Things for somebody way smarter than me to do.
Has anybody done a real study to prove whether or not the Al-Gore effect is for real?
Is there a sea level chart for the last 1,000 or 400 years? Maybe based on records of a few European castles and a couple of ports in other parts of the world. It would be interesting to know the sea levels for the years 1000 AD, 1300, 1600, 1830, 1900, 2000 based on the same measuring devices.
If we were to have another little ice age starting now, in 200 years what would be (expressed in numbers and percentage change) the sea level, ice coverage on land and ocean, how much water is changed to ice and the amount of heat loss for water both liquid and ice.
Neil Jordan
January 28, 2012 10:43 pm
The package of kale that I just bought at Trader Joe’s had this on the label:
Quote KALE Kale is a form of wild cabbage in which the central leaves do not form a head. It’s said to have originated in European mediterranean prior to the Middle Ages. Its hardy leaves resisted frost damage, making it a staple for winter cooking when most vegetables were unavailable. End quote.
Perhaps someone with paleo botany experience might find this information useful, because it implies thart pre-Middle-Age Mediterranean climate was colder than today’s Mediterranean climate.
Steve C
January 28, 2012 11:20 pm
As someone whose “bit of wet string” – wrapped around the brickwork of my flat a couple of floors up – is already skating very close to local planning restrictions, my eyes are green with envy just thinking about towers. (Actually, they’re green anyway, but let that pass!) Stay safe.
Laurie
January 28, 2012 11:59 pm
Eric Simpson,
I saw your comment on the Forbes article and thought you were being sarcastic.
” We need a PAC — all we need is a few smart people to start, and $£ money. Once going, the plan for it would be to grow big via additional donations — both from individuals sympathetic, to pirate a warmist phrase: to “the cause” (like us !), and from organizations & angels.”
I’m not much in favor of pushing for political activism and calling skeptism a “cause”. Not all skeptics share the same views about the science. Branching out from WUWT to many papers and reference materials and climate blogs from all perspectives seems to help me understand better. Personally, I would be appalled to see groups of people carrying signs and asking for donations for a skeptical PAC. I’m not saying that politics don’t play a huge part (imo) in the AGW camp. The obvious political agenda is what many people can’t ignore and also don’t trust. Why would we imitate them instead of continuing to hold their feet to the fire about the poor performing models and extreme prophecies, which were paid for with tax dollars? 100 million hits…do you think WUWT isn’t getting the message out?
Dabble
January 29, 2012 12:32 am
Interesting to see that the Russians are concerned about the accuracy of the temperature data used by CRU: “On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.”
I don’t speak Russian so have not read the source article, but it is briefly mentioned in an English language round up of the Russian newspapers: http://en.rian.ru/papers/20091216/157260660.html
“Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
“Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing”
This mornings mail on line
John Marshall
January 29, 2012 3:57 am
Don’t fall off!
Rogelio Escobar
January 29, 2012 4:28 am
I get the feeling that MSM and top politicians are now copping on to whats been going on and that we are about to see a major run for cover by the team. Expect resignations, retirements ect pretty soon. I don’t think any will stick around to see court action.
Congratulations Anthony et al, you have the hottest product !!!
You really are demonstrating world’s best practise, and it would appear that the world is watching.
obviously the internet has taken the sharing of information and human endeavour to greater and global levels – the truth will be told.
there’s been some discussion of where too from here, in a political/legal sense. I think that banks are the preferred candidates for cleaning up the global warming mess. e.g. who made the most money? who made the most mess ? we could invest in stocks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocks .
I’m interested in the production of food. I had a ‘small holding’ (12 acres), including a market garden, in the adelaide hills (australia). It appeared that the best economy of a market garden was an individual or family enterprise of a mixed holding. controlled environments were most desirable for extending opportunities and harvest time. definitely a small economy of scale e.g. 2 – 5 tonne truck trailer to market, glasshouse, greenhouse, aquaponic house, aquaculture house pond , outdoor crops …ad infinitum.
Giggle: Flashing image of Anthony Watts on radio mast swatting a biplanes piloted by porky, balding, middle-aged men … biplane callsigns IPCC-xxx
Crap. I wish I could draw as well as Josh.
Interesting to see that the Russians are concerned about the accuracy of the temperature data used by CRU
I checked that bastion of Truth (and substitute for tabloids I read in the checkout line), http://english.pravda.ru/
No luck.
They did have http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/18-01-2012/120262-public_sex-0/
“Public sex can be extremely dangerous”
It’s about insects getting preyed upon while distracted. http://english.pravda.ru/health/23-01-2012/120298-bird_flu-0/
A note that H5N1 is still out there and that a few human deaths have occurred recently. Similar stories are in a western media. http://english.pravda.ru/photo/album/6668/
Photos of “Snow disaster in Eastern Europe.” At least it’s snowing somewhere, I have only 1.5″ on the ground. http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/27-01-2012/120346-phobos_ground-0/
“Official conclusion of Phobos Ground crash shocks scientists”
Offcial: most likely, the spacecraft did not enter the departure trajectory to Mars due to the influence of plasma formation in the magnetosphere of the Earth.
Other scientist: This is impossible. Plasma formations of this type may appear at certain altitudes. As a rule, they are much weaker than would be required for exerting any influence on the spacecraft,”
I missed the article about Germany losing billions on alternative energy, and skipped the Michael Jackson arrest on a subway and “McDonald’s to expose everything about its chemical food in Russia”
Wow, it didn’t go in the spam bin. Maybe the folks at WordPress like Pravda!
Paul Coppin
January 29, 2012 6:31 am
Anthony, if you’re good with towers, the next time you are in the Toronto area, I have a frozen rotor and a HF beam that’s disintegrating, that could benefit from some TLC… (or we can just sit around with a beer and ruminate on how to get somebody younger and stupider to go up and change it… 🙂
My man and compatriot NOVAK DJOKOVIC just won Melbourne tennis tournament (3:2). Congratulations to our Nole.
Bob Diaz
January 29, 2012 8:58 am
The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
. . .
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html#ixzz1krq3mOu1
Interesting, very interesting….
eco-geek
January 29, 2012 9:13 am
The following article was written to express in the simplest possible terms to explain my views on AGW. While I do take a snipe at the “sceptics” they should not take it to heart. If anyone can explain why the laws of Physics are wrong please feel free to explain which ones and how….
He global warming concept hinges upon the idea that greenhouse gasses cause an increase in mean global temperatures . The basis for this concept is that such gasses are better radiators than non greenhouse gasses and as a result keep the global mean temperatures higher as a result of feeding back radiation to the Earth’s surface. Let us investigate this hypothesis:
First of all we need a model upon which all can agree is a good approximation to the real thing. The model I have chosen is familiar to most engaged in the debate and in my view lies closest to the hearts of the so-called global warmists. In this model we are concerned only with radiation from the sun which interacts thermally with the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. We are not concerned with radiation that is reflected either specularly or diffusely back into the space from which it came. Neither are we concerned about radiation which is absorbed and re-emitted without intermediate thermal processes. Without such processes there can be no warming of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere so such non thermal interactions can be neglected
Removing such non thermal processes from our model leaves us with this: the Earth’s surface is treated as an approximation to a black body, it absorbs radiation from the sun, becomes hotter and then re-emits radiation more typically at longer wavelengths. We also have an atmosphere which is composed of two types of gas: greenhouse gasses and non greenhouse gasses, both of which may or may not absorb and re-emit radiation or receive thermal input via convection and conduction from the Earth’s surface as is their wont. It does not concern us for now as to the nature of these processes.
To further the debate we have the concept propounded by the pro-greenhouse warming lobby that because greenhouse gasses are better radiating gasses than non greenhouse gasses they re-radiate more radiation back to the Earth’s surface than do non greenhouse gasses. This leads us to an obvious thought experiment:
We replace all greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere with an equal volume of non greenhouse gasses. There are then three logical possibilities:
1) Greenhouse gasses are less good radiating gasses than non greenhouse gasses.
2) Greenhouse gasses are equally good radiating gasses as non greenhouse gasses.
3) Greenhouse gasses are better radiating gasses than non greenhouse gasses.
If (1) or (2) are true then the theory of global warming is falsified. If (3) is true then greenhouse gasses produce relative global warming. I believe (3) is true.
We now consider the Earth’s radiation budget.
Integrating over a sufficient time period to average out the effects of night and day and the seasons then at equilibrium the average energy received by the Earth in the form of radiant energy from the Sun must equal the average energy lost by the Earth in the form of radiation. This is the only significant form of energy capable of influencing global mean temperatures. I take a warmist’s view here and do not include such effects as the solar wind, the Sun and Earth’s magnetic field coupling lateral flare currents into the oceans, cosmic rays inducing cloud formation or variations in solar energy output or spectrum.
We then consider the Earth’s outgoing energy budget. It has three components: that from greenhouse gasses, that from non greenhouse gasses and that from the black body Earth itself. We then perform the same thought experiment we performed above, and replace the greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere with an equal volume of non-greenhouse gasses:
As discussed above, we know that if (1) or (2) are true that the hypothesis of global warming is falsified. If (3) is true then greenhouse gasses cause absolute global cooling. This is because they contribute significantly to the Earth’s outgoing radiation budget. If they are removed from the Earth’s atmosphere the amount of energy radiated away into the absolute zero of space goes down and in consequence the temperature of the Earth and its atmosphere will rise, I neglect here the 4 degrees Kelvin background radiation left over from the Big Bang. It is thus demonstrated that:
A) Greenhouse gasses cause absolute global cooling.
B) In order to believe that greenhouse gasses produce relative global warming it is first necessary to believe that greenhouse gasses produce absolute global cooling.
At first sight the hypothesis of global warming through feedback radiation is self contradictory. Can we simultaneously have the situation in which greenhouse gasses produce both relative warming and absolute cooling of the planet? The answer is yes! This is because the so-called feedback radiation is a negative feedback on the absolute cooling caused by greenhouse gasses. This means that the presence of the feedback term in the equation of global cooling reduces the rate at which radiation is lost from the Earth by re-cycling energy back to the Earth’s surface. This amounts simply to an observation that secondary radiators are not 100% efficient. What this means is perhaps better explained with reference to the analogous system of coupled primary and secondary radiators we find under the hood of a typical auto-mobile:
In the Earth model above we treat the Earth’s surface as the primary radiator. We can do this because the amount of radiation fed back to the real primary radiator of the system, the Sun, is negligible. The secondary radiator of our system is the Earth’s atmosphere which is closely thermally coupled to the surface of the Earth by conduction and convection as well as radiation. In our auto-mobile engine analogy the primary radiator is the engine block and head with the secondary radiator being not surprisingly, the radiator! (If you like the engine can be treated as being supplied with both gasoline and air through a pipe so it can be run in vaccuum and thus tighten up the analogy).
We now imagine that our engine and radiator are sitting in an auto-mobile on our collective drive and that the engine has been running for some time and has reached thermal equilibrium with the environment. We lift the hood and examine the engine in operation with reference to a manual: The engine generates heat energy some of which it loses directly to the environment. Most heat energy however is removed from the engine by a water based coolant which is pumped though a series of channels in the block and head then via a radiator hose to the radiator. A second feedback radiator hose returns the cooled water from the radiator to the engine and closes the system loop.
We have just concluded that the engine and cooling system is working satisfactorily when our collective neighbour, a Mr. Gore, drops by and with the skilful use of a thermometer amidst all those moving parts demonstrates that the return hose from the radiator is operating above ambient temperature and is thus maintaining the engine at a higher temperature than it otherwise would be. Mr Gore is completely correct of course; feeding warm water into the auto-mobile engine will maintain it at a higher operating temperature. Mr Gore therefore prevails upon us to disconnect the feedback hose from the radiator to the engine block in order to keep the engine cooler.
Would you take Mr. Gore’s advice? Your answer to this question will not only determine your position in the global warming debate but whether or not you drive to work next week!
The lessons learned above can be reinforced by considering the black-body Earth and atmosphere in a little more detail. Consider a black-body Earth without any atmosphere whatsoever. Without an atmosphere not only will more radiation get through to the Earth’s surface because there are no greenhouse gasses to intercept any of this radiation and re-radiate it back out into space without it having first to interact with the Earth’s surface, but there will be no conduction and convection into the non-existent atmosphere to keep the surface cool. The job of re-radiating energy into space will fall squarely on the surface of the black-body Earth itself. Increasing the radiation from a black-body can only be accomplished by increasing its radiative temperature.
If we now add an atmosphere of non-greenhouse gasses to our black-body Earth we find that heat energy can leave the surface not just by radiation but by conduction and convection as well. If we also include surface water the latent heat of evaporation of water will contribute to this heat loss mechanism too. The situation is now similar to that of a domestic central heating radiator which loses heat to heat a room mainly by conduction and convection with a small component of radiative loss; the central heating radiator would be better described as a convection heater. Of course if the atmospheric gasses did not radiate away any energy into space eventually the Earth’s surface would rise to the temperature it had before we added any atmosphere. However all gasses radiate and the non-greenhouse gasses do so too. The reason for this is that all accelerating charges radiate and all molecules in the atmosphere accelerate, often negatively, as they constantly collide with each other. The faster the molecules move the more frequent are the collisions, the greater the accelerations and the greater the loss though radiation. The atmosphere can now be seen for what it is, a secondary radiator which by adding to the Earth’s outgoing radiation budget keeps the Earth’s surface cooler. The non-greenhouse gasses component of the Earth’s atmosphere are thermally radiating gasses. In other words in order to radiate more they must be at a higher temperature, just like the black-body Earth itself.
Finally we add to the Earth’s atmosphere the greenhouse gasses. While these gasses radiate thermally just like non-greenhouse gasses they have a secondary mechanism too based on a form of electronic transition related to quantised states of dipole moments. Greenhouse gasses as a result are not only able to radiate much more energy at lower temperature but are also able to pick up thermal energy from both the Earth’s surface and non-greenhouse gasses and radiate this energy into space as well. Greenhouse gasses thus add very significantly to the Earth’s outgoing energy budget and thus keep the Earth’s surface and atmosphere very much cooler than they would be in the absence of these lower temperature radiating gasses.
From consideration of the arguments given above it is very easy to see that the concept of greenhouse gasses as a planet warming blanket is completely erroneous. Greenhouse gasses are cooling gasses, part of a secondary radiator system and in my view the principal mechanism by which the temperatures at the Earth’s surface are kept cool enough for life to exist across the globe.
In the face of such obviousness the real question is why the concept of greenhouse gas induced global warming has persisted for so long in the face of so much entrenched opposition from global warming sceptics? The answer is perhaps surprising: The global warming debate has three factions which can be loosely described as warmists, luke-warmists and sceptics. These factions however all have one thing in common: they all believe in global warming!
These three groups all believe that warming is produced by greenhouse gasses to greater or lesser degrees with the warmists predicting large increases in global mean temperature with increasing man made emissions of carbon dioxide and the sceptics predicting very small increases in global mean temperatures as a result of these same emissions. The global warming debate has been monopolised by these three groups since the inception of the IPCC. It is a one sided debate in which no voices of opposition are heard.
The simple reality is that greenhouse gasses cause global cooling and lots of it. It is only by stepping outside the radiative feedback paradigm foisted upon us by warmists and sceptics alike and then viewing the the system as a whole using overarching energy arguments that we begin to glimpse the truth.
Safe driving!
Eco-geek
@Laurie. I say that we need a PAC like entity to fight the leftist radicals for public opinion. Pub opinion will determine the outcome of this war. Our ’cause’ is to thwart the leftists plans of w govt, unfree enterprise, and unfreedom. In the last few years we have made some gains with the public, but only with the benefit of a HUGE headwind in our favor (ClimateGate 1 & 2, Obama, temps arguably dipping, and more). But some polls show that even with all this, things are starting to head south again for us.
We can’t be complacent, and take the McCain style ‘high ground’ Goody Two-Shoes position, and lose. Cap & Trade, with 83% CO2 reductions set for 2050, passed the u.s. House, and they were just a couple votes short in the Senate. The leftists were that close to seeing their Utopian dream of severe de-industrialization and unfreedom realized. Don’t think it won’t happen again. A huge lot is at stake, but we are not playing like that’s the case. With the liberal establishments and liberal MSM every day pushing the leftist cause, we can soon find ourselves — defeated, and humiliated. Perhaps Nuremberged. Turn the tables!
Wake up. Start thinking about playing to win.
We need to say in 30 effective seconds: 1. there is nothing wrong with the climate (hockey stick a debunked deception: current temps are not unusual), and 2. CO2 has nothing (or very little) to do with it. There are secondary points to be made, but those two points are the main ones to deeply imprint in the public mind. We need a smart, coordinated web & tv attack plan.
By the way, most of the support for Point # 2 on CO2 can be made in 5 or 6 seconds, through a distillation of this 3 minute video, which also shows Al Gore in a pivotal deception: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg
Lucy, I was intrigued by your post, and have been thinking about the issue of web-based peer review for science, generally, for some time now.
Many professional journals seem to be dying out, and this death spiral could speed up as publishing costs and price goes up and subscription numbers go down. Many academic libraries are reducing their investment in all forms of paper-based publishing, including the expensive specialty journals. And once a journal goes online, especially if behind a prohibitively expensive paywall, it seems to me that the journal itself has become an unnecessary level of control, both restricting access by readers, students and follow-on scientists, all to serve a now superfluous business model.
It seems to me an open, web-based communication environment COULD become a much better mechanism to perform honest to goodness scientific peer review, not to mention be a great place to archive scientific work, with version-controlled components of the entire body of literature, published papers, raw data sets, formal review documents, and even feedback from both invited and uninvited reviewers. This would make science so much more transparent, I think. And if public funding is used to pay for the experiments, with the exception of publishing dangerous material (the discussion of which itself could be discussed openly), I cannot imagine any reasonable objection to full and open views of every aspect of a field of study like Climate Change (I can imagine some reasons, mind you, just not productive, positive ones).
Let’s ignore the issues of tendentiousness and open-mindedness and presume a good web interface will never change human nature. What bothers me about blog posting in general, is that threading is difficult to maintain, version control is not routinely possible, and the signal to noise ratio is often very small, making the study of any particular topic more difficult than it should be. A science interface requires navigation that’s more humane than is currently possible.
Science review blog SW would need many things that blogs already have; to wit, a way to log in either as an identified person, or a guest (pseudonymous IDs don’t bother me in the general case), threaded topic chains. But i also needs version control of whole threads, and a data archive (also version controlled), a set of conventions that restrict (publicly policed) threads to objectively stated hypotheses or questions, and a rating system to vote down low signal to noise posts and posters, and a corresponding viewing filter to select a reader’s tolerance for low signal to noise posts.
Science review site might have top level threads limited to a number of simple yes/no scientific propositions, implicitly geared toward falsification. The second level threads might follow a convention of having both a YES and a NO subthread. In the Yes thread, are all propositions / experiments claiming for Yes begin. If a pro-YES proposition is judged as having been ‘falsified’ by reviewers, the experiment moves to the NO thread. Conversely, if an experiment actively seeks to prove NO, it stays in the NO thread until it is judged as falsified by reviewers, in which case it moves to the YES thread. A third subthread is a communal group written (in the manner of a WIKI) “What We Think We Know” (WWTWK) executive summary, akin to an elevator statement (search WUWT if you don’t know what that is) describing the analysis of the complete set of YES/NO threads, and the currently “accepted’ state of which side (Yes or No) is winning, or intermediate conclusions, such as too early to tell, etc. Reviews and comments would be allowed as follow-on posts, and version control allows modifications, revisions, and even reversals in the WWTWK statement. And a communally written “minority report” would be generated, too, for the best cases opposed to WWTWK. Comments and reviews belong to their version only, so turn invisible to the latest version when it is published, but the old statement and it’s entire thread can still be accessed.
For Climate Science, I’d propose a top level thread called:
Proposition: the Earth is warming up, globally
-> Yes, it’s warming (thread top for experiments ‘proving’ warming (not AGW, just plain warming)
-> No, it’s cooling (thread top for experiments ‘proving’ cooling)
-> What we think we know
-> Minority Report (the best arguments of those who disagree with WWTWK
and:
Burning fossil fuels by human civilization significantly alters the Earth’s Climate
-> No, human use of fossil fuels has little to no effect in the context of natural variability
-> Yes, anthropogenic activity has a significant affect on the climate
-> What we think we know
-> Minority Report
and:
Climate models can predict the future.
@Eco-geek
You and most of us have been taken in by the warmists and discuss only radiation. What that leaves out is the important role the evapo-convection plays, plus other properties of water.
Yes, CO2 is radiatively active. But so is water, and there is up to 100 times as much water in the air as CO2. The water swamps any effect of the CO2.
Beyond that, there is the evapo-convection thing. Water is evaporated at the surface, thus absorbing latent energy; the moist air rises high skyward due to convection (particularly thunderheads in the tropics); the water vapor condenses at altitude, releasing the heat for radiation to outer space. I have read (and would like to have confirmed or countered) that up to 75% of the heat lofted upward is conveyed by evapo-convection.
Some thermal energy is raised just by the surface heating air, which also rises by convection.
And water has one more kick at the can by forming clouds, which block incoming radiation.
The radiative effect of CO2 is minuscule by comparison.
If anyone finds what I have written to have errors, kindly inform me. Otherwise, let’s stop playing the game of CO2 + radiation by the warmists’ rules!
IanM
Things for somebody way smarter than me to do.
Has anybody done a real study to prove whether or not the Al-Gore effect is for real?
Is there a sea level chart for the last 1,000 or 400 years? Maybe based on records of a few European castles and a couple of ports in other parts of the world. It would be interesting to know the sea levels for the years 1000 AD, 1300, 1600, 1830, 1900, 2000 based on the same measuring devices.
If we were to have another little ice age starting now, in 200 years what would be (expressed in numbers and percentage change) the sea level, ice coverage on land and ocean, how much water is changed to ice and the amount of heat loss for water both liquid and ice.
The package of kale that I just bought at Trader Joe’s had this on the label:
Quote KALE Kale is a form of wild cabbage in which the central leaves do not form a head. It’s said to have originated in European mediterranean prior to the Middle Ages. Its hardy leaves resisted frost damage, making it a staple for winter cooking when most vegetables were unavailable. End quote.
Perhaps someone with paleo botany experience might find this information useful, because it implies thart pre-Middle-Age Mediterranean climate was colder than today’s Mediterranean climate.
As someone whose “bit of wet string” – wrapped around the brickwork of my flat a couple of floors up – is already skating very close to local planning restrictions, my eyes are green with envy just thinking about towers. (Actually, they’re green anyway, but let that pass!) Stay safe.
Eric Simpson,
I saw your comment on the Forbes article and thought you were being sarcastic.
” We need a PAC — all we need is a few smart people to start, and $£ money. Once going, the plan for it would be to grow big via additional donations — both from individuals sympathetic, to pirate a warmist phrase: to “the cause” (like us !), and from organizations & angels.”
I’m not much in favor of pushing for political activism and calling skeptism a “cause”. Not all skeptics share the same views about the science. Branching out from WUWT to many papers and reference materials and climate blogs from all perspectives seems to help me understand better. Personally, I would be appalled to see groups of people carrying signs and asking for donations for a skeptical PAC. I’m not saying that politics don’t play a huge part (imo) in the AGW camp. The obvious political agenda is what many people can’t ignore and also don’t trust. Why would we imitate them instead of continuing to hold their feet to the fire about the poor performing models and extreme prophecies, which were paid for with tax dollars? 100 million hits…do you think WUWT isn’t getting the message out?
Interesting to see that the Russians are concerned about the accuracy of the temperature data used by CRU: “On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.”
I don’t speak Russian so have not read the source article, but it is briefly mentioned in an English language round up of the Russian newspapers:
http://en.rian.ru/papers/20091216/157260660.html
Spotted this article in the Daily Mail (UK) this am.
Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
“Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
“Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing”
This mornings mail on line
Don’t fall off!
I get the feeling that MSM and top politicians are now copping on to whats been going on and that we are about to see a major run for cover by the team. Expect resignations, retirements ect pretty soon. I don’t think any will stick around to see court action.
Thanks Judy and everyone.
Congratulations Anthony et al, you have the hottest product !!!
You really are demonstrating world’s best practise, and it would appear that the world is watching.
obviously the internet has taken the sharing of information and human endeavour to greater and global levels – the truth will be told.
there’s been some discussion of where too from here, in a political/legal sense. I think that banks are the preferred candidates for cleaning up the global warming mess. e.g. who made the most money? who made the most mess ? we could invest in stocks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocks .
I’m interested in the production of food. I had a ‘small holding’ (12 acres), including a market garden, in the adelaide hills (australia). It appeared that the best economy of a market garden was an individual or family enterprise of a mixed holding. controlled environments were most desirable for extending opportunities and harvest time. definitely a small economy of scale e.g. 2 – 5 tonne truck trailer to market, glasshouse, greenhouse, aquaponic house, aquaculture house pond , outdoor crops …ad infinitum.
Giggle: Flashing image of Anthony Watts on radio mast swatting a biplanes piloted by porky, balding, middle-aged men … biplane callsigns IPCC-xxx
Crap. I wish I could draw as well as Josh.
Dabble says:
January 29, 2012 at 12:32 am
I checked that bastion of Truth (and substitute for tabloids I read in the checkout line), http://english.pravda.ru/
No luck.
They did have
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/18-01-2012/120262-public_sex-0/
“Public sex can be extremely dangerous”
It’s about insects getting preyed upon while distracted.
http://english.pravda.ru/health/23-01-2012/120298-bird_flu-0/
A note that H5N1 is still out there and that a few human deaths have occurred recently. Similar stories are in a western media.
http://english.pravda.ru/photo/album/6668/
Photos of “Snow disaster in Eastern Europe.” At least it’s snowing somewhere, I have only 1.5″ on the ground.
http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/27-01-2012/120346-phobos_ground-0/
“Official conclusion of Phobos Ground crash shocks scientists”
Offcial: most likely, the spacecraft did not enter the departure trajectory to Mars due to the influence of plasma formation in the magnetosphere of the Earth.
Other scientist: This is impossible. Plasma formations of this type may appear at certain altitudes. As a rule, they are much weaker than would be required for exerting any influence on the spacecraft,”
I missed the article about Germany losing billions on alternative energy, and skipped the Michael Jackson arrest on a subway and “McDonald’s to expose everything about its chemical food in Russia”
Wow, it didn’t go in the spam bin. Maybe the folks at WordPress like Pravda!
Anthony, if you’re good with towers, the next time you are in the Toronto area, I have a frozen rotor and a HF beam that’s disintegrating, that could benefit from some TLC… (or we can just sit around with a beer and ruminate on how to get somebody younger and stupider to go up and change it… 🙂
My man and compatriot NOVAK DJOKOVIC just won Melbourne tennis tournament (3:2). Congratulations to our Nole.
The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
. . .
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html#ixzz1krq3mOu1
Interesting, very interesting….
The following article was written to express in the simplest possible terms to explain my views on AGW. While I do take a snipe at the “sceptics” they should not take it to heart. If anyone can explain why the laws of Physics are wrong please feel free to explain which ones and how….
He global warming concept hinges upon the idea that greenhouse gasses cause an increase in mean global temperatures . The basis for this concept is that such gasses are better radiators than non greenhouse gasses and as a result keep the global mean temperatures higher as a result of feeding back radiation to the Earth’s surface. Let us investigate this hypothesis:
First of all we need a model upon which all can agree is a good approximation to the real thing. The model I have chosen is familiar to most engaged in the debate and in my view lies closest to the hearts of the so-called global warmists. In this model we are concerned only with radiation from the sun which interacts thermally with the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. We are not concerned with radiation that is reflected either specularly or diffusely back into the space from which it came. Neither are we concerned about radiation which is absorbed and re-emitted without intermediate thermal processes. Without such processes there can be no warming of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere so such non thermal interactions can be neglected
Removing such non thermal processes from our model leaves us with this: the Earth’s surface is treated as an approximation to a black body, it absorbs radiation from the sun, becomes hotter and then re-emits radiation more typically at longer wavelengths. We also have an atmosphere which is composed of two types of gas: greenhouse gasses and non greenhouse gasses, both of which may or may not absorb and re-emit radiation or receive thermal input via convection and conduction from the Earth’s surface as is their wont. It does not concern us for now as to the nature of these processes.
To further the debate we have the concept propounded by the pro-greenhouse warming lobby that because greenhouse gasses are better radiating gasses than non greenhouse gasses they re-radiate more radiation back to the Earth’s surface than do non greenhouse gasses. This leads us to an obvious thought experiment:
We replace all greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere with an equal volume of non greenhouse gasses. There are then three logical possibilities:
1) Greenhouse gasses are less good radiating gasses than non greenhouse gasses.
2) Greenhouse gasses are equally good radiating gasses as non greenhouse gasses.
3) Greenhouse gasses are better radiating gasses than non greenhouse gasses.
If (1) or (2) are true then the theory of global warming is falsified. If (3) is true then greenhouse gasses produce relative global warming. I believe (3) is true.
We now consider the Earth’s radiation budget.
Integrating over a sufficient time period to average out the effects of night and day and the seasons then at equilibrium the average energy received by the Earth in the form of radiant energy from the Sun must equal the average energy lost by the Earth in the form of radiation. This is the only significant form of energy capable of influencing global mean temperatures. I take a warmist’s view here and do not include such effects as the solar wind, the Sun and Earth’s magnetic field coupling lateral flare currents into the oceans, cosmic rays inducing cloud formation or variations in solar energy output or spectrum.
We then consider the Earth’s outgoing energy budget. It has three components: that from greenhouse gasses, that from non greenhouse gasses and that from the black body Earth itself. We then perform the same thought experiment we performed above, and replace the greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere with an equal volume of non-greenhouse gasses:
As discussed above, we know that if (1) or (2) are true that the hypothesis of global warming is falsified. If (3) is true then greenhouse gasses cause absolute global cooling. This is because they contribute significantly to the Earth’s outgoing radiation budget. If they are removed from the Earth’s atmosphere the amount of energy radiated away into the absolute zero of space goes down and in consequence the temperature of the Earth and its atmosphere will rise, I neglect here the 4 degrees Kelvin background radiation left over from the Big Bang. It is thus demonstrated that:
A) Greenhouse gasses cause absolute global cooling.
B) In order to believe that greenhouse gasses produce relative global warming it is first necessary to believe that greenhouse gasses produce absolute global cooling.
At first sight the hypothesis of global warming through feedback radiation is self contradictory. Can we simultaneously have the situation in which greenhouse gasses produce both relative warming and absolute cooling of the planet? The answer is yes! This is because the so-called feedback radiation is a negative feedback on the absolute cooling caused by greenhouse gasses. This means that the presence of the feedback term in the equation of global cooling reduces the rate at which radiation is lost from the Earth by re-cycling energy back to the Earth’s surface. This amounts simply to an observation that secondary radiators are not 100% efficient. What this means is perhaps better explained with reference to the analogous system of coupled primary and secondary radiators we find under the hood of a typical auto-mobile:
In the Earth model above we treat the Earth’s surface as the primary radiator. We can do this because the amount of radiation fed back to the real primary radiator of the system, the Sun, is negligible. The secondary radiator of our system is the Earth’s atmosphere which is closely thermally coupled to the surface of the Earth by conduction and convection as well as radiation. In our auto-mobile engine analogy the primary radiator is the engine block and head with the secondary radiator being not surprisingly, the radiator! (If you like the engine can be treated as being supplied with both gasoline and air through a pipe so it can be run in vaccuum and thus tighten up the analogy).
We now imagine that our engine and radiator are sitting in an auto-mobile on our collective drive and that the engine has been running for some time and has reached thermal equilibrium with the environment. We lift the hood and examine the engine in operation with reference to a manual: The engine generates heat energy some of which it loses directly to the environment. Most heat energy however is removed from the engine by a water based coolant which is pumped though a series of channels in the block and head then via a radiator hose to the radiator. A second feedback radiator hose returns the cooled water from the radiator to the engine and closes the system loop.
We have just concluded that the engine and cooling system is working satisfactorily when our collective neighbour, a Mr. Gore, drops by and with the skilful use of a thermometer amidst all those moving parts demonstrates that the return hose from the radiator is operating above ambient temperature and is thus maintaining the engine at a higher temperature than it otherwise would be. Mr Gore is completely correct of course; feeding warm water into the auto-mobile engine will maintain it at a higher operating temperature. Mr Gore therefore prevails upon us to disconnect the feedback hose from the radiator to the engine block in order to keep the engine cooler.
Would you take Mr. Gore’s advice? Your answer to this question will not only determine your position in the global warming debate but whether or not you drive to work next week!
The lessons learned above can be reinforced by considering the black-body Earth and atmosphere in a little more detail. Consider a black-body Earth without any atmosphere whatsoever. Without an atmosphere not only will more radiation get through to the Earth’s surface because there are no greenhouse gasses to intercept any of this radiation and re-radiate it back out into space without it having first to interact with the Earth’s surface, but there will be no conduction and convection into the non-existent atmosphere to keep the surface cool. The job of re-radiating energy into space will fall squarely on the surface of the black-body Earth itself. Increasing the radiation from a black-body can only be accomplished by increasing its radiative temperature.
If we now add an atmosphere of non-greenhouse gasses to our black-body Earth we find that heat energy can leave the surface not just by radiation but by conduction and convection as well. If we also include surface water the latent heat of evaporation of water will contribute to this heat loss mechanism too. The situation is now similar to that of a domestic central heating radiator which loses heat to heat a room mainly by conduction and convection with a small component of radiative loss; the central heating radiator would be better described as a convection heater. Of course if the atmospheric gasses did not radiate away any energy into space eventually the Earth’s surface would rise to the temperature it had before we added any atmosphere. However all gasses radiate and the non-greenhouse gasses do so too. The reason for this is that all accelerating charges radiate and all molecules in the atmosphere accelerate, often negatively, as they constantly collide with each other. The faster the molecules move the more frequent are the collisions, the greater the accelerations and the greater the loss though radiation. The atmosphere can now be seen for what it is, a secondary radiator which by adding to the Earth’s outgoing radiation budget keeps the Earth’s surface cooler. The non-greenhouse gasses component of the Earth’s atmosphere are thermally radiating gasses. In other words in order to radiate more they must be at a higher temperature, just like the black-body Earth itself.
Finally we add to the Earth’s atmosphere the greenhouse gasses. While these gasses radiate thermally just like non-greenhouse gasses they have a secondary mechanism too based on a form of electronic transition related to quantised states of dipole moments. Greenhouse gasses as a result are not only able to radiate much more energy at lower temperature but are also able to pick up thermal energy from both the Earth’s surface and non-greenhouse gasses and radiate this energy into space as well. Greenhouse gasses thus add very significantly to the Earth’s outgoing energy budget and thus keep the Earth’s surface and atmosphere very much cooler than they would be in the absence of these lower temperature radiating gasses.
From consideration of the arguments given above it is very easy to see that the concept of greenhouse gasses as a planet warming blanket is completely erroneous. Greenhouse gasses are cooling gasses, part of a secondary radiator system and in my view the principal mechanism by which the temperatures at the Earth’s surface are kept cool enough for life to exist across the globe.
In the face of such obviousness the real question is why the concept of greenhouse gas induced global warming has persisted for so long in the face of so much entrenched opposition from global warming sceptics? The answer is perhaps surprising: The global warming debate has three factions which can be loosely described as warmists, luke-warmists and sceptics. These factions however all have one thing in common: they all believe in global warming!
These three groups all believe that warming is produced by greenhouse gasses to greater or lesser degrees with the warmists predicting large increases in global mean temperature with increasing man made emissions of carbon dioxide and the sceptics predicting very small increases in global mean temperatures as a result of these same emissions. The global warming debate has been monopolised by these three groups since the inception of the IPCC. It is a one sided debate in which no voices of opposition are heard.
The simple reality is that greenhouse gasses cause global cooling and lots of it. It is only by stepping outside the radiative feedback paradigm foisted upon us by warmists and sceptics alike and then viewing the the system as a whole using overarching energy arguments that we begin to glimpse the truth.
Safe driving!
Eco-geek
David was a nerd? Who knew! 😉
@Laurie. I say that we need a PAC like entity to fight the leftist radicals for public opinion. Pub opinion will determine the outcome of this war. Our ’cause’ is to thwart the leftists plans of w govt, unfree enterprise, and unfreedom. In the last few years we have made some gains with the public, but only with the benefit of a HUGE headwind in our favor (ClimateGate 1 & 2, Obama, temps arguably dipping, and more). But some polls show that even with all this, things are starting to head south again for us.
We can’t be complacent, and take the McCain style ‘high ground’ Goody Two-Shoes position, and lose. Cap & Trade, with 83% CO2 reductions set for 2050, passed the u.s. House, and they were just a couple votes short in the Senate. The leftists were that close to seeing their Utopian dream of severe de-industrialization and unfreedom realized. Don’t think it won’t happen again. A huge lot is at stake, but we are not playing like that’s the case. With the liberal establishments and liberal MSM every day pushing the leftist cause, we can soon find ourselves — defeated, and humiliated. Perhaps Nuremberged. Turn the tables!
Wake up. Start thinking about playing to win.
We need to say in 30 effective seconds: 1. there is nothing wrong with the climate (hockey stick a debunked deception: current temps are not unusual), and 2. CO2 has nothing (or very little) to do with it. There are secondary points to be made, but those two points are the main ones to deeply imprint in the public mind. We need a smart, coordinated web & tv attack plan.
By the way, most of the support for Point # 2 on CO2 can be made in 5 or 6 seconds, through a distillation of this 3 minute video, which also shows Al Gore in a pivotal deception: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg
Bob Diaz says:
January 29, 2012 at 8:58 am
“Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
Good grief, they’ve just admitted they’ve been hiding the decline in temps for the last 15 years!
Lucy, I was intrigued by your post, and have been thinking about the issue of web-based peer review for science, generally, for some time now.
Many professional journals seem to be dying out, and this death spiral could speed up as publishing costs and price goes up and subscription numbers go down. Many academic libraries are reducing their investment in all forms of paper-based publishing, including the expensive specialty journals. And once a journal goes online, especially if behind a prohibitively expensive paywall, it seems to me that the journal itself has become an unnecessary level of control, both restricting access by readers, students and follow-on scientists, all to serve a now superfluous business model.
It seems to me an open, web-based communication environment COULD become a much better mechanism to perform honest to goodness scientific peer review, not to mention be a great place to archive scientific work, with version-controlled components of the entire body of literature, published papers, raw data sets, formal review documents, and even feedback from both invited and uninvited reviewers. This would make science so much more transparent, I think. And if public funding is used to pay for the experiments, with the exception of publishing dangerous material (the discussion of which itself could be discussed openly), I cannot imagine any reasonable objection to full and open views of every aspect of a field of study like Climate Change (I can imagine some reasons, mind you, just not productive, positive ones).
Let’s ignore the issues of tendentiousness and open-mindedness and presume a good web interface will never change human nature. What bothers me about blog posting in general, is that threading is difficult to maintain, version control is not routinely possible, and the signal to noise ratio is often very small, making the study of any particular topic more difficult than it should be. A science interface requires navigation that’s more humane than is currently possible.
Science review blog SW would need many things that blogs already have; to wit, a way to log in either as an identified person, or a guest (pseudonymous IDs don’t bother me in the general case), threaded topic chains. But i also needs version control of whole threads, and a data archive (also version controlled), a set of conventions that restrict (publicly policed) threads to objectively stated hypotheses or questions, and a rating system to vote down low signal to noise posts and posters, and a corresponding viewing filter to select a reader’s tolerance for low signal to noise posts.
Science review site might have top level threads limited to a number of simple yes/no scientific propositions, implicitly geared toward falsification. The second level threads might follow a convention of having both a YES and a NO subthread. In the Yes thread, are all propositions / experiments claiming for Yes begin. If a pro-YES proposition is judged as having been ‘falsified’ by reviewers, the experiment moves to the NO thread. Conversely, if an experiment actively seeks to prove NO, it stays in the NO thread until it is judged as falsified by reviewers, in which case it moves to the YES thread. A third subthread is a communal group written (in the manner of a WIKI) “What We Think We Know” (WWTWK) executive summary, akin to an elevator statement (search WUWT if you don’t know what that is) describing the analysis of the complete set of YES/NO threads, and the currently “accepted’ state of which side (Yes or No) is winning, or intermediate conclusions, such as too early to tell, etc. Reviews and comments would be allowed as follow-on posts, and version control allows modifications, revisions, and even reversals in the WWTWK statement. And a communally written “minority report” would be generated, too, for the best cases opposed to WWTWK. Comments and reviews belong to their version only, so turn invisible to the latest version when it is published, but the old statement and it’s entire thread can still be accessed.
For Climate Science, I’d propose a top level thread called:
Proposition: the Earth is warming up, globally
-> Yes, it’s warming (thread top for experiments ‘proving’ warming (not AGW, just plain warming)
-> No, it’s cooling (thread top for experiments ‘proving’ cooling)
-> What we think we know
-> Minority Report (the best arguments of those who disagree with WWTWK
and:
Burning fossil fuels by human civilization significantly alters the Earth’s Climate
-> No, human use of fossil fuels has little to no effect in the context of natural variability
-> Yes, anthropogenic activity has a significant affect on the climate
-> What we think we know
-> Minority Report
and:
Climate models can predict the future.
This just in: Sky ain’t fallin’
http://talkingabouttheweather.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/look-up/
@Eco-geek
You and most of us have been taken in by the warmists and discuss only radiation. What that leaves out is the important role the evapo-convection plays, plus other properties of water.
Yes, CO2 is radiatively active. But so is water, and there is up to 100 times as much water in the air as CO2. The water swamps any effect of the CO2.
Beyond that, there is the evapo-convection thing. Water is evaporated at the surface, thus absorbing latent energy; the moist air rises high skyward due to convection (particularly thunderheads in the tropics); the water vapor condenses at altitude, releasing the heat for radiation to outer space. I have read (and would like to have confirmed or countered) that up to 75% of the heat lofted upward is conveyed by evapo-convection.
Some thermal energy is raised just by the surface heating air, which also rises by convection.
And water has one more kick at the can by forming clouds, which block incoming radiation.
The radiative effect of CO2 is minuscule by comparison.
If anyone finds what I have written to have errors, kindly inform me. Otherwise, let’s stop playing the game of CO2 + radiation by the warmists’ rules!
IanM
Just in case nobody’s posted it yet, here’s an unbelievable film of exactly what Anthony is doing.