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
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.