! I had to do it about six-months ago and if it wasn’t for my home server I would have been deep in doodoo. I had it all backed up thanks to WHS.
Best,
J,
Congratulations,
You have deserved your time-out!
R. Gates,
In truth, we don’t have to explain anything.
It’s your job to explain. You “planetary crisis, act NOW!” types have now had 23 years to make your case.
You fail at the most basic scientific level. This farce has only continued because of the money being poured into it to push an extreme political agenda.
Perhaps you can put together a guest post tackling the points – 10 + 4 from this item at Jo Nova’s.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/influential-people-are-getting-the-message-gina-rinehart-explains-the-science-of-climate-change/
Interstellar Bill:
Very poetic. And not being an “alarmist”, I haven’t the foggiest notion what they care about, but I am against the notion of geoengineering, as messing with complex systems existing on the edge of chaos is generally not a good idea. Stick your hand in the flow of water from your shower head and tell me where all the little droplets are going to wind up. This is akin to geoengineering the planet.
R. Gates, my answer to your original question (waaay back at the start) would just be:
1) ENSO and the other associated oceanic cycles
2) Little Ice Age rebound.
3) Computer model mis-calibration/hindcasting.
The pre-satellite surface measurements are (at best) a proxy. And the pre-surface-station proxies have – in the opinions of the scientists involved! – very wide error bars.
Being skeptical doesn’t require the assumption that “The Sun did it -all-!” The ENSO bits are regarded as “climate” when it’s convenient, and as “weather” when -that’s- convenient.
The most egregious aspect of Mann’s hockeystick isn’t the blade, it’s the shaft. His method will “flatten” any data in the ‘shaft’ portion while trying to fit the ‘blade’ portion. Fundamentally, it’s picking the set of trees that “best match” the 1900-1950 period, then assuming that those same trees (or other proxies) are the best at predicting the pre-1900 period. Repeating the process as needed to extend farther into the past. This is the million-monkeys-to-Shakespeare method. Sure you get a couple of promising starts – but there is -no- guarantee that they’re any better than random noise once you get -past- the start.
Once you recognize that paleoclimatology relies solely on -stressed- trees “right on the edge”, often ”right at the treeline” to manage to eliminate all other factors (precipitation, shelter, fertilization, etc.), you can reach the conundrum:
A tree can be a good proxy for -weather-, as minor shifts in temperature shift growing properties – and may well be the dominant effects. But when you switch to monitoring climate, you have to likewise assume climactic shifts!. Because the treelines -move- on hundred-year scales.
The claim is that “Global Warming is making it rain more!” (or less). Or shifting rain patterns. Well, wait a second. Shifting rainfall patterns will -change- which trees are the appropriate proxies for temperature. Because some trees will now be getting more water, and others less water. Which -will- change whether their growth is determined by temperature.
So there’s the fundamental assumption of paleoclimatology in millennial temperature reconstructions: There can be no climactic shifts, because they devastate the whole plan.
This is the entire reason “hide the decline!” was an issue. The exact same “best performer” trees determined by Mann et al don’t follow post-1960 temperatures very well at all. There -are- trees that track well, but they aren’t the same ones. Demonstrated by Mann’s -own- graduate student, using his own methods.
The -historians- have ample evidence of the Little Ice Age. The evidence is euro-centric. But observations by “The West” are in no way limited to Europe in this era. Expecting a continued rebound hardly seems outrageous.
And then there’s the calibration of the models. The satellite era is too short. So the so-called “instrumental period” is used. At the very least, the error bars on the instrumental period are over-confident. So there’s a lot of ‘hindcasting’ going on as the only way to test how a model works. But the long-term hindcasting runs into Mann’s flat stick. If everything is flat -> then “other factors” like the sun are irrelevant. The good correlation during the pre-2000 era leads to the “Ok, it -is- causation!” verdict. Ignoring the 1970 oceanic-cycle ‘low point’ that influences the steep 1970-2000 rise. Using exactly the same logic that cemented the “So it is causation!” verdict in the late-1990s for the period 2000-2010 would falsify it if applied today. But the logic is now “Oh, the oceanic cycles have depressed the temperature below the climactic signal!” I agree with that. But following through with exactly the same thought is that the oceanic cycles were -amplifying- the climactic signal during 1970-2000 period.
Thus, a periodic effect superimposed on a rising line. But a -more-slowly- rising line than than predicted by the models (since they were calibrated on an up-slope). (The modellers hate the term ‘calibration’ as well, but there -are- parameters to tweak wedged amongst the formulas, and they -do- get tweaked to attempt to agree with reality.)
The fundamental claim of the disaster scenarios is that Earth is “open-loop unstable” with respect to carbon dioxide. And that a long list of potential countervailing factors are minimal in effect (because of Mann’s stick). Shoving those two factors into the geologic-scale temperature/carbon dioxide estimates has lead to a lot of head-scratching, and very little in the way of celebratory papers.
Camburn says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:43 pm
“Tell me more about this seasonally adjusted sea level data?
As in, why in the world do they need to adjust the data for seasons? The tidal guages are not adjusted for seasons, they show what they show.”
I don’t know why they have to do it, I only saw those seasonally adjusted things, guessed that it must have something to do with NH snow cover or something…
See here.
Levitus S, Monterey GI, Boyer T (1997) Seasonal variability of
dynamic height and its Fourier analysis. NOAA NESDIS Atlas
15, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOA94/dyn.html
And apropos of absolutely nothing a jolly little ditty complete with its animation from the early 1960’s which British readers of a certain age will remember with affection.
Well a little levity seems appropriate the grand eight magnitudes.
Kindest Regards
Global Warming in Nome, Alaska.
“Fuel ship 190 miles away from iced-in Alaska city”
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9S4FN7O0&show_article=1
http://www.cataroo.com/cst_ROCKY.html for your consideration: times have changed…
“… the “Statehood for Moosylvania” campaign. Ward purchased a small obscure island in the Minnesota lake region and dubbed it “Moosylvania” like its cartoon counterpart. Then he had a van converted into a circus wagon with a calliope and a “Wossamatto U.” logo. Ward dressed up in an Admiral Nelson outfit and his publicist, Howard Brandy, dressed as Dudley Do-Right. They traveled the country and got 50,000 legitimate signatures on their petition for statehood. The stunt climaxed with Ward driving the van, calliope blaring onto the White House lawn. He arrived just as news of the Cuban Missile Crisis was breaking and armed guards escorted him off the White House premises.”
we have drifted far…
R. Gates, there are many people discussing what you posted, but I would like to ask you a question. This is a serious question. It is about the beginnings of this particular interglacial that we are in. It would appear that there were some massive glaciers covering much of parts of North America and Europe. It would also appear that some of those glaciers fairly quickly melted away, in most cases disappearing completely. By quickly, I am referring to the possibility that it happened within a short geologic time, perhaps much less than a hundred years. The question I have is: How did they melt so quickly? It would take an awful lot of energy (heat) to make that much ice go away so quickly (it appears that the oceans rose anywhere from 100 to 300 feet). Where did that much energy come from? And, as a follow-up question, why did the energy not continue, and finish melting all of the ice: Greenland, Polar ice, and Antarctic ice in particular. I’m not asking you to research this for me, but just to share any thoughts you may have on this odd phenomenon.
Just a congratulations for J.J.Watt, who had a magnificent interception to help the Houston Texans to win the playoff game today.
not related to Anthony Watts, but Anthony ought to consider adopting him
A congratulations to North Dakota….NCAA Div 1 FCS Champions!
Great game…..great folks.
Tallbloke says
This is the only logic which can account for simultaneously dropping sea levels and rising OHC.
———
I recollect a bunch of satellite measurements which put a lot of rain onto the continents over the last few years. Gravimetric measuremts perhaps.
R. Gates
“Stick your hand in the flow of water from your shower head and tell me where all the little droplets are going to wind up.”
In the drain.
Tallbloke says
Six mm of world ocean is equivalent to a couple of thousand cubic kilometers of water IIRC.
————-
Well it amounts to 12 mm on land. Obviously we don’t see 12mm of water everywhere, but I don’t have a feel for what this represents in terms of increased soil moisture and aquifer recharging.
Christian Bultmann says:
January 7, 2012 at 7:16 pm
“R. Gates
“Stick your hand in the flow of water from your shower head and tell me where all the little droplets are going to wind up.”
In the drain.”
Not if it’s the government’s hand.
(And geo-engineering would have to be the largest statist project ever.)
Orson Olson says:
“WHERE IS THE BOOK ON THE FACT THAT PALEOCLIMATE EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT delta-T LEADS delta-CO2?”
Orson, there are numerous graphs from both hemispheres showing that ΔT leads ΔCO2. Here is one, from the Vostok ice core record:
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yearslarge.gif
Ice cores from both hemispheres show the same thing: CO2 lags temperature. Typical lag time following temperature rises: 800 ±200 years.
R. Gates,
Good question. The divergence is partly overstaded (local warming, confirmation bias), but it’s likely a smaller part. The rest is explained by the thermal inertia of the ocean/ice system. The series of relatively strong cycles after the colder 19th century caused some warming, but much of the power of these cycles was spent on raising the energy of the oceans/ice. When oceans are already warmer and ice extent is less, two strong cycles (21 and 22) caused more warming much more easily. The SC23 was actually very weak, but it caused little to no cooling due to the high energy content of the oceans and little ice extent. The fit is surprisingly good, considering it’s only one factor – the sun cycle (or oscillation).
DirkH says:
January 7, 2012 at 6:22 pm
Sure but not all of the energy would be radiated out. What happens to the energy conducted from the surface to the N2 O2? As soon as N2 O2 warm up, they rise away from the surface but still retaining their energy. They are replaced at surface level by cooler N2 O2 from above.
At night the ground cools and so does the N2 O2 at ground level but the previously warmed N2 O2 molecules cannot descend down because they are warmer than the N2 O2 below (Temp inversion).
So no, the temp wouldn’t get to 100,000 but it would get close to whatever the highest surface temp is. (given enough time as conduction is a slow process)
So unless you can show that N2 O2 can conductively cool as quickly as they conductively warm, the mean temp would be higher than a no atmosphere situation because N2 O2 are Low Emissivity gasses.
Therefore, to cool the system quicker, we would need to introduce High Emissivity gasses.
Baa Humbug says:
January 7, 2012 at 7:26 pm
“As soon as N2 O2 warm up, they rise away from the surface but still retaining their energy. They are replaced at surface level by cooler N2 O2 from above.”
VERY good! I haven’t thought of that!
Camburn says
7. This is something that can be measured/observed on a short time span. Sea level recovery has not been apparant by either Evistat nor Colorado, hence the volume of water has to have shrunk.
————
Nit quite. Envisat is heading back to the long term trend.
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/news/ocean-indicators/mean-sea-level/
Tallbloke says
Gates: consider this. To measure the sea surface to within a few mm using satellites, you need to know where the satellites are in space, to within a few mm.
———–
But we known the satellites can pick up local variations in sea level due to air pressure, el niño etc., So maybe the people who run satellites and build instrumentation know a tad more than Daly.
LazyTeenager:
Envisat has a longggg way to go to get back to the long term trend.
You are clutching at a straw man here.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
“How do skeptics to AGW explain this?”
Natural variability, in a very poorly quantified, highly complex stochastic climate system.
Now, get your hand out of my pocket and pay for your own irrational concerns about an additional 80 ppm of plant food added to our CO2 starved atmosphere.
Warmist Regards!
MtK
Janice says:
January 7, 2012 at 7:01 pm
While your question to R. Gates seems well intentioned, I question the part where you say
“perhaps much less than a hundred years”
You use the phrase “massive glaciers” when it seems you mean ice sheets such as the Laurentide Ice Sheet rather than, say mountain valley glaciers. While some of the latter at low latitude and low elevation may have melted in less than 100 years (your term; I have no information), it seems that the Laurentide ice was with us for a long time. Perhaps you can provide more information with places and time frames.
LazyTeenager@7:42
I forgive you for being a young feller/woman who has not had the schooling to learn about error bars etc.
You can’t reduce the error bars of the results by ignoring the error bars of the placement of the collection device.
You are most kind to post on this blog so that us older folks can share our wisdom and knowledge with you, knowing that you are most certainly a receptive learner.
I hatre my computer – do you think you can come over and fix mine?
LOL
Am I being just a little too skeptical in suggesting that China might have an ulteria motive in anouncing their proposed $1.50 carbon abatement tax.
When one looks at the level of earnings they achieve with solar and wind generation componentry, it is very much in their interests to come up with a ‘me too’ moment, to provide encouragement to the ‘intellectual giants’ of Australia, the EU, etc.
China, must surely surmise the western world will at some stage regain a modicum of common sense – one can’t blame them for making the most of this madness while it lasts.
Msrkus says
I filled 3 1ltr drink bottles, 1 x dry air, 1 x 1/2 water, 1 x Co2. With little stick thermos on each bottle, I warmed them by a radiator to the same temp.
Temp was lost first by the Co2, followed by the water, then the dry air (which took twice as long to cool as the Co2.
———–
I don’t understand your experiment. It sounds like you had one bottle half filled with liquid water.
This experiment is not easy to do properly. There are complications that need to be addressed:
1. The plastic bottle may not allow IR radiation pass through its walls. Check the absorption spectrum of the PET (most likely).
2. check the bottle with the water in it is not producing a mini water cycle.
3. The thermal capacity of the thermometer may exceed that of the gas in the bottle.
And so on.
Regarding the question of Ice or Not Ice, see Robert Frost’s take on . . .
‘A Hillside Thaw’
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/robertfrost/12117
DirkH says
Has this ever been demonstrated? I don’t dispute that CO2 absorbs IR; but I hold that it instantly re-emits it. Any valid experimental setup should NOT use standard glass jars. CO2 is an IR fog.
———-
Almost right. I believe the CO2 absorbs the IR, but the collision rate with other gas molecules is much higher than the IR excited state lifetime, so that energy is transferred to the bath gas. A ground state CO2 then absorbs energy from the bath gas and re-emits the IR.
Things to check:
1. Lifetime of IR excited state
2. Time between collisions in gas.
3. Boltzmann intensity distribution of CO2 emission lines. This will be a direct measure of the temperature at which emission occurs. If the inferred temperature matches the actual air temperature then the energy of the original IR photon must have equilibrated with its environment.
If that all checks out the case is closed.
R. Gates
I am amazed when people professing to follow this site and some ability in reading graphs can still state:
However, there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
after studying this sequence of graphs provided kindly by Anthony .
In any part down the sliding to an ice age recent history to our times, there are ups and downs as large as the late twentieth century, and the observation can be made : what goes down will come up, albeit take its time to do so. Maybe sir, you should check your glasses.
Orson Olson says
I would love to have this book of scientific documentation to point AGW-Believers to….
THIS is simp,y one of the weak points in the AGW-skeptic briefing.
———
It won’t help you.
What you need is evidence that temperature is leading CO2 now. Or at least since some time before the industrial age.
Since there are feedback loops involved cause and effect become self referential and so both CO2 or ocean temperatures can be first causes depending on the circumstance.
The problems that arise from this particular debating point are:
1. A CO2 increase now implies a temperature increase 800 years ago. DirkH (I think) suggested the MWP to account for that, but the timing is not quite right.
2. The previous interglacials had the ocean out gassed at 300pm but we are now at 390ppm and still rising.
So great little debating point but a little lame as far as the truth is concerned.
DirkH – “Meaning that now half of them come back down, that’s the greenhouse effect, explaining those 33 centigrade of warming. ”
I am assuming you are referring to the difference between the 255 K S-B temp and the actual 288 K temperature. Convection accounts for the lions share of heating the atmosphere and LWR through CO2 only accounts for a tiny portion of atmospheric heating.
In your example CO2 LW radiation doesn’t even heat the atmosphere at all (if half is going out to space and half is going back to the surface).
Convection is the primary method for heating the atmosphere and averaging out the temperature over the globe.
ferd berple says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:08 pm:
I spent nearly 20 years sailing the Pacific and Indian Oceans on a 40 foot sailboat. We visited hundreds of remote coral atolls. Most of our charts were copies of British Admiralty Charts, drawn 150-250 years ago, drawn by the likes of Cook, Bligh, Vancouver, Flinders, etc. These areas have never been resurveyed as they are too remote.
If there has been any significant sea level rise over the past 150-250 years, it would be apparent in the charts.
Yes, it is worth visiting Google Earth and comparing some of Cooks Charts which can be found on the internet such as Botany Bay Australia and Cook Strait in New Zealand and seeing how remarkably similar they. You do have to make some allowances for such things as estuary silting and reclaiming of land and of course the rudimentary equipment that Cook was using. For instance he did miss Wellington Harbour on his chart of Cook Strait but he also missed Sydney Harbour which was just up the road after “discovering” Australia.
But if we get as much coastline change as you can see from these comparisons from sea level rises in the next 250 years I do not think our grandchildren’s grandchildren have much to worry about.
I recall that there was also a study done some-where comparing the old explorers’ records of observed weather to determine whether extreme events have also changed that much:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1218474/How-Captain-Cooks-ship-logs-helping-scientists-chart-global-climate-change.html
Interestingly not long before Capt Cook landed in Botany Bay and “found” Australia he observed “three water spouts at once, two were between us and the shore and one at some distance upon our larboard quarter.”
When seen these days naturally they are put down to yet another sign of global warming:
Google – Massive Waterspouts Form Off Australia Coast (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/waterspouts-2011-australia-video_n_86...
30 May 2011 – Unbelievable waterspouts off Australian coast – good video …. Global warming must be to blame for these water spouts, as no one has seen one in fifty years. …
Very strange that Capt Cook managed to see three in exactly the same place in 1770.
Baa Humbug;
Here is the conundrum:-
According to the GH Theory, the atmosphere is heated FROM THE INSIDE by the surface. Imagine the atmosphere as a box with the earth surface as the heater.
If I want to keep the inside of the box as cool as possible, I would “paint” the box with HEP. But since I can’t paint the atmosphere, the next best thing I could do is to infuse the atmosphere with High Emissivity gas molecules……CO2
What is wrong with the above?>>>
I’m not arguing the point you are trying to make, I think it very possible that CO2 may wind up proving to have a cooling effect when all is said and done. That said, your analogy doesn’t work very well because CO2 doesn’t exist in the atmosphere as a thin layer. It exists in a laer thousands of feet thick.
On top of that, the effects of CO2 change with altitude and with latitude. Why? Glad you asked.
At sea level in the tropics, water vapour can hit on the order of 40,000 parts per million (ppm). Since the absorption spectrum of water vapour and CO2 overlap, the effects of CO2 are pretty much zippo compared to water vapour. True, CO2 is a more efficient absorber of LW than water vapour, but when you’re outnumbered 40,000 to 400, muskets beat machine guns every time. As you rise in altitude however, or in latitude, temperatures fall. By the time you get to temps like 0 degrees C or colder, water vapour concentrations fall to near zero. Hence the expression, sure itz forty below, but itz a dry cold…
So, if you want CO2 to be your coat of paint, you have to figure out how to model the effects of a coat of paint that is (literaly) mostly air, and literaly, thicker in some places than in others. THEN you have to figure in the fact that in the latitudes that are cold (and hence permit CO2 to dominate over water vapour) there’s WAY less LW to absorb and re-radiate in the first place.
But if you can figure out how to model all those factors first, the rest ought to be simple by comparison. By simple of course, I’m thinking somewhere on the order of a 1000+ core compute cluster and less than a hundred thousand lines of code. Can’t help you with the code, but I do sell compute clusters….
Alan S. Blue,
Thank you kindly for your lengthy comments. Much to think about…
Edim,
Interesting comments, and certainly there is great thermal momentum in the oceans, yet ocean heat content continues to rise, even during the current very weak solar cycle 24. I find the curious and it leads me to looking for the cause…
Lazy says:
“What you need is evidence that temperature is leading CO2 now.”
Empirical evidence shows that Temperature leads CO2 no matter what time scale is used. Here is a chart showing that CO2 lags Temperature by 5 months.
The empirical record shows conclusively that CO2 lags Temperature on all time scales. That deconstructs the entire CO2=CAGW meme. But then, that debunked conjecture was always bullshit.
a jones says:
January 7, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Brilliant.
Here’s another Bernard Cribbins classic.
Baa Humbug says
As soon as N2 O2 warm up, they rise away from the surface but still retaining their energy. They are replaced at surface level by cooler N2 O2 from above.
———-
Interesting question. The development of a thermal inversion like this would reverse the temperature distribution we normally see, due to the adiabatic expansion and compression arising from convection.
Energy could only radiate to space from the surface. So the surface would be cold but the top-of-atmosphere hot. Weird but plausible.
Camburn says:
January 7, 2012 at 7:54 pm
LazyTeenager:
Envisat has a longggg way to go to get back to the long term trend.
You are clutching at a straw man here.
———–
Maybe but it’s currently not that far from 2008-2009 levels by my eyeball.
I’ll not make to much of it because I don’t believe in over interpreting squiggles at the end of graphs.
This peom always brings shivers to my spine. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen. He was a First World War soldier and he wrote this after the death of a friend after a mustard gas attack.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 – March, 1918
R. Gates, I covered a wide swath, sorry. Pre-1978 temperature measurement, error propagation and calibration are my primary complaints. Everything else basically boils down to ‘garbage in, garbage out’.
Camburn says
You can’t reduce the error bars of the results by ignoring the error bars of the placement of the collection device.
————–
But you are assuming that the satellite operators are ignoring error bars on the satellite location without proof. And you are assuming that the determination is in fact dependent on this data.
Maybe these assumptions are correct and maybe not, but you just can’t pull objections out of nowhere. You should by default expect that people who do this kind of thing for a living have not already thought of the problems and have dealt with it properly.
The error bars for these sea height measurements by the way are better than 50mm over a 1x1degree grid cell. Which suggests the average over the entire planet is a whole lot better than that.
See http://www.oscar.noaa.gov/methodology.html
“”Genghis says:
January 7, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Convection is the primary method for heating the atmosphere and averaging out the temperature over the globe.””
I agree the bit about convection, but isn’t it thermodynamics and pressure that distributes the temperature averaging it out globally?
I’m new, can anyone inform me what energy is radiated past the tropopause?
Janice,
Your question about the rapid decline of the ice sheets at the start of the current interglacial is a very good one, and it actually sort of happened twice. Just prior to the Younger Dryas, ice sheets were melting rapidly, and then they came back with a vengence in the Younger Dryas, though not quite to the same extent as prior, and they disappeared rapidly as the Younger Dryas ended.
Without researching it (more than I already have over the years), there are several factors at work, with multiple feedback processes in place. But lets forget the Younger Dryas event for a moment (as that is an very different issue) and focus on the intial rise out of the glacial period. The Milankovitch forcing is of course the key as it increases the amount SW radiation hitting the oceans. This warming of the oceans leads to multiple positive feedback processes, which amplify the Milankovtich forcing. These feedback processes relate to CO2 in the atmosphere, water vapor in the atmosphere, the actual exposure of land that was once covered in ice, and changes in ocean circulation. Again, all of these greatly amplify the initial warming brought about from the Milankovitch forcing. Let’s look at each one:
1) CO2 – As the oceans warm, of course they begin to outgas CO2. This effect is fairly well known, but lessor known is the biological effects of warmer oceans, as less CO2 is taken up by the plant life of the oceans as they warm. Even more so, as the atmosphere warms and becomes more humid, there is less dust in the atmosphere to fertilize the plant life, and thus they are less active and remove less CO2 from the atmosphere. From the beginning of Milankovtich warming to the time that CO2 levels really start to show an incease can be several hundred years, but once it kicks in, the additional CO2 really adds to the warming cycle.
2) Water Vapor – In addition to more CO2 in the atmosphere, the warmer oceans evaoporate more water and of course that ends of in the atmosphere and also leads to both more precipitation, but also the additional greenhouse warming from the higher water vapor levels. Glacial periods are generally much drier with more dust in the atmosphere. Interglacials have less dust, more water vapor, and clearer skies which also allow for even more solar warming.
3) Glacial Ice Retreat – As the world begins to warm and the ice starts to retreat the Earth’s albedo begins to decrease, allowing for even more absorption of SW and amplifiying the warming.
4) Changes in Ocean circulation – As the ocean warm, circulation patterns change, allowing for more heat to come to the higher latitudes, which reduces glacial ice cover even faster.
All of these factors (and a few more lessor ones) can allow for relatively rapid declines in the large ice sheets. With temperatures in the higher latitude soaring 15C or more, it really doesn’t take as long as one might think to melt the ice. But most importantly, the changes in solar insolation brought about by Milankovitch forcing alone could never bring this kind of large temperature rise. It truly takes the strong positive feedbacks of many parts of the climate system to see such rapid rises in temperatures.
Smokey says:
January 7, 2012 at 8:57 pm
Lazy says:
“What you need is evidence that temperature is leading CO2 now.”
Empirical evidence shows that Temperature leads CO2 no matter what time scale is used. Here is a chart showing that CO2 lags Temperature by 5 months.
The empirical record shows conclusively that CO2 lags Temperature on all time scales. That deconstructs the entire CO2=CAGW meme. But then, that debunked conjecture was always bullshit.
————-
Well that’s interesting. Smokey do you have the raw data up somewhere?
Jimmy Haigh. says: “This peom always brings shivers to my spine. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen. He was a First World War soldier and he wrote this after the death of a friend after a mustard gas attack.
Reminds me of this one:
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
McCrae threw the poem away. I’ve wondered if he did so based on second thoughts about the wisdom of urging others to “take up our quarrel with the foe.”
markus says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:22 pm
“R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 4:54 pm
Some amazing satellites, for sure, seeing down 2000, 3000, 4000 meters and more.
Evaporation is a far more effective way of removing water volume than thermal contraction, and as the Grace satellite data showed, that’s exactly what happened during the 2010-2011 La Nina.”
All whole lotta water has disappeared, much more than would be needed to fill aquifers from a 10 year drought.
Precipitation occurs in volumes to lower sea levels whilst the oceans are thermally expanding and experiencing deep ocean warming.
Is this the current (ever changing) AGW theory?
_______
The current rise in sea level is related to two primary factors, thermal expansion and the melting of Greenland and Antarctica. The reduction in sea level would be related to cooling of the oceans and evaporation of sea water and its movement to land. As there is currently no sign of the ocean heat content decreasing over the long-term (it is in fact at or near its highest level in some 30+ years), the only logical thing left is that a great deal of evaporation has occurred and moved that water to the land. This would all be a theory only if the Grace satellite data didn’t show this exact set of facts during the exact period of time that sea-levels declined. If you look at the Grace data that clearly shows the large amount of water that was moved to the land and realize these same areas saw some incredible floods, you can easily see that the Grace data is quite valid. The fact that evaporation and movement of water to land occurred to a greater degree than thermal expansion of the oceans during the time period in question is not surprizing or remarkable at all, as the two processes are of vastly different scales in terms of their effect on sea level.
These are the simple scientific facts, but it seems that certain skeptics just won’t accept them, even though they are pretty much right there in the data. Unfortunately, the refusal of some skeptics to accept even basic facts like these makes me suspcious of the motives of skeptics in general, which of course is my hangup and something I need to work on as I’m sure that the vast majority of skeptics truly care as much about the truth as I do.
jorgekafkazar says: January 7, 2012 at 9:41 pm
[McCrae threw the poem away. I’ve wondered if he did so based on second thoughts about the wisdom of urging others to “take up our quarrel with the foe.”]
Unlikely, since he was a Canadian.
We still “take up our quarrel with the foe.”
—
“Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.”
“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.”
“Carbon dioxide which is a naturally occurring gas vital to the life cycles of this planet”
“This may be a lot of fun for a few scientific and environmental elites in Ottawa, but ordinary Canadians from coast to coast will not put up with what this will do to their economy and lifestyle”
“We can debate whether or not… CO₂ does or does not contribute to global warming. I think the jury is out.”
“My party’s position on the Kyoto Protocol is clear and has been for a long time. We will oppose ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and its targets. We will work with the provinces and others to discourage the implementation of those targets. And we will rescind the targets when we have the opportunity to do so”
“As economic policy, the Kyoto Accord is a disaster. As environmental policy it is a fraud”
Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada.
—
Canada is out of Kyoto.
jorgekafkazar says:
January 7, 2012 at 9:41 pm >>>
My recollection is that “In Flander’s Fields” was written by Stephen Leacock?
R. Gates;
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 8:54 pm
Edim,
Interesting comments, and certainly there is great thermal momentum in the oceans, yet ocean heat content continues to rise, even during the current very weak solar cycle 24. I find the curious and it leads me to looking for the cause…>>>>
You are clearly looking at the data with the well known “Tiljander Adjustment”. Just turn the graph right side up and you’ll have the actual data and trend to refer to.
I went to see the water that was deposited on the land. I visited lake Eyre in May 2011.
Lake Eyre was at a level of 1.3 meters. It has been as high as 2.1 meters, I witnessed the highest water mark.
Lake Eyre fills 3 – 4 times a century. Lake Eyre was flooded in 2011 because of the La Nina event, as it has hundreds of times before. The sea level was probably affected at those events as well. Why is the natural occurring sea levels behaved differently in 2011.
That is a simple evidential fact.
Why has previous filling of Lake Eyre, at times with higher levels, been different to that in 2011.
The constant refusal of warmists to accept historical truth, confirms to me their motives are religiously unaffected by truthful fact.
Please revisit your statement about Antarctica melting, It’s not.
R. Gates says: January 7, 2012 at 2:48 pm Australian flooding, sea level drop .
Except for flows into Lake Eyre and similar much smaller flows elsewhere, much of the Australian flooding went straight back into the sea by rivers or storms formed over wet land. I’ve seen the suggestion in GRACE data that adequate water accumulated to give a gravity anomaly, but the data are far too qualitative to be accurate in testing this hypothesis.
While the hypothesis migh be correct, it requires a lot more quantitative work to be acceptable. The highly publicised Brisbane floods of a year ago were in a tiny basin incapable of resoution by GRACE.
Evidence trumps dogma.
@ R. Gates January 7, 2012 at 9:56 pm
…The reduction in sea level would be related to cooling of the oceans and evaporation of sea water and its movement to land. As there is currently no sign of the ocean heat content decreasing…
Is there something of a contradiction there? Should not the ‘estra’ evaporation itself result in some cooling of the oceans?
By the way – I do appreciate you debating your views in here – it (IMHO) adds to the debate. There is always a lot of discussion anyway, and it would certainly be less interesting if everyone was in agreement and simply patting each other on the back.
I’m having some fun on Skeptical Science’s Facebook wall. (I’ve been banned about eight times from their main site due to posts for which they had no answer.) Maybe others would like to join in on Facebook. Here’s a post I just did …
Four simple questions for you all – true or false?
(1) When the refective (mirror-like) internal surface of a vacuum flask reflects radiation back into the coffee the coffee does not get any hotter – true / false ?
(2) If you hold a mirror over a batch of earth (which is radiating) at night so that the mirror reflects that radiation back to the patch it does not get any hotter, just like the coffee – true or false?
(3) When carbon dioxide captures radiation from the surface and then re-emits it back again it is acting rather like a mirror because the radiation going back has no more energy than that which it captured – true or false?
(4) Hence, when such back radiation meets the surface it does not warm the surface – true or false?
Full marks if you answered true to all questions – you are now a well-informed denier.
Geoff Sherrington says:
January 7, 2012 at 10:57 pm
“Evidence trumps dogma.”
Dear Professor, please drive from CU up Epping Road to Macquarie Uni and tell Chris Flannery, “Evidence trumps dogma.” He’s been making a fool of himself.
markx says: “@ R. Gates … By the way – I do appreciate you debating your views in here – it (IMHO) adds to the debate. There is always a lot of discussion anyway, and it would certainly be less interesting if everyone was in agreement and simply patting each other on the back.”
RealClimate has that activity covered.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/25/argo-era-nodc-ocean-heat-content-data-0-700-meters-through-december-2010/
XBT shows a decline since 1990, TAO has been pretty much flat since 2000 and Argo shows a steep decline for the last several years.
R. Gates
the only logical thing left is that a great deal of evaporation has occurred and moved that water to the land. This would all be a theory only if the Grace satellite data didn’t show this exact set of facts during the exact period of time that sea-levels declined.>>>>
Well, since your premise is based on decreases in Antarctic ice that turn out to be increasing, and OHC that is increasing that turns out to be declining, the only logical conclusion is that your conclusion is not logical.
R. Gates
If you look at the Grace data that clearly shows the large amount of water that was moved to the land and realize these same areas saw some incredible floods, you can easily see that the Grace data is quite valid.>>>>
Well yes. Oddly, you overlooked all the drought data shown by GRACE. You also over looked all the data on ground water depletion cited by GRACE studies. I note also that the lead story on their site right now says that:
“PASADENA, Calif. – A new NASA and University of Washington study allays concerns that melting Arctic sea ice could be increasing the amount of freshwater in the Arctic enough to have an impact on the global “ocean conveyor belt” that redistributes heat around our planet”
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/
Oddly, you failed to mention that as well.
R. Gates;
The fact that evaporation and movement of water to land occurred to a greater degree than thermal expansion of the oceans during the time period in question is not surprizing or remarkable at all, as the two processes are of vastly different scales in terms of their effect on sea level.>>>
What is remarkable is the ease with which you toss off statements of fact as if true when they are not, imply trends that are the opposite of what the data says, ignore contrary data that contradicts your logic, and then have the unmitigated gall to claim that you are suspicious of the motives of skeptics and accuse them of twisting the facts.
Un.
Mitigated.
Gall.
mods – apologies, I cut off the top of my own comment. Here’s the whole thing:
R. Gates;
These are the simple scientific facts, but it seems that certain skeptics just won’t accept them, even though they are pretty much right there in the data. Unfortunately, the refusal of some skeptics to accept even basic facts like these makes me suspcious of the motives of skeptics in general, which of course is my hangup and something I need to work on as I’m sure that the vast majority of skeptics truly care as much about the truth as I do.>>>>
(drum roll)
…and another gem from R. Gates that begs to be answered. Let’s look at those “facts” and “data” of his:
R. Gates;
The current rise in sea level is related to two primary factors, thermal expansion and the melting of Greenland and Antarctica.>>>
Ooops. Antarctic ice is increasing, not decreasing.
R. Gates;
The reduction in sea level would be related to cooling of the oceans and evaporation of sea water and its movement to land. As there is currently no sign of the ocean heat content decreasing over the long-term (it is in fact at or near its highest level in some 30+ years)>>>
Well… that’s a bit of a misrepresentation, is it not?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/25/argo-era-nodc-ocean-heat-content-data-0-700-meters-through-december-2010/
XBT shows a decline since 1990, TAO has been pretty much flat since 2000 and Argo shows a steep decline for the last several years.
R. Gates
the only logical thing left is that a great deal of evaporation has occurred and moved that water to the land. This would all be a theory only if the Grace satellite data didn’t show this exact set of facts during the exact period of time that sea-levels declined.>>>>
Well, since your premise is based on decreases in Antarctic ice that turn out to be increasing, and OHC that is increasing that turns out to be declining, the only logical conclusion is that your conclusion is not logical.
R. Gates
If you look at the Grace data that clearly shows the large amount of water that was moved to the land and realize these same areas saw some incredible floods, you can easily see that the Grace data is quite valid.>>>>
Well yes. Oddly, you overlooked all the drought data shown by GRACE. You also over looked all the data on ground water depletion cited by GRACE studies. I note also that the lead story on their site right now says that:
“PASADENA, Calif. – A new NASA and University of Washington study allays concerns that melting Arctic sea ice could be increasing the amount of freshwater in the Arctic enough to have an impact on the global “ocean conveyor belt” that redistributes heat around our planet”
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/
Oddly, you failed to mention that as well.
R. Gates;
The fact that evaporation and movement of water to land occurred to a greater degree than thermal expansion of the oceans during the time period in question is not surprizing or remarkable at all, as the two processes are of vastly different scales in terms of their effect on sea level.>>>
What is remarkable is the ease with which you toss off statements of fact as if true when they are not, imply trends that are the opposite of what the data says, ignore contrary data that contradicts your logic, and then have the unmitigated gall to claim that you are suspicious of the motives of skeptics and accuse them of twisting the facts.
Un.
Mitigated.
Gall.
Ice Storm – 1998
Four days of super-cooled rain that froze as soon as it stopped moving.
2.5 to 4 inches is Ice over a 50,000 square mile area.
Millions without electricity for weeks.
Roads all impassable for many days.
No phones, no cell phones, no gasoline since the pumps need electricity.
100,000+ electric poles snapped.
30,000+ transformers destroyed.
500+ sub-stations destroyed.
100+ 18 story 600kV towers down
Thousands of miles of power lines, on the ground, under 3 inches of ice.
100% loss of all tree crowns, 20% loss of all trees.
Only the army could move.
If this happened today 100% of all solar panel systems and 100% of windmills would be destroyed.
If it happened today, what would be the cause?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1s7gpCZQWM
There has been some discussion above of “ice ages” and Milankovitch cycles. Firstly, ice ages should not be confused with glacial periods. There have been only five ice ages* whereas glacial periods appear to have a strong 100,000 year cycle at least for the last million years. Strictly speaking, the 100,000 year cycle should not be called a Milankovitch cycle, the latter being 19, 23 and 41 thousand years. The 100,000 year cycle is simply the time it takes for Earth’s eccentricity to cycle from its maximum to its minimum and back to its maximum. At its maximum I understand the distance from the Sun varies by about 5%, compared with being almost zero at the minimum. Jupiter is the main planet causing the eccentricity. In effect its gravitational pull modifies the Earth’s orbit just a little bit each year, but the effect is cumulative from one year to the next.
It’s my belief that the variation in average insolation which the Earth receives each year and which varies as the eccentricity varies over this 100,000 year cycle is in fact quite sufficient to account for the glacial cycles because there is a cumulative effect as thermal energy builds up (and is retained) or declines (and is lost to space) throughout this cycle. After all, there are a lot of individual years in the cycle, so a very minute percentage variation can build into something significant over half the length of the cycle, namely 50,000 years.
There will be resulting effects which could explain the saw-tooth pattern observed. Sea ice levels will affect both albedo and insulating effects, leading to atmospheric moisture fluxes which then affect precipitation and land ice. Some of these factors could also affect rates of ocean current flows under the ice, and such rates affect rates of melting.
I don’t believe there is any necessity to assume any carbon dioxide forcing, because we now know that back radiation has a frequency below Wien’s cut-off and thus cannot warm the surface, which means the so-called atmospheric “greenhouse effect” is physically impossible.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciation
“Science” at the Movies
I went to the movies yesterday and was confronted with a promo for “Happy Feet 2 from Robin Williams. The storyline for Happy Feet 2 is that global warming in Antarctica causes an ice floe to break off and strand a penguin colony and how the penguins work together to overcome the problem. See a message there?
Now I happen to like Robin Williams who I believe is one of the best actors and comedians in Hollywood. But why doesn’t he (and just about every other Hollywood actor) read a few facts before he starts getting too emotionally involved and starts pontificating on human induced pending catastrophe? And the same goes for Hollywood film makers.
In the promo Robin gave an example of St Marks Square in Venice and how the water has risen up to a foot – “Its happening baby.”
What Robin didn’t tell us was that St Mark’s Square is the lowest point in Venice and has been flooding since Venetian recorded history and is caused when there is a combination of high tides and storm surges in the Adriatic Sea.
The most severe combination of storms and high tides of recent decades happened during the Great Flood of 1966 that pushed up water levels in Venice by 1.94 metres above normal. And Venice is SINKING accentuated by the drawing of water from aquifers beneath the city between 1950 and 1970.
If Robin ever read history he would find that the first record of a large flood in the Venetian lagoon dates back to the so-called Rotta della Cucca, reported by Paul the Deacon[11] as having occurred on October 17, 589. According to Paul, all rivers with mouths in the northern Adriatic, from the Tagliamento to the Po, overflowed at the same time, completely modifying the hydro-geologic equilibrium of the lagoon.
The first documented description[12] of acqua alta in Venice concerns the year 782 and is followed by other documented events in 840, 885, and 1102.
In 1110 the water, following a violent sea storm (or, possibly, a seaquake and its subsequent tsunami), completely destroyed Metamauco (ancient name for Malamocco), Venice’s political centre before the Doge’s residence was moved to Rialto.
Local chroniclers report that in 1240 “the water (that) flooded the streets (was) higher than a man”[12]. Other events are recorded to have occurred in 1268, 1280, 1282, and on December 20, 1283, which was probably an abnormally significant event, since a chronicle reported that Venice was “saved by a miracle”[12].
Chroniclers report that high tides occurred in 1286, 1297, and 1314; on February 15, 1340; on February 25, 1341; on January 18, 1386; and on May 31 and August 10, 1410.
In the 15th century, high tides were recorded in 1419 and 1423, on May 11, 1428 and on October 10, 1430, as well as in 1444 and 1445. On November 10, 1442 the water is reported to have risen “four feet above the usual” (Wikipedia)
OK Robin? It’s happened before baby.
And did Hollywood ever look at the fact that Antarctic Sea Ice has been steadily increasing over the last 30 years? And there are fossil records of how penguins evolved going back 50 million years and the greatest threat to the penguin is COLD and lack of food. If sea-ice does NOT break away, or krill numbers are low, then huge breeding failures can occur, and few chicks survive.
OK baby? So can we please get a little balance from Hollywood on global warming? Or is that Mission Impossible?
r gates~ ‘I’m sure that the vast majority of skeptics truly care as much about the truth as I do.’
Yes, we do. So when do you plan to start INCLUDING the more-than-half of each ‘fact,’ which you are currently omitting?
R Gates on “divergence” between solar activity and temperatures recently
Tallbloke has flagged up stuff. So has Vuk. But I’m surprised nobody has really pointed the big finger:
Unregistered UHI.
What Anthony came in to show at WUWT. What BEST totally failed to get. Where CRU has hidden the decline and lost the evidence. What GISS uber-crank Hansen cranks up. Where I don’t just accept the calibration of UAH on account of pre-existing unaccounted-for UHI. Where all the WUWT-type studies point to
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:10 pm
And the latest ocean heat content shows that once more, during the recent La Nina, the oceans are once more storing heat:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
From a scientific standpoint, I can’t see any conflict in any of this data. It all seems to make sense.
Yes, as I already told you, the oceans gain heat when the sunspot number is above 40. We are at the start of the peak of the cycle, and austral summer is when the Earth is closest to the sun. This pours an extra ~7.5W/m^2 into the southern oceans. So no surprise we see an upward blip in OHC.
But OHC is still pretty flat since 2004. This is more consistent with Envisat MSL results than colorado, which you prefer for obvious cherry picking reasons.
LazyTeenager says:
January 7, 2012 at 7:42 pm
Tallbloke says
Gates: consider this. To measure the sea surface to within a few mm using satellites, you need to know where the satellites are in space, to within a few mm.
———–
But we known the satellites can pick up local variations in sea level due to air pressure, el niño etc., So maybe the people who run satellites and build instrumentation know a tad more than Daly.
Are you being thick for a bet?
Of course they pick up short term variations. It’s preventing drift over the longer term which is the issue. Given the costs of the projects, it’s not surprising the satellite teams don’t advertise their error ranges on the graphs. Would you be shouting from the rooftops that the longer term error is +/- 30-40 times bigger than the annual signal? Not that we really know from satellites what the annual signal is, because they have calibrated the satellite record to models of sea level derived from very rough estimates of inflow and eustatics and steric rise.
Same goes for GRACE.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
[…] there does appear to be a great divergence in correlation in the later part of the 20th century (after about 1980) between solar activity ( as measured any number of ways) and global temperatures. How do skeptics to AGW explain this?
Global temperatures? What do you mean by that?
We have some data online from USDC (United States Department of Commerce) NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) NODC (National Oceanographic Data Center) OCL (Ocean Climate Laboratory) on Heat Content of the Upper 700 m Layer of Global Oceans going back to 1955. The dataset is based on this study:
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L07608, 2009
doi:10.1029/2008GL037155
Global ocean heat content 1955–2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems
S. Levitus, J. I. Antonov, T. P. Boyer, R. A. Locarnini, H. E. Garcia & A. V. Mishonov
And now please bear with me while doing some quite basic math. As it is only a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the numbers need not be accurate to many significant digits.
Mass of global atmosphere: 5.1×10²¹ g
Specific heat of air: 1 J/gK
Heat capacity of atmosphere: 5.1×10²¹ J/K
Mass of upper 700 m of global oceans: 2.5×10²³ g
Specific heat of water: 4.2 J/gK
Heat capacity of upper 700 m of global oceans: 1.1×10²⁴ J/K
That is, heat capacity of this body of water is more than 200 times higher than that of the atmosphere. It means the contribution of atmospheric temperatures to the global average temperature is absolutely negligible. Can you follow me so far?
Now, according to USDC NOAA NODC OCL, heat content of the upper 700 m layer of global oceans has increased by some 10²³ J since 1980. It implies its temperature has gone up by less than 0.1 K (~94 mK) during the last 3 decades. This rate, if extrapolated, is 0.3 K/century, an order of magnitude lower than official IPCC estimates. Is it the global temperature anomaly you are talking about? Or, alternately, you may of course deny elementary physics. Is it the case?
BTW, it is an extraordinary claim (by Levitus & al.) that temperature of such a huge body of water was actually measured with a precision of 17 mK back in 1980 and this precision is enhanced to 7 mK since then. It would be rather doubtful even if someone has claimed such a precision to temperature measurements in a swimming pool. Anyway, that’s what their error bars would imply.
Everything a non scientist needs to know about climate and AGW
Milankovtich cycles dominate the long cycle
solar and hydrological cycles dominate the medium and short cycles
volcanoes and impacts cause short term perturbations of these cycles
CO2 has little effect on earths temperature but is the cause of the greening of the biosphere
AGW is an elitist power and money grab bunch of bollix
Team Hockey Stick are gravy train riders
Uber Greens are humanity hating sickos
AndiC says: January 7, 2012 at 12:29 pm
Also I would ask, why does 1 degree warming from around 1900 to say 1950 when CO2 emissions were relatively low seem “natural” and 1 degree warming ever since when emissions are allegedly “catastrophic” seem abnormal?
An excellent question, fellow skeptic, but do please get the numbers right. In the periods you refer to, the warming in each case was much less than 1degC, as you will see from the official (i.e. warmist-inspired) world temperature data shown plotted out here:
http://www.thetruthaboutclimatechange.org/tempsworld.html
The red line in the graph shows the 11 year running mean from which it is clear that the temperature rise over each of the two periods was more like 0.5degC.
Yes, it is true that higher figures than 0.5degC can be obtained by cherry picking the raw data (see the grey plots). But that’s a warmist game, not worthy of a skeptical scientist. Such measurements are spurious because they include ‘noisy’ annual temperature fluctuations that even the most virulent alarmists accept are natural. In contrast, the red line is the 11 year running mean. This filters out annual variability leaving only longer term variations.
The red line clearly exposes small ~65 year cyclic fluctuations of less than plus and minus 0.25degC (see the red dotted ‘tramlines’). They are widely assumed to be due to natural ocean warming/cooling phenomena. As such they are up-and-down cycles and do not contribute at all to long term warming.
However the graph does show a minor long term upward trend over the full 161 year record of 0.41degC per century (the blue line). This is most likely to be natural in origin, representing just a small part of a very long term 1000+ year climate cycle from the heights of the Medieval Warming Period to the depths of the Little Ice Age and now, thankfully, returning back up again.
During the most recent ~30 year warming period from 1970 to 2000, there was a comparatively sharp climb of 0.5degC so it is understandable that this might have seemed to some people to be very alarming. It is surely no coincidence that climate alarmism did indeed grow steadily throughout that period, being falsely correlated with the large increase in man-made atmospheric CO2 that also happened to occur during that same time span.
The real test for warmists will be the next 20 to 30 years. I suspect they are going to find it an increasingly tough time. But the rest of us can look forward towards another optimum era for mankind.
My questions to R Gates is this:
1. What was the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere one million years ago today?
2. What was the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere one million plus 30 years ago today?
3. What was the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere one million minus 30 years ago today?
When you can give me the accurate answers to those questions you can start using the words unprecedented, divergence, anthropogenic, etc for the last 60 years.
For me, the big story this week is the outcome of our investigation of the controversy between Maxwell, Boltzmann and Loschmidt. It seems Maxwell and Boltzmann were wrong, and Loschmidt was right. This now has experimental support as well as theoretical underpinning.
That outcome supports Nikolov and Zeller’s contention that there is a gravity caused gradient in the temperature of the atmosphere, responsible for most if not all of the so called Greenhouse Effect. It isn’t contradicting the conservation of energy principle as Joel Shore erroneously claims. Neither is it in contravention of the second law of thermodynamics, once it is understood that an enclosed column of gas in a gravitational field cannot settle to a uniform temperature, although it does settle to a uniform energy distribution. The reason is simple: molecules at the top of the atmosphere have 133% of the gravitational potential energy of molecules at the surface of Earth. This means less of their energy is available to be thermalised.
The implications for climate science and the Greenhouse gas theory are huge.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-loschmidt-gravito-thermal-effect-old-controversy-new-relevance/
What would happen if Earth had no H2O and CO2 in the atmosphere? Would O2 and N2 heat up to 100,000 degrees like the corona of the sun? ”
Of course not, why would it. The O2 and N2 are radiatively inert in the long wave infrared region and so they would not be able to interfere with radiation escaping from the earth to space. The atmosphere would heat by conduction from the surface and distribute this heat by convection. But the temperature of the atmosphere can never exceed the surface temperature – otherwise it would conduct heat back to the surface. The radiation balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared from the earth would now be at the planet’s surface – instead of being at the top of the atmosphere as it is now. If all other things were equal then the earth effective temperature would be -18 deg. C. However, all other things would not be equal, for example, there would no longer be clouds to act as a sunshield to reflect back 30% of the incoming insolation.
100,000,000 postings? Congratulations!
And here I thought that 100,000,000 was the temperature of the Earth’s core per Albertus Gore, Climatic Wishcaster De Luxe…
Well said tallbloke!
Everyone… yes, you do absolutely need to check this one out!
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-loschmidt-gravito-thermal-effect-old-controversy-new-relevance/
And tallbloke, you should check these out! I am finally vindicated!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/08/venus-envy/#comment-387272
And that very discussion goes all the way down that Venus Envy thread.
(in that skit dr.bill is playing Karl Maxwell ☺)
It has been going on in other threads for over a year and half. My persitent gut feeling was absolutely correct that low altitudes are warmer, high altitudes are are naturally cooler, but at that time I though it was JUST pressure and had not played in the acceleration of the molecules yet.
Well I owe it to you tallbloke for finding those papers…. you’ the man!
tallbloke:
It was Steve Goddard that started that whole thought process. There’s credit to be shared. I bet he would find that Loschmidt thread velly interesting, one of us should point him to it. Off a bit but had it pegged.
See why this Nikolov-Zeller paper really hit home with me? Now I need to take a day or two off like Anthony, I’m spread far too thin between too many threads and my error/slip rate when through the ceiling, just moving too fast, for my normal 5 words a minute pace that is.
Markus – “I agree the bit about convection, but isn’t it thermodynamics and pressure that distributes the temperature averaging it out globally?”
Yes, it is certainly thermodynamics that governs how heat flows (from warm to cold), just look at a globe representation that show the air (heat) currents flowing from the tropics outward heating up the global atmosphere. And then of course it is the ideal gas law that explains where the temperature finally ends up according to pressure distribution (lapse rate).
Tallbloke – “For me, the big story this week is the outcome of our investigation of the controversy between Maxwell, Boltzmann and Loschmidt. It seems Maxwell and Boltzmann were wrong, and Loschmidt was right. This now has experimental support as well as theoretical underpinning.”
You are absolutely correct. The takeaway from that, for me, is that convection is what primarily heats the atmosphere. The atmosphere is largely transparent to radiation.
The warmers claim that the temperature of the air would be 255 k without radiation warming the atmosphere. They are completely wrong and the lapse rate proves it. Convection and the Ideal Gas Law rules.
tallbloke says:
January 8, 2012 at 1:45 am
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:10 pm
And the latest ocean heat content shows that once more, during the recent La Nina, the oceans are once more storing heat:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
From a scientific standpoint, I can’t see any conflict in any of this data. It all seems to make sense.
Yes, as I already told you, the oceans gain heat when the sunspot number is above 40. We are at the start of the peak of the cycle, and austral summer is when the Earth is closest to the sun. This pours an extra ~7.5W/m^2 into the southern oceans. So no surprise we see an upward blip in OHC.
But OHC is still pretty flat since 2004. This is more consistent with Envisat MSL results than colorado, which you prefer for obvious cherry picking reasons.
__________
Tallbloke,
I absolutely agree that OHC is “pretty flat” since 2004, but it currently at or slightly above the highert level in the past 30+ years. But are you stating this then do you generally think the OHC measurements are accurate enough to show the long-term trend or not?
Generally speaking, in looking in detail at the OHC (and allowing for recalibrations), the global oceans gain heat during La Nina periods, and release it during El Ninos. This makes perfect sense, and has nothing to do with sunspot number, but everything to do with what’s going on in the equatorial Pacific ocean. The general suppression of cloudiness during La Ninas when compared to the increase in clouds and evaporation in general during El Ninos is what drives the ocean heat content. We see the OHC drop sharply during a strong El Nino period and then rebuild during a following La Nina or ENSO neutral period. Of course this heat is transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere during the El Nino, such that atmospheric temperatures rise. What is interesting is the general increase in OHC over the 30+ year period, which can only mean that less heat is being lost during El Ninos than is being stored back in the ocean during La Ninas and ENSO neutral periods. I’m fully aware that some are expecting the OHC to peak around now, and begin heading downward for 30 years or so until the supposed cycle repeats itself. Others are still locked on the notion that this gain in OHC is still reflective of a “recovery” from the LIA. The first notion I find interesting and worthy to consider, but this later notion, related to recovery from the LIA, I find preposterous (and that’s being kind).
LazyTeenager says:
January 7, 2012 at 7:42 pm
But we known the satellites can pick up local variations in sea level due to air pressure, el niño etc., So maybe the people who run satellites and build instrumentation know a tad more than Daly.
=======================================================
Mostly it’s gravity…..that’s why almost all of the measured sea level rise is a pool of water north of Australia. Where the most active sea floor volcanoes are. Sea floor volcanoes increase gravity over them.
……Remove that one concentrated pool of water, and sea levels are falling
They don’t correct for it, because then it would show sea levels falling………
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/discussion-so-far/
Genghis says:
January 8, 2012 at 5:29 am
Tallbloke – “For me, the big story this week is the outcome of our investigation of the controversy between Maxwell, Boltzmann and Loschmidt. It seems Maxwell and Boltzmann were wrong, and Loschmidt was right. This now has experimental support as well as theoretical underpinning.”
You are absolutely correct. The takeaway from that, for me, is that convection is what primarily heats the atmosphere. The atmosphere is largely transparent to radiation.
_______
Except that the atmosphere with greenhouse gaes present is not “largely transparent” the the LW radiation coming back from the ground, and in fact, the absorption by CO2 at around 15 microns is very nearly exactly at the same wavelength where the peak of the LW from the ground is. Water vapor also has absorption at around 15 microns, but the intensity of CO2 absorption in this region is greater. There are of course other LW aborption bands in the atmosphere as well. In addition to the LW radiation coming from the ground, there is of course some small amount of SW solar radiation that is absorbed by the atmosphere. Suggesting the atmosphere is “largely transparent” to radiation (if you’re including LW) is nonsense. Having clarified that point however, it is quite true that convection heats the atmosphere as well as conduction of course, but radiative transfer is a larger proportion of the heating than either of these.
tallbloke says:
January 8, 2012 at 3:49 am
“For me, the big story this week is the outcome of our investigation of the controversy between Maxwell, Boltzmann and Loschmidt. It seems Maxwell and Boltzmann were wrong, and Loschmidt was right. This now has experimental support as well as theoretical underpinning.”
Wonderful! Never heard of Loschmidt, but the moment I read your comment I googled “Loschmidt Virial” and guess what was the first hit – your blog posting!
Miskolczi has argued with the Virial theorem, and when asked why it was valid for the atmosphere, he shrugged and said everyone learns that from textbooks. But probably not in Western universities!
Wonderful to see more about this; and proving Maxwell AND Boltzmann wrong, that’s rather a feat!
UnReal Climate have an “Open Thread” which of course means it’s closed.
I thought I would provide some useful comments but closed minds are difficult to open. Anyway you can count their readers on one hand so I thought it would be good to replicate my post here.
“My highlight of the year was the release by the whistleblower the second tranche of emails which confirmed the mendacity and incompetence of The Fiddlestick Team. Certainly if I had a cause and wanted support the last people I would involve are The Fiddlestick boys.”
Latitude says:
January 8, 2012 at 5:55 am
LazyTeenager says:
January 7, 2012 at 7:42 pm
But we known the satellites can pick up local variations in sea level due to air pressure, el niño etc., So maybe the people who run satellites and build instrumentation know a tad more than Daly.
=======================================================
Mostly it’s gravity…..that’s why almost all of the measured sea level rise is a pool of water north of Australia. Where the most active sea floor volcanoes are. Sea floor volcanoes increase gravity over them.
……Remove that one concentrated pool of water, and sea levels are falling
They don’t correct for it, because then it would show sea levels falling………
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/discussion-so-far/
________
Sorry, but this is rediculous. If you look at the patterns of sea level changes and match them up with prevailing winds and warm water over a long time period you get a nearly direct match. Are you suggesting that the volcanic activity on the sea floor also follows the prevailing winds? The area north of Australia is where the prevailing tropical easterly winds pile up the warm water from the equatorial Pacific. Nothing to do with volcanoes.
What ever happened to Joe Romm’s permanent SouthWest drought?
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/romms-permanent-drought/
100million views is all well and good but i still think a little more porn wouldn’t hurt.
[Reply] Pssst, wanna see some climate porn? TB – mod
R. Gates says:
January 8, 2012 at 6:15 am
Genghis says:
January 8, 2012 at 5:29 am
Tallbloke – “For me, the big story this week is the outcome of our investigation of the controversy between Maxwell, Boltzmann and Loschmidt. It seems Maxwell and Boltzmann were wrong, and Loschmidt was right. This now has experimental support as well as theoretical underpinning.”
You are absolutely correct. The takeaway from that, for me, is that convection is what primarily heats the atmosphere. The atmosphere is largely transparent to radiation.
_______
Except that the atmosphere with greenhouse gaes present is not “largely transparent” the the LW radiation coming back from the ground, and in fact, the absorption by CO2 at around 15 microns is very nearly exactly at the same wavelength where the peak of the LW from the ground is. Water vapor also has absorption at around 15 microns, but the intensity of CO2 absorption in this region is greater. There are of course other LW aborption bands in the atmosphere as well. In addition to the LW radiation coming from the ground, there is of course some small amount of SW solar radiation that is absorbed by the atmosphere. Suggesting the atmosphere is “largely transparent” to radiation (if you’re including LW) is nonsense. Having clarified that point however, it is quite true that convection heats the atmosphere as well as conduction of course, but radiative transfer is a larger proportion of the heating than either of these.
Well, as it turns out, you’re both wrong, along with Ira Glickstein.
In fact, it is the gravitational compression of the atmosphere which leads to the thermal gradient which matches the dry adiabatic lapse rate. However, convection and the latent heat of evaporation have a large role to play in returning the balance of the gradient of heat in the atmosphere to that set by the gravitational constant and the consequent air pressure. Radiation does very little, since it cannot transfer heat between layers in any significant way in the troposphere due to short free path length and the contiguous nature of the equilibrium thermal gradient. But of course, the dayside earth is often not in local thermal equilibrium so radiation will have minor second order effects mopping up the imbalance left by convective activity. There remains much to discover about the way radiation to space occurs from various levels however, so the gravitationally challenged lady is still arranging her skirts offstage at the moment.
wayne says:
January 8, 2012 at 4:56 am
Well said tallbloke!
Everyone… yes, you do absolutely need to check this one out!
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-loschmidt-gravito-thermal-effect-old-controversy-new-relevance/
And tallbloke, you should check these out! I am finally vindicated!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/08/venus-envy/#comment-387272
And that very discussion goes all the way down that Venus Envy thread.
(in that skit dr.bill is playing Karl Maxwell ☺)
It has been going on in other threads for over a year and half. My persitent gut feeling was absolutely correct that low altitudes are warmer, high altitudes are are naturally cooler, but at that time I though it was JUST pressure and had not played in the acceleration of the molecules yet.
Well I owe it to you tallbloke for finding those papers…. you’ the man!
I just did the diligent librarian bit. Others take a bigger share of the props, including Bill Gilbert and Hans Jelbring to name just two. Plus of course Nikolov and Zeller for rekindling the flame.
When Django and Stefan met for the firsttime after the war they sat down and recorded this.
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 11:52 am
That discrepancy has been properly explained several times here, in special by Prof.Nicola Scafetta.
Have a nice week end Anthony!. a HUNDRED MILLIONS HITS deserves much more than that: Cheers!
R. Gates – “Having clarified that point however, it is quite true that convection heats the atmosphere as well as conduction of course, but radiative transfer is a larger proportion of the heating than either of these.”
You are absolutely 100% wrong or at least 99.5% wrong, it depends on the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere as to how wrong you are : ) The bulk of the atmosphere is transparent to radiation, to put it simply for you and LazyTeenager that means that radiation doesn’t warm it, radiation passes right through it.
As far as heating the atmosphere CO2 is relatively neutral, it instantly re radiates all the radiation it intercepts, except for a small fraction of kinetic energy that it transfers to the nitrogen or oxygen atoms, but remember the same collision works in reverse with the atmospheric atoms transferring kinetic energy back to the CO2 molecule which causes it to radiate out, which is a zero net gain.
Convection is the primary means of heating and distributing the energy to the atmosphere, almost exclusively. If you want some really fun proof of that I would love to take you flying some day : )
Please do not even think of limiting R gates posts here etc. He is a super asset for the skeptics. It seesms that nearly every single statement he has put up here has been soundly debunked with clear data graphs etc from his own mates NCDC, Cryosphere, DMI etc.. LOL
R. Gates
You should take a close look at OHC of the tropics. http://virakkraft.com/ENSO-OHC-Tropics.png
– All the increase in western hemisphere happened between 70 and 80, but no similar decrease in the eastern hemisphere.
– There is a very curious step change around 2003 indicating the data before and after are not comparable.
– Tropical temperature only increased as long as there were excess OHC in the w. hem. After balance was restored around 1998, tropical temperature has not increased. http://virakkraft.com/excess-heat-tropics.png Again the step change around 2003 is probably not real.
Conclusion: There is no trace of a CO2 influence in the tropics. It is all a result of the 70-80 shift (maybe caused by the change in earths rotation)
R. Gates says:
January 8, 2012 at 6:15 am
but radiative transfer is a larger proportion of the heating than either of these.
Don’t think so! Why is the floor cold below my radiator yet the ceiling above it is red hot??????
And my radiator is a lot hotter than the surface of the earth.
Has anyone seen this?
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337368/title/Insurance_payouts_point_to_climate_change
It’s just amazing to me how far downhill SN has gone over the last 5 years.
R. Gates says….
“…….I’m sure that the vast majority of skeptics truly care as much about the truth as I do.”
Ha! Very funny for early Sunday morning. You care about the truth? My impression is that you don’t care at all for the truth.
You do, though, have a fondness for half-truths and tap dancing.
Actually I owe Ghengis an apology. He is correct that it is mostly convection (plus evapo-transpiration) which heats the atmosphere. Gravity is the underlying force which determines the distribution of that heat; cooler on top, warmer near the surface.
Fitzcarraldo says:
January 8, 2012 at 7:01 am
Please do not even think of limiting R gates posts here etc. He is a super asset for the skeptics. It seesms that nearly every single statement he has put up here has been soundly debunked with clear data graphs etc from his own mates NCDC, Cryosphere, DMI etc.. LOL
__________________________
No amount of serial debunking has moved R. Gates to date. Solid evidence on Monday leads to R. Gates deceptive postings over the same point on Thursday.
Due to R. Gates record of subtle obfuscation and thread redirection, I sincerely question that the person is really just a somewhat- dense warmist, but is rather a propagandist, as part of their job, to continuously disrupt and obscure any information displayed in WUWT which contradicts the warmist line.
This point about R. Gates true agenda has been made and left unanswered (by R. Gates) in WUWT before. The fact that the point is unanswered serves to increase the suspicion.
R. Gates says:
January 8, 2012 at 6:28 am
“Sorry, but this is rediculous. If you look at the patterns of sea level changes and match them up with prevailing winds and warm water over a long time period you get a nearly direct match. Are you suggesting that the volcanic activity on the sea floor also follows the prevailing winds? The area north of Australia is where the prevailing tropical easterly winds pile up the warm water from the equatorial Pacific. Nothing to do with volcanoes.”
There’s another water mountain near Iceland. You will have to add some epicycles to your theory.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/discussion-so-far/
Genghis says:
January 8, 2012 at 7:00 am
“Convection is the primary means of heating and distributing the energy to the atmosphere, almost exclusively. If you want some really fun proof of that I would love to take you flying some day : )”
As you are keeping current with night flying, you will remember that convection disappears at night (except along weather fronts). So at night radiation rules and that scourge of mankind CO2 gets to slow down outgoing LW and keep things a little warmer. But daylight comes and the convective temperature cap goes back on an we are all saved.
Since Gates has taken over this thread, to brake monotony here is something different from Jackson California, official permitted by the governor himself:
I hope Anthony as a Ca man didn’t mind the post.
♪♪ Feelin a bit of that GRAVITY mix’n in the air ♪♪
Make sure that you make your rebuilt PC a DUAL BOOT machine with a LINUX installation such as Red Hat Fedora, Gentoo or Ubunto, or even SUSE. Windows is great but having LINUX available is a wonderful toolbox that can help you get many, many more things done!
I despise rebuilding my personal confusers. Even though I am good at it, the time to save, save, and save is gruelingly boring. Then to load, load, load, load, and endure the monotonous hours of waiting for the “Next” icon. Not how I would celebrate 1^8. However, it does allow for some beer research. 🙂
–> Convection is the primary means of heating and distributing the energy to the atmosphere, almost exclusively. If you want some really fun proof of that I would love to take you flying some day : )
You increase the temperature of the atmosphere inside a greenhouse by preventing convection and, of course, by allowing convection, “distributing the energy to the atmosphere” must mean from the ‘warm’ to the ‘cool’ atmosphere.
Maybe we should call this an R. Gates thread, as most comments seem to be addressed to him. In an attempt to re-task this thread from questioning skeptical views, I will propose this question.
How does one explain climategate 1&2. I am not referring to any single email, but the entirety of the email library. How can we rely on such “scientists” to provide us with a global view of climate? What happens to modern educated people, that causes such degeneration of principles? Why do so many warmists not discern the manipulation exposed by these emails?
Are warmist unaware or just ideologically blinded? Since R. Gates is one, perhaps he should explain first. GK
Fitzcarraldo says:
January 8, 2012 at 7:01 am
Please do not even think of limiting R gates posts here etc. He is a super asset for the skeptics. It seesms that nearly every single statement he has put up here has been soundly debunked with clear data graphs etc from his own mates NCDC, Cryosphere, DMI etc.. LOL
I don’t believe that there is even a thought of preventing R. Gates from posting here. This site provides a forum for thought, exchange of information etc. Unlike other sites that are agenda driven, this site is information driven.
A real breath of fresh air.