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
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
@ur momisugly 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.
@ur momisugly 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.