Who Are You Going To Believe – The Government Climate Scientists or The Data?
By Dr David M.W. Evans (republished here with permission, PDF link below)
We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message – here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention.
What the Government Climate Scientists Say
Figure 1: The climate models. If the CO2 level doubles (as it is on course to do by about 2070 to 2100), the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 3 = 3.3°C.i
The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century.ii
Feedbacks are due to the ways the Earth reacts to the direct warming effect of the CO2. The threefold amplification by feedbacks is based on the assumption, or guess, made around 1980, that more warming due to CO2 will cause more evaporation from the oceans and that this extra water vapor will in turn lead to even more heat trapping because water vapor is the main greenhouse gas. And extra heat will cause even more evaporation, and so on. This amplification is built into all the climate models.iii The amount of amplification is estimated by assuming that nearly all the industrial-age warming is due to our CO2.
The government climate scientists and the media often tell us about the direct effect of the CO2, but rarely admit that two thirds of their projected temperature increases are due to amplification by feedbacks.
What the Skeptics Say
Figure 2: The skeptic’s view. If the CO2 level doubles, skeptics estimates that the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 0.5 ≈ 0.6°C.iv
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.
The feedbacks dampen or reduce the direct effect of the extra CO2, cutting it roughly in half.v The main feedbacks involve evaporation, water vapor, and clouds. In particular, water vapor condenses into clouds, so extra water vapor due to the direct warming effect of extra CO2 will cause extra clouds, which reflect sunlight back out to space and cool the earth, thereby reducing the overall warming.
There are literally thousands of feedbacks, each of which either reinforces or opposes the direct warming effect of the extra CO2. Almost every long-lived system is governed by net feedback that dampens its response to a perturbation. If a system instead reacts to a perturbation by amplifying it, the system is likely to reach a tipping point and become unstable (like the electronic squeal that erupts when a microphone gets too close to its speakers). The earth’s climate is long-lived and stable— it has never gone into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus — which strongly suggests that the feedbacks dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2.
What the Data Says
The climate models have been essentially the same for 30 years now, maintaining roughly the same sensitivity to extra CO2even while they got more detailed with more computer power.
- How well have the climate models predicted the temperature?
- Does the data better support the climate models or the skeptic’s view?
Air Temperatures
One of the earliest and most important predictions was presented to the US Congress in 1988 by Dr James Hansen, the “father of global warming”:
Figure 3: Hansen’s predictionsvi to the US Congress in 1988, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellitesvii.
Hansen’s climate model clearly exaggerated future temperature rises.
In particular, his climate model predicted that if human CO2 emissions were cut back drastically starting in 1988, such that by year 2000 the CO2 level was not rising at all, we would get his scenario C. But in reality the temperature did not even rise this much, even though our CO2 emissions strongly increased – which suggests that the climate models greatly overestimate the effect of CO2 emissions.
A more considered prediction by the climate models was made in 1990 in the IPCC’s First Assessment Report:viii
Figure 4: Predictions of the IPCC’s First Assessment Report in 1990, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellites.
It’s 20 years now, and the average rate of increase in reality is below the lowest trend in the range predicted by the IPCC.
Ocean Temperatures
The oceans hold the vast bulk of the heat in the climate system. We’ve only been measuring ocean temperature properly since mid-2003, when the Argo system became operational.ix,x In Argo, a buoy duck dives down to a depth of 2,000 meters, measures temperatures as it very slowly ascends, then radios the results back to headquarters via satellite. Over three thousand Argo buoys constantly patrol all the oceans of the world.
Figure 5: Climate model predictionsxi of ocean temperature, versus the measurements by Argoxii. The unit of the vertical axis is 1022 Joules (about 0.01°C).
The ocean temperature has been basically flat since we started measuring it properly, and not warming as quickly as the climate models predict.
Atmospheric Hotspot
The climate models predict a particular pattern of atmospheric warming during periods of global warming; the most prominent change they predict is a warming in the tropics about 10 km up, the “hotspot”.
The hotspot is the sign of the amplification in their theory (see Figure 1). The theory says the hotspot is caused by extra evaporation, and by extra water vapor pushing the warmer wetter lower troposphere up into volume previously occupied by cool dry air. The presence of a hotspot would indicate amplification is occurring, and vice versa.
We have been measuring atmospheric temperatures with weather balloons since the 1960s. Millions of weather balloons have built up a good picture of atmospheric temperatures over the last few decades, including the warming period from the late 70’s to the late 90’s. This important and pivotal data was not released publicly by the climate establishment until 2006, and then in an obscure place.xiii Here it is:
Figure 6: On the left is the data collected by millions of weather balloons.xiv On the right is what the climate models say was happening.xv The theory (as per the climate models) is incompatible with the observations. In both diagrams the horizontal axis shows latitude, and the right vertical axis shows height in kilometers.
In reality there was no hotspot, not even a small one. So in reality there is no amplification – the amplification shown in Figure 1 does not exist.xvi
Outgoing Radiation
The climate models predict that when the surface of the earth warms, less heat is radiated from the earth into space (on a weekly or monthly time scale). This is because, according to the theory, the warmer surface causes more evaporation and thus there is more heat-trapping water vapor. This is the heat-trapping mechanism that is responsible for the assumed amplification in Figure 1.
Satellites have been measuring the radiation emitted from the earth for the last two decades. A major study has linked the changes in temperature on the earth’s surface with the changes in the outgoing radiation. Here are the results:
Figure 7: Outgoing radiation from earth (vertical axis) against sea surface temperature (horizontal), as measured by the ERBE satellites (upper left graph) and as “predicted” by 11 climate models (the other graphs).xvii Notice that the slope of the graphs for the climate models are opposite to the slope of the graph for the observed data.
This shows that in reality the earth gives off more heat when its surface is warmer. This is the opposite of what the climate models predict. This shows that the climate models trap heat too aggressively, and that their assumed amplification shown in Figure 1 does not exist.
Conclusions
All the data here is impeccably sourced—satellites, Argo, and weather balloons.xviii
The air and ocean temperature data shows that the climate models overestimate temperature rises. The climate establishment suggest that cooling due to undetected aerosols might be responsible for the failure of the models to date, but this excuse is wearing thin—it continues not to warm as much as they said it would, or in the way they said it would. On the other hand, the rise in air temperature has been greater than the skeptics say could be due to CO2. The skeptic’s excuse is that the rise is mainly due to other forces – and they point out that the world has been in a fairly steady warming trend of 0.5°C per century since 1680 (with alternating ~30 year periods of warming and mild cooling) where as the vast bulk of all human CO2 emissions have been after 1945.
We’ve checked all the main predictions of the climate models against the best data:
The climate models get them all wrong. The missing hotspot and outgoing radiation data both, independently, prove that the amplification in the climate models is not present. Without the amplification, the climate model temperature predictions would be cut by at least two thirds, which would explain why they overestimated the recent air and ocean temperature increases.
Therefore:
- The climate models are fundamentally flawed. Their assumed threefold amplification by feedbacks does not in fact exist.
- The climate models overestimate temperature rises due to CO2 by at least a factor of three.
The skeptical view is compatible with the data.
Some Political Points
The data presented here is impeccably sourced, very relevant, publicly available, and from our best instruments. Yet it never appears in the mainstream media – have you ever seen anything like any of the figures here in the mainstream media? That alone tells you that the “debate” is about politics and power, and not about science or truth.
This is an unusual political issue, because there is a right and a wrong answer and everyone will know which it is eventually. People are going ahead and emitting CO2 anyway, so we are doing the experiment: either the world heats up by several degrees by 2050, or it doesn’t.
Notice that the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2; they just disagree just about the feedbacks. The climate debate is all about the feedbacks; everything else is merely a sideshow. Yet hardly anyone knows that. The government climate scientists and the mainstream media have framed the debate in terms of the direct effect of CO2 and sideshows such as arctic ice, bad weather, or psychology. They almost never mention the feedbacks. Why is that? Who has the power to make that happen?
About the Author
Dr David M.W. Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The area of human endeavor with the most experience and sophistication in dealing with feedbacks and analyzing complex systems is electrical engineering, and the most crucial and disputed aspects of understanding the climate system are the feedbacks. The evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006, causing Evans to move from being a warmist to a skeptic.
Inquiries to david.evans@sciencespeak.com.
Republished on www.wattsupwiththat.com
This document is also available as a PDF file here: TheSkepticsCase
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References
i More generally, if the CO2 level is x (in parts per million) then the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to the extra CO2 over the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm as 4.33 ln(x / 280). For example, this model attributes a temperature rise of 4.33 ln(392/280) = 1.46°C to the increase from pre-industrial to the current CO2 level of 392 ppm.
ii The direct effect of CO2 is the same for each doubling of the CO2 level (that is, logarithmic). Calculations of the increased surface temperature due to of a doubling of the CO2 level vary from 1.0°C to 1.2°C. In this document we use the midpoint value 1.1°C; which value you use does not affect the arguments made here.
iii The IPCC, in their last Assessment Report in 2007, project a temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 (called the climate sensitivity) in the range 2.0°C to 4.5°C. The central point of their model estimates is 3.3°C, which is 3.0 times the direct CO2 effect of 1.1°C, so we simply say their amplification is threefold. To be more precise, each climate model has a slightly different effective amplification, but they are generally around 3.0.
iv More generally, if the CO2 level is x (in parts per million) then skeptics estimate the temperature increase due to the extra CO2 over the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm as 0.72 ln(x / 280). For example, skeptics attribute a temperature rise of 0.72 ln(392/280) = 0.24°C to the increase from pre-industrial to the current CO2 level of 392 ppm.
v The effect of feedbacks is hard to pin down with empirical evidence because there are more forces affecting the temperature than just changes in CO2 level, but seems to be multiplication by something between 0.25 and 0.9. We have used 0.5 here for simplicity.
vi Hansen’s predictions were made in Hansen et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 93 No D8 (20 Aug 1988) Fig 3a Page 9347: pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf. In the graph here, Hansen’s three scenarios are graphed to start from the same point in mid-1987 – we are only interested in changes (anomalies).
vii The earth’s temperature shown here is as measured by the NASA satellites that have been measuring the earth’s temperature since 1979, managed at the University of Alabama Hunstville (UAH). Satellites measure the temperature 24/7 over broad swathes of land and ocean, across the whole world except the poles. While satellites had some initial calibration problems, those have long since been fully fixed to everyone’s satisfaction. Satellites are mankind’s most reliable, extensive, and unbiased method for measuring the earth’s air temperature temperatures since 1979. This is an impeccable source of data, and you can download the data yourself from vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt (save it as .txt file then open it in Microsoft Excel; the numbers in the “Globe” column are the changes in MSU Global Monthly Mean Lower Troposphere Temperatures in °C).
viii IPCC First Assessment Report, 1990, page xxii (www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf) in the Policymakers Summary, Figure 8 and surrounding text, for the business-as-usual scenario (which is what in fact occurred, there being no significant controls or decrease in the rate of increase of emissions to date). “Under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, the average rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century is estimated to be about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0.5°C).”
ix http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/observations/gathering_data/argo.html
x Ocean temperature measurements before Argo are nearly worthless. Before Argo, ocean temperature was measured with buckets or with bathythermographs (XBTs) — which are expendable probes lowered into the water, transmitting temperature and pressure data back along a pair of thin wires. Nearly all measurements were from ships along the main commercial shipping lanes, so geographical coverage of the world’s oceans was poor—for example the huge southern oceans were not monitored. XBTs do not go as deep as Argo floats, and their data is much less precise and much less accurate (for one thing, they move too quickly through the water to come to thermal equilibrium with the water they are trying to measure).
xi The climate models project ocean heat content increasing at about 0.7 × 10^22 Joules per year. See Hansen et al, 2005: Earth’s energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications. Science, 308, 1431-1435, page 1432 (pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha00110y), where the increase in ocean heat content per square meter of surface, in the upper 750m, according to typical models, is 6.0 Watt·year/m2 per year, which converts to 0.7 × 10^22 Joules per year for the entire ocean as explained at bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/giss-ohc-model-trends-one-question-answered-another-uncovered/.
xii The ocean heat content down to 700m as measured by Argo is now available; you can download it from ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv. The numbers are the changes in average heat for the three months, in units of 10^22 Joules, seasonally adjusted. The Argo system started in mid-2003, so we started the data at 2003-6.
xiii The weather balloon data showing the atmospheric warming pattern was finally released in 2006, in the US Climate Change Science Program, 2006, part E of Figure 5.7, on page 116 (www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-chap5.pdf).
There is no other data for this period, and we cannot collect more data on atmospheric warming during global warming until global warming resumes. This is the only data there is. Btw, isn’t this an obscure place to release such important and pivotal data – you don’t suppose they are trying to hide something, do you?
xv Any climate model, for example, IPCC Assessment Report 4, 2007, Chapter 9, page 675, which is also on the web at http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-2-2.html (Figure 9.1 parts c and f). There was little warming 1959 – 1977, so the commonly available 1959 – 1999 simulations work as well.
xvi So the multiplier in the second box in Figures 1 and 2 is at most 1.0.
xvii Lindzen and Choi 2009, Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 36: http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf. The paper was corrected after some criticism, coming to essentially the same result again in 2011: www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf.
xviii In particular, we have not quoted results from land thermometers, or from sparse sampling by buckets and XBT’s at sea. Land thermometers are notoriously susceptible to localized effects – see Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? by the same author: jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/corruption/climate-corruption.pdf.
Your figure one and figure two are the same
REPLY: Fixed thanks, a formatting error led to a duplicate. Scourge of document conversion – Anthony
First photo “What the Government Climate Scientists Say” is the same as the second photo. Think you put the wrong one there, should be x3 in the box.
Coherent argument, multiple footnotes.
This should be carried in major media outlets.
Kurt in Switzerland
Figures 1 and 2 are identical. Text indicates that they should show something different.
There seems to be a typo in the box summarising the feedback; should it be x3
The mixup in diagrams is a FATAL FLAW : please fix prontissimo.
REPLY: Using the refresh button helps too – Anthony
Simple and easy to read, states the case beautifully, and really examines how fraudulent any supposed case for catastrophic warming is.
Heretic, how dare you quote the facts!
Official Team response.
Check Figure 1 – it is missing the X3 amplification box show in the original paper
The matching figure 1 and 2 mistake appears to be from the original PDF file.
REPLY: Yes I know, the PDF file has been fixed also…Anthony
The first and second diagrams seem to me to be identical. Should the first one have a X 3 function, not x 0.5?
REPLY: This was fixed a couple of minutes after publication, try the refresh button on your browser – Anthony
Clear and precise with no Ambiguity of information. In Hockey terms this is a SLAP SHOT or a HOLE IN ONE well done Dr David Evans. Lets see what the rent seekers come up with in reply, I already know and can see the cut and paste crowd at work.
So, “serious skeptic”, how is Fig. 4 consistent with the “agreed-upon” 1.1K in Figs. 1 & 2??
I assert that the 1.1K is inappropriately extrapolated laboratory data, and should be at most 0.1, negligibly different from 0.0K, and further assert that that is H0.
Fig. 4 indicates that there is no evidence to the contrary.
Now surely, dr Evans, we are not going to let facts stand in our way (tongue in cheek)
Well….. what more can you say?
Further to the above: G&T are right. You are wrong.
And another thing. I read elsewhere that there are hundreds of phenomena or processes that could affect climate (per the study being promoted by WUWT). Doesn’t the essence of this paper, being all about concentration on carbon dioxide/temperature/feedbacks, rather help the warmists’ case?
Dr. Evans
The exposition is marvelous, however I do have a question on the 1.1 degree direct effect of CO2. Can you provide the source for this prediction that after unraveling does not point back to Hansen’s empirical relationship?
In Loudon’s textbook on Quantum mechanics there are two primary means whereby an increase in the partial pressure of an IR absorbing gas such as CO2 increases absorption. The first is a Lorentz pressure broadening and the variable term of pressure is against the entire atmosphere, not the self pressurization of the IR absorbing gas. The second is temperature broadening which is also a Lorentz transformation from the gaussian function for the QM energy absorption/emission of the gas (CO2).
In running the equations in Loudon with the increase in the partial pressure of CO2 from 0.028% of the atmosphere to 0.39% of the atmosphere does not result in a 1.1 degree temperature increase. Obviously there are more calculations involved related to the statistical mean time between absorption and emission against the mechanical transfer of the increased energy in the CO2 molecule to another non CO2 molecule but no fundamental equation that I have seen can, at the partial pressure of CO2 observed, produce the 1.1 degree result.
What is wrong here?
I am a little unsure about what the figures are saying in regards to doubling of CO2. I thought that for each doubling of CO2, you had a logarithmic increase in temperature. The figures make it seem as though the relationship is linear and every doubling of CO2 led to a 1.1 degree increase in temperature.
REPLY: Typo related to format conversion image/cut/paste – now fixed – Anthony
The posts under David’s original blog has some good discourse also. A skeptic brings up some rubbish “slayer” arguments that are sometimes used to attack the CAGW meme but, being titally wrong, only serve to discredit the skeptics. David Evans obviously understands Physics very well and explains why these “slayer” arguments are just plain wrong. Excellent.
I realize Anthony Watts and his crew, not being Physicists, cannot be expected to correct the occasional egregious Physics errors committed from time to time on WUWT. However, WUWT is so well supported, has a large community, is uncensored, and is full of such diverse and interesting content (as well as posts) that I am quite wiling to overlook the odd articles/posts on WUWT that makes us few Physicists cringe.
The blue box is wrong in fig 1. Should be 3x
REPLY: Try the refresh button on your browser -A
I think it is the “sceptic’s case” in respect to CO2, and there is a whole lot more going on. But they are sceptics about CO2, so it is quite correct.
Yep, I’m adding my voice to Onion and Novareason. Please fix this first figure before too many copies get sent out.
Aside from that, this is great. Cheers.
REPLY: Apparently nobody knows how to use the refresh button, it has been fixed just a couple minutes after it was published. – Anthony
I’m not a scientist but I am a grammarian. The word “data” is the plural of “datum.” Therefore the proper usage is “the data say” not “the data says.”
We are now 22 years into the global warming story. This is a very good summary of how the crux of the argument has always been just about water feedbacks. In my opinion the evidence clearly rules out the large feedback factors that are still used by climate models – as do arguments from the faint sun paradox. All this should be welcomed as good news, and surely scientists would now want to bring this to the public’s attention – rather than apparently wishing the evidence away! This area of science seems to have got embroiled with politics and various vested interests. This paper is a good start and needs more exposure.
Note: Figure 1 should have feedback x 3.0 (not 0.5!) The PDF file has the same problem.
Please fix the feedback parameter in the first graphic!
REPLY: It has been noted and fixed, please read other comments before piling on – Anthony
What a lot of the skeptic scientist generally have missed is that the 1.1 deg C rise with CO2 doubling comes from a calculation in which the IPCC brains unilaterally and for no good reason (other than their desired agenda) multiplied the thermodynamic factor for CO2 (effectively, the probability factor regarding the chances of a CO2 molecule colliding with another molecule during the instant between IR absorption and IR re-emission, allowing the energy to become heat energy) by a whopping factor of 12, bumping the warming from 0.1 deg C to 1.1–1.2 deg C.
This was patently dishonest, but they NEEDED to make CO2 more effective. All the while, they masked their duplicity by lauding and marveling how constant this (now inflated) factor had been in the literature over time.
It’s too bad that so many skeptics honor this falsehood, just as so many honor the false CO2 graph composed of Arctic ice core and Mauna Loa volcano data and validate it in discussions as if it was true. It’s cherry-picked and manipulated data and has to be labeled so as often as it comes up.
“Wow, it’s such a hot day!” he said, while turning up the heat. “It must be global warming.”
We HAVE to keep checking the thermostat on these guys or we end up arguing nonsense.
Figure 3 is wrong. The lines for scenarios A,B and C in Hansen’s 1988 graph did not start at the same place in 1988 as depicted in figure 3.
Useful summary. Well done!
Minor point: the rhs in each of Figs 1 and 2 should be ‘predicted’ or ‘expected’, and not ‘observed’.
Dear Dr, Evans.
Thank you for this. You can’t get any more Lay than I am and I managed to follow your argument well enough. The only area of confusion is at the top, where you describe the basic positions of sceptic and warmist. A second diagram in each case, describing the differences over feedback effects, could make things even more clear.
Figures 1 and 2 are misleading in that they look at changes in temperature rather than actual temperatures. No one ever said that temperatures would increase steadily and in fact all the projections and models suggested that after the major El Nino peak in 1998 there should be a return to the trend line which implies that temperatures should fall or at least stop increasing in order to return to the trend line. The fact that they have done that should be no surprise and certainly does not invalidate the models.
David, this is overall an excellent exposition and I know how difficult it is to write a concise debunking of CAGW. There is however one weakness that I’m sure the CAGWers will exploit viz: in Figure 3 you compare Hansen’s 1988 projections with the UAH satellite tropospheric temperature record. My recollection is that Hansen’s projections were surface air temperatures, rather than lower troposphere. I don’t think a spaghetti graph would help here — rather a sentence explaining why you choose UAH.
[Aside] I am recalling the screaming of a CAGW fanatic screaming far too loudly for comfort: “cherry-picker, cherry-picker…” during David Archibald’s presentation when he and Anthony visited Hobart not so very long ago. [/Aside]
I’ve been ill served by popular media. It has taken a lot of reading on my part to become aware of the existence of feedbacks in global warming theory, yet this is what the theory of the crisis hinges on.
[snip – reword this and resubmit, without making accusations -Anthony]
[q]I am a little unsure about what the figures are saying in regards to doubling of CO2. I thought that for each doubling of CO2, you had a logarithmic increase in temperature. The figures make it seem as though the relationship is linear and every doubling of CO2 led to a 1.1 degree increase in temperature.
REPLY: Typo related to format conversion image/cut/paste – now fixed – Anthony[/q]
Having read this paper over at Mises.org, oddly enough I figured that you would have fixed the graphic soon after I posted my comment (and you did) so I was commenting on the what would be the fixed graphics (if that makes any sense).
Both figures are saying that every doubling of CO2 leads to a direct 1.1 degree increase in temperature. But the CO2/Temperature relationship is logarithmic: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
I don’t know if it is something that Dr. Evan overlooked or if it is just a poor or simplified wording, but the figures are implying the direct relationship between CO2 and temperature are stronger than they are.
scepticalwombat says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Figures 1 and 2 are misleading in that they look at changes in temperature rather than actual temperatures. No one ever said that temperatures would increase steadily and in fact all the projections and models suggested that after the major El Nino peak in 1998 there should be a return to the trend line which implies that temperatures should fall or at least stop increasing in order to return to the trend line. The fact that they have done that should be no surprise and certainly does not invalidate the models.
I most firmly disagree: NO published model result of ANY of the 23 known GCM used thus far has predicted a 15 year flat period while CO2 levels increase. NONE.
At best, Steve Mosher has indicated informally on this site that 3% of the total model results show a flat period, but the remaining 97% of the total computer runs continue to “falt line” in s nice neat straight “average” line linearly increasing with CO2 increases. ALL published results use “averages” of dozens to hundreds of model runs as their result.
Further, NO model results have EVER predicted ANY El Nino or La Nina period, much less the 1998 super-El-Nino. This includes back-casting and forecasting: No model results shows a El Nino spike or La Nina dip caused by those oscillations in the mid-Pacific winds and currents.
Now, to be fair, I will leave you to prove your statement by showing either the 3% of the runs that Mosher mentioned, or a published result of any 15 year flat period.
Very Nice Anthony..
the data in simple understandable format… but the AGW faithful will cry heretic!
Reality… what a concept…
Yes, need to re-publish the PDF as well. The warmist feedback is incorrect as well.
> I thought that for each doubling of CO2, you had a logarithmic increase in temperature.
No. Temperature change is roughly linear in log(CO2 change).
REPLY: Is it really? That is what you and the rest of RealClimate believes, but observations and other calculations suggest that isn’t actually the case. From http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/25/what-does-a-reduction-to-350-ppm-of-co2-get-you/
For a short period of time, such as our history of CO2 measurement, it appears as linear, but on the larger scale, not so much. – Anthony
That’s the best summary of the skeptics case that I have seen. Thanks.
higley7 said @ February 26, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Wrong! It comes from MODTRAN a computer program designed to model atmospheric propagation of electromagnetic radiation for the 100-50,000 cm-1 (0.2 to 100 um) spectral range by Spectral Sciences Inc. and the US Air Force. You do understand that there is a difference between these organisations and the IPCC?
Figure 7 could be more clear. It would be helpful to separate the actual ERBE data from all others by using a different color or setting it apart somehow. At first and second looks, it appears that ERBE is simply an outlier amongst many data sets, rather than being the only data amongst many models.
David Evans can you explain how and why you altered Hansen’s scenario A, B and C lines in figures 3 and 4? I presume there was a good reason to do so, but wouldn’t it have been clearer to just leave them unmodified? I don’t see how it helps to modify the prediction if you want to test the prediction.
I notice for example that in figure 3 and 4 you show Hansen’s 3 scenarios meeting in the year 2008. That doesn’t occur in Hansen’s original, in fact scenarios A and C are far apart in 2008:
http://www.zeeburgnieuws.nl/nieuws/images/hansen_1988_temp_prediction.jpg
Obviously something has been shifted up or down. What though? and why?
Excellent work. Thank you.
Well done. Very clear and understandable.
How can a piece like this be submitted for formal publication and peer review? Might that be in the works? I wonder what Revkin would say about this presentation?
pkirk21 said @ February 26, 2012 at 12:17 pm
No, the temperature increase falls off rapidly as more CO2 is added. Almost everyone uses MODTRAN to do the sums.
haha, nevermind :). The pdf still shows the incorrect image though. Just a head’s up.
REPLY: No, it doesn’t: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/theskepticscase.pdf
-Anthony
Sorry – that should be figures 4 and 5.
nomnom says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“Obviously something has been shifted up or down. What though? and why?”
Consult the footnotes.
“vi Hansen’s predictions were made in Hansen et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 93 No D8 (20 Aug 1988) Fig 3a Page 9347: pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf. In the graph here, Hansen’s three scenarios are graphed to start from the same point in mid-1987 – we are only interested in changes (anomalies).”
I don’t think this should be presented as “the” skeptical case. While there isn’t model independent evidence to support large climate sensitivities to CO2 forcing in the current climate regime, there also is not conclusive evidence that the net feedbacks are actually negative, although Lindzen, Spencer and others have work arguing that, and the long term stability of the climate is suggestive of that. A positive assertion of a climate sensitivity of 0.6 degrees C, leaves about 80% of the recent warming unexplained rather than the two-thirds to be explained with the direct effects of CO2 forcing. There are plenty of good candidates, anthropogenic black carbon, anthropogenic aerosols (reduction), natural variation (e.g., PDO and other multi-decade climate modes) and solar activity. The IPCC conclusions and confidence are not warranted by the evidence. One can be skeptical based just upon the model diagnostic issues and the lack of model independent evidence for high sensitivities relevant on the time scales of interest, and being unable to reject mostly natural variation, or a sensitivity of 1.1C or even 0.6C as null hypotheses.
All feedbacks are irrelevant if the system has a governor or thermostat. Willis’s theory that ITCZ Cu-Nims have this effect seems highly likely and I hope the Eschenator will publish soonest.
This incorrectly assumes that CO2 is a cause of warming and not an effect. Even Al Gore’s graphs show CO2 increases are an effect, not a cause of warming. There is no evidence that CO2 actually causes warming, despite any theoretical greenhouse contribution calculations.
In this post, Evans basically cherrypicks data sets, time periods, and studies to arrive at the conclusion that it wants to arrive at. Let’s focus, for example, on the “atmospheric hotspot” (tropical tropospheric amplification) issue. Evans does not discuss the known issues with the radiosonde trend data that he shows and the fact that different radiosonde analyses and different satellite data analyses yield different results.
In particular, he ignores many of the conclusions in the very report that he got the data from ( http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-chap5.pdf ):
The first statement tells us that the models and data agree for fluctuations over time periods for which the data is robust. Where they disagree is for the multidecadal trends where both the radiosonde and satellite data is not very robust and has known artifacts that can affect these trends. For these reasons, the authors of the report concluded that the remaining disagreement between models and data was more likely due to issues with the data than problems with the models.
Finally, it is not clear where the claim that 2/3 of the warming projected in the models is due to the “hot spot” comes from. This claim is not correct. In fact, as Isaac Held, one of the top modelers has recently noted, the hot spot has two effects: (1) to increase the magnitude of the water vapor feedback, which would increase the warming and (2) to cause the lapse rate feedback, a negative feedback in the models (i.e., one that reduces the warming). However, Held argues that the effect in the models of (2) is actually larger than (1), so that the net effect of the “hot spot” is likely to lower the amount of surface warming…and, thus, the absence of the “hot spot”, if real, would…if anything…increase the surface warming.
To be honest, this conclusion that the increase in the lapse rate feedback due to the “hot spot” is larger than the increase in the water vapor feedback kind of surprised me because I had always thought that the water vapor feedback wins over the lapse rate feedback…i.e., that the net effect of these two feedbacks together is amplification of the surface warming. However, Held explained to me that, while this is true, the water vapor feedback can be thought of as consisting of two parts: (a) the part that would occur even if the troposphere warmed uniformly rather than with tropical tropospheric amplification and (b) the additional part that occurs due to the tropical tropospheric amplification (“the hotspot”). Contrarily, the lapse rate feedback is solely the result of the tropical tropospheric amplification. And, if you compare only (b) to the lapse rate feedback, you find that the net effect of these two is a small negative feedback, so that is the net result that one at least naively expects from tropical tropospheric amplification (as opposed to just a uniform warming of the tropical troposphere).
So, to summarize, the comparison between models and data regarding the “hot spot” remains unsettled. And, at any rate, the “hot spot” is not responsible for most of the surface warming in the models; in fact, if anything the net effect of the “hot spot” missing would be to make the net feedbacks a little more positive because the net effect in the models of having the “hot spot” is a slight negative feedback to the surface warming.
My reasoning why the offical view for doubling of CO2 (1.1c) could actually be wrong is down to lab work I did a few years ago. It was only done for interest and therefore no report or analysis with it. The key conclusion I found and it was very suprising at the time, was that compared with the atmospheric air (~386ppm CO2) against 100 percent CO2 volume, there was only a 3c difference. This would take just short of 15 doublings of CO2 to reach this level if it was ever possible. Almost 15 doublings using the offical view should show a 16.5c difference, yet in the lab could only show a 3c difference. This value only represents about 0.2c rise per doubling of CO2, much lower than the 1.1c quoted.
The Warmist’s lack of logic boggles the mind! Consider this statement at the top of the post:
If water is THE predominant greenhouse gas, it doesn’t need any warming assistance from CO2. Their “guess” about a threefold amplification about feedbacks is bogus–water alone should be sufficient to cause runaway heat trapping and all the catastrophism the hysterical side needs to stir up the populace, remove individual freedoms, and foist a global governance through energy control onto all humanity.
But it DOESN’T. And it never will. There is no special collusion that happens between the two gasses.
It must really suck to be an AGW Control Freak right about now.
There are several other points that I feel are worth inclusion above.
1) Surface temperature monitoring prior to 1978 and the error bars thereof.
2) The silliness of ignoring ENSO(etc) during the ‘best fit’ rising portion … and blaming them during the current roughly-flat period.
3) The Little Ice Age and the widespread geographical and historical ‘anecdotes’ that are eliminated by Mann’s data-flattening method.
4) The elimination of the Medieval Warm Period.
Yes, it is only an ‘anecdote’ when you’re using information like tribal migrations, choice of crops, and ice skating announcements. But concrete information can be derived from even anecdotes – and the error bars (on one side anyway) can go well beyond the normal ‘95%’ confidence level typical of an actual experiment. The Thames just isn’t above freezing if there is an ice fair.
Elimination of the other previous, well-documented (if not well-instrumented) climactic shifts is -the- key element that allows the claims ‘worst in history’ and the crucial component of the adjective -catastrophic- for CAGW.
The silliness of fitting on the up-slope of a periodic function and claiming ‘Excellent Fit!’ and then turning around and declaiming that the subsequent deviation is mere weather is also odd. Either ENSO is ‘climate’, and should be properly predicted … -or- … ENSO is weather and the 1990-2000 period’s models should be falling short as they under-predict a ‘mere weather’ phenomena. Pick. Just don’t change your mind to suit whatever seems most convenient at the moment. Again.
CF this piece with this weeks Lindzen address at the house of commons – link thru
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/2/23/independent-on-lindzen.html
His 58 page presentation concludes : ( Be sure to read the whole thing)
“Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating.
In the meantime, while I avoid making forecasts for tenths of a degree change in globally averaged temperature anomaly, I am quite willing to state that unprecedented climate catastrophes are not on the horizon though in several thousand years we may return to an ice age.”
58
“Hansen’s climate model clearly exaggerated future temperature rises.”
No, you have shown Hansen’s predictions for met stations surface temp measurement against satellite measured temperature for the lower troposphere. What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.
This chart shows the relationship between increasing CO2 and temperature. And this short paper by Dr Lance Endersbee shows the relationship between CO2, the oceans, and global warming:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Focus_0808_endersbee.pdf
Mutter, mutter, dry adiabatic lapse rate, mutter, mutter. Let’s not go there today….
Re figure 2 – This skeptic would include increased convection as offsetting part of a CO2 induced temperature increase.
William M. Connolley says:
That graph does not contradict what Connolley says. What he is saying is that temperature change depends logarithmically on CO2 level, which means that it would be linear on a plot of log(CO2 level). The plot you show does not have log(CO2 level) on the x-axis. It just has CO2 level.
If you look at the entire thread of the comment:
* Evans correctly assumed that the dependence of temperature on log(CO2) means that each doubling would produce the same increment in temperature (e.g., going from 560 ppm to 1120 ppm would produce the same temp change as going from 280 ppm to 560 ppm).
* pkirk21 incorrectly assumed that a logarithmic relationship means that each successive doubling would produce a smaller increment in temperature.
* Connolley correctly pointed out that the logarithmic relationship means the each successive doubling produces the same increment in temperature.
Nick Stokes says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:47 pm
“No, you have shown Hansen’s predictions for met stations surface temp measurement against satellite measured temperature for the lower troposphere. What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.”
But wasn’t the prediction that the troposphere should heat up faster than the surface?
“”””” Jeremy says:
February 26, 2012 at 11:51 am
The posts under David’s original blog has some good discourse also. A skeptic brings up some rubbish “slayer” arguments that are sometimes used to attack the CAGW meme but, being titally wrong, only serve to discredit the skeptics. David Evans obviously understands Physics very well and explains why these “slayer” arguments are just plain wrong. Excellent.
I realize Anthony Watts and his crew, not being Physicists, cannot be expected to correct the occasional egregious Physics errors committed from time to time on WUWT. However, WUWT is so well supported, has a large community, is uncensored, and is full of such diverse and interesting content (as well as posts) that I am quite wiling to overlook the odd articles/posts on WUWT that makes us few Physicists cringe. “””””
Well Jeremy, if you have been a practising Physicist; getting people to spend THEIR OWN MONEY in free arms length exchange for the fruits of YOUR Physics expertise, for more than 55 years, then I suppose you have cause to cringe; along with those other few Physicists out there. by the way; where can we find some of your expert Physics utterances related to the subject David Evans is presenting.
I take his data for granted, having not measured that myself. But I don’t necessarily agree with his view of what serious skeptics do believe WRT the 1.1 deg C rise in the mean global surface Temperature for any doubling of CO2 (sans ANY amplifications)… For a start, there is NO observed data supporting that, and just how in the laboratory did somebody measure the Temperature rise of some “surface” akin to earth’s surface, from doubling the CO2 (say from 280 to 560 ppm of a dry (waterless) synthetic earth atmosphere, under the influence of say a roughly black body radiator at a Temperature of about 288 Kelvins; the purported earth mean surface Temperature ?? I would accept something like an ordinary bottle of water at 15 deg C, as a suitable source of a 10 micron peaked LWIR emission spectrum, such as the mean earth surface emits. So where can we read the peer reviewed results of such laboratory experiments, confirming the official 1.1 deg C rise scenario. ??
Some of us “serious Physicists” would like to know.
[snip. On 72 hour timeout. ~dbs, mod.]
REPLY: I see that mostly what you are doing is throwing in hot button words to provoke a response, then whining about it when you get called out on it, such as you’ve recorded here: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/02/comments_elsewhere_part_ii.php
So, by your own admission it is all a game for you.
I note that you didn’t print the part today where I called you out on it.
And also note, other similar comments on Figure 3were allowed, but they didn’t call Dr. Evan’s integrity into question immediately like you did. They asked questions, you made accusations. Your comment wording was the problem.
For a person who routinely changes history at Wikipedia, and gets called out on it, and gets privileges revoked for his actions, you sure have some ego to complain when Dr. Evans makes an interpretation different than you. Your Gleickness shines brightly.
For your subterfuge word baiting game to see if you get banned here, the timeout I’m assigning you this this time is 72 hours. There won’t be a third time. Keep it civil and don’t assume this to be your sandbox, and you won’t have a problem. Your choice. – Anthony
Dessler and Davis JGR 2010 vol 115 could not find any increasing water vapour.
Water vapor is supposedly the most important feedback mechanism.
The case for (strong) feedback seems weak.
DirkH says: February 26, 2012 at 12:57 pm
“But wasn’t the prediction that the troposphere should heat up faster than the surface?”
Not the lower troposphere. But in any case, why not simply measure his prediction against what he was actually predicting?
Regarding the source of the direct effect of doubling of CO2 (with and w/o feedbacks included) here is page #3 of the 58 page presentation of Dr. Lindzen on Feb 2 2012 at the House of Commons Committee Rooms in Westminster, London: [note: bold emphasis below mine-JW]
Page 41 through 44 of Lindzen’s same 58 page presentation details the mechanism by which is the basis of his conclusion on page 44:
Hope this helps with showing another view versus Dr David M.W. Evans statement in his post that the direct effect of CO2 doubling is 1.1C.
Dr. Evans said:
As you can see the positions of Lindzen and Evans are different in that Lindzen adds that the direct effect of CO2 w/o feedbacks of about 1C is conservatively high. Whereas I do not see that conservatively high caution in Dr. Evans 1.1C.
John
Yes, doubling of CO2 for each increment involves the same rise in temperature.
For example.
386 –> 772ppm (1.1c )
772 –>1544ppm (1.1c)
The rise is the same for each doubling, but the volume of gas doubles each time to achieve the same rise.
Smokey says: February 26, 2012 at 12:48 pm
This short paper by Dr Lance Endersbee shows the relationship between CO2, the oceans, and global warming: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Focus_0808_endersbee.pdf
Thanks Smokey for fishing this out, I hadn’t seen it. I was in contact with Endersbee shortly before he died. Some stats folk here suggested that Endersbee’s graph was done over too short a period of time… and in those days I took that as gospel but now I suspect the correlation is likely statistically significant… and boy is it telling.
CO2 comes from the oceans. WMC eat your heart out.
For the sake of clarity can we split the argument into two distinct camps.
I suggest that the warministas be refered to as the Goreal warming advocacy .
Any suggestions for the reality side? Or improvements on the above
All very interesting and succinct, and I was very impressed with Dr. Evan’s bio until I got to the Stanford part…alas!
Go Bears. 🙂
I’d really like for the HI to work to distill all these data so a high school 9th grader could understand it. I’d do it myself, but hey…they’re the ones evidently trying to stop the teaching of science in American schools and they’re the ones who are getting the big bad oil bucks to do it, right?
http://www.rhinohide.org/gw/publications/ipcc/ar4/img/ts26-updated-2011.jpg
Take a close look at the graphs/charts and consider this for a moment. Is it possible they were aware of the cooling that would be caused by the actions they “ignore?” Assume that the IPCC BS had been accepted in 2000 and that CO2 had been restricted as they wanted. All of these morons would be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
Wrong! It comes from MODTRAN a computer program designed to model atmospheric propagation of electromagnetic radiation for the 100-50,000 cm-1 (0.2 to 100 um) spectral range by Spectral Sciences Inc. and the US Air Force. You do understand that there is a difference between these organisations and the IPCC?
Do we have any outputs from MODTRAN from the base state derived from the observations of 50 years ago? Do we have any recent actual data on the increased Lorentz bandwidth observed and compared them against the original data?
I have some of the books that detail the measurements from that era (including down to the individual wave numbers) but I have yet to see one to one comparisons of that data to today or even comparable recent data.
For someone who knows a person who goes to places like Durbin ( a relative of a friend of mine whom I’ve debated with over drinks ), Please help:
What are the arguments against some of these skeptic arguments made by warmists?
The hotspot.
The argo data.
Sea level non-acceleration.
choose another.
And how do they justify the fact that they declared this crisis in the late 80s after about a decade of warming, while now dismissing a decade of flat temps as irrelevant?
And, i would suggest any forced warming should cause said amplifications as ” the models ” predict, and yet no fire-ball earth in history?
Any answers to these would be much appreciated, as this guy loves to drive me into the weeds. And I am educated well on this subject, but need to know their weak ( likely ) rebuttals.
Whatever CO2 does, during forthcoming decade or two its effect is going to be very small. It is becoming apparent that the current plateau of high global temperatures is likely to turn into a downward trend reminiscent of the 1960’s.
Within a decade or even sooner the CO2 overcooked hypothesis will be held up as a grotesque example of scientific folly of the modern time.
It is time for all those who are reluctant supporters of that folly, to seriously consider bailing out and salvage at least some of their scientific credibility. Many universities and research establishments now considered as the ‘hot houses’ of the AGW agenda will require a rapid ‘U turn’ in the related sciences, it is time for the ‘reluctant’ ones to start preparing for the inevitable changeover.
higley7 says: February 26, 2012 at 12:06 pm
What a lot of the skeptic scientist generally have missed is that the 1.1 deg C rise with CO2 doubling comes from a calculation in which the IPCC brains (…) multiplied the thermodynamic factor for CO2 (…) by a whopping factor of 12, bumping the warming from 0.1 deg C to 1.1–1.2 deg C.
…It’s too bad that so many skeptics honor this falsehood, just as so many honor the false CO2 graph composed of Arctic ice core and Mauna Loa volcano data and validate it in discussions as if it was true. It’s cherry-picked and manipulated data and has to be labeled so as often as it comes up.
(1) Can you give a ref. for the 12-fold exaggerating trick?
(2) The Ice Hockey Stick gets too little mention, absolutely, thanks for mentioning it. Don’t know about this one?
What if CO2 doesn’t lead to warming ?? I really doubt if that has ever been established because it leads to creating energy from nothing. Besdies the argument supposes CO2 is a perfect insulator and this has NEVER been demonstrated !
What if increasing CO2 actually provides an extra mechanism for energy transport in the atmosphere – albeit a small one due to its concentration ?
If it does increase the efficiency of the atmosphere in reducing the surface temperature during the day – which only the most devoted refuse to acknowledge is the real case – thenincreasing CO2 levels could be more of a problem than thought.
Increasing the cooling effect of the atmosphere when solar scientists are predicting deep solar minimums as the coming scenario is not a good idea.
Now, wouldn’t that be a turnaround. Coling effect of increased CO2 due to enhanced radiative transport versus creation of energy from nothing – I think AGW is less probable !
“DirkH says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:35 pm
nomnom says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“Obviously something has been shifted up or down. What though? and why?”
Consult the footnotes.
“vi Hansen’s predictions were made in Hansen et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 93 No D8 (20 Aug 1988) Fig 3a Page 9347: pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf. In the graph here, Hansen’s three scenarios are graphed to start from the same point in mid-1987 – we are only interested in changes (anomalies).”
Also consult the vertical scale legends. Hansen’s graph is for change per annum: i.e., a RATE of change. Evans’ graph is total anomaly: SUMMED change.
Here’s another presentation (my adaptation of Warren Meyer’s) that explains the feedback issue very clearly as well. It also puts the feedback issue into perspective with all the rest of the climate gleickenspiels as I now want to call them.
Joel, my buddy
I don’t know whether you trained to be a prat or whether it was thrust upon you for whatever stick to the subject, concentrate hard on what’s being said and then try again, please.
DirkH said @ February 26, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Which is precisely why I suggested above that David explain why he chose UAH over surface air temperatures.
[snip – what part of 72 hours don’t you understand? Care to try for permanent? I’m adding you to the moderation que so that all subsequent comments get flagged for attention. That’s not a permanent ban, but since you have admitted to playing games, I find it a necessary requirement now after 94 comments you’ve made here. – Anthony]
“Millions” of weather balloons in the last 40 years?
That’s over two thousand weather balloons launched per month for just one million; about 70 launches per day (according to my calculator).
I have to say I find that to be a very large number; especially if it’s more than one million.
Regarding Brian H’s first comment:
Dr. Evans accepts and uses the “1.1 direct effect” and proceeds to demolish AGW, and thus CAGW. Brian’s lower estimate of the direct effect makes the case even more so.
One of the highly commented (Comments closed at 436) posts on WUWT was:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
Brian H. also commented there, including on the uncertainty of the pre-industrial level of CO2.
Can someone provide a link to a report explaining when and how this issue became closed, as in: “The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2.” [David Evans, this post]
I have forwarded a copy of the .pdf to “The Source”, Ezra Levant’s excellent Canadian television program. Hopefully it will aid them in continuing to take the fight to the climate fraudsters.
Excellent paper Dr Evans.
Thank-you Dr. Evans for the clear explanation of the fundamental science of AGW and the fundamental issues which determine, whether a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in benign warming (less than 1C with most of the warming occurring at high latitudes which increases the extent of the biosphere) as opposed the extreme warming 3C to 5C as predicted by the IPCC. with a significant portion of the warming occuring at low latitudes of the planet.
As you note, it there is zero feedback a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from 280ppm to 560 ppm, is predicted conservatively on the high side to result in 1.2C warming. If the planet resists the temperature change (negative feedback) the warming will be less than 1.2C, the planet must amplify the forcing change (positive feedback) to achieve the IPCC’s 1.5C to 5C predicted warming.
All of general circulation models used by the IPCC to predicted future warming due to atmospheric CO2 increases, assume the planet amplifies forcing changes (positive feedback).
Your comparison of recent temperature data to IPCC general circulation model predictions shows the planet resists a forcing change ( negative feedback, planetary cloud increases when the planet warms which reflects more sunlight off into space which resists the change) rather than amplifies the forcing (positive feedback).
Lindzen and Choi’s analysis of top of the atmosphere radiation changes (measured by satellite) vs planetary temperature changes (see this linked to paper) supports the same conclusion. The planet’s response to a change in forcing is to resist the change in temperature (negative feedback) by reflecting more or less sunlight off into space.
Negative feedback works to stabilizes systems. Positive feedback would result in an oscillatory unstable system.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
Richard S. Lindzen1 and Yong-Sang Choi2
We argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics, and the tropical feedbacks can be adjusted to account for their impact on the globe as a whole. Indeed, we show that including all CERES data (not just from the tropics) leads to results similar to what are obtained for the tropics alone – though with more noise. We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.
Jo Nova’s original booklet also relies on going for the jugular of the CAGW nonsense in a very simple, straightforward way.And of course, Jo has answered the weak attacks on the book, here.
Anthony, would you consider adding her booklet to your sidebar?
[snip. On 72 hour timeout. ~dbs, mod.]
REPLY: Yeah, that must be why WUWT and all other websites are just so darned, um, unpopular with regular folks who don’t have terminal egoblegh – Anthony.
Matt G says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Sorry I made a mistake to previous post and should read 12 doublings (CO2).
This changes the values to 13.2c compared with 3c and 1.1c compared with 0.25c per CO2 doubling.
John Douglas says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:09 pm
For the sake of clarity can we split the argument into two distinct camps.
I suggest that the warministas be refered to as the Goreal warming advocacy .
Any suggestions for the reality side? Or improvements on the above
I suggest the ‘Natureal Variability’ perception.
Ric Werme says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:49 pm
“The earth’s climate is long-lived and stable— it has never gone into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus — which strongly suggests that the feedbacks dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2.
Mutter, mutter, dry adiabatic lapse rate, mutter, mutter. Let’s not go there today….
Re figure 2 – This skeptic would include increased convection as offsetting part of a CO2 induced temperature increase.”
___________________________________________________________________________
Hooray! It took a while – nearly half an hours worth of reading in fact, – but somebody finally mentioned the “c” word – convection.
Until climate science acknowledges the key role that convection, acting alongside radiation, plays in controlling atmospheric temperatures, it will be forever thrashing around in the dark, unable to produce a correct explanation for anything.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/vef/kids/wxballoon.php
“Twice a day, every day of the year, weather balloons are released simultaneously from almost 900 locations worldwide!”
900 x 2 x365 x 40 = 2.628.0000
Matt G says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Yes, doubling of CO2 for each increment involves the same rise in temperature.
For example.
386 –> 772ppm (1.1c )
772 –>1544ppm (1.1c)
The rise is the same for each doubling, but the volume of gas doubles each time to achieve the same rise.
———————————–
Okay! Bad mathematical visualization on my part. Dr. Evans statement was correct in the figure, my brain was just seeing the doubling as 2, 4, 6, 8… instead of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32…
I would just like to say that I find Mr.Connolley’s behaviour verging on the childish, but I would request that he not be banned here. That would be , after all, the result that he is after.
Further, some points he raises are quite legitimate, it seems to me, although his style is ridiculously provocative. His own blog is quite startling in its rudeness. I appreciate moderating him might be tiresome but it seems to me that your previous tactic of requesting resubmission in an acceptable form is the preferred one.
Of course, it may be that he has “previous”, as we say in the UK, in his behaviour here so I might not have the full story.
REPLY: He’s made a lot of comments here, many legitimate and insightful, 94 up to the last one. But when I find that he’s hot-word baiting to get a desired result for publication on his blog, I have to draw the line somewhere. He’s got the same problem as Gleick, and over reaching ego steeped in a belief that he holds the moral high ground- Anthony
@joel Shore says:
“In this post, Evans basically cherrypicks data sets, time periods, and studies to arrive at the conclusion that it wants to arrive at.”
==============================
Joel, the problem with your type of reasoning is that every single independent line of evidence would have to be wrong. Yes I appreciate you can always think of possible reasons for why a particular line of evidence could be in error or misleading. But every single line of evidence suffers from flaws of one type or another? Is that plausible? Is that a rational scientific position to take? I seen the same sort of “reasoning” applied when I have debated Creationist proponents in the past.
JMF says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:16 pm
“For someone who knows a person who goes to places like Durbin ( a relative of a friend of mine whom I’ve debated with over drinks ), Please help:
What are the arguments against some of these skeptic arguments made by warmists?”
JMF, that’s what skepticalscience is for. They are on the warm side and have a huge collection of talking points against skeptical arguments. You find them in the sidebar under “unreliable” – they got this label after too many after-the-fact manipulations in their comment threads were discovered.
Bad Apple says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:30 pm
“Millions” of weather balloons in the last 40 years?
I don’t see a date, but —
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/vef/kids/wxballoon.php
Twice a day, every day of the year, weather balloons are released simultaneously from almost 900 locations worldwide!
@Nick Stokes says:
“Hansen’s climate model clearly exaggerated future temperature rises.”
No, you have shown Hansen’s predictions for met stations surface temp measurement against satellite measured temperature for the lower troposphere. What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.
—————————————————
OK, then let’s look at what RealClimate has to say about Hansen’s prediction:
http://www.realclimate.org/images/hansen10.jpg
As you can see, even at RC the projection is below scenario C and even then they had to cherry pick the graph at the height of the last El Nino to make it look that ‘good’. Since then temperatures have dropped further. Don’t wish to be rude here, but your statement that “[the] prediction is pretty good” seems to be a product of your imagination.
Nick Stokes > Not the lower troposphere. But in any case, why not simply measure his prediction against what he was actually predicting?
I agree. I suspect the conclusion will be similar, but it just muddies the water to have a prediction made on one basis, and graph results on another basis.
Rosco says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:21 pm
What if CO2 doesn’t lead to warming ?? I really doubt if that has ever been established because it leads to creating energy from nothing. Besdies the argument supposes CO2 is a perfect insulator and this has NEVER been demonstrated !
What if increasing CO2 actually provides an extra mechanism for energy transport in the atmosphere – albeit a small one due to its concentration ?
Now, wouldn’t that be a turnaround. Cooling effect of increased CO2 due to enhanced radiative transport versus creation of energy from nothing – I think AGW is less probable !
__________________________________________________________
Black body IR is indeed hastened by CO2 levels. When CO2 is increased it displaces other gases which reflect that band of energy transference. As levels increase so does the speed at which those areas release heat, even during the day time.
just another paradoxical event that is not fully understood.
This and the PDF are now in my bookmarks to be distributed to all who:
1. will take a serious look at it and,
2. those like my warmist co-worker,who may read it and get irritated
which is what I want. BTW he has not spoken one word about Gleick.
just looks at the floor a lot…
Oh, one other thing-with the coooling of the Oceans, if it continues and
becomes obvious to everyone,won’t there be a CO2 absorbtion?
A tank you to Dr. Evans. I will bookmark this for future use.
Regarding this sentence;
“Dr David M.W. Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change)”
Excuse me for saying so, but….”Department of Climate Change” ? Is it just me that finds this silly? Does Climate Change have it’s own department now?
hehe.
UzUrBrain >Take a close look at the graphs/charts and consider this for a moment. Is it possible they were aware of the cooling that would be caused by the actions they “ignore?” Assume that the IPCC BS had been accepted in 2000 and that CO2 had been restricted as they wanted. All of these morons would be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
That’s a very interesting observation.
You say that an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause warming which in turn will cause an increase in water vapor in the atmosphere, ( and water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.) In fact, both relative and specific humidity have been decreasing since 1948, as shown by radio sonde balloon records, as CO2 has been steadily increasing.( See Ferenc Miskolczi’s paper on the Saturated Greenhouse Effect,Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Journal, Vol III, No1, Jan-March 2007.)
Anthony – Connelly is simply [snip let’s not pile on – Anthony]
[snip- piling on – Connelley’s game playing isn’t worth discussing further here, and since he can’t respond for 72 hours, it would be inappropriate. You can take it up with him at Stoat – Anthony]
Thank you Dr Evans and Mr Watts.
Anything is possible says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Please email me, thx.
Sorry – know its off topic – feel free to delete, however, I suspect others here might be interested in Mr. Connolley’s opinion of WUWT and its participants, and his agenda here:
“It has taken me a little while, but my adventures into WUWT land have finally provoked a banning, though only temporary. The poor darling didn’tlike me pointing out the vacuousness of one of his favourites. I should add that WUWT likes to pretend that it is tolerant of dissenting voices; it is commonplace for people there to say “well at least we don’t stop people commenting here”. But of course they don’t really mean it, though the tolerance extended to the “skeptic” side is very wide.”
“The only thing that the WUWT folk have in common is denial of GW (in fact even that is being too kind; most of them are utterly clueless about what the scientific opinion is; its not as if they’ve ever read any, or the IPCC reports. They are still lost in their shadow-world of CAGW).”
[Reply: Mr Connolley knows that he was only given a “24 hour time out” for violating site Policy, which is not being “banned”. ~dbs, mod.]
“Roscoe: Increasing the cooling effect of the atmosphere when solar scientists are predicting deep solar minimums as the coming scenario is not a good idea.”
Congrats Roscoe, you may be on the forefront of the new paradigm.
I can hear it now, “we must reduce CO2 emissions to avoid runaway cooling”.
Everyone climb aboard….lots of money to be made!
Sheeesh!
JMF says:
What are the arguments against some of these skeptic arguments made by warmists?
========================
For Dr Evans’ arguments the ‘rebuttals’ I have found are:
Air Temperatures
– Warming will resume, only on hiatus. 10-15 year period too short.
– Comment: This is plausible but only just. If warming ‘caught up’ rapidly over the next few years and globally rose by around.5C, this would nullify this line of evidence.
Ocean Temperatures
– Too little data over too short a period of time, given the variability due to ENSO, etc.
– Comment: Somewhat plausible but warmists are starting to recognise the problem, hence suggesting new theories, such as the warmth transitioning to the deep ocean where we presently can’t measure it.
Hot Spot
– Argue for problems with the data measurements. And also argue it doesn’t matter if it’s not found.
– Comment: Somewhat plausible, but I cannot make any sense of the second line of argument that the missing hot spot doesn’t matter.
Outgoing Radiation
– Argues that the papers by Spencer, Lindzen/Choi are likely wrong and the period of analysis is too short. The first argument is always plausible and the 2nd argument might be valid too.
My impression here is that while each critique on it’s own merits is plausible, to have 4 different lines of evidence dismissed using the same type of argument – the data is too short, too noisy, too unreliable – seems to stretch credulity.
Excellent succinct summary. Perhaps the best I have seen. Well done David.
Ya, but…..
Facts do not tax.
Dr Evans,
Do you know about Heartland Institutes efforts to put back Normal Science and Scientific debate back in schools?
I agree with Jenn Oates says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:11 pm
“I’d really like for the HI to work to distill all these data so a high school 9th grader could understand it. ”
———————-
However, I found it very pliable 🙂
Usually due to lack of adequate explanation I have trouble understanding half the graphs in the articles these geniuses write. This article is quite the exception with the explanations gooder enough “For Kids Who Can’t Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too,…” (Zoolander)
I am very glad I didn’t have a chance to read this before the errors in the html conversion were identified and fixed. I would have been confused and not smart enough to straighten it out. LOL
I think this is an excellent paper and well documented and right on target in addressing the differences between the warmist positions and skeptics responses. But, to me, the big picture includes two other factors not covered.
One is that an ice age ended 13 thousnd years ago and there was a (all be it filled with a never ending series of minor 10 to 40 year ups and downs) steady warming throughout the 12 thousand years prior to the beginnings of our modern civilization. No one has yet to explain to me with acceptable scientific proof what causes the major swings from ice ages to interglacial periods and the steady warming during the first half of the interglacial periods when huge fields of ice melt, oceans rise and fall and life thrives or what causes the steady cooling as a new ice age approaches. Clearly these are major overwhelming natural forces and our anthropogenic warming is such a minor factor it is almost undetectable.
The second issue is one noted by a poster above, that the atmospheric CO2 has seemed to change in the past (according to paleoclimatology) after temperature changes not as a driver of temperatures changes.
I look forward to comments that answer these two questions that are so basic in my mind.
Regards to all,
Nick Stokes, there isn’t much between all of them and his reasoning is using the most accurate, which compared with surface is true. GISS is on it’s own a bit especially with some of the peaks it manages with others nowhere near them. Why not use his prediction against what he actually predicting? Another reason is to remove bias so HAD3 for surface or satellites!!!
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1995/normalise/plot/rss/from:1995/normalise/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/normalise/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1995/normalise/plot/uah/from:1995/trend/plot/rss/from:1995/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1995/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1995/normalise/plot/gistemp/from:1995/trend
[snip – more piling on on Connelley – lets’ just leave it be please – Anthony]
Nick Stokes says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:47 pm
“No, you have shown Hansen’s predictions for met stations surface temp measurement against satellite measured temperature for the lower troposphere. What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.”
___________________________________________________________________________
Nick, perhaps you ought to clarify whether the Hansen who made the prediction is actually the same Hansen who is responsible for producing the very GISS Ts index which makes the prediction look “pretty good” – or is it just an unfortunate co-incidence that they have the same surname?
You know what people – especially sceptics – are like. If they thought that the 2 Hansens were one and the same person, they may start suspecting that the index was being driven in such a way as to make the prediction look good rather than by the data itself.
People are funny like that…….
@kwik says:
Excuse me for saying so, but….”Department of Climate Change” ? Is it just me that finds this silly? Does Climate Change have it’s own department now?
==================================
Yes in Australia there is actually a department of climate change.
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/
Lucy Skywalker says: February 26, 2012 at 2:12 pm
[snip- piling on… Anthony]
Fair enough. Comes a bit close to me starting to doing the same as WMC.
Ah, but it’s this emotion that drives us! Where would this wonderful blog be if we had no Joel or WMC or Gleick to trigger our righteous reflexes!
yet, truth matters. I’m still working on a reply to Willis and all that stuff from January and refuse to bring it out until I’ve made the math path simple to tread without raising violent emotions.
Lucy Skywalker says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Anything is possible says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Please email me, thx.
____________________________
Duly sent. Can you pls confirm arrival.
I disagree that doubling CO2 will directly increase temperatures 1.1C, (leave feed backs out for now). That is because a significant part of heat loss is due to convective heat transfer. This transports heat up to the upper troposphere and even to the stratosphere. Doubling ground level CO2, a heavy gas, will not double the concentration higher up. The clouds up there are radiating to space, like they always have been. Convective heat transfer from the earth is poorly modeled, and probably explains why we have not warmed, along with negative feed backs.
“Jeremy says:
February 26, 2012 at 11:51 am
“I realize Anthony Watts and his crew, not being Physicists, cannot be expected to correct the occasional egregious Physics errors committed from time to time on WUWT. However, WUWT is so well supported, has a large community, is uncensored, and is full of such diverse and interesting content (as well as posts) that I am quite wiling to overlook the odd articles/posts on WUWT that makes us few Physicists cringe.”
And that, Sir, is the point. May we, the ordinary people, have the truth though it may have to be clarified so we can understand it. And would you be kind enough to explain the errors where they may occur – again in simple terms so that we the ordinary people who pay the researchers can again understand.
I had heard we were going to get conclusive ice core samples telling us whether c02 leads or lags warming. Anyone know what has come of that?
We have yet to attain to a Ministry for Silly Walks, but give them time…
Their foundation is not the climage change theory or the math, charts, they publish.
Their foundation is that they lie, go after the foundation and it will all fall down.
This article was recently featured on the Ludwig Von Mises Institute page
http://mises.org/daily/5892/The-Skeptics-Case
plug plug
Will Nitschke says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:40 pm
@kwik says:
Excuse me for saying so, but….”Department of Climate Change” ? Is it just me that finds this silly? Does Climate Change have it’s own department now?
==================================
Yes in Australia there is actually a department of climate change.
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/
=================================================
Also in UK – the department of Energy and Climate Change. I’ve considered putting in a request asking why they haven’t succeeded in changing the climate to something more agreeable yet.
We have the science, the models and the reality.
Science and models gives us this;
AGW + positive feedback = cAGW = alarmism
Science and reality gives us this;
AGW + negative feedback = rAGW = reality
JamesD says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:03 pm
I disagree that doubling CO2 will directly increase temperatures 1.1C
All other things remaining equal.
As you rightly pointed out….all other things would not remain equal. But that is part of ‘feedbacks’.
Will Nitschke says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:40 pm
Yes in Australia there is actually a department of climate change.”
========================
Australians aren’t silly, we also have a climate commission to make sure the “message” gets thru.
http://climatecommission.gov.au/
I’ve recently received a letter from The Director, Paul Ryan further to my request as to procedures for correction to published reports. I’m just now in the process of having them quantify their risk assessments regarding a report Professor McMichaels on dengue fever.
From their feedback to me, thus far, they appear to be the propaganda machine for the Department of Climate. Here is a example from my first foray with them, questioning the veracity of their claims about mosquito borne diseases, with regards to mosquito disease transportation factors.
=========================
I refereed them to Gething Et El. (2010) and Paaijmans et al. (2011). Paul Ryans response in part:
“Both papers refer to malaria, which is a quite different illness to dengue fever. Malaria is is spread by different mosquito’s (Anopheles) v’s ( Aedes aegypti), and is a different type of illness. The Paaijimans et al. paper presents research on a link between temperature and malaria parasite infectiousness. The papers comment regarding dengue fever is not part of the papers research, and is unusual given the differences discussed above.
“There are many variables to consider in understanding and projecting future movements of infectious disease carried by mosquito, such as temperature, mosquito behavior infectiousness and human interferences (medication, preventative action.
“How climate change will affect malaria, as well as other other mosquito-borne infectious diseases, is a complex issue and there are no easy answers. The ‘Critical Decade – Climate Change and Heath’ focuses on dengue fever, as a more quantifiable risk fo Australia.”
=========================
I’m relate here only two of my many questions of them.
1. A dengue fever epidemic was recognised in the Torres Strait Islands of Queensland in late 2003. Two fatal cases of dengue haemorrhagic fever occurred in early 2004. This severe manifestation is more common when a patient is infected a second time, with a different virus serotype to the first infection. These are the first fatalities related to dengue fever in Australia in over a century.
2. Geographic distribution Aedes aegypti in Australia;
An introduced species, currently known to exist only in Queensland and predominantly northern coastal Qld, but previously known from WA, NT, and southern NSW. It exists in low populated areas of Australia.
I do wonder how much money was spent in advising Australians of the risk caused by climate change regarding this mosquito. I know it was in the millions. I’ll let you know exactly how much soon.
Explain this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
JamesD
Your supposition would make sense if CO2 were limited to the lower portions of the atmosphere, but that does not seems to be the case. While the concentration is not exactly uniform throughout the entire vertical extent of the atmosphere, it appears that the departures [from] uniform are minor. Per the abstract at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002AGUFM.A62B0151W they observe differences of 8ppmv (relative to an average of 390 ppmv) (I didn’t read the full article to see if I misunderstood the abstract)
In contrast, this Nature article http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v221/n5185/abs/2211040a0.html suggests the assumption of constant mixing is not correct, but the abstract doesn’t quantify the differences; perhaps someone with access to Nature can summarize the conclusions.
Joel Shore says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:40 pm
I don’t see any cherry picks here, the data either only exists for the period shown or shows the prediction from the date it was originally claimed.
The data using any temperature set makes little difference as shown in my previous post and he stated what was used is the most accurate. (2 weather stations in a 1000 square mile radius versus a complete surface area coverage, no comparison)
The hot spot response makes little sense, something thats not there can’t warm the surface. If anything the surface is warming the atmosphere above it especially where the oceans are concerned over the tropics/sub-tropics. Plus if you say the hot-spot should cause a negative feedback then that would support the sceptics water vapor view. While the world was warming global cloud albedo was declining and while the globe become stable and stopped warming global cloud levels stabilized and have recently [increased]. That is not evidence supporting a positive feedback.
Looks like Nick Stokes only remembered part of the standard Hansen defense I’ve been seeing from the consensus side.
He was supposed to have said:
“And that prediction was pretty good, if you allow for the fact he got the climate sensitivity wrong.”
And besides Nick, I’ve told you before even Hansen says the proper test for his scenarios lies somewhere between the met surface station temps and the global (land + ocean) temps.
Unfortunately, in his analysis, Dr. Evans left off the largest heat sink and greatest energy storage reservoir on the planet– the deeper ocean, as well as of course, what’s been happening with Arctic sea ice volume, area, and extent over the past 30+ years. Had he included this, it would have given him another area the models have been “wrong” in (though he seems to miss the whole intention of models in general), but in this case, the models were wrong in that they didn’t estimate enough of a change in either of these areas;
1) Arctic sea ice loss has been greater (much greater) than any of the models indicated.
2) The total energy gained by the deeper ocean (down to 2000m) has been greater than any of the models indicated that it would be.
Finally, Dr. Evans really simplifies the whole issue of feedbacks by leaving out the notion of fast versus slow feedbacks, and has forgotten to discuss one of the most important of feedbacks (the cryopshere response) and the issue of Arctic amplification of the CO2 induced warming.
None of these things that Dr. Evans has left out are trivial matters.
Mike,
Compared to what?
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/PNAS_GTCh_Fig2.gif
Mike says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:39 pm
Explain this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
____
The skeptics would chalk it up to “natural variability” or perhaps, “recovery from the Little Ice Age”, or my favorite, “the sun did it all”.
To add to previous post.
Finally, there are many conclusions that never match the content in reports, so whether the data matches the often opinionated conclusion is irrelevant.
Ouch, how the heck do you have time to get six university degrees?
Oh, yeah that’s right, you don’t go above and overboard on the fanatical industrialization of printing disiformation into wikipedia.
:p
Anything is possible says: February 26, 2012 at 2:40 pm
“Nick, perhaps you ought to clarify whether the Hansen who made the prediction is actually the same Hansen who is responsible for producing the very GISS Ts index…”
Yes. He made the prediction in terms of the only index that was available at the time – the Hansen-Lebedeff index, which has been maintained as GISS Ts. You can see his original graph here. The observed that he was matching was that index.
Since then, the prediction has stayed the same. And it was predicting that index. But people have been substituting different data sets. Even RC used a somewhat cooler land/ocean index. And now David Evans is substituting the lower troposphere index, which is cooler again.
The GISS Ts index is in line with other land indices. CRUTEM3 is about the same; BEST runs warmer.
“While the world was warming global cloud albedo was declining and while the globe become stable and stopped warming global cloud levels stablized and have recently declined.”
Sorry made a mistake, please change the last word shown above in previous post from declined to increased.
Then remove this message.
First off, it’s an excellent presentation. I’ve copied the pdf to keep. There has been some bit of argument over the 1.1 deg C attribution to CO2 due to a doubling. There are some general average numbers we have that can shed a bit of light on what it must be.
Roughly put, solar flux averaged over the Earth’s surface is about 341 W/m^2 with around 70% of that number absorbed and 30% reflected/scattered out to space. That leaves about 239 W/m^2 which is absorbed by the Earth and atmosphere and which must be radiated away by thermal radiation from cloud tops, atmosphere, and from the surface for there to be radiative balance. The average surface temperature for Earth is about 288.2 K which produces about 390 W/m^2 of radiation at the surface. What must happen (for the radiative equilibrium) is that 390-239 ~= 150 W/m^2 radiated from the surface that is captured in the atmosphere above and beyond what is reradiated outbound by the atmosphere and cloud tops. Also, the true blackbody temperature required to radiate away 239 W/m^2 which amounts to about 255k, a difference of 33K. Divide the delta T by the delta P and one gets 33/239 = .22 K per W/m^2. When one uses Modtran or Hitran to determine line by line absorption between surface and the troposphere when doubling the co2 content, one finds that there is about 3.7W/m^2 of added absorption.
Applying the 0.22k per W/m^2 sensitivity, one finds that temperature increase for a 3.7W/m^2 increase in absorption should be around 0.8 K.
Alternatively, if one simply assumes that the fraction of surface radiation escaping is (390-150)/390 = 0.61 so that if a temperature increase at the surface must increase radiation by 3.7/0.61 = 6 W/m^2 so as to overcome the 3.7W/m^2 added absorption, then the surface must be increased in T from 288.2k to about 289.3k which provides us with the 1.1 k increase.
The major problem with this approach that yields 1.1k is that the 3.7W/m^2 added absorption due to a co2 doubling is only for clear skies. which amounts to substantially less than 50% of the sky over at any one time.
What the 0.8k rise does not show is any additional feedbacks which would add or subtract additional W/m^2 to the total. It is also based on pertubation concepts where we are dealing with small changes – like 1 deg C out of almost 300k so that linearity is approximated.
Since the initial numbers I used include all existing feedbacks for the starting conditions, the value of 0.8k rise for a co2 doubling indicates that there is a net negative feedback since it is less than the 1.1K rise due to the straight radiative assumption approach. Hence, one would expect the final result to be lower than 0.8k. It is also likely that the negative feedback contribution will actually be a little less than that estimated using a value of 0.8k rather than 1.1k. However, it should not affect the final total presented.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:48 pm
What are you trying to infer Gatesie, that a .3 Deg increase over 70 years is outside natural variability. Of course by 2030 there will be a null hypothesis. Eh.
These people can help you; http://www.aoa.org/
RC had a similar post not too long ago:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/02/2011-updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
I think this post is better, the author sticks to actual predictions and data, while RC makes assumptions and uses additional data not central to IPCC predictions (ie cherry picked 95% of model runs, cherry picked “adjusted data”, sea ice??)
Although this post does not use the most recent IPCC reports and the limited sea temp/heat content data (0-700m only? and only Argo) is a negative, but RC does not use accurate information here so they do not pick up any points.
At some point it would be interesting if every prediction in AR4/5 was documented and kept up with based only on the prediction made and real world data available.
Mac says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:35 pm
We have the science, the models and the reality.
Science and models gives us this;
AGW + positive feedback = cAGW = alarmism
Science and reality gives us this;
AGW + negative feedback = rAGW = reality
_____
Actually, more like this:
AGW + positive feedbacks + negative feedbacks= Likely in the range of 3C + or – 1C (at the 95% confidence level) per doubling of CO2 from preindustrial levels.
This is by far in my view the best expose of climate to this date its a must see for everyone. Well done Evans
Mike says:
“Explain this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif ”
Glad to. So sit up straight and pay attention. I promise you will learn something.
That is a zero baseline chart, which is fine for anomalies. But when charting a trend, an arbitrary baseline chart is highly deceptive.
Here is a trend line chart from the LIA in the 1600’s. You can see two things right off: Global temperatures are not accelerating, and the natural warming trend since the LIA is rising along the same trend line. Rises identical to the modern warming trend that ended about 15 years ago have happened periodically, when CO2 was very low.
There have been very similar temperature rises over the past century and a half, as even Phil Jones acknowledges.
The mild warming trend has remained within the same parameters, thus falsifying the conjecture that the rise in CO2 is causing an accelerated temperature rise. It isn’t. In fact, any warming from CO2 is so small that it can be disregarded as insignificant. It is too small to even measure.
So when you see a scary chart like the one you posted, remember to check and see if it has an arbitrary baseline. What you need is a chart that shows the trend, like this [the green line is the trend]. Or this chart, which shows how Hansen’s chart deceives the eye; it’s not real because it is a zero baseline chart. But it is scary, which is why GISS uses it. Funding would be substantially less if they weren’t alarming the public.
Also remember that the James Hansen chart you linked to has been artificially “adjusted”. There was no raw data used to construct that chart. Hansen’s adjustments are of two types: either making the past cooler, in order to show a more rapid temperature rise, or “adjusting” the current temperature higher. The most reliable records are from satellite measurements, but Hansen’s charts always show a scary rise in temperatures. But it is false. Hansen is just trying to change the temperature record, to get it closer to his failed predictions.
Stokes.. Why the hell is AMSU satellite 600mb currently -1C? What is wrong?
Naive question — so where can I find a layman-accessible response to these basic points from the perspective of the “consensus” view? Without over-emotional language or ad hominem charges against skeptics of the “consensus” view? I’d seriously like to know what the basic response is to the big picture point made by the article. There must be one, but the presentation here on its face presents a pretty powerful case.
“R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Finally, Dr. Evans really simplifies the whole issue of feedbacks by leaving out the notion of fast versus slow feedbacks, and has forgotten to discuss one of the most important of feedbacks (the cryopshere response) and the issue of Arctic amplification of the CO2 induced warming.
None of these things that Dr. Evans has left out are trivial matters.””
================
What is not trivial is the unassailable fact that if there are no AGW CO2 forcing there is no AGW feedbacks.
How did Hansen get the flux weighted ‘mean’ altitude of emissivity surface altitude at exactly 5 klms, by using a lineal saturated adiabatic lapse rate?
I’ll tell ya. He fudged it.
George E. Smith; says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:00 pm
I don’t have much more to add to Evans. I like what he has done.
All else equal, most Phsyicists agree that a doubling of CO2 is roughly equivalent to warming of 1 deg (ALL ELSE EQUAL). This is what David Evans states (he uses 1.1). David correctly shows that the real unknowns territory begins when one reflects on possible feedbacks to the system in response to more heat….that is where simple radiative physics meets the complexity of clouds and other albedo complications (changes simplistic radiative assumptions) and convection effects (which move heat around).
In the absence of convection, water vapor, sea and a whole host of other factors which dominate our complex atmosphere, Radiative physics is really quite easy. It is generally accepted if ALL ELSE IS EQUAL then more CO2 will cause more infra-red absorption and therefore it acts like another “blanket on a bed”, reducing the overall rate of heat loss to space and raising temperatures by about 1 degree per doubling of CO2. The CAGW alarmists have this part CORRECT, however, as Lindzen and others have shown (using observational data) ALL ELSE IS CERTAINLY NOT EQUAL and feedback loops appear to reduce the direct affect of CO2 by AT LEAST 50% (perhaps much more).
The very worst alarmists (like the IPCC) overstate things radically in their computer models by assuming feedbacks are POSITIVE BY A FACTOR OF UP TO THREE (for which there is NO OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE AT ALL).
Markus Fitzhenry says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:03 pm
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:48 pm
What are you trying to infer Gatesie, that a .3 Deg increase over 70 years is outside natural variability. Of course by 2030 there will be a null hypothesis. Eh
_____
Wow, didn’t know you had psychic abilities, able to predict exactly what will happen in 2030? You might want to take that show on the road.
Even though the troposphere is an excellent way to see warming in the Earth’s system over a long-term basis (many decades) because of its low thermal inertia and poor energy retention, it is not so good over shorter-periods, as natural variability will often dominate, and any longer-term signal (such as from anthropogenic CO2) can often get lost in the short-term noise. Thus, even though the past decade has been the warmest on temperature record, and 9 of the 10 warmest years have been since 2000, too much natural variability and noise still exists to clearly see the signal. Some clever scientists have found ways to filter out some of this natural variability, to see the signal but some still exists. Thus, a better place to see long-term changes in Earth’s energy balance (which is of course the true hard physical effect of increased greenhouse gases), is to look to the oceans. They are not quite so fickle as the troposphere, having a large amount of thermal inertia. Looking at this largest metric for which we have some reliable and consistent data (down to 2000m) we see a constant increase in Earth’s energy system over the past 40 years. Completely consistent with an alteration in Earth’s energy budget consistent with the external forcing expected from increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
I got educated in Australia (University) and I can guarantee that currently they have a third world class education system which accounts for the thousands if not millions of climate ignoramuses along the Gleick style, reason I left a long long time ago
Matt G says: February 26, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Yes, doubling of CO2 for each increment involves the same rise in temperature.
For example.
386 –> 772ppm (1.1c )
772 –>1544ppm (1.1c)
The rise is the same for each doubling, but the volume of gas doubles each time to achieve the same rise.
Per the IPCC, the way we double CO2 is to burn fossil fuels, in which case we are merely adding a C to an existing O2 gas molecule, so volume should remain about the same, if I follow your argument.
Since 1850, what has the global temperatures increase been (in degrees C) ?
What percentage of this number is natural factors and what percentage is human factors ?
Of the human induced climate change factor what percentage is due to petroleum CO2 emissions ?
It’s the answer to the last question (or lack thereof) that scares the warmists.
Smokey says: February 26, 2012 at 12:48 pm
This chart shows the relationship between increasing CO2 and temperature. And this short paper by Dr Lance Endersbee shows the relationship between CO2, the oceans, and global warming:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Focus_0808_endersbee.pdf
Thanks Smokey – I just scanned the subject Endersbee article and (most days) I agree with him – I wrote something similar in January 2008 at http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
I used to agree with the position in the Evans paper – we wrote something similar in 2002, at http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
Evans and our 2002 paper are OK, except they do not recognize the fact that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales. This observation may be trivial, but it is more likely a major problem for the “mainstream argument” that CO2 drives temperature, since it seems to require that the future is causing the past (I know – “phantom feedbacks” are the cause, just like “phantom aerosols” explain the lack of global warming).
R.Gates said:
Kind of like Obama’s economic success, “Building a better tomorrow……tomorrow”.
Normally when a prediction fails, the “theory” is reconsidered, but this is post normal science.
I’m still trying to understand how a 95% CI can be assigned to data that hasn’t been measured and has no past data to support it. Strange climate science is.
Smokey says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:10 pm
“Here is a trend line chart from the LIA in the 1600′s. You can see two things right off: Global temperatures are not accelerating.”
___
Uh, Smokey buddy, why would you equate “Central England Temperatures” with Global Temperatures? Completely and significantly different things. Your chart that goes back to the 1600’s says nothing at all about Global Temperatures, despite your claim otherwise. Unless of course you’ve got some proof that Central England Temperatures are a very good proxy for Global Temperatures? Love to see that if you have it…
Nick Stokes says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:47 pm
” What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.”
Oh right, Hansen’s predictions match his data after he himself is through bending, folding, spindling, mutilating and otherwise “adjusting” the data.
ROTFL
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Care to distinguish the difference between Arctic warming and AGW Arctic warming? If the feedback is not found for CAGW using the tools highlighted, it makes the Arctic and deep ocean irrelevant. Still not mentioned how longwave radiaition warms the deep ocean by bypassing the top 700m.
Mr. Watts,
I’m risking a much dreaded (and never before experienced) [SNIP] here, but I’ll take my chances. One of the things I really love about this site is when you moderate the comment threads. You can slice and dice the most odious of trolls with a sentence or two in your replies. I often chuckle. Sometimes I laugh out loud. This site might get a bit contentious from time to time but it never devolves into mud wrestling. It came close with Willis a while back (my money was on Willis), but this is a civil, cordial site visited by a lot of very intelligent, very well informed participants.
Let me preface this by saying I’m not “piling on” William Connolley. Were it not for WUWT I wouldn’t know who this obscure software designer even was (I don’t go to Wikipedia for information on climate, but I have to admit, they’re an excellent source if you need to know the atomic weight of boron or the year McKinley died). But over the years I’ve seen you yank the plug on a few of these tedious folks. I found Connolley’s comments becoming tiresome and tedious. As a regular reader I just want to thank you for giving him a time out. I just want to thank you.
Explain this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
an ideolog’s last desperate grasp at relevancy?
R. Gates says:
Smokey says:
“Here is a trend line chart from the LIA in the 1600′s. You can see two things right off: Global temperatures are not accelerating.
___
“Uh, Smokey buddy, why would you equate “Central England Temperatures” with Global Temperatures? Completely and significantly different things. Your chart that goes back to the 1600′s says nothing at all about Global Temperatures, despite your claim otherwise.”
Uh, Gates buddy, you are too quick to find fault where there is none. The chart I posted did not just have the CET record. It showed temperature trends from Washington D.C, and Berlin, and Minneapolis, and Geneva, and New York City, and Copenhagen, and St. Petersburg, too. That’s a pretty good proxy for global temperatures.
But you’re just avoiding the central issue: when charting a trend, an arbitrary, zero baseline chart is deceptive. It will show a hockey stick shape when there is no acceleration in temperatures. In other words, that kind of chart is dishonest when charting trends. It’s good for anomalies, which are deviations from a base line, but not for trends, as this chart shows.
Matt G says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:30 pm
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Care to distinguish the difference between Arctic warming and AGW Arctic warming? If the feedback is not found for CAGW using the tools highlighted, it makes the Arctic and deep ocean irrelevant. Still not mentioned how longwave radiaition warms the deep ocean by bypassing the top 700m.
_____
Arctic warming is a general term and AGW induced Arctic warming would be the specific example. The Arctic and deeper ocean can’t possibly be irrelevant to the issue of anthropogenic climate change as they are key players in Earth’s energy budget and both will be sensitive to changes in that budget.
Finally, the notion that longwave radiation has to bypass the top 700m of ocean is one of the talking points certain skeptics like to use, and that ought to be perhaps considered by neophytes studying the ocean, but then discarded by those really wanting to understand the true dynamics of the ocean and what goes on in the deeper ocean and how heat (really energy) is transported there. The vast majority of the heat coming into the deeper ocean is brought there through specific areas of downwelling around the world’s oceans. These downwelling areas are of course part of the global ocean conveyor current system. To see some of the research being done about the heat going into the deeper ocean, I suggest you read:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008JCLI2131.1
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967064511001809
ftp://soest.hawaii.edu/coastal/Climate%20Articles/Song%202011%20deep%20ocean%20warming.pdf
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2010/EGU2010-7482-2.pdf
ftp://kakapo.ucsd.edu/pub/sio_220/e03%20-%20Global%20warming/Purkey_Johnson.JClim_sub_10.pdf
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2007JCLI2238.1
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/docs/Garzoli_progressing_towards.pdf
http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/8/2197/2011/osd-8-2197-2011.pdf
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3625.1?journalCode=clim
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n7/abs/nclimate1229.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/abs/nature09043.html
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n2/full/ngeo1375.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/abs/465304a.html
It shows the 5 year mean flatlining.
scottd0317 says:
I’m not a scientist but I am a grammarian. The word “data” is the plural of “datum.” Therefore the proper usage is “the data say” not “the data says.”
My own inclination is to agree with you, but there is another consideration. Some Latin words become completely English, with subtle changes of meaning. This can lead to a Latin plural becoming an English singular.(“Agenda”, for example, is singular. In English it does not mean the plural of Latin agendum.) If we regard “data” as meaning something like “information” rather than “the given”, it is, I think, acceptable to treat it as an uncountable noun and use the singular form of the verb.
Contrary to Dr. Evans’ contention, the colored lines of his Figures 3, 4 and 5 are not “predictions” but rather, in IPCC terms, are “projections.” Though professional climatologists and climatology bloggers persistently confuse the idea that is referenced by the term “projection” with the idea that is referenced by the term “prediction” the two ideas are distinct.
One statistically tests a model by comparing the predicted to the observed outcomes of statistical events but none of the IPCC climate models make the required predictions or reference the complete set of statistical events (the so-called “statistical population”) from which the observed events would be drawn. As neither predictions nor observed events are available, one cannot test any of the IPCC models. It follows from one’s inability to test these models that the IPCC’s inquiry into AGW has not truly been a scientific inquiry. The IPCC has represented that its inquiry has been scientific but this representation has been false.
In AR4, IPCC Working Group I presents comparisons of model projections of the global surface air temperature to a global surface air temperature time series; a comparison of this type supports what the IPCC calls a model “evaluation” but the word “evaluation” is statistically meaningless and does not result either in the falsification or the validation of the model. In the Web-posted article entitled “Spinning the Climate,” the IPCC expert reviewer Vincent Gray reports that the IPCC replaced the statistically meaningful term “validation” with the statistically meaningless term “evaluation” after he pointed out that to statistically validate an IPCC model would be impossible for the lack of the required predictions and observed events.
As “projection” sounds like “prediction,” “evaluation” sounds like “validation” and a comparison of model projections of the global surface air temperature to a global surface air temperature time series looks superficially like the comparison that is made in validating a model, a number of well meaning people have wound up thinking that a model has been tested when an IPCC-style “evaluation” has been conducted. Among the people who are thusly confused, evidently, is Dr. Evans.
R. Gates,
So that humans can make choices if your correct please put into this offical record here when the warming will be “x” degrees above some known and accepted standard tempature.
Seems there is great reluctance to do so by the climate change all knowing ones.
2050
2100
2200
10,000
Your choice and lets leave a marker for all to see.
R.Gates: “None of these things that Dr. Evans has left out are trivial matters.”
justthefactswuwt recently had a post here on WUWT, “crowdsourcing” climate factors.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/19/crowdsourced-climate-complexity-compiling-the-wuwt-potential-climatic-variables-reference-page/
It should be clear that it is only possible to eliminate some as trivial only after evaluation of the whole system in a model where each can be changed independently (sensitivity), dragging they coupled factors along with the factor being changed. It is technically unfeasible to produce any scientifically useful results from such modelling. Even with the best super-computer that one can imagine.
One has to recognize that natural factors behave non-linearly and not necessarily monotonically over the range of conditions. Further, boundary condition changes can drastically alter the long-term behaviour of the “chaotic” climate system. We cannot know the state of the system in sufficient detail. If you don’t know the values precisely enough, then that can lead you to thinking that some factors are more important than they are in reality, or that they aren’t significant when they are; outside the range of model runs.
All that one can do scientifically is to observe how the total system responds to the known, measurable perturbations. Predictions are only valuable in retrospect; to assess the quality of the underlying assumptions. One can develop “Engineering” models of the climate system; but in doing so, one must heed uncertainty, based on hard-nosed analysis of how the actual system deviated from the proposed model in the past.
@R. Gates says:
Looking at this largest metric for which we have some reliable and consistent data (down to 2000m) we see a constant increase in Earth’s energy system over the past 40 years. Completely consistent with an alteration in Earth’s energy budget consistent with the external forcing expected from increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
=====================================
Yes Warmists always come back to the claim that the Earth has warmed, therefore catastrophe is imminent. Which is a non sequitur of course. For the millionth time, remember that the debate is over rate of change and not direction of change.
To always argue against a strawman is to reveal a very weak logical position.
Smokey says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:46 pm
R. Gates says:
Smokey says:
“Here is a trend line chart from the LIA in the 1600′s. You can see two things right off: Global temperatures are not accelerating.
___
“Uh, Smokey buddy, why would you equate “Central England Temperatures” with Global Temperatures? Completely and significantly different things. Your chart that goes back to the 1600′s says nothing at all about Global Temperatures, despite your claim otherwise.”
Uh, Gates buddy, you are too quick to find fault where there is none. The chart I posted did not just have the CET record. It showed temperature trends from Washington D.C, and Berlin, and Minneapolis, and Geneva, and New York City, and Copenhagen, and St. Petersburg, too. That’s a pretty goodd proxy for global temperatures.
____
Smokey, I didn’t know that Minneapolis even existed in the 1600’s. Wow, you gave me the history lesson. Really, do you not see a problem in your attempt to suggest that even this small list represents Global temperatures? Just a tiny little problem. Look closely at your list Smokey, and use both Hemispheres of your brain (big hint).
But to your point that you claim I am missing. I completely agree that one can use different baselines and time frames to cherry pick data and make things appear to be something they are not. What’s the longest time frame of actual hard, instrumental (non proxy data) Global temperatures that we have? Seems we go back to:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:19 pm
Wow, didn’t know you had psychic abilities, able to predict exactly what will happen in 2030?
===============
Well now you know.
Smokey and Lucy Skywalker,
Thanks for the very informative links!
1) Do you have a reference for a model prediction of Arctic sea ice loss? Antarctic?
2) Within the random ups and downs of the data (which suggest an error bound since I doubt the sea temperature is changing that quickly) the actual data look pretty flat to me:
http://www-argo.ucsd.edu/time_series_atlas.gif
Nick Stokes says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:47 pm
What Hansen was predicting is what is measured by the GISS Ts index. And that prediction is pretty good.
I predict Hansen will continue to adjust the GISS to match his predictions.
Sometime ago, I indulged in some curve-fitting cyclomania, to check the data against the models, and came up with formula that computes the global temperature anomaly from 3000BC to the present with a correlation of 0.990 against the 10Yr moving average.
The formula required that I add 0.0052 °C/Yr to the base cyclic curve, from 1944 onwards to maintain a good fit. This works out to 0.65 °C per CO2 doubling (300ppm in 1944 to 600ppm in ~2070), in full agreement with Dr Evans’ findings.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:49 pm
The reason why the Arctic and deep ocean are irrevelant if you can’t find the feedback is because without the feedback these could have easily warmed naturally with no/little input from AGW. The feedback depends on water vapor and behaviour on different layers in the atmosphere, especially away from poles. Without the feedback the Arctic warming or deep ocean changes can’t be distinguished from naturally occuring events.
The downwelling areas are known as are the upwelling ones,but you can’t say it only a one way thing. This is highly speculative nearly as bad as CAGW. These can take many decades to go through the circulation, so if as you say warmer water is sinking, warmer water may have been rising too from many decades ago. The data is serious lacking and restrircted so, calling bs on this one until better coverage. Also the deep ocean can store massive amounts of heat, if anything this will increasingly lower the AGW concern.
Based on my vast lack of expertise, I have two main criticisms of Evans.
First, for Fig 4, he says
“It’s 20 years now, and the average rate of increase in reality is below the lowest trend in the range predicted by the IPCC.”
But I can’t see that from the graph. I can see the wriggly black line, but not the average rate of increase. It would be better to put in a trend line showing that.
Second, Fig 7 is taken from the Lindzne and Choi paper. I understand that a number of sceptical researchers, including Spencer, have reservations about that paper. It might be helpful for Evans to take these into account.
Mike says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:39 pm
Explain this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
Please see the following. Note the flat lines for three different ten year periods that are decades apart. For the first two periods, the starting time was extended to 25 years. Note how the two lines slope down. Presently, we have had no warming according to GISS for 10 years. So if history repeats itself, if we were to draw a line from 2002 in 15 years from now, it should also slope down.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1880/plot/gistemp/from:2002/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1894.25/to:1904.25/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1937/to:1947/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1894.25/to:1919.25/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1937/to:1962/trend
Lucy Skywalker says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:28 pm
“…… It also puts the feedback issue into perspective with all the rest of the climate gleickenspiels as I now want to call them.”
Nice!
Def: Gleickenspiel – a talking schlock.
The article seems to be using logs wrongly:
– the correct formula for calculating the effect of 392ppm CO2 is:
log2(392/280) x doubling-rise
– and not:
ln(392/280) x doubling-rise
(since ln is log to base e)
– you can convert from natural log (ln) to log2 thusly:
log2(n) = ln(n) / ln(2)
the same is true for a log of any base
e.g.
log2(n) = log10(n) / log10(2)
or conversely
log4(n) = ln(n) / ln(4)
etc
Thus using natural logs, the correct formula is:
Current temp rise = doubling-rise x ln(392 / 280) / ln(2)
(i.e. we’ve had about 48% of the doubling rise already)
In Figures 1 and 2, the variable confusingly labelled the “observed temperature increase” is the non-observable “equilibrium temperature increase.” As the numerical value of the equilibrium temperature increase is not observable, neither the claim, by the government climate scientists, that this value is 3.3 Celsius nor the claim by the skeptics that this value is 0.55 Celsius is susceptible to testing. As neither claim can be tested, neither merits the descriptor “scientific.” Thus, the argument between the government scientists and the skeptics over the value of this variable is scientifically nonsensical.
R. Gates,
Seems from the time of the ice bridge (from global cooling) to current Alaska there where humans over here. The names of our towns were not on city limits signs nor in your language.
Dennis Ray Wingo says:
February 26, 2012 at 11:47 am
Dr. Evans
The exposition is marvelous, however I do have a question on the 1.1 degree direct effect of CO2. Can you provide the source for this prediction that after unraveling does not point back to Hansen’s empirical relationship?
Nir Shaviv gives a demonstration here:
http://www.sciencebits.com/OnClimateSensitivity
Another calculation is based on the theoretical calculatoin that a doubling of CO2 would increase
the surface flux by about 3.7 wats. Note that the logarithmic effect is on the wattage flux, NOT directly on temperatures.
If the earth radiated as a blackbody with a surface temp of 288 K, the wattage flux would be
390.7 watts. The addtional 3.7 watts from a doubling of CO2 would increase that to
390.7 + 3.7 = 394.4 watts.
Absolute temperature is proportional to the 4th root of the wattage flux.
(394.4./390.7)^0.25 times the oridinal 288 K = 288.7 K, or an increase of 0.7K with a doubling of CO2 and no feedbacks,
I would say the actual hard data goes back to 1979. I strongly question the graph you present, on an historical basis. In the late 1970s there was much discussion in scientific circles about catastrophic cooling. Although it wasn’t universally accepted among scientists, the fact that it was there at all shows that the temperatures at that time were anomalously cold. Yet the graph shows 1970’s temperatures comparable to the preceding decades.
Doesn’t this disagreement between GISS and history strike you as suspicious?
They fudge the numbers, they lie about the facts, they refuse to let anyone check their work, they will not allow any normal fact check methods. Then they get into these waste of time debates of how thin some line on a graph is or tell everyone the sun does not count.
Waste of ban width and fingers.
Get the information out in any way of the lies and fraud and ingnore these little word fights.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm
2) The total energy gained by the deeper ocean (down to 2000m) has been greater than any of the models indicated that it would be.
At judithcurry, you expanded this to say: shows the past decade had the largest increase in total Joules of energy of any decade in the past 40 years
…Additionally of course, we can now observe massive downwelling in areas such as the Pacific Warm pool
My response was: “If the last decade had such an increase, why was the El Nino from 2010 weaker than the one in 1998? (At least according to HadCrut3 and RSS and UAH)”
Now on the other hand, if you wish to claim that the heat from the deep ocean does not affect the El Nino, which may well be the case, then why should anyone be concerned if the deep ocean may have increased in temperature from 4.00 C to 4.01 C? That heat cannot escape anyway once it is down there. This would at least be the case until the deeper ocean reached the surface temperature.
Will Nitschke says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:02 pm
@R. Gates says:
Looking at this largest metric for which we have some reliable and consistent data (down to 2000m) we see a constant increase in Earth’s energy system over the past 40 years. Completely consistent with an alteration in Earth’s energy budget consistent with the external forcing expected from increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
=====================================
Yes Warmists always come back to the claim that the Earth has warmed, therefore catastrophe is imminent.
______
Actually, where did I ever mention that “catastrophe is imminent”? Seems that is your own straw man argument, since it was not from me.
And, though reasonable true skeptics might know the argument is one of climate sensitivity, or the degree of change, there are plenty of what I would call false-skeptics, who refuse to accept that anthropogenic CO2 can alter the climate at all. My point in bringing up the ocean heat content being the single best indicator of changes to Earth’s energy balance is to at least get them off the tropospheric temperature meme. Yes, tropospheric temps have gone up, yes, they that rise has leveled a bit in the past decade, but the troposphere has low thermal retention and inertia, is highly subject to short-term noise, and is just a fraction of Earth’s energy storage bucket. If you want to see how increasing greenhouse gases affect Earth’s energy balance– look to the bloody oceans at the greatest depth you can!
Mike and R. Gates: Please explain the strong rise in global temps. from 1910 to
1940, as shown on the graph Mike linked to. Gates, it would be hypocritical of you to “chalk it up to “natural variability” or perhaps, “recovery from the Little Ice Age”, or my favorite, “the sun did it all”.”
APACHEWHOKNOWS says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:32 pm
R. Gates,
Seems from the time of the ice bridge (from global cooling) to current Alaska there where humans over here. The names of our towns were not on city limits signs nor in your language.
____
And did the native people of North America living near what would become “Minneapolis” happen to accurately record temperatures in the 1600’s?
Why is Al Gore and Algae are so much alike when printed out on a blog post.
Some say Nikolov and Zeller are correct.
Others say the dragonslayers are correct.
Others say Dr. Evans is correct.
Others say Claes Johnson is correct.
Others say that others are correct.
I do not know who is correct, but as this post clearly shows, the IPCC is wrong. And as the following shows, which I also just posted above, we seem to be in for at least 15 years of cooling.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1880/plot/gistemp/from:2002/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1894.25/to:1904.25/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1937/to:1947/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1894.25/to:1919.25/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1937/to:1962/trend
The three scenarios have been shifted to agree in 1988, since that’s the date of Hansen’s paper. This brings up several questions:
1. Why did Hansen’s three scenarios published in 1988 disagree in value in 1988 when the CO2 levels were known at that time?
2. Why did the hindcasts disagree at all? Shouldn’t he use actual known CO2 data?
3. Why do his projections converge at times, since the only difference is projected CO2 levels? Shouldn’t the three scenario graphs show the same temporal wiggles with just a divergence due to CO2 levels?
R. Gates,
Well there was the big rocks leaning up out in Chaco Canyon that tracked the moon, sun, cycles.
Those of the time lived out under the sun and did not eat when it got to cold to grow crops.
Very motivated to know as much as possible.
They did not sit at computers and fudge numbers for poltical and money reasons under air conditioners.
The graph showing the missing hotspot has more to show if one cares to look for it.
Assume for a moment that the skeptics are correct and that there is overall negative feedback due to shading from clouds. What signature would this display? You’d expect the extra shade to reduce temperature not in the upper atmosphere, but at ground level where the sunlight which is not reflected to space gets converted to heat. And you’d expect to see a greater effect from clouds in the tropics than near the poles. So what you’d expect to see is a cool spot (or less warm spot) showing up at low altitude in the tropics. And if you look at the graph, that is pretty much what you do see. The most noticeable feature is indeed a cool spot at low altitude in the tropics.
Of course this is only a first order guesstimate. A second order guesstimate would need a climate model tuned with negative cloud feedback.
@R. Gates says:
Actually, where did I ever mention that “catastrophe is imminent”? Seems that is your own straw man argument, since it was not from me.
[…]
And, though reasonable true skeptics might know the argument is one of climate sensitivity, or the degree of change, there are plenty of what I would call false-skeptics, who refuse to accept that anthropogenic CO2 can alter the climate at all.
[…]If you want to see how increasing greenhouse gases affect Earth’s energy balance– look to the bloody oceans at the greatest depth you can!
================================
Unless you can put forward a case that there is a problem, and a serious one at that, the IPCC position has no relevance so why are you here discussing this as all, if you simply make a bunch of trivial points that most sceptics do not disagree with anyway?
It doesn’t really matter what people opinionate on; you should focus on arguing the evidence. If you’re rebuttal posts in the comments section of a blog, and not the scientific evidence presented in the main article, then this is all about wasting time with strawmen.
If the missing heat has gone to the one place where we can measure it with less reliability than anywhere else, then you’ve found yourself a powerful negative feedback. Because the deep ocean is very cold and that heat would necessarily have to diffuse in those ocean layers which would imply time frames orders of magnitude different from what the IPCC has postulated. Claiming the heat has gone into the deep ocean doesn’t help the IPCC case. The opposite in fact. And are you talking about the expected 3-4C of warming going into the deep ocean or .5-1C of warming? Because the two claims are very different.
Why does not one Warmist here want to discuss water vapour feedback which is critical to the IPCC case? If you support the IPCC position then that is the main game in town. Instead, the response is mainly red herrings and other distractions.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:36 pm
“Yes, tropospheric temps have gone up, yes, they that rise has leveled a bit in the past decade, but the troposphere has low thermal retention and inertia, is highly subject to short-term noise, and is just a fraction of Earth’s energy storage bucket. If you want to see how increasing greenhouse gases affect Earth’s energy balance– look to the bloody oceans at the greatest depth you can!”
And when we expend more billions in self-serving research grants to self-invested control-freak “scientists” and billions upon billions in power-seizing economic-strangling regulation determined to transfer wealth from the poor of the first world to the wealthy rulers of the third world, and it turns out the deep ocean ALSO IS NOT warming . . . then they’ll say, well, of course, the deep ocean is clearly an unreliable measure of the “Earth’s energy storage bucket” . . . what we REALLY need to measure is the temperature of the Earth’s molten core.
Lord knows what they’ll think up after we’ve determined, after yet more billions in research grants and more billions upon billions of power-seizing regulations, that the core is not warming. Additional dimensions storing the heat, I suppose.
Fig one lacks the all-important money feedback mechanism MFM to us crimatologists. 🙂
The super 1998 El Nino is sometimes mentioned. In the grand scheme of things, it makes little difference due to the La Ninas that followed it. See the graph below. One slope includes 1998 and the other does not. Depending on your time frame, it is possible to get a time of more than ten years with a flat slope in either case.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/plot/rss-land/from:1997.08/trend/plot/rss-land/from:2000.92/trend
Change the subject, strawman, use of the word but, move the goal post 30,000 leagues under the sea, it is settled, your not educated as much as we wise ones are, Dr. SoSmart agrees with me, I am a Serria Club member your not, the Union of Concerned Scientist support climate change,
ect. ect. ect.
Well OK, in order to get on the same page, let us see all your data.
Publish all our data,, NO.
R Gates says “Looking at this largest metric for which we have some reliable and consistent data (down to 2000m) we see a constant increase in Earth’s energy system over the past 40 years”
Gates, I seriously doubt that there is a comprehensive, world-wide database of ocean temperatures from the surface to 2000m depth covering the last 15 years, let alone the last 40 years. Argo buoys have only been in place for 9 years, & even they do not cover the entire global ocean. What sketchy dataset are you claiming gives accurate coverage of this volume of water? Roughly 335,000,000 sq km of ocean surface in the major oceans. If we say 30% is less than 2000m deep, we have 235,000,000 sq km to sample. Double that for 2000m depth & you have a volume of 470,000,000 cubic kilometers. Gates, how many samples are required to give a representative, statistically significant sample of that volume of water? And how many were done?
The fact that observations do not support positive feedbacks from CO2 is … INCONTROVERTIBLE.
Nor can logical thinking support positive feedbacks: warming causes outgassing of CO2 which causes more warming which causes more outgassing, etc. No way. If such an unstable system was possible on earth, we wouldn’t be here to discuss it.
Yes, those government scientists are always wrong. Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. Richard Lindzen get their research funding from who? What do they say climate sensitivity is?
Rosco says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:21 pm
What if CO2 doesn’t lead to warming ?? I really doubt if that has ever been established because it leads to creating energy from nothing. Besdies the argument supposes CO2 is a perfect insulator and this has NEVER been demonstrated !
What if increasing CO2 actually provides an extra mechanism for energy transport in the atmosphere – albeit a small one due to its concentration ?
I’ve been pointing out the “cooling effect” of CO2 (and all GHGs) for some time. For the most part the warming only occurs lower in the atmosphere … as one gets higher more GHGs simply speed up the heat transport where most of the energy goes to space. This works well with convected heat. The lower GHGs heat the surface which enhances latent heat and convection. The higher atmosphere GHGs transport the majority of that heat to space. A negative feedback inherent in GHGs themselves.
Never mind substantive discussion of climate issues, someone has just really got up my nose:
Real (trained/professional) grammarians are a truly rare species. Self styled grammarians, on the other hand, are quite common.
What we have here is a case of hypercorrection, which is a particularly annoying form of illiteracy:
“Data” is a collective noun. In the context of scientific data, it is important to bear in mind that an individual data point is usually meaningless. We try to tease meaning out of data sets. Insisting that “data” is treated as a plural ascribes an importance to individual data points that they do not have. It is as wrong and annoying as insisting that thermometer measurements be written with five significant digits.
For many other references google for: data datum collective noun
This is a very informative article, yet it does not tell me what I wish to know the most.
I’ll explain:
In this article above it is written: “Notice that the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2; they just disagree just about the feedbacks. The climate debate is all about the feedbacks; everything else is merely a sideshow. Yet hardly anyone knows that.”
I have noticed and know all of that – but as to why the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2 is a mystery to me.
I keep on asking as many of them (Skeptics) as I can; what the evidence for warming by CO2 is, but no one seems to have any evidence at all. – Some say, just as this article does; “The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century” – That kind of sentence needs backing up by facts.
Well, I can only assume the so called IR radiation from the ground is supposed to be emitted as Electro Magnetic (EM) waves. In other words similar to the waves that come to Earth in the form of sunlight, but at wave-band length that is longer than that of visible light. Yet they know quite well that EM IR radiation from the Sun is not, readily, being absorbed by gases in the Troposphere.
This knowledge apparently gives the “Warming by CO2 Skeptics” or the so-called “Lukewarmers” the idea that heat itself can be emitted as “radiation” – which is the only option left for as to how their CO2 theory can work.
However, physics tell me that if CO2 and water vapor (WV) molecules can absorb IR radiation from the ground/surface those molecules must increase their temperature and subsequently re-emit IR radiation, in all direction including back to the surface whence it came from in the first place. – How can that so called “Backradiation” warm the surface up any further?
I ask, because the heat/energy it is thus receiving is only – at best – one half of the energy the surface emitted in the first place.
Is the idea perhaps that the surface can emit energy without cooling down?
Furthermore if surface IR emissions can warm greenhouse gases (GHGs) then, as we know that air-parcels of all sizes – with different moisture contents ascend vertically at different rates of speed, there would be no set, or sensible lapse rates.
And then; “The effect of CO2,(have been) based on laboratory results, and known for over a century”
My question here is: “What lab. results? – And, exactly what has been known for over a century?
More,
O.H. Dahlsveen.
More, very good.
Nice one. 😉 You finally agree with the rest of us that the models are useless.
François GM:
It’s not incontrovertable. According to climatologists such as Dr. Lindzen, DeltaT = DeltaT(no feedbacks)/(1-f) where DeltaT represents the change in the equilibrium global surface air temperature, DeltaT (no feedbacks) represents the change in the equilibrium global surface air temperature without feedbacks and f represents the degree of feedback. However, neither DeltaT nor DeltaT(no feedbacks) is observable. Thus, when a person such as Dr. Lindzen asserts that f has a particular numerical value this assertion cannot be tested.
I am going to have to tweet and chrip very carefully here. The fat and sassy birds on my bird feeder[s] made me do this. while they are watching WUWT over my shoulder from their special perch outside my studio window.. I am fixing to speak about William Connolley.
Mr Watts, I rarely disagree with you about your actions, and I understand that this is your website and you rule, However Mr. Connolley is being given too much leeway. The facts of the matter are he was banned from Wicki for improper editing. Barred from that site he is frantically looking for another site that he can screw up. You won’t let him, but neither will your loyal readers and commenters if you don’t stop us from insulting and demeaning him. I completely understand that you want civlized behavior on WUWT. I submit that Mr. Connollry is beyond the pale.. He does not deserve civilazed treatment. No more then pencil necked Gleick des.
Well as I already said, David Evans has pointed to a good bit of presumably believable data, that simply does not support the IPCC party line; and I think Joel Shore is tilting at wind turbines when he accuaes Dr Evans of cherry picking. Come now Joel; I know you are better than that. why don’t you support YOUR position, by presenting (or linking to) OTHER credible data, that you feel counter’s Evan’s thesis.
There is data, that I would like to point to.
#1/ The well publicised Mauna Loa CO2 data from 1757/8 to the present; perhaps the only authoritative CO2 data (OBSERVED).
I’ve looked at that plot so often, I think I could just about draw it free hand. There are two characteristics of that plot, that are incontrovertible (a) , There is an annual roughly saw tooth cycle of about 6 ppm CO2 abundance, rising over about 7 months, and falling in just 5 months.
(b) , Since 1957/8, I believe it is true to say, that the annual CO2 maximum ( and also the annual CO2 minimum) , has NEVER EVER gone down from 1957 to 2012. The trend has ALWAYS been UPWARD. I believe there is no exception to this rule.
THE SAME CANNOT BE SAID FOR THE EARTH TEMPERATURE; whether mean surface, or lower troposphere or whatever; there has been NO MONOTONIC upward Temperature progress. It has been up and down, and all over the place since 1957.
Consequently there is simply no basis for asserting that one data set has followed the logarithm of the other data set.; they show NO CAUSAL LINKAGE whatsoever; whether logarithmic, or linear, or of the form y = exp (-1/x^2)
Dinner calls.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:36 pm
Yes, tropospheric temps have gone up, yes, they that rise has leveled a bit in the past decade, but the troposphere has low thermal retention and inertia
Fair enough. So what do the surface temperatures of the ocean tell us? They decreased over the past decade and they were completely flat for the last 15 years. (Of course, water has a high specific heat capacity.)
1997.08: slope = -0.000326788 per year (or essentially 0)
2002.08: slope = -0.00962834 per year
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.08/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002.08/trend
P.S. They do not show the deep ocean on this graphing program so I cannot show that yet.
O H Dahlsveen says:
February 26, 2012 at 6:52 pm My question here is: “What lab. results? – And, exactly what has been known for over a century? But as to why the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2 is a mystery to me.
======
Konrad Hartmann amongst others have recently stated some testing. I am also of the understanding Nikolov and Zeller are in the Lab now doing experiments.
Most sceptics don’t agree on the Earths Energy Budget as accepted by “Government Scientists”. Many sceptics think that thermodynamic laws, insolation and the force of pressure are the dominate factors regulating Earths temperature with little effect by the composition of the Atmosphere. The composition of Venus is 97% CO2, but it doesn’t cause runaway heating. Dr Evans critique relates to the statistical anomalies of projections of the the peer reviewed literature of climate science. Other dedicated physicists do not accept the theory of CO2 climatic forcing. There are many who are rejecting the IPCC theory of AGW
‘Back-radiation’ is a fact. It is simply a consequence of the fact that all matter in the universe is radiating energy in all directions all of the time. This implies that the Earth’s atmosphere is radiating in all directions too.
Radiation and conduction both occur from hot objects to cold and from cold objects to hot at the molecular level. It is quite easy to show that a cold molecule (low kinetic energy) can warm a hot molecule (high kinetic energy) through collision, further reducing the kinetic energy of the already cold molecule.
This does not violate thermodynamics, because thermodynamics does not apply at the molecular level. Thermodynamics is a statistical affect that operates on averages over many molecules.
Thus, while a “cold” molecule can warm a “hot” molecule. It is probably a lower occurrence than “hot” warms “cold.” Thus, thermodynamics tells us that as a result of statistical averaging that heat only flows from warm to cold objects. Thus, at the molecular level, radiation and conduction are two sides of the same coin.
Furthermore, because that part of the radiated energy intercepted by the warmer body is standing wave communicating information between the emitter/absorber states, on both bodies, it can do no thermodynamic work.
When the cooler body is at absolute zero, the exchange energy is zero. When the temperatures are equal, it is the same as the radiation emitted by either body.
However, it can still do no thermodynamic work and it can only be detected by blocking the energy from the warmer body to the colder body. By counting ‘back radiation’ with the energy emitted by the warmer body, Trenberth is increasing the S-B constant by a factor 1to2.
So for statistical and modelling purposes it is disingenuous to consider back-radiation as a climatic forcing.
Tom_R says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Roger Pielke Jr wrote an excellent piece on the shortcomings of Hansen’s 88 projections a year or so ago. That should answer these questions. Sorry I never kept a link, but Google should help.
If you look at the NASA plots for all available sea surface data from 2003 you will see a very regular annual pattern with a maximum in March, a dip in June, slight rise in August and a minimum around the end of November. Selected sea surface and tick all years except 2012: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
This indicates very tight control and very little random noise. It also indicates no rise over that period, but my point is that the lack of rise cannot be blamed on random noise. The plain fact is that carbon dioxide is having absolutely no effect – not just a little effect as semi-skeptics like the author would have you believe.
It is time for true skeptics to debunk statements like The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century. altogether and not to acknowledge that radiation from the atmosphere can have any thermal effect on the warmer surface. It can’t because to do so would be a breach of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You cannot “excuse” it all by saying “net” radiation is out of the surface. It isn’t on a warm sunny morning when the surface temperature is increasing, and what is happening on the other side of the World at that time does not create something called “net radiation.”. And in any event, “net radiation” is a totally meaningless expression with absolutely no physical entity matching its description.
Radiation goes “full blast” with all the power allowed in the area under the Planck curve – in each direction. But only the surplus in the higher frequencies from the warmer surface has any thermal effect, namely warming the atmosphere. All the radiation from the cooler atmosphere, and a matching amount from the warmer atmosphere merely resonates (possibly in standing waves) without transferring thermal energy.
So any radiative greenhouse effect is a physical impossibility as several, including myself, have been pointing out for a while now.
It’s time for the semi-skeptics to become full skeptics with a unified, proven message.
.
Tom_R says: February 26, 2012 at 5:47 pm
“1. Why did Hansen’s three scenarios published in 1988 disagree in value in 1988 when the CO2 levels were known at that time?
2. Why did the hindcasts disagree at all? Shouldn’t he use actual known CO2 data?
3. Why do his projections converge at times, since the only difference is projected CO2 levels? Shouldn’t the three scenario graphs show the same temporal wiggles with just a divergence due to CO2 levels?”
1. Hansen explains in his paper (p 9345, next to the forcings fig). he uses a comprehensive set of forcings, not just CO2. And scenario A included allowance some trace gases, for which they did not have recent measurements, but had to postulate values (just as scenarios postulate future values). Why only scenario A I don’t know, but that’s the reason.
2. ditto
3. Scenarios B and C postulated some volcanic explosions (one in 1995, which turned out to match Pinatubo fairly well).
These differences should not have been adjusted for. They were the prediction. If you meddle with the predictions, and then test them against a different data set than that predicted – well, what’s the point?
stan stendera says:
February 26, 2012 at 7:11 pm
(re : Connolly)
“You won’t let him, but neither will your loyal readers and commenters if you don’t stop us from insulting and demeaning him.”
____________________________________________________________________________
The best thing to do with Connolley is to ignore him completely. See his name at the top of a post? Just scroll quickly down to the next one. It’s real easy.
If you want to insult and demean him (don’t think he’s worth the effort, myself),go to his own website and do it. Sure, it won’t get posted, but somebody still has to read it first.
“Do not feed the trolls” may be a cliche, but it still works. Starved of the attention they crave, they simply go away and bother someone else.
Joel Shore @ February 26, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Joel, I only glanced through the rest of your long comment, but might do so more carefully if you were to deign to respond to some issues I raised on an earlier thread. Meanwhile, I find it appropriate to mirror your own dogmatic prose to me in return: You [Joel] frankly haven’t shown any particularly ability to learn anything that might challenge your ideologically-driven point-of-view.
Let me point out something that maybe you have not taken into consideration, which is that David Evans’ essay is short and to the point in raising the salient points. Thus, it is fairly easy for you to accuse him of not including all the possible topics or data. In the same way, I see that R. Gates has scolded him for not mentioning the “disastrous ice melt” in the Arctic.
In your case, you have criticised his observations concerning “the hotspot” and giving your own views on it. However, your own claims do not include the possibility that there is embarrassment in the “church” that the hotspot seems to be reluctant to fulfill its promises, and that various “defences” have been raised. This could be a lengthy debate that you have not touched on, so you can also be accused of cherry-picking.
John Coleman says:
February 26, 2012 at 2:35 pm
“No one has yet to explain to me with acceptable scientific proof what causes the major swings from ice ages to interglacial periods . . .”
I think this has been investigated but maybe not to your satisfaction:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/07/in-defense-of-milankovitch-by-gerard.html
The above is Luboš Motl (trf) ‘The Reference Frame’ on July 6, 2010 (and a bit more on 1/9/2012) comments on this paper . . .
In defense of Milankovitch, Geophysical Research Letters (backup), Vol. 33, L24703, doi:10.1029/2006GL027817, 2006 (full text PDF)
Find here:
http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/roe/GerardWeb/Publications_files/Roe_Milankovitch_GRL06.pdf
———————————————-
The second issue is . . .
You may need to restate this one. There are many places where the idea is put forth that as Earth warms there are increases in the processes producing or releasing (oceans) carbon dioxide. Cold water to warm water is one such. If this doesn’t help – ask again.
George E. Smith @ February 26, 7:16 pm
George, the earliest graphical model prediction of an underlying sinusoidal trend with a cycle of about 60+ years that I’m aware of was back in 2003 by two Russians, and it is remarkable that to this day it still looks good. See it with comparator stuff and a really, really silly IPCC trend graph here:
http://bobfjones.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/linear-trends-on-noisy-data/
Curiously, I invited Joel Shore after he accused me of not understanding trend analysis and error-bars, to offer his advice on it severally on an earlier thread, and Email, but he remains reluctant to do so, e.g. quoting his latest via Email:
I [Joel] am not sure if I am particularly interested in responding to [the graphics] as I have found conversations with you so far to be very frustrating.
JamesD says:
February 26, 2012 at 3:03 pm
Convection part – fine.
Convection to upper troposhpere – fine.
even to the stratosphere – problems. Big thunderstorms, sure, but I’m not so sure about weak storms.
CO2 density – sure, however, it is well mixed. In a tightly closed column I’d expect that gases would stratify, but diffusion will keep a mixed layer even there. In the general atmosphere, wind and convection is more than enough to keep things well mixed. If that were not the case, then the 1% Ar (atomic weight 40) would settle on the ground. Or at least the first few hundred feet above sea level) and we’d all asphixiate. Water vapor (atomic weight 18) would float upward, pass through the tropospause and saturate the stratosphere.
In reality there is no universal sceptic position. Sceptics are lumped together because of what they don’t believe and not united by what they do believe. Underneath the large umbrella of climate scepticism you can find many distinct subgroups who can be classified according to the reasons for their scepticism.
There is certainly a very large group that believes essentially along the lines of the article and I identify myself strongly with this group. The article speaks clearly and cogently and lays out almost exactly what I would say, only it says it better than I ever could. However as the comments have made clear, there are other sceptics whose minds run along … different … lines.
Perhaps a taxonomy of climate sceptics might be a useful idea.
@ Terry Oldenberg.
So Evans says the IPCC warming predictions have failed, and thus the theory is wrong.
You are saying that the IPCC hasn’t made any warming predictions at all, so the theory isn’t even a theory.
It’s just sciency sounding drivel.
Either way, the IPCC loses.
With regards to the Mauna Loa CO2 data, it has been said that since the rise of CO2 is exponential and since the effect on temperature is supposed to be logarithmic, the net effect is a straight line. But even this is questionable, at least since 1995. The trend in CO2 since 1995 is very linear at 1.92979 per year. See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1950/plot/esrl-co2/from:1995/trend
Thank you for your response.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but basically your answer is that Hansen’s models generated random events such as volcanic eruptions which occur at different times for the different scenarios. That seems to me to confuse the issue if the idea was to compare the effect of three different CO2-generating scenarios.
for Anything Is Possible:
You are most certainly right. [SNIP: OK, enough of the Connolley bashing. You can talk about wanting to demean him, but actually doing it is another story. Please don’t. -REP] it’s almost impossible [for me] not to want to demean Mr. Connolley.
@Nick Stokes says:
1. Hansen explains in his paper (p 9345, next to the forcings fig). he uses a comprehensive set of forcings, not just CO2. And scenario A included allowance some trace gases, for which they did not have recent measurements, but had to postulate values (just as scenarios postulate future values). Why only scenario A I don’t know, but that’s the reason.
2. ditto
3. Scenarios B and C postulated some volcanic explosions (one in 1995, which turned out to match Pinatubo fairly well).
These differences should not have been adjusted for. They were the prediction. If you meddle with the predictions, and then test them against a different data set than that predicted – well, what’s the point?
====================================
I’ve heard this excuse many times before… It comes down to this, other more minor trace gases didn’t make it into the atmosphere in the proportions that Hansen speculated on, therefore he cannot be blamed for getting his prediction wrong. OK, but since it is literally impossible to get the approximate combinations of different green house gases correct over such a stretch of time, this means there was never any hope that his prediction would be correct, except by chance. I am curious to know that if Hansen got the trend approximately correct, but the green house trace gas mix was inevitably different, would you be using this excuse to argue that Hansen was correct but only through a fluke or would you view it as vindication regardless?
The lack of volcanic eruptions since circa 95 makes Hansens look predictions worse, not better.
So back to my thought about the approved and disapproved CO2 climate linkage. I already agreed that I absolutely believe that the CO2 molecule can and does absorb photons in the 15 micron wavelength range, which excite the bending mode of molecular oscillation; and I also absolutely believe that much of this captured radiant energy is subsequently thermalized by collision with other air molecules, thereby raising the local air Temperature.
So back to my non-monotonic Temperature increase. I defy ANY statistician, mathematician, politician, or even a Physicist like Jeremy, to prove that the CO2 – ANY Global Temperature relationship, is MORE LIKELY to be logarithmic, than linear, or sinusoidal, or exponential, or the aforementioned y = exp (-1/x^2).
The cognoscenti will easily recognize this function as being maximally flat at the origin, since every single derivative of that function is exactly zero at x = 0 . So it starts out at zero, with zero velocity, and zero acceleration, and zero rate of increase of acceleration yada, yada , yada…
So how the hell does it ever get anywhere ? (other than zero), yet it does get to 1/e at x = 1 .
And it can be fiotted to the Temp/CO2 data at least as good as a logarithmic curve.
So with no experimental basis for asserting a logarithmic relationship; why then claim such ?
Aha ! here’s where De Beer’s Law comes in; to whit: – Carbon in the form of diamonds, is dug up from a “diamond pipe” in south Africa, and reburied in some ladies’ jewellery box; never to see the market light of day again. De Beers simply won’t permit it to re-appear.
Well “Beer’s Law” or the Beer Lambert Law, is the theoretical origin of the logarithmic CO2/Temperature mythology. And the key point of the Beer Law, as in the case of De Beer’s law, is that “never see the light of day again”.
Beer’s Law, from chemistry, says that the ABSORPTION by a dilute substance in solution is proportional to the logarithm of the total solute abundance ( or words to that effect). If a certain thickness of solution absorbs half of the incident radiation, another equal thickness, will absorb half of the remainder, and so on.
You can prove Beer’s law for yourself, with say a laser, and a monochromator, and a sensitive detector, like a photo-multiplier tube, and standard samples of equal thickness of the solutions.
You shine the laser through a path into which you can insert multiple thicknesses of the solution samples, and then the output is passed through the monochromator, and then on to the photo-multiplier.
So why do you need the monochromator, since the laser is a single narrow line frequency / wavelength source.
Well here’s where Beer’s law and De Beer’s law agree. The subject, diamond, or laser radiation, is absorbed; never to see the light of day again.
It is an imperitive requirement of the Beer Lambert law, that the absorption be measured strictly for the original incident source radiation.
If you do the above laser experiment, say with a blue HeCd (4416) laser, and say Schott sharp cutoff filter glasses ( long wave pass) you will confirm Beer’s Law; down to five or six orders of magnitude attenuation; well you likely have to use a double monochromator to get that far down in the mud.
But if you remove that monochromator from the system, the photomultiplier will record orders of magnitude more RADIANT ENERGY than Beer’s Law predicted. It just is not 4416 blue radiation any more, but some longer wavelength or band of wavelengths. You have violated De Beer’s law..
The ABSORBED energy predicted by Beer’s law, is required to be never re-emitted, but totally thermalized as “heat”, perhaps slightly raising the Temperature of the material, which of course would thusly radiate some roughly black body like Thermal spectrum, dependent only on the Temperature of the material, and independent of the nature of the material, so it would likely be around 10 micron peaked LWIR emission from those glasses. and of course at sigma T^4 total power.
Instead you will find that those glasses fluoresce, and emit green, yellow, orange, red/ whatever colored light at much higher intensities than the LWIR thermal emissions, and quite dependent on the doping impurities in those sharp cut filter glasses.
Well gee, who’dathunkit , the atmosphere doesn’t obey Beer’s law either, or De Beer’s law.
Beer’s law relates to the ABSORPTION of the dilute solution; it DOES NOT apply to the ENERGY TRANSMISSION of the sample; and in the atmosphere, the ABSORBING CO2, doesn’t hold onto the LWIR forever, but it re-emits a similar but not identical photon to the one that got absorbed.
In act climate scientists insist, that the ONLY way the atmosphere can cool (radiatively) is re-emission from CO2 or other GHGs.
So NO ; The Beer Lambert Law does not apply to the CO2 or other GHGs in the earth atmosphere, the captured energy IS NOT later emitted as a thermal black body spectrum dependent ONLY on the Temperature of the atmosphere.
So Pfffoooey !! there is NO theoretical basis for a Beer’s Law based logarithmic dependency on CO2 abundance.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. The absence of any significant THERMAL CONTINUUM Temperature based emission from the atmosphere is solid evidence, that Beer’s Law does not apply; and there is neither experimental nor theoretical justification for assuming this silly logarithmic CO2 / Temperature relationship.
So NO Dr Evans, serious scientists do not all believe that CO2 unamplified exhibits a 1.1 deg C per doubling of CO2 relationship.
Remeber too, that the observations are with all feedbacks fully operational (how would you disconnect them), so the 3x feedback amplification factor would be fully active in the observed Temperature measurments, which do not even support a total feedback amplified increase of 1.1 deg C per doubling, let a lone a bare bones CO2 alone effect.
Well that is just one small area of disagreement between some serious scientists, and what the IPCC claims is our doom.
But let me re-iterate, I do believe that CO2 captures 15 micron surface emitted LWIR radiation and thermalizes it to warm the nearby air. What else it might do is not so clear.
One simple question; Where is the evidence of empirical measurements of absorptivity of the surface with respect to spontaneous (blackbody) emission with frequencies in the range of those for atmospheric temperatures?
It is quite wrongly assumed in all the models that this absorptivity is comparable with that measured using visible light. It isn’t and it can’t be. In fact, absorptivity of anything has to reduce to zero when the source of the radiation is cooler than the target for which absorptivity is being measured. Unless this is the case, the Second Law of Thermodynamics would be violated. Fullstop.
“”””” Bob_FJ says:
February 26, 2012 at 8:13 pm
George E. Smith @ February 26, 7:16 pm “”””
Bob, I agree that a sixty year cycle does seem to be a good fit to the data. I’m tempted to say that it is actually three full 22 year solar magnetic cycles; but as I recall, Dr Leif Svalgaard, has not subscribed to that idea, or has not offered any solar theoretical reason for such a relationship. So maybe it is just a circumstantial similarity in time scales. But a 30 year upstroke, followed by a 30 year down stroke, such as we are now in, does seem a better fit than a log CO2 fit.
See my explanation above as to why I don’t believe the Beer’s Law basis for a theoretical log function either.
One other law of Physics, which is too often touted, and is also not applicable is the Kirchoff Law for equality of spectral absorptance, and spectral emissivity. That law ONLY applies to a closed system with the material in thermal equilibrium with the radiant energy field; ie an isothermal closed cavity system.
If Kirchoff’s law applied to the earth climate system, the oceans would be constantly radiating a bright sunlight beam, matching the solar spectrum in spectral content, and spectral radiance. The earth climate/weather system isn’t even vaguely an equilibrium system; just the earth rotation alone prohibits that.
George E. Smith; says:
February 26, 2012 at 9:06 pm
orge E. Smith @ February 26, 7:16 pm “”””
Bob, I agree that a sixty year cycle does seem to be a good fit to the data. I’m tempted to say that it is actually three full 22 year solar magnetic cycles; but as I recall, Dr Leif Svalgaard, has not subscribed to that idea, or has not offered any solar theoretical reason for such a relationship.
_________________________________________________
My first site (written early last year) http://earth-climate.com postulates possible reasons why the 60 year cycle correlates with Jupiter / Saturn resonance – these planets roughly align every 59.6 years I understand. (John Dodds could help you on anything to do with planetary orbits.)
Note also this plot: http://earth-climate.com/planetcycles.jpg which shows 60 year cycles and also shows a 934 year cycle related to the sum of the scalar angular momentum of the Sun and 9 planets. (Bit of a mystery, but I’m working on it!)
Of course there is already Scafetta’s article here on WUWT.
R. Gates @ February 26, 3:46 pm
First of all please see my comment to Joel Shore for background, since it also applies to you, and you should not insist that a deliberately short essay on the most salient issues should embrace total knowledge.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-905697
We regulars here are all familiar with your favourite “canary of disaster”, but may I point out that you seem to rely solely on recent satellite data and a still broad definition of how to describe sea ice cover. However, there is plenty of evidence that back around 1940, that the region was warmer or similar to that in recent times. For instance Jason Box co-authored a paper (in 2004?) that showed it to be warmer in Greenland back then. Strangely though in IPCC AR4, where Box was a co-author in the relevant chapter, there was zero mention of this inconvenient data.
Then there is the effect of wind patterns of course, so it all gets rather complicated, and not so simple as you seem to think.
BTW, why do you ignore what has happened in most of Antarctica?
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.
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That sounds sensible.
Now if climate feedbacks are so effective we would expect very little change in the Earth’s temperature over time.
But as others have pointed out here the Eocene was maybe 6-12C higher at the poles than it is today. So that contradicts the whole thesis.
In short it can get a whole lot hotter and a whole lot cooler than it is today, so large negative feedbacks are not on.
The IPCC models make use of absorptivity measurements for the Earth’s surface which were measured using visible light. But they apply them to far-IR radiation from the atmosphere, even though it is well known that absorptivity reduces very significantly for much lower temperature radiation. This is obviously important when determining the assumed warming effect of radiation from the atmosphere – which, by the way, is assumed to help the Sun with its warming every sunny morning – all quite against the Second Law of Thermodynamics which they think it isn’t because somewhere on the other side of the Earth at night some radiation is turning it all into totally unphysical “net” radiation which cannot be a physical entity. But, never mind, I diverge.
The question is Can someone link me to any empirical measurement of absorptivity by the surface of radiation in the IR bands emitted by the atmosphere?
You’d kinda think the IPCC would have got this part sorted out before spending all that money on the models. So show me where they did – anybody!
From RC:
The following is a graph of “model projections” of global temperatures as depicted in the IPCC AR4.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-ts-26.html
And here is the same chart with updated observations.
http://www.rhinohide.org/gw/publications/ipcc/ar4/img/ts26-updated-2011.jpg
The added observations are HadCRUTv3 and are only ‘hand-fitted’ to the chart via an image editor.
(Comment by Ron Broberg — 25 Feb 2012 @ 2:53 PM)