Guest post by Alec Rawls
“Expert review” of the First Order Draft of AR5 closed on the 10th. Here is the first paragraph of my submitted critique:
My training is in economics where we are very familiar with what statisticians call “the omitted variable problem” (or when it is intentional, “omitted variable fraud”). Whenever an explanatory variable is omitted from a statistical analysis, its explanatory power gets misattributed to any correlated variables that are included. This problem is manifest at the very highest level of AR5, and is built into each step of its analysis.
Like everyone else who participated in this review, I agreed not to cite, quote or distribute the draft. The IPCC also made a further request, which reviewers were not required to agree to, that we “not discuss the contents of the FOD in public fora such as blogs.”
Given what I found—systematic fraud—it would not be moral to honor this un-agreed to request, and because my comments are about what is omitted, the fraud is easy enough to expose without quoting the draft. My entire review (4700 words) only contains a half dozen quotes, which can easily be replaced here with descriptions of the quoted material. Cited section numbers are also easy to replace with descriptions of the subjects addressed. And so with Anthony’s permission, here is the rest of my minimally altered review:
Introduction to the “omitted variable fraud” critique, continued
For the 1750-2010 period examined, two variables correlate strongly with the observed warming (and hence with each other). Solar magnetic activity and atmospheric CO2 were both trending upwards over the period, and both stepped up to much higher levels over the second half of the 20th century. These two correlations with temperature change give rise to the two main competing theories of 20th century warming. Was it driven by rapidly increasing human release of CO2, or by the 80 year “grand maximum” of solar activity that began in the early 1920’s? (“Grand minima and maxima of solar activity: new observational constraints,” Usoskin et al. 2007.)
The empirical evidence in favor of the solar explanation is overwhelming. Dozens of peer-reviewed studies have found a very high degree of correlation (.5 to .8) between solar-magnetic activity and global temperature going back many thousands of years (Bond 2001, Neff 2001, Shaviv 2003, Usoskin 2005, and many others listed below). In other words, solar activity “explains,” in the statistical sense, 50 to 80% of past temperature change.
Such a high degree of correlation over such long time periods implies causality, which can only go one way. Global temperature cannot be driving solar activity, so there must be some mechanism by which solar activity is driving or modulating global temperature change. The high degree of correlation also suggests that solar activity is the primary driver of global temperature on every time scale studied (which is pretty much every time scale but the Milankovitch cycle).
In contrast, records of CO2 and temperature reveal no discernable warming effect of CO2. There is a correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature, but with CO2 changes following temperature changes by an average of about 800 years (Caillon 2003), indicating that it is temperature change that is driving atmospheric CO2 change (as it should, since warming oceans are able to hold less CO2). This does not rule out the possibility that CO2 also drives temperature, and in theory a doubling of CO2 should cause about a 1 degree increase in temperature before any feedback effects are accounted, but feedbacks could be negative (dampening rather than amplifying temperature forcings), so there no reason, just from what we know about the greenhouse mechanism, that CO2 has to be a significant player. The one thing we can say is that whatever the warming effect of CO2, it is not detectable in the raw CO2 vs. temperature data.
This is in glaring contrast to solar activity, which lights up like a neon sign in the raw data. Literally dozens of studies finding .5 to .8 degrees of correlation with temperature. So how is it that the IPCC’s current generation of general circulation models start with the assumption that CO2 has done 40 times as much to warm the planet as solar activity since 1750? This is the ratio of AR5’s radiative forcing estimates for variation in CO2 and variation in total solar effects between 1750 and 2010, as listed in [the table of RF estimates in the chapter on human and natural temperature forcing factors]. RF for CO2 is entered as ___ W/m^2 while RF for total solar effects is entered as ___ W/m^2. [I’m not going to quote the actual numbers, but yeah, the ratio is an astounding 40 to 1, up from 14 to 1 in AR4, which listed total solar forcing as 0.12 W/m^2, vs. 1.66 for CO2.]
So the 50% driver of global temperature according to mountains of temperature correlation data is assumed to have 1/40th the warming effect of something whose warming effect is not even discernable in the temperature record. This is on the input side of the GCM’s. The models aren’t using gigaflops of computing power to find that CO2 has that much larger a warming effect. The warming ratio is fixed at the outset. Garbage in, garbage out.
The “how” is very simple. The 40 times greater warming effect of CO2 is achieved by blatant omitted variable fraud. As I will fully document, all of the evidence for a strong solar magnetic driver of climate is simply left out of AR5. Of the many careful empirical studies that show a high correlation between solar activity and climate, only three papers are obliquely referenced in a single sentence of the entire First Order Draft. On [page___, line ____ of the chapter on aerosols and clouds] there is a bare reference to three papers that found unspecified correlations to some climate variables, with no mention of the dramatic magnitude of the correlations, or the scope and repetition of the findings. And that’s it. Not a single other mention in the entire report. A person reading AR5 from cover to cover would come away with not even a hint that for more than ten years a veritable flood of studies have been finding solar activity to explain something on the order of half of all past temperature variation. The omission is virtually complete.
As a result, AR5 misattributes virtually all of the explanatory power of solar-magnetic activity to the correlated CO2 variable. This misattribution can be found both in AR5’s analytical discussions and in its statistical estimations and projections, and the error could not be more consequential. If it is solar-magnetic activity that drives climate then the sun’s recent descent into a state of profound quiescence portends imminent global cooling, possibly rapid and severe, and unlike warming, cooling is actually dangerous and really can feed back on itself in runaway fashion.
Nothing could be more perverse in such a circumstance than to unplug the modern world in a misbegotten jihad against CO2. The IPCC’s omitted variable fraud must stop. AR5’s misattribution of 20th century warming to CO2 must stop. The evidence overwhelmingly supports the solar-magnetic warming theory. The only support for the CO2 theory is the fact that models built on it can achieve a reasonable fit to the last couple centuries of temperature history, but that is only because CO2 is roughly correlated with solar activity over this period, while these models themselves are invalidated by their demonstrable omitted variable fraud. If warming is attributed to solar-magnetic effects at all in accordance with the evidence then the warming that is left to attribute to CO2 becomes utterly benign.
With natural temperature variation almost certainly both substantially larger than CO2 effects, and headed in the cooling direction, the expected external value of CO2 is unambiguously positive. If anything, we should subsidizing and promoting increases in atmospheric CO2, exactly the opposite of the draft report’s opening claim that developments since AR4 “… [summary conclusion about scientists supposedly being more sure than ever (thanks to the absence of any 21st century warming?) that the effects of human activity are the primary climate concern].”
As someone who recognizes the scientific errors in this disastrous report, I can at least make sure that the issue is put properly before the authors of AR5. Thus I am documenting as concisely as possible the solar-magnetic omission and the errors it leads to. The discussion is substantial but I have kept it well under the character limit for a single comment. This comment is being submitted as a top-level comment on AR5 as a whole, and it is being submitted unaltered as a comment on three different sub-chapter headings where the omitted solar-magnetic evidence ought to be taken into account: ____, ____, ____ [a subheading in the paleo-data chapter, a subheading in the chapter on clouds and aerosols, and a subheading in the radiative forcing chapter].
A sample of the omitted evidence
Listed below are a few of the most prominent and compelling studies that have found a strong correlations between solar activity and climate, together with a semi-random collection of similar findings, totaling two dozen citations all together. It would be easy to list two dozen more, but the purpose here is just to show a sample of the omitted evidence, in order to document up-front the existence and validity of it. Included are brief descriptions of the findings for about ten of the studies. None of the observed correlations are reported anywhere in AR5. The first four are the ones I mentioned above:
Bond et al. 2001, “Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene,” Science.
Excerpt from Bond: “Over the last 12,000 years virtually every centennial time scale increase in drift ice documented in our North Atlantic records was tied to a distinct interval of variable and, overall, reduced solar output.”
Neff et al. 2001, “Strong coherence between solar variability and the monsoon in Oman between 9 and 6 kyr ago,” Nature.
Finding from Neff: Correlation coefficients of .55 and .60.
Usoskin et. al. 2005, “Solar Activity Over the Last 1150 years: does it Correlate with Climate?” Proc. 13th Cool Stars Workshop.
Excerpt from Usoskin: “The long term trends in solar data and in northern hemisphere temperatures have a correlation coefficient of about 0.7 — .8 at a 94% — 98% confidence level.”
Shaviv and Veizer, 2003, “Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?” GSA Today.
Excerpt from Shaviv: “We find that at least 66% of the variance in the paleotemperature trend could be attributed to CRF [Cosmic Ray Flux] variations likely due to solar system passages through the spiral arms of the galaxy.” [Not strictly due to solar activity, but implicating the GCR, or CRF, that solar activity modulates.]
Plenty of anti-CO2 alarmists know about this stuff. Mike Lockwood and Claus Fröhlich, for instance, in their 2007 paper: “Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature” (Proc. R. Soc. A), began by documenting how “[a] number of studies have indicated that solar variations had an effect on preindustrial climate throughout the Holocene.” In support, they cited 17 papers: the Bond and Neff articles from above, plus:
Davis & Shafer 1992; Jirikowic et al. 1993; Davis 1994; vanGeel et al. 1998; Yu&Ito 1999; Hu et al. 2003; Sarnthein et al. 2003; Christla et al. 2004; Prasad et al. 2004; Wei & Wang 2004; Maasch et al. 2005; Mayewski et al. 2005; Wang et al. 2005a; Bard & Frank 2006; and Polissar et al. 2006.
The correlations in most of these papers are not directly to temperature. They are to temperature proxies, some of which have a complex relationship with temperature, like Neff 2001, which found a correlation between solar activity and rainfall. Even so, the correlations tend to be strong, as if the whole gyre is somehow moving in broad synchrony with solar activity.
Some studies do examine correlations between solar activity proxies and direct temperature proxies, like the ratio of Oxygen18 to Oxygen16 in geologic samples. One such study (highlighted in Kirkby 2007) is Mangini et. al. 2005, “Reconstruction of temperature in the Central Alps during the past 2000 yr from a δ18O stalagmite record.”
Excerpt from Mangini: “… a high correlation between δ18O in SPA 12 and D14C (r =0.61). The maxima of δ18O coincide with solar minima (Dalton, Maunder, Sporer, Wolf, as well as with minima at around AD 700, 500 and 300). This correlation indicates that the variability of δ18O is driven by solar changes, in agreement with previous results on Holocene stalagmites from Oman, and from Central Germany.”
And that’s just old stuff. Here are four random recent papers.
Ogurtsov et al, 2010, “Variations in tree ring stable isotope records from northern Finland and their possible connection to solar activity,” JASTP.
Excerpt from Ogurtsov: “Statistical analysis of the carbon and oxygen stable isotope records reveals variations in the periods around 100, 11 and 3 years. A century scale connection between the 13C/12C record and solar activity is most evident.”
Di Rita, 2011, “A possible solar pacemaker for Holocene fluctuations of a salt-marsh in southern Italy,” Quaternary International.
Excerpt from Di Rita: “The chronological correspondence between the ages of saltmarsh vegetation reductions and the minimum concentration values of 10Be in the GISP2 ice core supports the hypothesis that important fluctuations in the extent of the salt-marsh in the coastal Tavoliere plain are related to variations of solar activity.”
Raspopov et al, 2011, “Variations in climate parameters at time intervals from hundreds to tens of millions of years in the past and its relation to solar activity,” JASTP.
Excerpt from Raspopov: “Our analysis of 200-year climatic oscillations in modern times and also data of other researchers referred to above suggest that these climatic oscillations can be attributed to solar forcing. The results obtained in our study for climatic variations millions of years ago indicate, in our opinion, that the 200- year solar cycle exerted a strong influence on climate parameters at those time intervals as well.”
Tan et al, 2011, “Climate patterns in north central China during the last 1800 yr and their possible driving force,” Clim. Past.
Excerpt from Tan: “Solar activity may be the dominant force that drove the same-phase variations of the temperature and precipitation in north central China.”
Saltmarshes, precipitation, “oscillations.” It’s all so science-fair. How about something just plain scary?
Solheim et al. 2011, “The long sunspot cycle 23 predicts a significant temperature decrease in cycle 24,” submitted astro-ph.
Excerpt from Solheim: “We find that for the Norwegian local stations investigated that 30-90% of the temperature increase in this period may be attributed to the Sun. For the average of 60 European stations we find ≈ 60% and globally (HadCRUT3) ≈ 50%. The same relations predict a temperature decrease of ≈ 0.9°C globally and 1.1−1.7°C for the Norwegian stations investigated from solar cycle 23 to 24.”
First paleo chapter error: omitting all solar variables besides TSI
The paleo-observations chapter is the right place for the evidence for a solar-magnetic climate driver to be introduced because most of this evidence is obtained from the deposition of cosmogenic isotopes in various paleologic strata: ice cores, geologic cores and tree rings. When solar activity is strong, less galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) is able to penetrate the solar wind and reach earth, making variation in cosmogenic isotopes found in time-indexed strata a proxy for solar activity. But when this chapter does get around to looking at cosmogenic records, it only looks at how they can be used to reconstruct total solar irradiance (TSI). It never even hints at the flood of studies that show a high degree of correlation between solar activity and various paleo proxies for climate and temperature!
This takes place [in the addendum that asks whether the sun is a major climate driver]. This addendum mentions the long-period changes in TSI that go with orbital variation (Milankovitch cycles), a factor which hasn’t changed enough since 1750 to account for any significant amount of the warming since that date. Neither can TSI changes from changes in the sun’s output of electromagnetic radiation be responsible for significant recent warming because, as solar activity jumps dramatically up and down over the roughly 11 year solar cycle, solar output is known to remain remarkably stable, varying only .1 to .2%.
Thus, concludes the addendum, the sun cannot be responsible for any significant amount of the warming since 1750. But it is only able to reach this conclusion by completely omitting any consideration those solar variables other than TSI that could be affecting global temperature. Unlike TSI, solar wind speed and pressure vary considerably over the solar cycle and between solar cycles. So do the Ap index and the F10.7cm radio flux progression, while the GCR that the solar wind modulates (measured by neutron counts at Climax, Oulu and other locations) can vary by a full order of magnitude over the solar cycle. In contrast, TSI varies so little that it is called “the solar constant.” If there is a mechanism by which solar variation is driving global temperature, it is most likely to work through those solar variables that actually vary significantly with solar activity. Yet the discussion in the addendum pretends that these other solar variables do not even exist.
So that’s the first error in the paleo-chapter addendum: pretending to have addressed the range of possible solar effects while studiously neglecting to mention that there are a bunch of solar variables that, unlike TSI, vary tremendously over the solar cycle and might affect our climate in ways that we do not yet understand. We in-effect live inside of the sun’s “atmosphere,” the extended corona created by the sun’s magnetic field and the solar wind. AR5 simply assumes that this solar environment has no effect on global climate, and they do it by rank omission of the relevant variables. The omitted variable problems that result are not an accident. They are omitted variable fraud.
Second paleo-chapter error: the highly irrational assumption that temperature would be driven by the trend in solar activity rather than the level
Perhaps in an effort to justify ignoring all solar variables other than TSI, the paleo-chapter addendum ends with what it presents as a general reason to dismiss the possibility that solar variation made any significant contribution to late 20th century warming by ANY mechanism:
[The statement here it the familiar claim that, because solar activity was not rising over the second half of the 20th century, it cannot possibly be responsible for late 20th century warming. I wrote a series of posts last year documenting the number of anti-CO2 alarmists who make this amazing claim, that it is not the level of forcing that creates warming, but the rate of change in the forcing. See for example, “Solar warming and ocean equilibrium Part 3: Solanki and Schuessler respond.”]
TSI peaks at the high point of the solar cycle just as the other solar variables do, so no matter what solar variable is looked at, it can’t have been the cause of recent warming, because none of these variables showed any upward trend over this period, right? Wrong. That’s like saying you can’t heat a pot of water by turning the flame to maximum and leaving it there, that you have to turn up the flame sloooooowly if you want the water to heat. It is incredible to see something so completely unscientific in AR5, passing as highly vetted science.
And the “flame” did stay on maximum. Again, there was an 80 year “grand maximum” of solar activity starting in the early 1920’s (Usoskin 2007).
[WUWT interjection for Leif and others who deny that there was a 20the century grand maximum of solar activity: if 20th century solar activity was merely “high instead of exceptional” (Muscheler 2007), it makes no difference to the argument here, as I explain in a postscript at the bottom.]
By claiming that solar activity would have had to keep rising in order to cause late 20th century warming, AR5 is in-effect assuming that by the late 70’s the oceans had already equilibrated to whatever temperature forcing effect the 20th century’s high level of solar activity might have. Otherwise the continued high level of solar activity would have caused continued warming.
Claims of rapid ocean equilibration have been made (Schwartz 2007), but they don’t stand up to scrutiny. In order to get his result, Schwartz used an energy balance model with the oceans represented by a single heat sink. That is, he assumed that the whole ocean changed temperature at once! Once you move to a 2 heat sink model where it takes time for heat to transfer from one ocean layer to another (Kirk-Davidoff 2009), rapid temperature adjustment of the upper ocean layer tells us next to nothing about how long it takes for the ocean to equilibrate to a long term forcing. [For an in-depth comparison of one heat-sink and the two heat-sink energy balance models see Part 2 of my ocean equilibration series.]
The paleo-temperature record is typified by multi-century warming and cooling phases, suggesting that equilibration can easily take centuries, making it ludicrous to assume that the warming effect of a grand maximum that began in the 1920’s must have been spent by 1970 or 1980 or by any particular date.
So no, there is no way to save the utterly incompetent argument in the paleo-chapter addendum that a solar driver of temperature can only cause warming when it is on the increase. If solar wind pressure or GCR does in some way drive global temperature, there is every reason to believe that it would have continued to warm the planet for as long as solar activity remained at grand maximum levels. There is no excuse for the IPCC to be omitting these variables, which are much more likely than TSI to be responsible for the high observed degree of correlation between solar activity and climate. For the paleo chapter to be tenable, all of the now massive evidence that there is some mechanism by which solar activity is driving most temperature change must be laid out in full.
Technical note: misattribution is assigned manually in AR5, but the concept is the same as for purely statistical omitted variable fraud
If TSI and the other solar variables all move roughly together, won’t omitting the solar variables other than TSI cause their explanatory power to be attributed to TSI rather than CO2, since they are more closely correlated with TSI than with CO2?
In a purely statistical estimation scheme yes, but the IPCC uses a combination of parameterized elements and estimated elements, and amongst the parameterized elements are the radiative forcings of CO2 and TSI, meaning that their relative warming effects are parameterized as well, with CO2 being assigned 40 times the warming effect of TSI over the 1750 to 2010 period.
This parameterization means that the explanatory power of the omitted solar magnetic variables gets attributed forty parts to CO2 for every one part to TSI. This structure forces the misattribution onto CO2. You can think of it as a manual assignment of the misattribution.
The general concept of the omitted variable remains the same. There is only so much attribution for warming to go around (100%). If attribution is given to the solar-magnetic variables in accordance with the evidence from the historic and paleo records, meaning at least 50%, then there less than 50% that can possibly be attributable to other causes.
Which again brings the scientific competence of IPCC into question. If CO2 has 40 times the warming effect of the 50% driver of global temperature (total solar effects), that makes it what? The 2000% driver of global temperature?
The chapter on aerosols and clouds inverts the scientific method, using theory to dismiss evidence
Where the paleo chapter simply pretends that no solar variable other than TSI exists, the chapter on aerosols and clouds doesn’t have that option. It is tasked to address directly the possibility that variables like the solar wind and GCR could be affecting climate. But this chapter still comes up with a way to avoid mentioning any of the massive evidence that there must be some mechanism by which solar activity is driving climate. Just as it starts to touch on the subject, it jumps instead to examining the tenability of particular theories about the mechanism by which solar activity might drive climate.
This happens right at the beginning of [the section that discusses the possible interplay between cosmic radiation, aerosols and clouds]:
[The quote here is the first two sentences under this sub-chapter heading. The first lists three papers as finding non-specific correlations between cosmogenic isotopes and various climate variables. The second sentence executes an immediate transition to a discussion of the evidence for particular mechanisms by which solar activity might drive global temperature.]
The first sentence of this quote is as close as AR5 comes to making any mention of overwhelming evidence that there is SOME mechanism by which solar activity drives global temperature. The citations suggest some correlations between solar activity and climate, but the strength of the correlations and how well established they are is completely obscured, and that’s it. Bare reference to three papers (author and year) with virtually nothing about what they found. The second sentence effects the transition into looking at the evidence for particular theories of possible mechanisms by which solar activity might effect climate. A short discussion later the evidence for these particular mechanisms is asserted (quite tendentiously) to be “[not strong enough]” for the mechanisms to “[have a significant effect on climate]” (page __, line __). This proclaimed weakness in turn becomes the rationale for omitting the proposed mechanisms from the IPCC’s general circulation models, and hence from the projections that are made with those models.
What do the AR5 draft authors do with the overwhelming evidence that there is SOME mechanism at work that makes solar magnetic the primary driver of global temperature? They don’t like the particular theories offered, but they have to still acknowledge that SOME such mechanism must be at work, don’t they? But readers don’t know about that evidence. It was skipped over via that one sentence of oblique references to a few papers that made unidentified findings, allowing AR5 to continue as if the evidence doesn’t exist. They never mention it again. They never account it in any way. It is GONE from AR5. The authors declare their dissatisfaction with the available theories for how solar activity might drive climate, and use this as an excuse to completely ignore the massive evidence that there is some such mechanism at work.
This is an exact inversion of the scientific method, which says that evidence always trumps theory. The IPCC is throwing away the evidence for a solar-magnetic driver of climate because it isn’t satisfied with the theories that have been proposed to account for it. This is the definition of anti-science: putting theory (or ideology, or anything) over evidence. Evidence has to be the trump card, or its not science. The IPCC is engaged in pure, definitional, anti-science, precisely inverting the scientific method.
It is as if a pre-Newtonian “scientist” were to predict that a rock released into the air will waft away on the breeze because we understand the force that the breeze imparts on the rock but we have no good theory of the mechanism by which heavy objects are pulled to the ground. We should therefore ignore the overwhelming evidence that there is some mechanism that pulls heavy objects to the ground, and until such time as we can identify the mechanism, proceed as if no such mechanism exists. This is what the IPCC is actually doing with the solar-climate evidence. Y’all aren’t scientists. You are actual, definitional, anti-scientists.
More anti-science: the aerosols and clouds chapter repeats the second paleo-chapter error
You know what I’m talking about: that bit about thinking that a climate driver can only cause continued warming if its own level continues to increase. The clouds and aerosols chapter says again that just leaving a proposed climate driver on maximum can’t possibly cause warming (page___, lines ___):
“_____ _____ _____ _____ ____”
And that’s the end of the section, AR5’s punctuation mark on why solar activity and GCR should be dismissed as an explanation for late 20th century warming.
This is anti-scientific in its own way. Scientists are supposed to be smart. They aren’t supposed to think that you have to slowly turn up the flame under a pot of water in order to heat it. You could collect every imbecile in the world together and not a one of them would ever come up with the idea that they have to turn the heat up slowly. It’s beyond stupid. It’s like, insanely stupid. And multiple chapter-writing teams are proclaiming the same nonsense? Fruitcakes.
Okay, I guess that means I’m ready to wrap up. Y’all have taken all these tens of billions in research money and used it perpetrate a fraud. As I have documented above, you have perpetrated the grandest and most blatant example of omitted variable fraud in history, but so far only the skeptic half the world knows it. You still have a shot, before global cooling is an established fact, to make a rapid turn around and save some shred of your reputations. But if AR5 comes out insisting that CO2 is a dominant warming influence just as global cooling is proving that the dominant climate driver is our now-quiet sun, then you all are finished on the spot. You’ll still have your filthy lucre, but the tap is going to turn off, and your reputations will be destroyed forever.
Can you imagine a worse juxtaposition? Still waging war on CO2 as the sun is already proving that CO2 is entirely beneficial? And this is what the evidence says is going to happen, all of that evidence that you have been so studiously omitting. I’m eager for your embarrassment, but I would much rather see you save yourselves, so that the needed policy reversals can some that much sooner. The anti-CO2 policies that your fraudulent “science” has supported are right now destroying the world economy. You idiots are killing our future. Please wake up and try to save your own reputations before your lunatic anti-science ruins us all.
End of review
“Omitted variable fraud” is the more fundamental critique
It is common for those who are swayed by the evidence for solar-climate driver to frame their protest against the IPCC’s dismissal of the evidence by protesting the short shrift the IPCC gives to the theories of how those effects might work. Here, for instance, is Tim Ball’s 2008 critique of AR4:
…they studiously avoided any discussion of the clear relationship between sunspot activity and temperature. They claimed there was no mechanism to explain the correlation so it could not be included, but that is incorrect. A very valid mechanism known as the Cosmic Theory (Svensmark and Calder, “The Chilling Stars”) has been in the literature with increasing detail since 1991. The date is important because IPCC claimed it was excluded because it was not published in time to meet their cut off date for consideration.
In other words, AR4 did exactly the same thing that AR5 is doing. They used the supposed lack of a sufficient theory for how a solar magnetic driver worked as an excuse not to present the overwhelming evidence that some such mechanism is a potent driver of global climate (a ruse that I documented in submitted comments on the Second Order draft of AR4, and TAR pulled the same trick as well.)
Ball’s response—that there actually is a pretty good theory—is perfectly correct, but it skips past the deeper point: that there can never be any excuse for “studiously [avoiding] any discussion of the clear relationship between sunspot activity and temperature.” The “omitted variable fraud” critique directly exposes and attacks this excuse making. Empirical evidence, the raw data, is supposed to be the ultimate arbiter. If any excuse is used to shunt the evidence aside, it’s no longer science.
We also know the consequences of this fraudulent anti-science. Omission of any variable with known explanatory power (regardless of whether the mechanism is understood) creates misattribution of the same magnitude. It’s a first order mistake.
In contrast, giving short shrift to the GCR-cloud theory is a lesser problem. So long as the IPCC’s predictive scheme attributes recent warming to solar activity in accordance with past patterns it isn’t a big deal whether a particular solar-temperature mechanism is modeled or not. At least the known explanatory variables are not being omitted and we are down to second order errors instead of first order errors.
Note that it is not necessary to invoke any theory. Predictions of future solar activity, for instance, are not based on physical models, but are purely a projection of past patterns, and this is sufficient to avoid first order error. Avoid the omitted variable fraud, account the known explanatory power of the solar-magnetic variables in any reasonable way, and big mistakes are avoided.
For the fraudsters, big mistakes are the whole point. Only with big mistakes can our eco-leftist “scientists” wage their war against industrial capitalism. Only big mistakes can give mainstream-left politicians the vast energy taxes that they eye as a treasure trove and allow them to channel hundreds of billions of dollars in wind and solar subsidies to their friends and backers.
But it’s an easy fraud to expose. Pretty much everyone who has ever taken a first course in statistics is familiar with the omitted variable problem. That is every undergraduate economics major, every business major, every science major, and most other social science majors. Right now, most of these people believe it when they are told that they can’t check the facts for themselves, that they just have to trust (or not trust) the credentialed climate scientists. But it is not true. Not only can they check the facts for themselves, but it is trivially easy.
All they need to do is scan a selection of the many empirical findings that solar-magnetic activity “explains” in the statistical sense something like half of past temperature change, then observe that all solar magnetic variables are in fact omitted from the IPCC models. It’s right there the RF table for each area report, where total solar effects are parameterized as having some tiny fraction of the warming effect of CO2. Then bingo. They know that powerful solar-warming effects are being misattributed to the coincidentally correlated CO2. They have checked the facts for themselves, at which point the voices of authority insisting that they cannot check the facts for themselves instantly become the Wizard of Oz, ordering them to ignore the man behind the curtain. Not even trusting little Dorothy fell for that.
Fundamental and accessible. That’s why I have trying to push the “omitted variable fraud” critique for many years. Anthony has a bigger bullhorn than I have had access to in the past, so maybe it will get out there this time!
If Leif is right that sunspot counts since 1945 should be reduced 20%, it does not alter the above analysis in any significant way
My review cites Usoskin’s claim that solar activity was at “grand maximum” levels from about 1920-2000. Frequent WUWT contributor Leif Svalsgaard denies that the recent peak in solar activity was a “grand maximum,” arguing that Max Waldmeier’s post-1945 sunspot counting scheme yields numbers that are about 20% too high.
If solar activity from 1945 to 2000 was merely “high instead of exceptional” (Muscheler 2007, whose cosmogenic proxies for solar activity extend through 2001), the narrative here is not significantly altered. As my review reiterates, you don’t have to keep turning the flame up under a pot of water to cause warming. Coming out of the Maunder Minimum/ Little Ice Age, if what the paleo-data says is the primary driver of global temperature remained at a high setting for most of a couple of centuries, that should cause continued warming. To actually argue that solar forcing has to continue rising in order to cause continued warming (the IPCC just asserts it) you’d have to argue that oceans had already equilibrated to the forcing, but there is no evidence for that, while the history of planetary temperature suggests that equilibration can take several centuries.
It is true that some of the strongest correlations between solar activity and temperature have short lags, on the order of ten years, but rapid responses to short term changes in solar-magnetic activity do not militate against longer term responses to longer term forcings. On the contrary, short term responsiveness implies longer term responsiveness, just as the rapid response of daytime temperatures to the rising sun implies that the longer term increase in insolation as the seasons change towards summer should cause seasonal temperature change (which of course it does).
For present purposes, it doesn’t matter whether solar activity quickly jumped up to high levels after Maunder and stayed mostly at those levels until the end of the 20th century (with the notable exceptions of the Dalton Minimum and the turn of the 19th century lull), or whether solar activity over the second half of the 20th century really did ascend to the highest levels seen since 9000 BC (Usoskin). As far as we know, either scenario could easily account for the modest amount of warming in question.
That’s an unexceptional .7° C from 1600 to the 1961-90 average according to Moberg 2005 , or .5° between 1750 to 1961-90. That 1961-90 temperature average is the HadCRUT3 zero point. HadCRUT3 reached a peak of .548 in 1998 and has fallen a couple of tenths since, so altogether there was a peak of about a 1° increase over the IPCC’s 260 year study period (now down to about .8°) which is nothing unusual in the ups and downs of global temperature.
There is no reason to think that the sun could only be responsible for this unexceptional temperature increase if there had been 50 years of the highest solar activity since 9000 BC. Of course the IPCC thinks that any steady level of solar activity over the second half of the 20th century rules out a solar explanation for the small amount of warming over that period on grounds that the level of solar activity didn’t keep going up to even more extreme levels, but they’re just a bunch of fruitcake anti-scientists.
Submitted review contains one inaccuracy that is corrected in the review posted above
My submitted review claimed that the only reference in the First Order Draft to the vast evidence for a solar-climate driver comes in a single sentence that makes an oblique reference to a single research paper. In the corrected review above, that becomes a single sentence making oblique reference to three research papers.
Two of the papers only look at solar-climate correlations over the second half of the 20th century and hence are inherently unable to draw strong conclusions. I guess I was thinking that the only “real” citation was to the survey paper that actually addresses the paleo-data. But those details are irrelevant to the point I was trying to make—that a reader of AR5 is given no hint of what is in any these papers—and no clue that numerous studies point to solar activity as the primary driver of global temperature. The submitted review quotes the full sentence, so it isn’t hiding anything, but it isn’t fully accurate.
So that’s the price of procrastination. It was just before the submission deadline and I had a reunion dinner to rush off to so I was not able to vet as thoroughly as I would have liked. Still, this is the only actual screw-up in my submitted review: it isn’t one oblique reference to a single paper, but one sentence obliquely referencing three papers. With the draft report unavailable to WUWT readers I don’t want to put forward any mischaracterizations, so I made the correction and am footnoting it here.
The posting here also fixes some typos, adds links to some of the cited papers, adds some formatting that was unavailable on our Excel submission form, and touches up the presentation in a few spots.
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Comment 373? Oh well…
Yeah, I tried to get the peregrine falcon entry in Wikipedia down to earth, but failed. Its stoop is still claimed to be 240mph, triple a more realistic value. Vance Tucker’s math model and Ken Franklin’s special effects trump all observation. As with the superbird, so with the super gas–the fairy tale survives.
Just last week Ecotretus posted maps that prove the NE Passage was navigable and navigated before the LIA. And we are doomed by a seemingly decelerating 3mm/year sea level rise. If all the ice melted this century it would increase overall population density by about the same amount that can be extrapolated from current demographic trends–real, live world trends–not imaginary doomsday scenarios. And it probably wasn’t until the MWP that the population of Europe overtook that of North Africa, which kept right on drying up. Climatologically speaking, we live in a benign age.
There really aren’t any competent scholars or scientists who take this climate drama seriously.
–AGF
Alec Rawls is not a scientist, he is an economist. The IPCC fraud is much deeper than he thinks because he fails to understand:
1. Correlation, however convincing, does not PROVE causality.
2. The average temperature of the earth cannot be measured, so the “Mean Global Temperature Anomaly Record” is fraudulent and is not a measure of surface temperature or of its “trends”. It was stated openly to be faked by “Harry” in his Climategate report.
[Reply: My online dictionary defines ‘scientist’ as: a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences. ~dbs, mod.]
> I am only 25% of the way through this, and already this is up there with the most important posts EVER on WUWT, IMO.
I think the timing was unfortunate, coming in the midst of the HI-Gleick brou-ha-ha, and may get missed by some. On the other hand, it is hard to keep up, so maybe the timing worked out OK
Typhoon noted some legitimate concerns about the graphic from woodfortrees. Yes, if this were a peer-reviewed journal, one would get rejected for failing to include the error bars, failing to identify whether a fit other than linear was appropriate and various other problems. However, in the context of the assertion that “lower tropospheric global temperature has not changed based on satellite data” do you seriously think that addition of error bars could possibly support the contention that the true slope could be flat?
The warmists should be challenged when making unsupportable assertions, but so should the skeptics. Contending that the global temperature is statistically flat over the last 30 years is an extraordinary claim, and it requires extraordinary evidence, not a flat assertion that flies in the face of evidence.
Tim Folkerts says “The net impact of global warming seems to be a classic example of such a “wicked problem”.
I disagree, The benefits are KNOWN, empirically demonstrated in thousands of experiments, whereas the catastrophic projections of CAGW are postulated, but thus far extremely underwhelming, global average T stationary, frequency of severe weather is all within normal parameters, sea levels rise is not accelerating, and since 2005 is slowing down or flat. Every year we grow ten to fifteen percent more food , on the same land and water, then we would be able to if CO2 was still at 280ppm. The observations support Smokey’s statement.
There is one thing I don’t understand. Would the high explanation for variance on a short scale imply that the system quickly equilibriates to the new solar magnetic environment? Using the pot of water analogy, if I put the burner on medium, leave it for a while, and then come back and turn it down a bit, and then the temperature of the water goes down, doesn’t that imply the pot was in equilibrium with medium heat before I turned it down?
[Reply: My online dictionary defines ‘scientist’ as: a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences. ~dbs, mod.]
;———————————————————————————————————————-
Economics is a social science.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/economics
: a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services
Connelly has a non response-response to most everybody.
David says
“Lets test ‘In the last 30 years the lower tropospheric global temperature has not changed based on satellite data’.” Yes, let’s test that
> So, Connolley links to a chart demonstrating that the climate modles are %200 to %400 off of there projections.
———————————————————————————-
Connelly response…
No, that wasn’t my link; someone else provided that. I did think of adding that I was discussing the observations, and didn’t believe the modelling stuff there – its only McI, after all, you can’t rely on it.
—————————————————————————-
David says…
Yes Connelly, I see now that it was in response to Smokey’s link to it. The rest of your comment demonstrate how you are neither a scientist, or a rational and reasonable person to have a conversation with; this in particular…“and didn’t believe the modelling stuff there – its only McI, after all, you can’t rely on it.” McKitrick and McIntyre have been model scientist, willing to have rational debate with anyone, you could learn a great deal concerning real communication from visiting “climate audit”. The math contained within the report concerning tropical troposphere is easy to check and is based on the IPCC projections. (YOU KNOW THIS) Your refusal to believe it without pointing out any flaws is poor science, and pitiful debate.
——————————————————————————–
Connelly quotes one little sentence of my previous post
> So please copy the several paragraphs of Alex’s post to your comments…
And responds…
If you have a specific question, you may ask the sensei. But expecting me to answer some unspecified ramble won’t do. As I take it, the essential point of this post is “vast evidence for solar climate driver rates one oblique sentence in AR5″ – that is the title, after all. I don’t have the AR5 – no-one has, only the FOD. But certainly if you look at the AR4, it is trivial to see that the claim in the title is hopelessly wrong.
————————————————————————————-
First of all my request for you to respond to Alec. Rawl’s post was very specific and not rambling. “It is nice to see how, in your post in response to Alex’s detailed comments on your rambling snippets, you still did NOT engage the central parts of his criticism of the obvious fact that you apparently never really read the post as HE DID IN FACT GIVE A DETAILED ANSWER TO YOUR CONCERN ABOUT CURRENT “T” BASED ON NATURAL CAUSES, INCLUDING SOLAR CHANGES, AND HE DID IT WITH PEER REVIEWED REFERENCES. This was the central part of your criticism, but you ignore his comments.”
Mr. Connelly, that response by Alec is here, Alec Rawls says: .
February 22, 2012 at 11:31 am See if you are capable of a cogent response to his post.
Mr. Connelly leaves with this little demonstration that he can both spell a word, and demonstrate its meaning at the same time.
——————————————–
Connelly says
> and condesending
You mean condescending.
—————————————————————-
Cool Connelly, but your discernment of placement of a comma, does not account for your climate science coma.
P.S. modeling has one d, not moddeling which I think is what you meant. (-;
Surely all of us have, at one time or another, had the wondrous adventure of finding ourselves being driven around by a cab driver spouting precisely the kind of spiraling, unfocused, “look, there’s a squirrel” pseudo-intellectualism as Willie so eagerly, nay desperately, shares with us. To be fair, at least the cab driver is, in the final analysis, engaged in an honorable vocation.
Of course much of the enjoyment of the “genius” cab driver experience is that it tends to be a very focused and time-limited event. No one invites the nutty cab driver to move in with them, or to educate their children, or to engage in a lengthy exchange of pseudoscientific communication and “debate” intended to mislead, obfuscate, and waste away perhaps the single most valuable and precious resource of all (time).
In the same way I find it remarkable that so many here continue to engage Willie as if he were genuinely interested in advancing the scientific dialogue. He’s clearly merely acting as a pseudoscientific activist, provocateur, and propagandist (with the resume to back it up), who apparently believes he is “winning” any time he can cause people of scientific integrity to waste their time chasing his “squirrels” rather than engaging in the ethical pursuit of scientific knowledge.
I mean, the time is your own, feel free to expend it how you wish, of course. I suppose it is hypothetically possible that there may be a less useful use of one’s time than attempting to communicate on a serious level with Willie, although I’m darned if I can think of one off the top of my head. Heck I’ve had stomach viruses with more beneficial outcomes . . . at least in those cases I lost some weight. 😉
If experience is any basis on which to judge, Willie will continue to be a presence here as long as his “look at me, look at me!” hunger is fed. All good sport, I suppose.
Responding to the other Phil —
The statement of “lower tropospheric global temperature has not changed based on satellite data” does not imply that that the last 30 years of data are statistically flat. But it does deserve explanation.
I meant that the TLT channel data for 30 years ago show about the same values as the current values. To the casual observer, there is no significant difference between the two.
I’ll also say the “30 year trend line” looks like a least squares linear fit and should not be over-interpreted.
Adding context helps. Any direct infrared absorpton effect of CO2 on troposphere temps is likely very rapid, certainly within the time frame of physical mixing of global sources. Say four months.
Now, are the TLT anomaly data for the last four months the same as the correstponding months in 1980??
Oct 2011 0.116
Nov 2011 0.123
Dec 2011 0.126
Jan 2012 -0.093
Average less than +0.1
The corresponding values in 1980 and Jan 1981are -0.034, 0.004, -0.152 and 0.022, with an average near zero.
The difference in averages can’t be statistically significant because the variances appear to exceed 0.1
In 1980 the CO2 concentration is about 335 ppm plus or minus 2
In 2012 the value is 391 ppm
Now I’ll state a null hypothesis that there is no difference between the TLT anomaly values between the two data sets shown. BTW, I’m neither a skeptic nor a warmist. I do think that there is political corruption of the science and that time will resolve the issue in favor of the so-called skeptics.
Nullius in verba
bw says
I did a two-sample t-test and you are right — these two sets of data are not significantly different (p = 0.165.
However, the set of data from 1979-80 is relatively high; the data from 2011-12 is relatively low. If you had done the analysis a few months earlier, then the results would have been highly significant. This shows the danger of choosing a brief period from highly variable date and looking for trends. The overall trend is clearly upward and significant (slope = 0.01361 C/yr, R-Sq = 34.8%, p = 0.000).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/22/omitted-variable-fraud-vast-evidence-for-solar-climate-driver-rates-one-oblique-sentence-in-ar5/#comment-900970
William Connelly will not answer these questions.
William why will you not answer these questions?
If science is on the side of the extreme AGW paradigm, surely there is a scientific response to these questions.
How does AR-4 explain the 23 cycles of warming followed by cooling that have been found in the paleoclimatic record? Why are there cosmogenic isotope changes at each of the past warming and cooling phases?
The following is link to my comments that has links to papers and more details. Note I include papers that explain the mechanism and show planetary cloud cover correlates with both GCR intensity and changes to the global electric circuit caused by the solar wind bursts that remove cloud forming ions, by the process that is called electroscavenging. Note I am quoting published papers.
Why is there no mention of electroscavenging over at Realclimate? Selective filtering of science?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/22/omitted-variable-fraud-vast-evidence-for-solar-climate-driver-rates-one-oblique-sentence-in-ar5/#comment-900486
Those promoting the extreme AGW paradigm and AR4 appear to selectively ignore and filter research and data, that does not support their paradigm. The planet has repeated warmed and cooled with greater warming at northern higher latitudes. i.e. Exactly what we are currently observing.
http://www.climate4you.com/
See this link. Big picture, figure 3, which shows Greenland ice sheet temperatures over the last 12,000 years. Note the cyclic increases and decreases of high latitude temperatures which correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes. Note AR-4 specifically notes this cyclic warming and cooling cannot be explained by CO2 changes or by ocean current changes.
Its the sun. Its the sun. Its the sun. Who will be the first extreme AGW high profile scientist to break ranks? When will the media take notice? When will the public start looking for scape goats? This would be fun, if it were not likely we may observe a Heinrich cycle rather than a Dansgaard-Oescgher cycle.
This graph shows cyclic past Dansgaard-Oesgher or Bond cycles. Note there are cycles in the paleoclimatic record of warming followed by cooling of high latitude Northern regions (Gerald Bond has able to track 23 of these cycles through the Holocene interglacial and into the last glacial cycle). In the 20th century there was also warming of high latitude Northern regions. The past warming and cooling cycles all correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes. There is no correlation with atmospheric CO2 changes. There is no correlation to changes in the North Atlantic drift current and these cycles. Correlation and/or the lack of correlation is a fundamental issue that must be explained by the hypothesis.
What is the AR4 explanation of the past warming and cooling cycles? What caused the warming followed by cooling? Magic wand? Why is there again and again correlation of the warming and cooling cycles with large changes in cosmogenic isotopes? (Changes in cosmogenic isotopes are caused by changes in the solar heliosphere or changes in the geomagnetic field.)
One does not need to be prescient to predict what will happen next. The past is a guide to the future. When the same solar magnetic cycle changes occur the planet will react in a similar manner. (Note the magnitude of the temperature decline will be greater due to the declining geomagnetic field and the rapidity of the solar magnetic cycle interruption.) The magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots is declining linearly. The solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted. There will be significant cooling at higher latitudes particular Northern Latitudes particularly in the winter. The first significant cooling is now observable. The masking mechanism that was delaying the cooling is finished. There will be a news worthy significant colder winter 2012/2013.
The gig is up for the extreme AGW paradigm. There will be no scientific explanation for the significant cooling. The cooling will continue.
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MmSAI/76/PDF/969.pdf
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0784v1
Long-term Evolution of Sunspot Magnetic Fields
Independent of the normal solar cycle, a decrease in the sunspot magnetic field strength has been observed using the Zeeman-split 1564.8nm Fe I spectral line at the NSO Kitt Peak McMath-Pierce telescope. Corresponding changes in sunspot brightness and the strength of molecular absorption lines were also seen. This trend was seen to continue in observations of the first sunspots of the new solar Cycle 24, and extrapolating a linear fit to this trend would lead to only half the number of spots in Cycle 24 compared to Cycle 23, and imply virtually no sunspots in Cycle 25.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amet/aip/543146.pdf
Solar activity and Svalbard temperatures
The long temperature series at Svalbard (Longyearbyen) show large variations and a positive trend since its start in 1912. During this period solar activity has increased, as indicated by shorter solar cycles. The temperature at Svalbard is negatively correlated with the length of the solar cycle. The strongest negative correlation is found with lags 10–12 years. The relations between the length of a solar cycle and the mean temperature in the following cycle are used to model Svalbard annual mean temperature and seasonal temperature variations.
These models can be applied as forecasting models. We predict an annual mean temperature decrease for Svalbard of 3.5 to 2oC from solar cycle 23 to solar cycle 24 (2009–‐20) and a decrease in the winter temperature of ≈6 oC.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2000PA000571.shtml
On the 1470-year pacing of Dansgaard-Oeschger warm events
The oxygen isotope record from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) ice core was reanalyzed in the frequency and time domains. The prominent 1470-year spectral peak, which has been associated with the occurrence of Dansgaard-Oeschger interstadial events, is solely caused by Dansgaard-Oeschger events 5, 6, and 7. This result emphasizes the nonstationary character of the oxygen isotope time series. Nevertheless, a fundamental pacing period of ∼1470 years seems to control the timing of the onset of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. A trapezoidal time series model is introduced which provides a template for the pacing of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Statistical analysis indicates only a ≤3% probability that the number of matches between observed and template-derived onsets of Dansgaard-Oeschger events between 13 and 46 kyr B.P. resulted by chance. During this interval the spacing of the Dansgaard-Oeschger onsets varied by ±20% around the fundamental 1470-year period and multiples thereof. The pacing seems unaffected by variations in the strength of North Atlantic Deep Water formation, suggesting that the thermohaline circulation was not the primary controlling factor of the pacing period.
boston12gs says:
February 23, 2012 at 3:16 pm
.”…In the same way I find it remarkable that so many here continue to engage Willie as if he were genuinely interested in advancing the scientific dialogue….”
Boston, for my part I answere that sentment here…
“David says:
February 22, 2012 at 11:48 pm
One further comment on why I think it is important to give serious arguments to Connely, and also point out his evasiveness and reiterate what he refuses to discuss.
From reading his posts here I consider his serious arguments to lack cogency. By this I mean he is only trying to confuse, and not to directly engage the post, Furthermore I do not trust him any more then Peter Gleick. It would not surprise me to see him do an article in the pro CAGW world, where he cherry picks (they do this well) his comments here and the responses, the purpose being to make sceptics appear ignorant or unwilling to debate.”
So you see, for the record it is good to try to corner such trolls to an actual conversation on the science, and to redirect them to the post, while factualy revealing their deductive reason failures.
A further two cent suggestions for the moderators. Poster with “one trick pony” agendas, such as the non heating ability of SWR, or those who insist that there is no GHE, should not be allowed to turn every post into a dialogue and debate over their pet peeve. Perhaps a Side Bar link could be set on the side, and such repetive debates, which distract from the subject of the article, could be redirected to that location with all further interactions similarly placed there..
To Myrrh’s Pseudo Science
I live at a high mountainous altitude in the American SW. Sometimes I get a significant amount of snow in the winter. When the sun comes out I notice how the snow melts. First it melts around dark objects exposed to the suns rays. rocks, tree trunks, foliage that stick through the snow. If I want to hasten the melting of the snow in a particular area, like a walkway, I put ashes from a fire over the snow/ice and it melts 3 times faster. Any dark object over the snow will make it melt faster around the object.
Conclusion: dark objects absorb more energy from the suns rays then light ones do, proof positive that the light is converted to LWR by absorption and emissivity. It’s why solar thermal collectors have black painted surfaces on the backboard and pipes.
Furthermore, if I wanted an ice covered ground to melt faster, I must pick the ice loose from it’s icy grip on the ground below allowing sun and warm air to get underneath the ice to melt it faster. The relatively warm water then accelerates the melting ice even more.
The CO2 ladened air of the dry cold air does next to nothing for the warming process. I live at around 6,000 ft. I have noticed that if you get a warm moist air mass from the pacific SW area the snow and ice will melt really fast, especially if it rains.
You fail at basic physics Myrrh you nut!
Lasers, ah a good example of how energy can be converted by absorption and emissivity. A laser has a medium that is pumped up with electrical energy to cause the lasing medium to jump up a level in it’s atomic energy levels, aka: an outer electron level jumps to a higher energy band orbit. When that electron collapses back to it neutral orbit shell a photon is admitted.
A conventional gas laser works by bouncing the photons from a polished mirror side to a semitransparent polished mirror side. This process of pumping electrical energy into the gas medium and the photons bouncing back and forth between the two mirror surfaces repeats until the light energy reaches a breakaway level and comes out the semitransparent side as an intense light energy source. Of course CO2 or cobalt lasers produce LWR energy and the process is somewhat different.
So we another example of absorption and emissivity.
I have a dish washing scrub brush that has a flat black rubber coat over the lower portion of an ivory white handle to the brush head. One day the sun had been shining on it as it hung from a cabinet over the sink next to a window in front of the sink. The black handle portion was very warm while the white portion was relatively cool. But if I moved it out of the direct sunlight and just exposed to the reflected and diffused light it would be at room temperature of 50-F. Another example of solar light energy being absorbed by by an object and converted to heat or LWIR.
I am wondering myself exactly why this is, and is there any artificial way to recreate the sunlight portion of the solar spectrum? (minus the UV and near or far IR). What is it about direct solar light energy that makes it so powerful, why it is essentially black objects that absorb it and white that reflect it? I just know it happens.
According to Myrrh’s explanations the Sun would revolve around the Earth in his explanation of how the Earths heating system works. Yes the AGWers have exaggerated the green house effect from the interaction of CO2 with H2O and other reactive gases in the atmosphere to solar energy, but it is what Ira basically shows of the GHE. The exact nature of GHG’s interactions seems to remain ambiguous on how they absorb and emit the solar energy.
My analogy of the green house effect would be a pool of heat reservoir fed by a spring that would be the sun. If I put sponges (CO2) around this perfectly circular and level pool then the outflow of water (HEAT) would be impeded and the water level would rise somewhat until a new equilibrium level was reached. If I put another ring of sponges in back of the the first ring the effect will be less then the initial. This is somewhat how the atmospheric GHG works but it is much more complicated.
A good reference site that gets down to the nitty gritty is found on these 3 web pages:
The Hard Bit
http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page17.htm
MODTRAN calculations
http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page24.htm
Model predictions
http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page22.htm
But it still doesn’t explain all factors of the physics and mechanics of the Earths atmosphere involving the GHE.
——————————————–
An experiment:
Take 3 shallow boxes with pipes going through them. The boxes are exposed to the environment of a dry sunny climate of either Nevada or Arizona. Each box is 10 meters off the ground to negate ground effects. Feeder pipes are insulated and come directly underneath from the ground.
Box A: It’s completely covered except for the bottom. The top and sides are of a mirrored surface.
Box B: Is covered except for the top with highly mirrored surface including the pipes.
Box C: Is like box B but its surfaces including the pipe is painted flat black.
Monitor the temperature of water flowing into separate respective tanks for 6 hours during prim solar irradiance.
Which reservoir do you expect to have the highest temperature or heat content?
Box A: Heated by the ambient air?
Box B: Heated by air and sunlight?
Box C: Heated by air and sunlight absorption?
Try it with jars in a similar setup and come back with the results.
This experiment could be modified for GHG effect using gases of various mixtures.
Dear WUWT moderators, the post Scottar says:February 23, 2012 at 7:16 pm is one example of dozens in this thread that are off topic. There is nothing wrong with Scottar’s post, it just does not belong here. If my recomendation just above Scottar’s post is not viable, then what else could be done?
Thanks
Watch out for Connolley to do a Gleick
> How does AR-4 explain the 23 cycles of warming followed by cooling that have been found in the paleoclimatic record
I don’t know. I’m not even sure that it is known.
> The past warming and cooling cycles all correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes.
You’ve said that several times, and I’ve asked for references, and you haven’t provided them. You’ve provided a link to a comment of yours which refs several papers, and all the ones I checked were irrelevant. So please, just provide a link to one (or more) relevant papers.
> http://www.climate4you.com/ See this link. Big picture, figure 3, which shows Greenland ice sheet temperatures over the last 12,000 years. Note the cyclic increases and decreases of high latitude temperatures which correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes
You haven’t shown the cosmogenic isotopes on that picture. Why not?
> The past warming and cooling cycles all correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes
Again, the same assertion, the same lack of evidence.
William M. Connolley says not much.
February 24, 2012 at 12:34 am
Please say thy lord to thee unwashed.
Does the oceans warm the atmosphere or does the atmosphere warm the oceans?
David says:
February 23, 2012 at 7:09 pm
A further two cent suggestions for the moderators. Poster with “one trick pony” agendas, such as the non heating ability of SWR, or those who insist that there is no GHE, should not be allowed to turn every post into a dialogue and debate over their pet peeve. Perhaps a Side Bar link could be set on the side, and such repetive debates, which distract from the subject of the article, could be redirected to that location with all further interactions similarly placed there..
Oh right, so those who insist there is no GHE should be sidelined according to those who haven’t proved any such thing exists and moreover say it exists because of some imaginative belief that, contrary to all empirical proven physics knowledge, SWR heats land and oceans?
I was adding to the opening post’s very strong condemnation of the IPCC’s fraud in taking out the Sun – the fraud goes further than that is my point, it has taken out the Sun because it has introduced a completely different fisics about it.
Now, you can take your unproven GHE effect and stuff it, or prove that it exists, but as long as Anthony allows free and open discussion on the science of this then the view that this too is a science fraud is fair to bring into such relevant discussions, the swapping of properties by giving shortwave the properties of heat, thermal infrared, is a sleight of hand deliberately contrived to further the agenda of those who created AGW.
To that end they have created a completely different fisics as can be seen in their claims for the imaginary GHE by their manipulation of the basics and touted in their cartoon energy budget, which they have spent the last decades introducing into mainstream education*. Because of this, those believing in GHE can’t see the simple disjunct between their claims, their fisics, and industry all around us falsifying that claim.
Perhaps you didn’t understand my example earlier, industry in its empirically proven real world physics sells specialised windows to block thermal infrared, the direct heat we feel from the Sun, and produces window to maximise the direct entry of visible light from the Sun. Why? It saves on air conditioning costs in areas where the Sun’s heat entering through windows is a problem. Can you see the disjunct yet between your GHE fisics and traditional physics reality? Go on, you too, go to these companies and tell them they are cheating their customers because it is visible light which heats up the rooms they claim will be cooler – you’ve got your cartoon greenhouse GHE fisics to prove they’re wrong..
When you can see the just how your claim about visible light will appear to them you’ll be on your way to recovery, having taken the first step out of the fictional world ‘they’ created through the looking glass with Alice in which you’re being kept in thrall.
Did you read this post on what other variable could have been left out?
UzUrBrain says:
February 22, 2012 at 10:50 am
Take a field trip to any one of those energy saving window outlets you see advertized on TV. Ask them to demonstrate one of their IR blocking windows. Note how they can have a Infrared heating element on one side of the window and you feel no heat at all on your side. Now, move the heating element around to the other side. Shazam, there is no heat on that side either. It works both ways. Why do the AGW left-wing-nuts ignore this? Are they ignoring the IR energy given off by the SUN? If the CO2 blocks the IR from leaving the earth doesn’t it block the IR energy from reaching the earth? EVERY graph, chart, pictorial representation I see shows NO IR energy striking the earth. WHY? Please explain.
Well, he thinks that it is decidely odd that there is no direct heat energy from the Sun striking the Earth in their energy budget cartoon…, (obviously another taught that the direct heat we feel from the Sun is the invisible thermal infrared as I gave from NASA’s traditional physics teaching), and if we’re feeling it how can the cartoon say it doesn’t reach the Earth’s surface? But as I’ve explained, this is deliberately manipulated fictional fisics to sell the AGW agenda** and to that end they have not only taken out the Sun as a variable, they have replaced it with their own version – they have given the properties of the actual thermal energy of the Sun which is heat, to shortwave, and so their claim that visible light heats land and oceans which in real world physics it can’t do.
* Education – I discovered through discussions on WUWT that this manipulation of education comes from the highest levels: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/spencer-and-braswell-on-slashdot/#comment-711886
**Agenda – and I say this circumspectly, an unholy alliance between various vested interests, ideological, political and financial.
Scottar says:
February 23, 2012 at 7:16 pm
To Myrrh’s Pseudo Science
Read the above. Until you can tell the difference between Heat and Light energies from the Sun, in traditional physics the empirically understood difference by category, you won’t even begin to make sense of your observations, and I don’t have the time to go through each individually. Stick to discovering the real differences between visible Light and the invisible thermal infrared Heat for yourself. I’ve given more than sufficient information for you to make a start, and, do this with the challenge I have given in mind which should help you concentrate your efforts. Industry falsifies your fisics, proof that your are touting a psuedo-science, not I. Remember, this is energy direct from the Sun, don’t get into a muddle with artificially enhanced lasers – if our Sun was a laser you wouldn’t be writing here and I wouldn’t be reading it…
> Oh right, so those who insist there is no GHE should be sidelined
Yes, the raving nutters are making those merely nutty look bad by association.
William M. Connolley says:
February 23, 2012 at 9:34 am
“No, that wasn’t my link; someone else provided that. I did think of adding that I was discussing the observations, and didn’t believe the modelling stuff there – its only McI, after all, you can’t rely on it.”
Wonderful!
William, you shouldn’t talk TOO much… your mask slips….
William Astley > William Connelly will not answer these questions.
You could do him the courtesy of spelling his name correctly. It won’t change his demeanor, which will continue to be perceived as arrogant, but that’s no excuse for failing a basic courtesy of spelling his name right.
Connolley says:
“Yes, the raving nutters are making those merely nutty look bad by association.”
Curious which category you place yourself in? I have my own view, but I’ll just point out that Dr Misckolczi gives the effect of 2xCO2 as 0.0°C. Several other well respected climatologists and scientists give numbers of less than 0.5°C per doubling – such a minuscule effect that for all practical purposes it might as well be zero. Even a 1°C rise would be a net benefit to humanity. Warmth is good; cold kills. Only mendacious propagandists claim otherwise.
And with essentially no warming over the past decade and a half [while harmless, beneficial CO2 continues rising], it’s clear that the CO2=CAGW conjecture is being falsified by Planet Earth herself. Who should we believe? The alarmist nutters who are being proven wrong? Or Mother Gaia – the ultimate Authority?
Scottar says:
February 23, 2012 at 7:16 pm
Very good – I’ve been looking for something that shows visible light can heat something. Given water is a good absorber of LWIR (hmm, I better check the spectrum for near-IR), this shows light heating the ground. Quite usable here in New England. The only other analogy I have at hand was my experience with burning holes in black paper with an argon laser, but most people haven’t had that privilege. Getting ice off the driveway, too much experience.
Other demonstrations welcome!
Here’s something to watch for – note the effect dew point has on the melt rate. If it’s above freezing, water vapor will condense on the snow releasing the vapor’s latent heat, which goes directly into melting. If it’s below freezing, only conduction from the air melts the snow surface and the snow hangs around much longer.
Of course, if you don’t have a dew point gauge, Anthony’s company will be glad to sell you a Davis Vantage Pro II with solar UV sensor (you want to track that too, right?). 🙂
I can’t agree, Alec. The earth is a mechanical heat engine. If I have a steam locomotive that runs on a heat-source (burning fuel), which then produces both mechanical motion & waste heat, magnetism isn’t going to affect it, no matter how powerful (let alone the admittedly large (size) but locally weak magnetic field of the earth). It just doesn’t figure.