Note – this will be pinned as a top post for a few days. Other posts will appear below this one.
UPDATE: Josh weighs in with a Friday Funny.
UPDATE2: McKibben has a Forrest Gump moment with his latest propaganda video
I’m doing something I’ve never done before, I’m asking every reader of WUWT to write a letter to the editor this weekend. I don’t take this step lightly, but given what I’ve observed the last few days, I think it is time to stir the power of our collective WUWT community for the common good.
Readers may recall the debunkings I regularly put forth any time paid activists like Bill McKibben, Joe Romm, David Suzuki, or Brad Johnson (and others) try to make claims that human induced climate change is making our daily weather “more extreme”. You know and I know that this is “garbage science” (even worse than “junk science”) because it is an attempt to twist science to strike fear over climate into the hearts of the average citizen. It is an act of desperation, rooted in the fact that the modeled warming scenarios described by the scientist activist high priest of the global warming movement Dr. James Hansen, just have not come to pass. Climate feedbacks don’t seem to be strong, climate sensitivity doesn’t seem to be high, there’s been no statistically significant warming in the last decade, and thus the only thing left is to blame bouts of normally occurring severe weather on climate change. The level of thinking sophistication here isn’t much different from blaming witches for bad weather in medieval times, but the sophistication of telegraphing this message to the weak-minded is far more sophisticated than in those days.
And, yesterday, we saw a message similar to calls made during those dark times “she’s a witch, BURN her!” in Steve Zwick’s rant on Forbes.com where he says:
We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. … They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?
The level of delusional fail here is off the scale. If this were an isolated incident, we could simply laugh it off as the hateful rantings of a person afflicted with climate derangement syndrome. But there’s more.
Yesterday, it entered my children’s school (see below), and this week, we saw a survey on “extreme weather” conducted by Yale, use a phrase in the press release that is straight out of a propagandist organization, Bill McKibben’s 350.org. The heat is on to make climate all about the weather for propaganda purposes, and there’s no data to support it. It is a lie of global proportions. We need to step up. Here’s what I found in my children’s school yesterday:
At my children’s school yesterday, they had a book fair. In that book fair was this display from the publisher of a new book INsiders – Extreme Weather.
Of course you know what book I picked up to look at first, and it took me all of about 15 seconds to find this (I highlighted the relevant part digitally):
“Some scientists”? I think the author really meant “some activists”.
To be fair, there are some very good sections of the book well rooted in science, for example this one on lightning:
I know the author, H. Michael Mogil, who is well rooted in science, and who is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist. I can’t imagine him fully signing off on the climate=severe weather idea as McKibben et al put it. But, I think there was pressure from publishers to include the section on climate linkage, and I think he hedged his statement as best he could. My point is that is it beginning to pervade children’s books.
Also this week we had this poll released from Yale University, which got a ton of press thanks to it being carried in the Associated Press. It even made my own local newspaper.
The poll itself is a logical fallacy, with sloppy questions like this one:
I give it a thorough debunking here with a strong emphasis on the reporting bias introduced by our technologically saturated society. Anyone with a cellphone can report severe weather now and within minutes it can be known worldwide.
Here’s a quote from the lead author that was carried in news stories, bold mine:
“Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. “People are starting to connect the dots.”
At the time, I didn’t note the significance of the “connect the dots” meme, but one of our sharp WUWT readers pointed out that this is the new catchphrase of Bill McKibben’s 350.org movement.
In tips and notes this morning, Nick Ryan confirmed this for me with this letter from McKibben he posted.
Subject: Good news.
From: organizers@350.org
To: nick_ryan@xxxx.xxx
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:57:30 +0000
Dear friends,
Good news this time.
At some point every one of us at 350 has thought to ourselves a little despairingly: is the world ever going to catch on to climate change? Today is one of those days when it feels like it just might happen.
A story on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times described a new poll — Americans in record numbers are understanding that the planet is warming because they’re seeing the “freaky” weather that comes with climate change.
And the story ends by describing the next step in this process: May 5, the giant Connect the Dots day that people are joining all around the globe: http://www.ClimateDots.org
When the zeitgeist conspires to help our efforts, we need to make the most of it. Two weeks is plenty of time to organize a beautiful photo for May 5, one that will help spread this idea. Are you in a place where flood and rain have caused havoc? Ten people with umbrellas can make a memorable “climate dot” for all the world to see. You’ll think of something appropriate for your place — and you can find lots of examples and ideas here.
This movement is growing quickly, and with not a moment to spare — new data from scientists like Jim Hansen at NASA shows that our carbon emissions have already made extreme weather many times more likely. We can’t take back the carbon we’ve already poured into the atmosphere, but if we work together hard and fast then we can keep it from getting steadily worse.
Earth Day is coming up this weekend, and there will be thousands of events across the US. Each one of them is a great place to spread the word about the big day of action on 5/5. When you’re on the front page of the Times it’s a sign that the message is starting to get through — but only one American in 300 reads that newspaper. Now it’s up to all of us to make sure that everyone around the world gets the message, and Connect the Dots day on 5/5 is our best chance to do that. Please join us.
Onwards,
Bill McKibben for 350.org
P.S. It is key to remember that these photos from May 5 are not just for their effect on that day. We need a bank of images showing the human face of global warming — pictures we’ll use for the hard and direct political work of the next few years. If people don’t know there’s a problem, they won’t try to solve it. So let’s show them on 5/5. Here’s a heartbreaking example, from some local activists in Texas:
Climate Activists in Texas
Clearly, due to the timing and the reference he made to “People are starting to connect the dots.”, the poll conducted by Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University is just a tool that is connected to this 350.org “climatedots.org” campaign, it isn’t science, it is blatant advocacy disguised as science of the brand Dr. James Hansen practices.
So looking at what is going in total this week, I think it is time for us to exercise our own rights to free speech, and thus I’m asking WUWT readers to write letters to the editor to your local newspapers and magazines to counter what will surely be a blitz of advocacy in the coming days.
This tactic is used by these NGO’s so there is nothing wrong with it. It is free speech in the finest American tradition. There is one hitch though, and that’s the newspaper editors back-channel.
You see, one of the perks of being a journalist in the TV and radio news business is that I’m privy to how things work. In print media, editors have established a back-channel to alert each other of potential letter writing campaigns, such as those form letters like we see from “Forecast the Facts”.
The key is to make this your own letter, in your own words. While I can suggest topics, the letters need to be written in your own words for them to be accepted.
You can start here with this essay, and draw from it.
Warren Meyer made some excellent points yesterday in his Zwick rebuttal at Forbes:
A Vivid Reminder of How The Climate Debate is Broken
I really liked this part, which speaks to reporting bias (like we have with severe weather):
In the summer of 2001, a little boy in Mississippi lost an arm in a shark attack. The media went absolutely crazy. For weeks and months they highlighted every shark attack on the evening news. They ran aerial footage of sharks in the water near beaches. They coined the term “Summer of the Shark.” According to Wikipedia, shark attacks were the number three story, in terms of network news time dedicated, of the summer.
Bombarded by such coverage, most Americans responded to polls by saying they were concerned about the uptick in shark attacks. In fact, there were actually about 10% fewer shark attacks in 2001 than in 2000. Our perceptions were severely biased by the coverage.
How to write a letter:
1. Go to your local newspaper website, locate the guidelines for letters to the editor. Typical letter policies limit letters to 200-250 words.
2. Do your research, craft your letter carefully. Cite facts, cite statistics such as I offer on WUWT. Use your own words, don’t quote me, though quoting people like Professor Grady Dixon “…it would be a mistake to blame climate change for a seeming increase in tornadoes” is fine.
3. [added] Readers are submitting content ideas in comments, have a look at those. Fr example Steve E. writes: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr’s posting on the IPCC SREX Report, “A Handy Bullshit Button on Disasters and Climate Change” here: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.ca/2012/03/handy-bullshit-button-on-disasters-and.html is also a good source for letter content.
4. Send it, being mindful of length and guidelines.
Thank you for your consideration. – Anthony
And not a single reference to the article I posted.
Pick and choose what you respond to. Hilarious. Who has the blinders on? 8^D !!
Here it is again; Eric Adler. you missed this;
http://drtimball.com/2012/claims-global-warming-increases-severe-weather-are-scientifically-incorrect/
dang….and all this time I was told that CO2 was just a bit player
…and it’s the feedbacks we have to worry about
Of course, no one has even figured out if the feedbacks are negative or positive or zero
If I’m interpreting the article correctly AGW sould lead to a lower temperature differential across the Zonal Index, which means less severe weather. Would “A” GW produce a different “footprint” in the ZI than “ordinary” GW? IOW, AGW says that the poles would heat faster than the rest of the world, but, for example, during the end of the last ice age, do we know if the rates or warming between the poles and the lower latitudes was any different?
If the Rossby Waves are produced by the cyclonic lows moving along the Zonal Index, wouldn’t stronger lows produce deeper Rossby Waves? And if AGW lowers the temperature differential across the Zonal Index, wouldn’t that produce less-strong lows up there and shallower Rossby Waves? Thus, just as tornadoes need a large temperature differential for a big breakout, the Rossby Waves need a large temperature differential to produce the lows that create them.
To sum up: AGW = less temp. diff. in the Zonal Index = less powerful lows = less severe weather.
Did I grasp the article’s meaning correctly?
Earth Day with George Carlin.
Caution: Language.
————————————————–
George Carlin: Earth Day
jaschrumpf says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:13 pm
…
All this doesn’t matter to the true believers of AGW though.
They keep claiming that the global average temperature is on a catastrophic rise and that this
will lead to more severe weather.
Still interesting how they went from: “Weather is NOT climate!” to the opposite view in a few years.
During the 20th century we had a temperature rise of some 0.15 degrees C and the trend for the 21st century is about half that (0.07 – 0.08). How anyone in their right mind get that to catastrophic is beyond me.
Eric Adler says:
April 22, 2012 at 10:02 am
You are making a lot of scientific errors in your thinking. The assumption that you are making that the ocean will warm uniformly is incorrect and has caused you to make a misleading calculation about ocean temperature.
The surface of the ocean has been heating up as the various temperature records show. The rate of heating is variable because of fluctuations in ocean currents which mix the surface and bottom waters.
Presumably we are talking about GLOBAL warming. Right? And if so, would not the oceans in the whole world warm up if the globe warmed up? Now I realize that the northern Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the earth, so I would agree that the oceans high up north may get more warming than the rest of the earth. So let us just assume that enough heat has gone into the ocean to raise the whole ocean by 0.1 C from 3.0 C to 3.1 C. But let us take this a step further and assume the heating was NOT uniform and a third of the deep ocean warmed to 3.3 C while the rest stayed at 3.0 C. This heat would never make it to the surface where the temperature averages 15 C. It would violate one of the laws of thermodynamics to go from cold to hot on a macroscopic scale. And we are talking about the deeper ocean so extra warmth gets very diluted by the time it gets deep. So I am still convinced that even a minor non-uniform heating of the ocean is nothing to be concerned about.
As for your assertion that “The surface of the ocean has been heating up as the various temperature records show.” There has been cooling of the surface for the last 10 years and no warming for the last 15 years. See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1995/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.08/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002.08/trend
Eric Adler says:
April 22, 2012 at 10:27 am
I understand physics very well, having been a scientist and engineer prior to my retirement.
We are very similar in this regard! I have an engineering degree and taught high school chemistry and/or physics for 39 years before I retired.
Here’s my letter to the Editor of the Dominion in New Zealand:
====================================================
Sirs
It would appear the Climate Change movement – aka CAGW Activists – are rushing headlong to directly associate each and every extreme weather event be that hot or cold, drought or flood with Global Warming.
The new campaign is “Joining the Dots” – starting with a Yale survey that asks outrageously biased questions such as “Do you recall any unusual weather events in your local area that occurred in your area in the last 12 months” – perhaps most of us would answer that with YES considering last year’s snow fall.
However, even the IPCC regards Climate as being the averaging of events over a 30-year period – not just one-offs.
Regarding flooding, Bouziotas et al. presented a paper at the EGU and concluded:
Analysis of trends and of aggregated time series on climatic (30-year) scale does not indicate consistent trends worldwide. Despite common perception, in general, the detected trends are more negative (less intense floods in most recent years) than positive. Similarly, Svensson et al. (2005) and Di Baldassarre et al. (2010) did not find systematical change neither in flood increasing or decreasing numbers nor change in flood magnitudes in their analysis
We simply have better communications, a more diverse population, and a media frenzy just waiting to publish any shrill message – hey that sells papers !!
To quote a parallel from a recent Forbes article:
In the summer of 2001, a little boy in Mississippi lost an arm in a shark attack. The media went absolutely crazy. For weeks and months they highlighted every shark attack on the evening news. They ran aerial footage of sharks in the water near beaches. They coined the term “Summer of the Shark.” According to Wikipedia, shark attacks were the number three story, in terms of network news time dedicated, of the summer.
Andi Cockroft
(address supplied)
Gunga Din says:
April 22, 2012 at 11:07 am
…So someone please explain to me just what is a “scientist”? Just what is a “climate scientist”?
It seems that the Eric Adlers of the world would base the definitions on the conclusions reached. Or am I missing something?
_______________________________
In the post modern world a scientist is someone who produces data that is useful for advancing a political position. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko is an excellent example.
some postmodern science scholars have extended the scope of their critiques, declaring that much of modern science, like literary and historical analysis, is “socially constructed,” dependent on the social and political environment of the researchers, with no claim to fundamental truth
As soon as you hear some one using the “Consensus” (97% of scientists agree…) or an appeal to authority, you are probably looking at a “Post Modern Science” Real science depends on a falsifiable theory supported by real world data. With Post Modern Science when real world data is used you see the inappropriate use of statistics, adjustment of data and the reluctance to reveal the actual raw data. Therefore the real division between CAGW believers and “Deniers” is the division between post modern science and real world science.
They are two completely antagonistic world views.
@ur momisugly Lady in Red,
Your letter is a masterpiece, but I wonder what newspaper will print something of that length (1134 words).
jaschrumpf says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:13 pm
You have correctly connected the dots. My father has always tried to make the complex as palatable as possible. He has been criticized for this. His goal is to take away from the warmists the advantage that most people have little understanding of even the basics of climate and are therefore easily mislead by people like Eric Adler. Nice work.
I repeat, do you have any peer reviewed evidence that the weather is getting weirder? It’s a simple question really. 😉
Eric Adler says:
April 22, 2012 at 8:20 am
Ian W says:
April 22, 2012 at 7:10 am
“@Eric Adler
As you are so totally certain of everything – you could answer Jo Nova’s challenge here http://joannenova.com.au/2010/01/is-there-any-evidence/
This open challenge has been unanswered for 2 years. One would have thought that with all the leading lights of the AGW movement and billions being spent on ‘climate research’ and industries being shut down at a cost of trillions of dollars, that one of the climate ‘scientists’ would have been able to meet the challenge.
But so far the silence is deafening.”
It is because you are wearing earplugs.
It has been known for 150 years that absorption and emission of IR by GHG’s is responsible for preventing the escape of heat from the earth atmosphere system. The first estimate of the effect of doubling of CO2 due to industrial emissions was made by Nobel Laureate Svante Ahrennius in 1896. More careful measurements of spectra and temperature profiles of the atmosphere in the late 1950′s have improved the model paramenters. Satellite observations of the decreases in upward longwave radiation escaping from the top of the atmosphere, and the increase downward long wave radiation at the surface of the earth are direct evidence that
increases in CO2 and CH4 are responsible for the increase in temperatures over the past 40 years.
http://www.eumetsat.int/Home/Main/Publications/Conference_and_Workshop_Proceedings/groups/cps/documents/document/pdf_conf_p50_s9_01_harries_v.pdf
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD011800.shtml
Eric carefully and slowly read what was said.
Yes – CO2 does absorb (then almost immediately re-emit) a narrow band of infra-red and this can be seen from satellites. This alone EVERYONE accepts is insufficient to lead to the warming since the Little Ice Age. So you can put Ahrennius aside as an argument (an appeal to authority with no effect on the conversation).
The AGW hypothesis then depends on more water vapor in the atmosphere (more humidity) leading to water vapor’s green house effect being added to CO2.
THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED indeed global humidity is dropping, no measurements of any kind have shown the tropical tropospheric hotspot that would appear if water vapor was behaving as claimed by the AGW hypothesis. IT IS NOT THERE.
Not only that but there has been no increase in temperatures for the last decade despite the increasing CO2. The models are all forecasting far higher figures the temperatures are even below the ‘business as normal’ figures that are modeled. SOMETHING IS WRONG with the AGW hypothesis.
The basic physics is fine but the ocean/atmosphere system is chaotic which means it will not behave in a linear way. It is becoming more apparent that as temperatures increase there is negative feedback. If you lived in the tropics you would be more aware of this.
So the AGW hypothesis is falsified. If you want to go to the Jo Nova site and provide incontrovertible evidence that AGW is happening – not that some parts of some of the physics is happening everyone knows that – but observational evidence of the AGW hypothesis in the chaotic climate system.. You won’t as no-one else has, because there isn’t any and all the predictions, forecasts, interpolations, projections have failed. .
jaschrumpf says:
April 22, 2012 at 11:12 am
“One thing one does have to admit is that this level of discussion would never occur at RealClimate nor any of the other alarmist blogs. Eric Adler is giving as good as he’s getting, and it’s been going on for a couple of days now. Good luck getting that reception at “The Team”s favorite sites.
Now, I wouldn’t say Eric is getting the better of anyone. He did manage to miss my point that CO2 should be one of multiple hypotheses , and instead focused on his perception of my “ignorance” of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. But we all know that the crux of the AGW biscuit are the feedbacks, not the feeble 1.5C rise due to a doubling of CO2 concentrations. Those feedbacks are nowhere in sight; nor could they be, since geology (my degree) tells us that Earth’s atmosphere has had much higher levels of CO2 (up to 2000ppm) and never had “runaway greenhouse effects.”
It did, however, manage to have an ice age during one of those high CO2 periods.”
There are two problems with your argument. Positive feedback does not imply a runaway condition. It implies amplification of forced excursions..
The second problem in your argument is the implicit assumption that CO2 is the only variable that matters. In fact 100’s of millions of years ago, when CO2 levels were much higher than today, the solar radiance was substantially less. For the most part, to the best of our ability to measure proxies, we find that high CO2 concentrations and high temperatures were well correlated.
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/FACULTY
/POPP/Royer%20et%20al.%202004%20GSA%20Today.pdf
“…Here we review the
geologic records of CO2 and glaciations
and find that CO2 was low (1000 ppm) during other, warmer
periods. The CO2 record is likely robust
because independent proxy records
are highly correlated with CO2 predictions
from geochemical models…”
Werner Brozek says:
“As for your assertion that “The surface of the ocean has been heating up as the various temperature records show.” There has been cooling of the surface for the last 10 years and no warming for the last 15 years. See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1995/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.08/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002.08/trend
”
The graph you show has a lot of noise. Despite the slopes, the uncertainty during the last 15 years is too large to show a clear trend one way or the other. It seems like cherry picking to me. If you look at the last 35 years, you can see an unmistakable warming trend modulated by ENSO cycles, which make the trend look noisy.
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/
Gail Combs says:
April 22, 2012 at 1:07 pm
Gunga Din says:
April 22, 2012 at 11:07 am
Thank you, Gail. (and Smokey)
I thought it was something like that.
Positive feedback does not imply a runaway condition if they give rise to negative feedbacks to stop them. What negative feedbacks does “AGW theory” posit to stop the runaway condition? In the CO2-forcing scenarios I’ve read at places like RealClimate, the story usually goes like this: “Something [unknown] causes CO2 to increase. This causes temperatures to rise. Something [unknown] causes CO2 to decrease. Temperatures fall again.”
Sagan’s “baloney detector” requires that “all of the links in a chain or argument have to work (including the premise) — not just most of them.” The CAGW argument chain seems to have links that are missing entirely. What event caused atmospheric CO2 to increase in geologic eras past? What event caused them to decrease? Since the earth has never reached runaway greenhouse conditions before when CO2 was much, much higher, we must conclude that there are powerful negative feedbacks in the climate. What does CAGW “theory” state that these are?
Yes, we find that when temps increase, the oceans give off their stored CO2 into the atmosphere. That much is clear.
How much less solar radiation would be required to keep a 2000ppm CO2 concentration from creating runaway greenhouse effects? In fact, what difference would solar irradiation make at all? If the CO2 traps the heat, then it should be just a matter of time before even a lower level of solar radiation raises the Earth’s temperature significantly. A 300F flame will boil water more slowly than a 400F flame will, but it will ultimately boil it.
Too bad none of you are willing to put your money where your mouths are.
https://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/?eventClassId=20
[Reply: You’re new here. Commenters have been trading on Intrade and reporting on it here for years. ~dbs, mod.]
Ian W says:
April 22, 2012 at 1:53 pm
“Yes – CO2 does absorb (then almost immediately re-emit) a narrow band of infra-red and this can be seen from satellites. This alone EVERYONE accepts is insufficient to lead to the warming since the Little Ice Age. So you can put Ahrennius aside as an argument (an appeal to authority with no effect on the conversation).
The AGW hypothesis then depends on more water vapor in the atmosphere (more humidity) leading to water vapor’s green house effect being added to CO2.
THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED indeed global humidity is dropping, no measurements of any kind have shown the tropical tropospheric hotspot that would appear if water vapor was behaving as claimed by the AGW hypothesis. IT IS NOT THERE.”
Once again you are denying reality. Measurements of the atmosphere show that water vapor has been increasing with increasing temperatures.
hhttp://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/WaterVapor.htm
“Not only that but there has been no increase in temperatures for the last decade despite the increasing CO2. The models are all forecasting far higher figures the temperatures are even below the ‘business as normal’ figures that are modeled. SOMETHING IS WRONG with the AGW hypothesis.”
Climate models do not have the capability to predict ENSO indices, solar radiance variations, volcanoes, or changes in industrial pollution. It is no surprise that they cannot predict short term changes in climate with any accuracy. In the short term any forcing due to CO2 and natural feedbacks are smaller than these other influences on climate.
“The basic physics is fine but the ocean/atmosphere system is chaotic which means it will not behave in a linear way. It is becoming more apparent that as temperatures increase there is negative feedback. If you lived in the tropics you would be more aware of this.”
The temperature oscillations that took place during the ice ages show that positive feedback was at work. The small changes in insolation as a result of the Milankovitch cycles by themselves could never have caused the temperature changes that have been measured, or the changes in glaciation that occurred. Your claim of negative feedback is nonsense.
“So the AGW hypothesis is falsified. If you want to go to the Jo Nova site and provide incontrovertible evidence that AGW is happening – not that some parts of some of the physics is happening everyone knows that – but observational evidence of the AGW hypothesis in the chaotic climate system.. You won’t as no-one else has, because there isn’t any and all the predictions, forecasts, interpolations, projections have failed. .”
You and your fellow “skeptics” are simply ignoring or denying the evidence that scientists have provided.
Brian D Finch says: April 20, 2012 at 10:18 am
So, global warming will warm the poles, will it?
But what about the germans?
You have hit the nail on the head. The whole global warming thing is now just one huge comedy.
I was writing a letter today to a newspaper, and whereas a year ago I would be really concerned to get over facts, now I find my letters are just mocking them for holding such ridiculous views.
The biggest comedy is all the politicians who hitched themselves so enthusiastically, wholeheartedly and apparently iretrievably to the global warming bandwagon, who are just waking up to the fact it is a mass vote looser. They are like someone who has just woken up on the train, who has clearly just realised that the doors have shut tight … and this is/was their station.
It’s the way they both … try so hard to look as if nothing is wrong … whilst wildly looking around for a way out.
jaschrumpf says:
April 22, 2012 at 2:51 pm
” Eric Adler says:
April 22, 2012 at 1:57 pm
“There are two problems with your argument. Positive feedback does not imply a runaway condition. It implies amplification of forced excursions.. ”
Positive feedback does not imply a runaway condition if they give rise to negative feedbacks to stop them. What negative feedbacks does “AGW theory” posit to stop the runaway condition? In the CO2-forcing scenarios I’ve read at places like RealClimate, the story usually goes like this: “Something [unknown] causes CO2 to increase. This causes temperatures to rise. Something [unknown] causes CO2 to decrease. Temperatures fall again.””
The trigger for the glaciation and deglaciation is the Milankovitch cycle, i.e. wobble of the earth’s axis and precession of the major axis of the elliptical orbit. This changes the summer insolation in the northern hemisphere. The sequence of the last deglaciation has been recently studied in detail in a paper by Shakun.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/full/nature10915.html
I guess you are unfamiliar with the phenomenon of chemical equilibrium between a gas and the liquid solution containing the gas as a function of temperature. If the partial pressure increases above the equilibrium level, there is a tendency for the gas to go back into solution. In addition biological processes and weathering rocks tend to soak up CO2.
jaschrumpf says:
April 22, 2012 at 2:51 pm
” Eric Adler says:
April 22, 2012 at 1:57 pm
” The second problem in your argument is the implicit assumption that CO2 is the only variable that matters. In fact 100′s of millions of years ago, when CO2 levels were much higher than today, the solar radiance was substantially less. For the most part, to the best of our ability to measure proxies, we find that high CO2 concentrations and high temperatures were well correlated. ”
Yes, we find that when temps increase, the oceans give off their stored CO2 into the atmosphere. That much is clear.
How much less solar radiation would be required to keep a 2000ppm CO2 concentration from creating runaway greenhouse effects? In fact, what difference would solar irradiation make at all? If the CO2 traps the heat, then it should be just a matter of time before even a lower level of solar radiation raises the Earth’s temperature significantly. A 300F flame will boil water more slowly than a 400F flame will, but it will ultimately boil it.”
In fact we have estimates of how much solar radiance has increased, and models of the solar and CO2 forcing 300 Million years ago showing that eras of low forcing coincident with the large amounts of ice present on earth. Look at figure 2 on page 5668. (4 of 11) of the following paper on the Phanerozoic era:
http://droyer.web.wesleyan.edu/PhanCO2%28GCA%29.pdf
It’s funny how Warmists have shifted AWAY from global mean temps and onto…………….survey and opinion polls as well as weather events – which they told us was not the climate but just the weather. Might it have something to do with the temperature standstill? Heh, heh. 😉
Eric Adler says:
April 22, 2012 at 1:57 pm
For the most part, to the best of our ability to measure proxies, we find that high CO2 concentrations and high temperatures were well correlated.
True, but in the past, CO2 rose AFTER temperatures went up since warm ocean water dissolves less CO2 than cold water. See the following which shows carbon dioxide and methane and temperature on the same graph.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/07/carbon-dioxide-and-temperatures-ice.html
Note the spikes every 100,000 years or so. A perfectly natural explanation is Milankovitch cycles which causes warming and as a result of warming, the warmer oceans release all gases such as CO2 and CH4. Then when the cycle is in a cool phase, the oceans absorb these gases again to a greater degree.
But having said that, I DO agree that at present, humans are responsible for raising the CO2 from 280 ppm in 1750 to 390 ppm today. However its effect on temperature has been negligible over the last 10 to 15 years on any data set you wish to use. Even the brand new and improved Hadcrut4 has no warming for 11 years and 4 months. Here is how I arrived at that conclusion.
HADCRUT4 only goes to December 2010 so I had to be a bit creative. What I did was get the slope of HADCRUT3 from December 2000 to December 2010. Then I got the slope of HADCRUT3 from December 2000 to the present. The DIFFERENCE in slope was 0.00607 – 0.00165 = 0.00442 lower for the latter. The positive slope for HADCRUT4 was 0.00408. So IF HADCRUT4 were totally up to date, I conclude it would show no slope for at least 11 years and 4 months going back to December 2000. (It could be a month longer if the February anomaly for HADCRUT3 of 0.19 is ever officially published. On the basis of what GISS says about March, March would not change things either.) (By the way, doing the same thing with GISS gives the same conclusion.) See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000/to/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000.9/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.9/to:2011/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.9/trend