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
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.
@ur momisugly 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: “@ur momisugly 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