Guest post by Floyd Doughty
Some years ago when I was investigating the climate change issue in my spare time, I ran across a short article by James Hansen on the GISS website under “Education Resource Materials”, dated January, 1999. James Hansen is arguably the father of modern Anthropogenic Global Warming dogma. So I saved the web page for future reference because of some of the predictions contained within it, as well as the incredibly balanced and well-reasoned attitude expressed regarding the philosophy of scientific investigation. We could all benefit from Dr. Hansen’s wisdom. For example,
“Skepticism thus plays an essential role in scientific research, and, far from trying to silence skeptics, science invites their contributions. So too, the global warming debate benefits from traditional scientific skepticism”.
And another gem:
“Although scientists have a right to express personal opinions related to policy issues, it seems to me that we can be of more use by focusing on the science and carrying that out with rigorous objectivity. That approach seems to be essential for the success, as well as the “fun”, of scientific research”.
Given what has transpired in the intervening 13 years, it is not surprising that I can no longer find the article on the GISS site (but I may not have dug deeply enough). Therefore, I am making my copy of the article available to you for your reading pleasure. There is such a wealth of fascinating statements contained in this short document, it is impossible to decide where to begin. I suspect others will find numerous points to comment on. By the way, the embedded link to Dr. Hansen’s book review is still working, and I found that to be an interesting read as well.
I found Dr. Hansen’s chart of projected global temperature anomalies intriguing, particularly in light of the observational record of the last decade:
This chart, as displayed in the January, 1999 document, is a replica of the global temperature projections, considering three scenarios that Dr. Hansen presented during his celebrated 1988 United States Senate testimony, but updated with the actual observed GISS temperature record as of 1998.
Scenario A represented projected global temperatures assuming “a fast growth rate for greenhouse gases”. Scenarios B and C “have a moderate growth rate for greenhouse gases until year 2000, after which greenhouse gases stop increasing in Scenario C”. I thought it might be enlightening, or at least entertaining, to compare the current GISS global temperature record with what was presented in January, 1999. The “… traditional analysis … global annual-mean surface air temperature change …” data series was downloaded from
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.txt)
This time series was plotted in Microsoft Excel. Unfortunately, time series data values that were used to produce the original chart did not seem to be available. Therefore, the Excel chart of the current GISS global temperature record was rather crudely scaled and overlain onto an image of the original chart, with the following result:
The data shown in red are from the original image published in 1999. The blue points are what are currently available for download at the GISS website. The slight apparent time shift in the vertical grid lines was necessary because, for some reason, Dr. Hansen originally plotted yearly averages between tick marks rather than centered on tick marks. The vertical scales have not been altered, and are as exact as I can make them with the manual overlay. The blue observational data points seem to roughly lie between Dr. Hansen’s Scenario B (moderate, continued growth rate in greenhouse gases) and Scenario C (moderate growth rate in greenhouse gases until year 2000, after which greenhouse gases stop increasing). Interestingly, the data currently available for download (blue) seem to be indicating a slightly warmer trend than what was presented in 1999 (red). After manually applying a slight downward bulk shift (or “bias”) to the overlay of the current record (blue), the two time series seem to be in slightly better agreement:
It seems the historical GISS temperature record has been somewhat altered, or “adjusted” since January of 1999, such that historical global temperature anomaly values are now slightly more positive than what was published at that time. Perhaps a base line change was applied to the data since the 1999 article. But data after 1988 appear to be “adjusted” to a greater extent than data prior to 1988. Well, it is what it is, and the best we can do is to calibrate the current GISS temperature time series to the years prior to 1988, under the charitable assumption that perhaps the points that were added to the original 1988 chart in the 1999 article were accidentally mis-posted.
Now that the current version of historical temperature measurements are approximately calibrated to the historic record as presented by Dr. Hansen to the United States Senate in 1988, it seems that the GISS record in the years following 1988 have roughly approximated Dr. Hansen’s Scenario C. But wait – that scenario was a projection of temperature variations assuming greenhouse gases stop increasing after the year 2000. Did I miss something? Was the IPCC wildly successful after all?
It is also illustrative to compare Dr. Hansen’s 1988 prediction with the satellite record. UAH NCDC temperature data from analyses by Roy Spencer and John Christy was downloaded from Dr. Spencer’s website:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures (http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt)
Since these data are monthly averages of global temperature derived from satellite measurements, the global temperature data series was further averaged over each calendar year to enable direct comparison with the raw, currently available GISS data. The UAH NCDC chart was then manually scaled and bulk shifted in order to calibrate with the original 1999 GISS data (since the base periods for the two data sets are different). The result of this crude scaling exercise is shown with the UAH NCDC data in green, compared with the current, unbiased GISS data in blue:
After applying the manual bulk shift to compensate for the different base line periods, it appears that the satellite data agree reasonably well with the current, unbiased GISS surface station data – except for the trend, as others have pointed out. GISS estimates since 1998 seem to be consistently higher than the UAH NCDC satellite estimates. More accurately stated (since the calibration was visual only), the GISS trend appears more positive than the UAH NCDC satellite data trend. Interesting. Now it looks like Dr. Hansen’s Scenario C global temperature forecast that he presented to the United States Senate in 1988 was amazingly accurate, according to the satellite-derived global temperature record. That is truly a remarkable achievement. So now let’s employ a bit of faulty logic that is similar to that which is routinely applied by AGW proponents: “The observational data fit the model, so the model must be accurate”. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must have ceased in the year 2000. And I missed it. Rats.
In the interest of full disclosure, I must unambiguously state that I am a state board-certified Professional Geophysicist nearing retirement after more than 38 years spent in the search for new oil and gas reserves. As such, AGW proponents may simply dismiss my comments as the ravings of an “oil company shill”. There is no statement that I can swear to that would convince them otherwise. So be it. The truth is that the observations, opinions, and views I have expressed are the result of independent critical thought, are strictly my own, and do not in any way represent those of my employer, the oil industry in general, or any other entities.
Floyd Doughty
May 10, 2012
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Source – the Wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20010223232940/http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/
The Global Warming Debate
By James Hansen — January 1999
The only way to have real success in science … is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory, you must try to explain what’s good about it and what’s bad about it equally. In science you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty. — Richard Feynman
In my view, we are not doing as well as we could in the global warming debate. For one thing, we have failed to use the opportunity to help teach the public about how science research works. On the contrary, we often appear to the public to be advocates of fixed adversarial positions. Of course, we can try to blame this on the media and politicians, with their proclivities to focus on antagonistic extremes. But that doesn’t really help.
The fun in science is to explore a topic from all angles and figure out how something works. To do this well, a scientist learns to be open-minded, ignoring prejudices that might be imposed by religious, political or other tendencies (Galileo being a model of excellence). Indeed, science thrives on repeated challenge of any interpretation, and there is even special pleasure in trying to find something wrong with well-accepted theory. Such challenges eventually strengthen our understanding of the subject, but it is a never-ending process as answers raise more questions to be pursued in order to further refine our knowledge.
Skepticism thus plays an essential role in scientific research, and, far from trying to silence skeptics, science invites their contributions. So too, the global warming debate benefits from traditional scientific skepticism.
I have argued in a recent book review that some “greenhouse skeptics” subvert the scientific process, ceasing to act as objective scientists, rather presenting only one side, as if they were lawyers hired to defend a particular viewpoint. But some of the topics focused on by the skeptics are recognized as legitimate research questions, and also it is fair to say that the injection of environmental, political and religious perspectives in midstream of the science research has occurred from both sides in the global warming debate.
So, what to do? Most scientists are willing to spend part of their time communicating with the public about how science works. And they should be: after all, the financial support for most research is provided ultimately by the public. But one quickly learns that such communication is not easy, at least not for many of us.
In late 1998, I was asked to debate the well-known greenhouse skeptic Dr. Patrick Michaels of the University of Virginia. I summarize here some key points in the debate, “A Public Debate on the Science of Global Warming”, held at the New York Hilton, Nov. 20, 1998, and organized by the American Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology. A copy of my entire contribution may be downloaded as a PDF document (Note: This document is 597 kB and requires a special viewer such as the free Adobe Reader.).
I agreed to participate in this debate with Dr. Michaels after learning that he had used (or misused) a figure of mine in testimony to the United States Congress. The figure showed the first predictions made with a 3-D climate model and time-dependent climate forcings — it was a figure from a paper that we had published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 1988 and it had been a principal basis for testimony that I gave to the United States Senate in 1988.
The figure that we published is reproduced here as Fig. 1.
Fig. 1: Climate model calculations reported in Hansen et al. (1988).
It shows the simulated global mean temperature for three climate forcing scenarios. Scenario A has a fast growth rate for greenhouse gases. Scenarios B and C have a moderate growth rate for greenhouse gases until year 2000, after which greenhouse gases stop increasing in Scenario C. Scenarios B and C also included occasional large volcanic eruptions, while scenario A did not. The objective was to illustrate the broad range of possibilities in the ignorance of how forcings would actually develop. The extreme scenarios (A with fast growth and no volcanos, and C with terminated growth of greenhouse gases) were meant to bracket plausible rates of change. All of the maps of simulated climate change that I showed in my 1988 testimony were for the intermediate scenario B, because it seemed the most likely of the three scenarios.
But when Pat Michaels testified to congress in 1998 and showed our 1988 predictions (Fig. 1) he erased the curves for scenarios B and C, and showed the result only for scenario A. He then argued that, since the real world temperature had not increased as fast as this model calculation, the climate model was faulty and there was no basis for concern about climate change, specifically concluding that the Kyoto Protocol was “a useless appendage to an irrelevant treaty”.
Although scientists have a right to express personal opinions related to policy issues, it seems to me that we can be of more use by focusing on the science and carrying that out with rigorous objectivity. That approach seems to be essential for the success, as well as the “fun”, of scientific research.
Fig. 1 is a good case in point. We now know (Hansen et al. 1998a, 1998b) that the growth rate of greenhouse gases in the period 1988-1998 has been flat, very similar to scenarios B and C (which are nearly the same until year 2000). Thus we can compare real world temperature changes in the past decade (filled circles in Fig. 1) with model calculations for the B-C scenarios. Taking account of the fact that the real world volcano occurred in 1991, rather than 1995 as assumed in the model, it is apparent that the model did a good job of predicting global temperature change. But the period of comparison is too short and the climate change too small compared to natural variability for the comparison to provide a meaningful check on the model’s sensitivity to climate forcings. With data from another decade we will be able to make a much clearer evaluation of the model.
As the opinions in the global warming debate do not seem to be converging, it seems to me that one useful thing that can be done is to clearly delineate the fundamental differences. Then, as our scientific understanding advances over the next several years, we can achieve more convincing evaluations of the global warming issue. (Stated less generously, this is a way to pin down those who keep changing their arguments.)
Table 1 summarizes chief differences that I delineated for the sake of a discussion with Richard Lindzen, who has provided the intellectual underpinnings for the greenhouse skeptics, in October 1998. I also used this list (Table 1) as the principal fodder for my “affirmative closing argument” in the debate with Pat Michaels.
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Table 1. Key Differences with Skeptics
1. Observed global warming: real or measurement problem?
Hansen: global warming is 0.5-0.75°C in past century, at least ~0.3°C in past 25 years.
Lindzen: since about 1850 “…more likely … 0.1±0.3°C” (MIT Tech Talk, 34, #7, 1989).
2. Climate sensitivity (equilibrium response to 2xCO2)
Lindzen: ~< 1°C
Hansen: 3±1°C
Comments: paleoclimate data, improved climate models, and process studies may narrow uncertainties; observed climate change on decadal time scales will provide constraint if climate forcings are measured; implicit information on climate sensitivity can be extracted from observed changes in ocean heat storage.
3. Water vapor feedback
Lindzen: negative, upper tropospheric water vapor decreases with global warming.
Hansen: positive, upper and lower tropospheric water vapor increase with global warming.
References: (these include references by Lindzen stating that, in response to global warming, water vapor will decrease at altitudes above 2-3 km).
Comment: accurate observations of interannual changes (several years) and long-term changes (1-2 decades) of upper tropospheric water vapor could provide defining data.
4. CO2 contribution to the ~33°C natural greenhouse effect
Lindzen: “Even if all other greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) were to disappear, we would still be left with over 98 percent of the current greenhouse effect.” Cato Review, Spring issue, 87-98, 1992; “If all CO2 were removed from the atmosphere, water vapor and clouds would still provide almost all of the present greenhouse effect.” Res. Explor. 9, 191-200, 1993.
Lacis and Hansen: removing CO2, with water vapor kept fixed, would cool the Earth 5-10°C; removing CO2 and trace gases with water vapor allowed to respond would remove most of the natural greenhouse effect.
5. When will global warming and climate change be obvious?
Lindzen: I personally feel that the likelihood over the next century of greenhouse warming reaching magnitudes comparable to natural variability remains small.
Hansen: “With the climatological probability of a hot summer represented by two faces (say painted red) of a six-faced die, judging from our model by the 1990s three or four of the six die faces will be red. It seems to us that this is a sufficient ‘loading’ of the dice that it will be noticeable to the man in the street.” J. Geophys. Res. 93, 9341-9364, 1988.
6. Planetary disequilibrium
Hansen: Earth is out of radiative equilibrium with space by at least approximately 0.5 W/m2 (absorbing more energy than it emits).
Comments: This is the most fundamental measure of the state of the greenhouse effect. Because the disequilibrium is a product of the long response time of the climate system, which in turn is a strong function of climate sensitivity, confirmation of the disequilibrium provides information on climate sensitivity and an indication of how much additional global warming is “in the pipeline” due to gases already added to the atmosphere.
This disequilibrium could be measured as the sum of the rate of heat storage in the ocean plus the net energy going into the melting of ice. Existing technology, including very precise measurements of ocean and ice sheet topography, could provide this information.
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Differences 1 (reality of global warming) and 2 (climate sensitivity) are very fundamental. From my perspective, strong evidence is already accumulating that weighs heavily against the skeptics contentions that there is no significant global warming and that climate sensitivity is low. These issues will become even clearer over the next several years.
Difference 3 (water vapor feedback) is related to climate sensitivity, but is so fundamental that it deserves specific attention. The topic has resisted definitive empirical evaluation, because of the poor state of water vapor measurements and the fact that tropospheric temperature change has been small in the past 20 years. Ozone depletion, which affects upper tropospheric temperatures, has also complicated this problem. This situation will change if, as I would anticipate, ozone depletion flattens and global temperature continues to rise.
Difference 4 has an academic flavor, and is perhaps not worth special efforts. But it illustrates a lack of understanding of the basic greenhouse mechanism by Lindzen.
Difference 5 is fundamental because substantial efforts to curb global warming may require that climate change first be apparent to people. If our assessments are right, we are in fact on the verge of warming being noticeable to the perceptive person-in-the-street. (See related material Global Temperature Trends and the Common Sense Climate Index.)
Difference 6, concerning the planetary “disequilibrium” (imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation) is the most fundamental measure of the state of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. The disequilibrium should exist if climate sensitivity is as high (and thus the ocean thermal response time so long) as we estimate, and if increasing greenhouse gases are the dominant climate forcing mechanism. We have presented evidence (Hansen et al. 1997) of a disequilibrium of at least 0.5 W/m2. This imbalance is the basis by which we could predict that record global temperatures would occur within a few years, that the 1990s would be warmer than the 1980s, and that the first decade of next century will be warmer than the 1990s, despite the existence of natural climate variability. I do not know of a reference where Lindzen specifically addresses planetary radiation imbalance, but his positions regarding climate sensitivity and the ocean response time clearly imply a smaller, negligible imbalance.
The important point is that the planetary radiation imbalance is measurable, via the ocean temperature, because the only place this excess energy can go is into the ocean and, probably to a less extent, into the melting of ice. If our estimates are approximately right, this heat storage should not escape detection during the next several years.
In summary, all of these issues are ones that the scientific community potentially can make progress on in the near future, if they receive appropriate attention. The real global warming debate, in the sense of traditional science, can be resolved to a large extent in a reasonable time.
References:
- Hansen, J. 1998. Book review of Sir John Houghton’s Global Warming: The Complete Briefing. J. Atmos. Chem. 30, 409-412.
- Hansen, J., I. Fung, A. Lacis, D. Rind, S. Lebedeff, R. Ruedy, G. Russell, and P. Stone 1988. Global climate changes as forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies three-dimensional model. J. Geophys. Res. 93, 9341-9364.
- Hansen, et al. 1997. Forcings and chaos in interannual to decadal climate change. J. Geophys. Res. 102, 25679-25720.
- Hansen, J., M. Sato, J. Glascoe and R. Ruedy 1998a. Common sense climate index: Is climate changing noticeably? Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 95, 4113-4120.
- Hansen, J., M. Sato, A. Lacis, R. Ruedy, I. Tegen, and E. Matthews 1998b. Perspective: Climate forcings in the industrial era. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 22, 12753-12758.
The URL for the page is:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010223232940/http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/
(The Wayback Machine strikes again!)
Oops… missed that the link was already in the article. Serves myself right for being too eager.
I wonder if Eli the ice (statistics) Rabbit will have any comment/enlightenment on the bias -er- adjustments applied, one way or the other …
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An interesting and informative contribution.
It is worth noting (re: how science works) that there has always been a difference between how science is supposed to work and how it actually works. The credibility and prestige of scientists are derived from the former, but their real power comes from the latter.
Hansen’s own comparison to the Scenario ABC temperatures at this link. [Note there is a difference between Land (meterological stations) and the Global including ocean SST values. Hansen’s 1987 paper is not actually clear to which he was projecting but the observation values used in the charts in the paper were the Global values (not the Land-meterological stations)].
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/PNAS_GTCh_Fig2.gif
Floyd Doughty wrote:
” Now it looks like Dr. Hansen’s Scenario C global temperature forecast that he presented to the United States Senate in 1988 was amazingly accurate, according to the satellite-derived global temperature record. That is truly a remarkable achievement. So now let’s employ a bit of faulty logic that is similar to that which is routinely applied by AGW proponents: “The observational data fit the model, so the model must be accurate”. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must have ceased in the year 2000. And I missed it. Rats.”
Your straw man argument is certainly not the only interpretation that can be made. If you are really going to argue like a scientist, rather than a lawyer, you would not neglect mentioning the possibility that a cooling effect due sulfate aerosols emitted by the rapidly developing Chinese economy , is slowing the increase in temperature. This was not included in the model Hansen developed in 1988. This is a large source of forcing uncertainty in the current models, along with feedback due to clouds.
In addition, a recent paper by Forster and Rahmsdorf, has argued that internal variations due to ENSO, and volcanos and solar decline have counteracted the effects of GHG increases, with the biggest effect being ENSO. Hansen’s 1998 model couldn’t track the effects of ENSO in the short term.
If you read the article that Hansen wrote in 1998, that was appended to the post, there are a lot of differences between Lindzen and himself that needed to be answered in order to decide whether the proponents of AGW, or the “skeptics” are right. It would be instructive to review what has been learned since then as part of this review.
The blue outline describes clearly the major differences that distinguish skeptical ( correct ) science from Hansen’s distorted viewpoints. The whole argument really boils down to whether additional absorption of IR by CO2 can cause a positive feedback on water vapor as Hansen and Lacis claimed. Of course, neither of them bothered to study the founding work in atmospheric science that never eluded to that possibility, and the reason is that CO2 15 micron absorption and emission is so intense that the flux divergence of the upward radiation cools the troposphere at the mid and upper layers in exchange for the higher emission height. This physical reality does not bode well for Hansen and Lacis because the saturation vapor pressure of water vapor is lowewred by the cooling which trims out water vapors optical depth as a counter to the CO2 higher emission height. With water vapors enormous spectral absorption compared to CO2, it should be obvious what constituent controls the earth’s OLR, when the vapor can change phase and is affected as a negative feedback in this mix.
Hansen, Lacis and other warmers who continue to ascribe to their positive feedback nonsense in light of the real measurements continue to deliberately mislead public officials for their self serving positions. The positive feedback assumptions along with the other prescribed foolishness of these wamers who also claim enough knowledge and skill to accurately model climate are fatal blows to their scientific prowess and integrity. Hansen’s current claims in this article ( warming is not a prediction but happening as a result of human CO2 emissions ) are now resorting to acting like a true fool.
Eric Adler,
Your ‘aerosol’ globaloney is just that. It is an untested, unproven, invented conjecture that amounts to a Deus ex Machina explanation; an attempt to rationalize the lack of warming for the past fifteen years. It’s amazing that ‘aerosols’ exactly counteract the putative anthropogenic warming, huh? To within a tenth of a degree. What are the odds of that? They are astronomical.
Try thinking about Occam’s Razor for once: the simplest explanation is almost always the correct explanation: the planet’s temperature changes naturally, regardless of CO2, which is mainly the result of temperature change, rather than the cause. You’re just repeating the latest baseless fairy tale fabricated by the grant trollers. Aerosols! heh. As if.
My take on Hansen’s article, when a comparison is made between the subsequent observational data and Key Differences Table, is that far more attention should be paid to Lindzen (a *gasp* skeptic – both then and now) instead of Hansen. But any practitioner of the scientific method with respect to climate change (or perhaps even a person-in-the-street) already knew that.
There is a Javascript gadget here which lets you try out various current temperature datasets on Hansen’s original graph.
[sarc] “Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must have ceased in the year 2000.” [/sarc]
Or in combination with water vapor, they reached a spectral absorption saturation point.
With you Smokey! Eric Adler is your typical warmist hack pulling whatever lame excuse he can find up his a$$. Anyone with a brain knows that other than massive volcano events will blast aerosols high into the atmosphere, aerosol cooling is a regional occurrence. Funny thing then that the most significant cooling has been in the southerh hemisphere, far away from China.
Eric Adler says:
…you would not neglect mentioning the possibility that a cooling effect due sulfate aerosols emitted by the rapidly developing Chinese economy , is slowing the increase in temperature…
I thought the cooling effect of aerosols was local and short lived? And could you point to a warming event to match the effect of the Chinese economy? I mean, the West did do a pretty good job of cleaning up the aerosols and since they are so short lived, we should be able to pick up some signals of equal amplitude, right?
Eric Adler,
when James Hansen testified before the U.S. Senate he was expecting to have a serious influence on the future direction of public policy and disbursement of public funds. So, maybe he neglected to take account of Chinese aerosols. If this, and other (possibly unknown) factors, are to be accepted as a reasonable excuse for the falsification of his predictions, then the question has to be asked: Why take any notice of the man at all? He clearly does not have an adequate grasp of his subject. He is also unlikely to run out of excuses.
Floyd Doughty has addressed himself to the substance of Hansen’s utterances and the ‘straw man’ accusation is unwarranted.
Your ‘aerosol’ globaloney is just that. It is an untested, unproven, invented conjecture that amounts to a Deus ex Machina explanation; an attempt to rationalize the lack of warming for the past fifteen years. It’s amazing that ‘aerosols’ exactly counteract the putative anthropogenic warming, huh? To within a tenth of a degree. What are the odds of that? They are astronomical.
Modern Epicycles. For those who don’t know the Greeks had some very accurate predictions of the motions of the planets based upon the premise that the Earth was the center of the solar system. The Antikythera Mechanism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism) was the ultimate mechanical computer of the Greek civilization. It was amazingly accurate in predicting eclipses, the motion of the planets, the times of the year, basically a chronometer of the ancient world. This computer model explained all of this, their math calculated the motions, and the mechanical computer was unsurpassed until the 1700’s.
All on the flawed premise of an Earth centered solar system.
Computer models can explain many things and yet be completely wrong on the fundamental science. AGW is the modern epicycle.
…you would not neglect mentioning the possibility that a cooling effect due sulfate aerosols emitted by the rapidly developing Chinese economy , is slowing the increase in temperature…
If this were true then the greatest cooling would be over the western pacific, when in reality the opposite is the case.
Very interesting! James Hansen seems to have started out as a relatively honest and ethical scientist. It is apparent, however, his increasing public personae and sense of self worth led him from that path, to that of an unyielding zealot, immune to either data or suasion.
Power corrupts….. and pride goeth before a fall. The age old lessons relived, yet again.
But you see, Hansen HIMSELF claims that global greenhouse gasses DID stop increasing [before] the year 2000!
Quoting the Hansen from above …
So.
Hansen “proves” with his own statement about his own models and scenarios A, B, and C that CO2 emissions flattened (then – NOT needing any mythical, unmeasured, undocumented-anywhere-else-in-the-world Chinese emissions at all!).
Further, he condemns “scientists” that express personal opinions to affect national policies while ignoring the actual science involved!
Then, one and 1/2 decade later than these statements in 1998 ,(when he claims emissions were flattened by his own models in period from 1988 through 1998 but temperatures rose steadily over the same time, yet an incorrectly modeled volcano erupted in 1992 vice the modeled date of 1995 ???), how are we to use his models when seeing a flattened temperature global record but a steadily rising CO2 record and no volcanoes.
What exactly is IN his models after all?
Where does he fabricate his mythical global aerosols? What measurements were used? (Or all of his aerosols conveniently extracted from “research” papers AFTER he needed aerosols in his models between the year 2000 and 2012?)
You have to look at the divergence of prediction and observation and ask, just how many years do they have to diverge and by how much. And, the answer is clearly that no amount of divergence and no time frame is enough. Senior scientists have their reputation hung out to dryand they will never give ground. More epicycles is the answer. Max Planck had it right. “Science advances, one funeral at a time”.
Please don’t get lost in the weeds, folks. My attempts to compare the various time series data were for entertainment purposes only. I was unable to locate the actual data values used in the original chart, therefore the comparisons are qualitative only.
More importantly, I think it is instructive to compare Dr. Hansen’s rhetoric back in January of 1999 with his rhetoric of today. The irony is breathtaking, particularly his stated view of “skeptics” back then.
Also, Dr. Hansen laid down his own rules for judging the validity of GHG theory. These are important.
And Dr. Hansen’s comment regarding the chart presented in 1999 (note time frame):
“But the period of comparison is too short and the climate change too small compared to natural variability for the comparison to provide a meaningful check on the model’s sensitivity to climate forcings. With data from another decade we will be able to make a much clearer evaluation of the model”.
Dr. Hansen’s summary statement (time frame again):
“The important point is that the planetary radiation imbalance is measurable, via the ocean temperature, because the only place this excess energy can go is into the ocean and, probably to a less extent, into the melting of ice. If our estimates are approximately right, this heat storage should not escape detection during the next several years”.
Floyd
Floyd: Hansen is wrong. He counts absorption as a forcing on temperature at the sidebands of CO2. That would only work in a atmosphere without a hydrological cycle. The spectrally integrated OLR is the ONLY way to calculate whether there is a radiation imbalance, and that must include increases or decreases in solar shorwave per cloud thickness and ratio to water vapor.
To date there are no accurate calculations of this, but the founding work suggests with good physics that water vapor and clouds control the earth’s OLR, not CO2. Hansen and Lacis made up CO2 sensitivity to temperature on their own and shelved or dismissed the founding work without offering any refutation to it.
From today forward they will pay a severe price in credibility and reputation for such a cavalier dismissal of founding principles.
Eric Adler says:
May 10, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Your straw man argument is certainly not the only interpretation that can be made. If you are really going to argue like a scientist, rather than a lawyer, you would not neglect mentioning the possibility that a cooling effect due sulfate aerosols emitted by the rapidly developing Chinese economy , is slowing the increase in temperature.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
….. I thought I read somewhere that it was because the missing heat was sneaking down into the depths of the ocean and hiding.
When thieves fall out !!!!
Over a generation a Green Gang of AGW alarmists including Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. has emerged as pure global-governance propagandists, inflicting their wretched Statist agenda on long-suffering populations regardless of objective or even rational scientific processes.
Now on the threshold of a 70-year “dead sun” Grand Minimum similar to that of 1645 – 1715, society’s failure to ensure energy resources from coal to nuclear power is due solely to these Luddite sociopaths’ malignant sabotage, explicitly seeking mega-deaths in termination of post-Enlightenment industrial/technological civilization (see Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, Keith Farnish as acolytes of Gaia’s “new reality”).
Either informed citizens of intelligence and goodwill blast this democidal monomania at the root, or death-eating Thanatists will tumble all humane comfort, peace, prosperity forever to Abyss.
Perhaps Hansen’s failure to see the level-off temperatures et al for the last decade (or so) is due to his ‘compliance’ with this axiom credited to Sinclair:
” It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair.
with the addendum after “his salary” the following: “or his continued legacy and importance”.
.
To Anthony – a little bit off-topic, sorry. I posted (a similar version of) this at Bishop Hill and think it could also be useful here.
The Yamal controversy is of immense importance for the whole climate debate. However, one must read and digest the various posts before fully understanding the main points. I therefore suggest a simple post in the form of several bullet points (useful for attracting the attention of journalists) together with some links.
(1) An update of a temperature reconstruction with more data removes the hockey stick and implies there is nothing unusual about 20th century temperatures.
(2) The scientist who led this update withheld the results and pretended never to have made the study (this is called cherry picking and is simply not allowed for obvious reasons).
(3) Freedom of information requests and complaints to journals eventually allowed point (1) to be established and gave strong evidence that point (2) is well founded.
(4) There is consequently strong evidence that the accounts given to the various Climategate inquiries (including a UK Parliamentary inquiry) about this update (or lack of update) are untrue.
(5) There are serious questions which UAE must answer. To keep silent or to deride the accusers is unacceptable. Similarly, to respond that it “doesn’t matter since we’ve got other hockey sticks” is also unacceptable, not least since Yamal is strong evidence of publication bias in this field which can just as easily affect other measurements.
Unlike many here I feel somewhat sorry for Briffa. I’m also a scientist and whenever improved data destroys the “preferred message” (and there is always such a message whether we like it or not, we’re human) there is always the temptation to withhold or delay the result. One usually tries to convince oneself that more work is needed with the new data, one must have made a mistake, someone else will spot it so the new result will anyway appear eventually etc. Fortunately for me this has never gone beyond an impulse since not following basic scientific ethics would mean not sleeping well at night. I’d like to believe that Briffa holds similar standards and can provide a good defense against these allegations. Therefore I’d like journalists to pick it up and push for a response from UAE. To do this I think the central points should be made clearly and repeatedly. Although others may doubt it, I am sincere in my sympathy for Briffra – I want him to clear his name. This issue worries me more than any of the other Climategate stuff and I’d like to see it cleared up as soon as possible.
Are we having fun yet, 1981, 1988, 1998,2000, 2012 and the debate rages on…oh wait… I forgot, the debate is over.
“”””” Eric Adler says:
May 10, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Floyd Doughty wrote:
” Now it looks like Dr. Hansen’s Scenario C global temperature forecast that he presented to the United States Senate in 1988 was amazingly accurate, according to the satellite-derived global temperature record. That is truly a remarkable achievement. So now let’s employ a bit of faulty logic that is similar to that which is routinely applied by AGW proponents: “The observational data fit the model, so the model must be accurate”. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must have ceased in the year 2000. And I missed it. Rats.”
Your straw man argument is certainly not the only interpretation that can be made. If you are really going to argue like a scientist, rather than a lawyer, you would not neglect mentioning the possibility that a cooling effect due sulfate aerosols emitted by the rapidly developing Chinese economy , is slowing the increase in temperature. This was not included in the model Hansen developed in 1988. This is a large source of forcing uncertainty in the current models, along with feedback due to clouds. “””””
Eric are you suggesting that these natural variability phenomena are overriding the effects of human CO2 emissions.
You are correct about the uncertainty due to clouds. I had the opportunity to chat with Professor Davies in the Climate Physics section of the Physics Department, of the University of Auckland last March, just after he and a colleague had published their paper on the falling altitude of cirrus clouds (over the last decade), and he told me unequivocally, that they cannot and do not correctly model the reflectance of clouds. Well it isn’t reflectance anyway, but rather diffuse optical scattering for wavelengths that are water transmitted, and probably absorption and subsequent isotropic re-emission for wavelengths that aren’t water transmitted.
So I think you are correct; the modellers don’t reaally know what they are doing.
@ Nick Stokes, 7:45 PM
Way cool tool, Nick. Sure wish I had known about that earlier!
Well, what a surprise! All the representatives of the fossil fuel industry have checked in. As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein, “Follow the money!” It sure doesn’t lead to Hansen.
Hansen 1998: “With data from another decade we will be able to make a much clearer evaluation of the model.”
Well now we have that decade of data an it fits pretty well his scenario C. Since CO2 has risen unabated in that time that suggests that his basic model was not too far off if you *ignore* his spurious CO2 forcing.
It seems that Hansen’s own work proves there is no significant warming from CO2.
Congratulations to Floyd for digging this up.
“”””” Chuck Wiese says:
May 10, 2012 at 9:17 pm
Floyd: Hansen is wrong. He counts absorption as a forcing on temperature at the sidebands of CO2. That would only work in a atmosphere without a hydrological cycle. The spectrally integrated OLR is the ONLY way to calculate whether there is a radiation imbalance, and that must include increases or decreases in solar shorwave per cloud thickness and ratio to water vapor. “””””
Chuck,
O3, H2O, and to a lesser extent CO2; all of them green house gases, ALL absorb significant amounts of INCOMING solar spectrum energy in the range from roughly 250 nm to 4.0 microns, which contains about 98% of a 500nm peaked black body radiation spectrum, which the sun approximates. This plus the Raleigh scattering of the incomingshort end of that spectrum, accounts for much of the drop from a TSI of 1362 Wm^-2, to a typical surface irradiance (normal to the sun vector) of 1,000 Wm^-2. This atmospherically absorbed/scattered INCOMING solar energy is irretrievably lost to the deep ocean energy storage mechanism (maybe only half of the Raleigh scattered). The atmospherically absorbed (GHG) INCOMING solar spectrum energy is re-radiated as an isotropic LWIR spectrum, half of which is lost to space, and the other half cannot penetrate to the deep ocean (70% of the surface), and tends to promote prompt surface evaporation from the oceans, which adds to the water vapor absorption, and also returns a lot of latent heat of evaporation to the upper atmosphere.
I can’t for the life of me, make a positive feedback warming loop, out of any of that. More O3, H2O, and CO2, means LESS earth captured solar energy, which must ultimately lead to cooling, due to lack of sunshine.
you would not neglect mentioning the possibility that a cooling effect due sulfate aerosols emitted by the rapidly developing Chinese economy , is slowing the increase in temperature.
While sulphates have increased over east and south Asia. There has been a comparable decrease in sulphates over Europe and N America.
Since effect of sulphate aerosols is restricted to the region they are emitted lets look at the temperature trends for these regions.
The USA and likely all of N America (ex Arctic) has warmed substantially less than the global average since 1975, while east Asia has warmed faster than anywhere else (excluding the Arctic) in the last 2 decades.
http://adrem.org.cn/Faculty/GongDY/docu/Enhancement%20of%20the%20warming%20trend%20in%20China.pdf
While south Asia has warmed in line with the global average, all the S Asia warming is in the maximum temperature, which has increased several times faster than the global average. The sulphate cooling theory requires that the cooling be in the maximum temperature.
I think we can safely say the sulphate cooling hypothesis is falsified by the data.
Pardon my ignorance Philip, but is the increase in sulphates a resultvof the increase burning of coal?
George Smith: All good comments above. I would also add that increasing water vapor WITHOUT an increase of solar IR ALSO increases tropospheric cooling at the water vapor boundary from emission above CO2 >15 microns. That also self regulates and mitigates a positive water vapor growth cycle from sideband CO2 absorption. And yes, water vapor has four distinct absorption bands of incoming solar IR in the near range between .6 to 2.5 microns that provide tropospheric HEATING rather than IR longer wave cooling. That is critical to changing water vapor saturation vapor pressures that would allow growth of the column and amplify IR warming.
If aerosols have such a cooling effect, wouldn’t we be better off pumping as much of them as we can into the atmosphere?
Sure, they cause a myriad of health issues, but this must be better than the doom-and-gloom end of civilization predicted (prophesied?!) by the alarmist community.
I found this comment to be one of obvious importance and I am surprised there has been so little discussion on it. If Lindzen is correct (I see he uses references), then CAGW is an obvious fantasy, but if Hansen is correct (not clear if he uses references or not), then CAGW remains a possibility, albeit small. Some of the tens of billions of dollars per year wastefully ploughed into pointless areas of ‘climate science’ should be re-directed towards this subject.
“3. Water vapour feedback
Lindzen: negative, upper tropospheric water vapor decreases with global warming.
Hansen: positive, upper and lower tropospheric water vapour increase with global warming.
References: (these include references by Lindzen stating that, in response to global warming, water vapour will decrease at altitudes above 2-3 km).
Comment: accurate observations of interannual changes (several years) and long-term changes (1-2 decades) of upper tropospheric water vapour could provide defining data.”
On the subject of scepticism, it is interesting to see how Hansen, over the past 15 years, has morphed from being a reasonably rational individual into a ranting intolerant bigot.
The joy of true science is that you can proove yourself to be wrong and be proclaimed a genious for it.
Slide2112
“Pardon my ignorance Philip, but is the increase in sulphates a resultvof the increase burning of coal?”
Apparently if US had decided in 1988 to double coal consumption using technology from the 1950 [no pollution control] we would had lower global temperature.
it’s unlikely Hansen could predicted enormous increase in Chinese coal use, so it’s true Hansen would failed to predict the significant increase sulphates, he also would not predicted China exceeding US is CO2 emission. Some could predicted increase in crude oil use by China [far less CO2 emission per power generated] and some day China exceeding the US in CO2 emission. But idea that socialist would burn coal and have such enormous economic growth, is stranger than fiction- at least for socialists.
Imagine if the Soviet Union had such economic growth {USSR had far more wealth in fossil fuels than China] in such world we would be speaking Russian.
Floyd – you attribute an estimate for climate sensitivity of 3C for 2xCO2 to James Hansen. Which is indeed our best current estimate, however you fail to acknowledge that the value Hansen used in his 1988 model was nearer 4C.
This, along with a slight mismatch between the projected and actual forcings is the underlying cause of the divergence between Scenario B and observed temperature increase.
This is how science operates – uncertainties are reduced, estimates improved. The basic physics behind the model are fine, one of its input parameters was too high by about a third, is all.
Anthony, I plotted my own graph from Hansen’s 1988 graph a couple of years ago. It took me a couple of weeks to plot, (dot by dot), his graph and then scale the actual data for comparison. Check it out.
http://neighbors.denverpost.com/album_pic.php?pic_id=10622&sid=61fd10a0c0ec6869d17a0083df6fe85c
Wayne Douglas says:
May 10, 2012 at 10:20 pm
Well, what a surprise! All the representatives of the fossil fuel industry have checked in. As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein, “Follow the money!” It sure doesn’t lead to Hansen.Yeppers, ya gotta just follow that money!
But all of the money, all of the corruption, all of the power, all of the influence, all of the papers’ editing and publication, all of the ABBCNNBCBS media attention and adoration is on the CAGW hoard of trillions of tax dollars. And control of the world’s population.
All of the billions in government-funded CAGW money is spent on and by the (corruption inside the) CAGW propagandists who so conveniently provide results favorable to their CAGW-funding sponsers inside the CAGW-funding governments and government agencies.
Eric Adler:
May 10, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Are those the same aerosols that conveniently caused the cooling in the 60’s and 70’s?
Wayne Douglass… I hate it when warmies get their facts wrong.
http://monkeywrenchingamerica.com/?p=474
Wayne Douglas says:
May 10, 2012 at 10:20 pm
Well, what a surprise! All the representatives of the fossil fuel industry have checked in. As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein, “Follow the money!” It sure doesn’t lead to Hansen.
You are either a total idiot or you live with your head up your fesse. Hansen has become a 2 times millionaire since his damascas moment in ’88. Money earned from public speaking, Fenton and other supportive AGW organisations. I Suggest you go look for the info.
Eric Adler:
Scientists amend or reject a working hypothesis when its predictions are observed to be wrong.
Scientists do NOT ‘move the goal posts’ by introducing “a possibility” after their predictions are shown to be wrong: advocates do that.
But (at May 10, 2012 at 7:22 pm) you object to Floyd Doughty pointing out that observations fit with Hansen’s prediction of global temperature for cessation of CO2 emissions in 2000. And Doughty writes;
“Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must have ceased in the year 2000. And I missed it. Rats.”
And you say to Floyd Doughty:
“Your straw man argument is certainly not the only interpretation that can be made. If you are really going to argue like a scientist, rather than a lawyer, you would not neglect mentioning the possibility that a cooling effect due sulfate aerosols emitted by the rapidly developing Chinese economy , is slowing the increase in temperature. This was not included in the model Hansen developed in 1988. “etc..
Of course, your comment would have been equally valid if you had written;
“Your straw man argument is certainly not the only interpretation that can be made. If you are really going to argue like a scientist, rather than a lawyer, you would not neglect mentioning the possibility that a cooling effect due THE EASTER BUNNY IS STEALING HEAT, is slowing the increase in temperature. This was not included in the model Hansen developed in 1988. “etc..
And you accuse Doughty of a “straw man argument”! Sheesh!
Richard
Pardon my ignorance Philip, but is the increase in sulphates a resultvof the increase burning of coal?
Primarily burning coal in the absence of effective scrubbers.
Image of global sulphate concentrations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gocart_sulfate_optical_thickness.png
In the interest of full disclosure, I must unambiguously state that I am a state board-certified Professional Geophysicist nearing retirement after more than 38 years spent in the search for new oil and gas reserves.
————–
Well that’s interesting.
Now let’s say a geophysicist was involved in preparing an assessment of an ore body based on drilling and seismology. Then the ore body is exploited and the actual yeild is recorded. Just how good or bad would the agreement have to be for that geophysicist to be judged competent or incompetent? How would they compare to Hansen?
There is a lot of mis-information about aerosols/particulates/sulphates in China.
What has happened is that over the last few decades, is that hundreds of millions have moved from traditional dwellings where heat and cooking was by domestic stoves to highrises where electricity is the power source.
Anyone familiar with burning coal in a stove or open hearth knows it produces an awful lot of particulate pollution. By switching from domestic burning of coal to burning it power stations, particulates have been dramatically reduced, even while sulphates have risen. The developed world went through this transition 30 to 50 years ago. And there has been a similar large reduction in particulates from vehicle emissions.
Its the reduction in particulates that corresponds with the late 20th century warming and IMO could well be the primary cause – less scattering of solar irradiance and less particulate seeded clouds.
Floyd,
Here is a copy of the oldest GISS dataset we could previously find. It should be very very close to the 1999 set.
How I found this data is described here:
George E. Smith says:
May 10, 2012 at 10:24 pm
“”””” Chuck Wiese says:
May 10, 2012 at 9:17 pm
Floyd: Hansen is wrong. He counts absorption as a forcing on temperature at the sidebands of CO2. That would only work in a atmosphere without a hydrological cycle. The spectrally integrated OLR is the ONLY way to calculate whether there is a radiation imbalance, and that must include increases or decreases in solar shorwave per cloud thickness and ratio to water vapor. “””””
Chuck,
O3, H2O, and to a lesser extent CO2; all of them green house gases, ALL absorb significant amounts of INCOMING solar spectrum energy in the range from roughly 250 nm to 4.0 microns, which contains about 98% of a 500nm peaked black body radiation spectrum, which the sun approximates. This plus the Raleigh scattering of the incomingshort end of that spectrum, accounts for much of the drop from a TSI of 1362 Wm^-2, to a typical surface irradiance (normal to the sun vector) of 1,000 Wm^-2. This atmospherically absorbed/scattered INCOMING solar energy is irretrievably lost to the deep ocean energy storage mechanism (maybe only half of the Raleigh scattered). The atmospherically absorbed (GHG) INCOMING solar spectrum energy is re-radiated as an isotropic LWIR spectrum, half of which is lost to space, and the other half cannot penetrate to the deep ocean (70% of the surface), and tends to promote prompt surface evaporation from the oceans, which adds to the water vapor absorption, and also returns a lot of latent heat of evaporation to the upper atmosphere.
I can’t for the life of me, make a positive feedback warming loop, out of any of that. More O3, H2O, and CO2, means LESS earth captured solar energy, which must ultimately lead to cooling, due to lack of sunshine.
==========
Water is transparent to visible light … The WATER CYCLE cools the EArth by 52°C to bring it down to the 15°C.., the ‘greenhouse warming of 33°C’ is a sleight of hand – it misses out the water cycle completely, think deserts. The water cycle is CONVECTION, the transport of heat from the Earth’s surface by CONVECTION. Volumes of hot wet air rising taking away heat and on reaching COLD heights condensing out to water, rain, fog, clouds (which is carbonic acid, water + carbon dioxide).
Doesn’t anyone here understand how weather works? How clouds are formed?
Doesn’t anyone here understand the the difference between Light and Heat? How can y’all, generic warmists, not notice that the direct heat from the Sun to Earth’s surface, longwave infrared aka thermal infrared, is missing from the comic cartoon energy budget you use??
Visible light direct from the Sun isn’t hot, you can’t feel it as hot, if you can’t feel it as hot then it isn’t converting to heat. Duh.
None of you know what you’re talking about. You’re using a imaginary fisics from an imaginary world where heat direct from the Sun doesn’t even reach Earth’s surface and you have no water cycle.
And what’s worse, you can’t see anything wrong in it..
@dougetit says:
May 11, 2012 at 12:07 am
Anthony, I plotted my own graph from Hansen’s 1988 graph a couple of years ago. It took me a couple of weeks to plot, (dot by dot), his graph and then scale the actual data for comparison. Check it out.
http://neighbors.denverpost.com/album_pic.php?pic_id=10622&sid=61fd10a0c0ec6869d17a0083df6fe85c
===================================================================
Excellent! Thank you.
I think it’s a misnomer to call the GISS temperature record “observed”.
Stephen: You are right the recent YAMAL story is THE story and even here I don’t think they realize. This story needs to be hammered relentlessly until it ends up in court and they are all brought to justice. It’s the first outright De Facto evidence of fraud and deceit that will win in a court of law. That’s why no one one has touched it so far ie Revkin, RC, Thinkprogress, etc who usually reply to this type of event from previous experience, “accusations”
Anything from Mr Hanson of late can be put in the too hard basket and treated as propaganda.
His mission of late has been terminally wounded by facts and an unco-operative Gaia. Such is life. Reality and honesty are eternal, faith and politics not so much.
It is hard to know and understand what fate is in store for people such as this that pervert science for their own glorification.
Youse guys are somewhat late, earlier this year, in preparation for the Easter Hansen Was Wrong in 1988 offensive Eli went back and looked at an old post. As Hansen said in 1988
==========================
The climate model we employ has a global mean surface air equilibrium sensitivity of 4.2 C for doubled CO2. Other recent GCMs yield equilibrium sensitivities of 2.5-5.5 C…..
Forecast temperature trends for time scales of a few decades or less are not very sensitive to the model’s equilibrium climate sensitivity (reference provided). Therefore climate sensitivity would have to be much smaller than 4.2 C, say 1.5 to 2 C, in order for us to modify our conclusions significantly.
=========================
Eli pointed out that
==========================
We are getting to the point, twenty years on, where the high estimate of climate sensitivity is making itself felt. OTOH, the 1988 paper estimated the forcings slightly on the low side. The result was a pretty good prediction. Definitely in the class of useful models.
========================
BTW, Nick Stokes has a really nice JAVA way of plotting all of the measurement series against the 1988 prediction, although you have to be careful and realize that the 1988 graph was a forecast for land only and excluded the sea surfaces
Coincidentally I recently had a similar debate on The Guardian website in response to a bet offered by one of the commenters there. He proposed that “deniers” should offer to pay for the costs of global warming in 100 years time and we should be amply compensated by the “scientists” if we were wrong at the time. It wasn’t a bad rhetorical device; put your money where your mouth is.
I countered with a quicker payoff time. A bet against the prediction of Hansen to the US Congress. As his graph ended in 2019 and pretty much shows that the “science” of AGW was wrong it looked like a good bet to me.
Most of my subsequent posts were deleted by the moderators which is unusual. I took that as a sign that this line of argument was very awkward for those who earn a living as environmental journalists.
Ref: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/may/02/climate-change-sceptic-right-wing
Eric Adler says:
May 10, 2012 at 7:22 pm
But the temperatures flatline. They don’t go up or down, they stay the same. How lucky is that? Everything balances.
So let’s try and work out how that happens:
Delta CO2 Conc x CO2 forcing = Delta SO2 Conc x SO2 forcing – everything else (unknown)
CO2 Conc is increasing (Mauna Loa)
SO2 conc varies (it has a short atmospheric life as we know from volcanoes, of which we have not had many) but with environmental regs and the dash for gas it can’t have changed much upwards (even with the rise of China).
CO2 forcing should be declining due to Beer Lambert’s Law but some unidentified feedback may amplify it so in fairness we do not know.
Same for SO2.
How does that balance with rising CO2?
The simplest answer is that CO2 forcing = zero (at current levels) and SO2 Conc is constant (along with the unknown everything else). That is the implied assumption under Occum’s Razor.
But for me the honest answer is that the whole “CO2 = disaster meme” is unjustified hyperbole and we just don’t know. The science is not settled. It’s not even close to being understood.
In response to a couple of comments above:
Here’s a WUWT thread rebutting the Forster & Rahmstorf paper:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/26/rahmstorfs-new-heat-wave-twisty/
Here’s a WUWT thread documenting Hansen’s large outside income–possibly in violation of gov’t. regulations:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/18/dr-james-hansens-growing-financial-scandal-now-over-a-million-dollars-of-outside-income/
@Dennis Ray wingo wrote:
“All on the flawed premise of an Earth centered solar system.”
It is NOT a flawed premise.
Mutatis mutandis you can pick *any * set of axes to calculate orbital movements and heliocentric is (nearly) the simplest to do the mathematics on, that’s all.
The trouble with ‘layman’s science’ or ‘layman’s mathematics’ – both of which persist throughout even university graduates (unless that is their specialty) – is that they represent Occam’s Razor style ‘simplest hypotheses’ as ‘the Truth’.
A philosophical analysis of Hansen, et al, reveals some far more startling truths: The AGW hypothesis is based on the presupposition that all the climate change that cannot be accounted for by known factors, is down to CO2. Then the mysterious lambda factor is used to make the (somewhat dubious) temperature record fit the model. But what IS the lambda factor in physical terms? No one knows. Its a mysterious feedback element that amplifies the greenhouse effect of CO2.
But by assigning it a value that makes the model fit the data, it ‘proves’ CO2 is the culprit? Really?
You can do that with ANYTHING.
e.g. http://www.clarewind.org.uk/events-1.php?event=39
It is just as likely – and looking increasingly MORE likely – if probability can be assigned to unknown unknowns at all – that in fact there is something else going on entirely.
Which is where theories based on e.g. cloud formation (c.f. Svensmark et al) become increasingly interesting, if still dubious.
The problem is that AGW is a broadly circular argument: and that makes it a very weak one philosophically. To be sure all science proceeds by hypothesizing, and then seeing if the actual facts on the ground meet the hypothesis. However that never demonstrates the truth content of a hypothesis, merely that ‘it works’. In that context we can pick any sets of axes and any postulates we like, and as long as the whole schema that results is logically consistent, we can regard it as ‘scientifically true’. The great mistake is to confuse that with The Truth. And, worse if we pick a postulate that cannot be falsified, we are straying right off science altogether, and into metaphysics.
And that is where Hansen et al are heading with AGW. Into irrefutable propositions – it seems that whereas we are to take CO2 and its attendant climate change as established FACT, anything that results in them not fitting the facts is due to ‘unkown feedback factors’ or ‘pollution’ or any other convenient unknown that MIGHT explain the discrepancies.
But how is CO2 itself, with its massive fudge factor, to be taken as any different?
The reality is that no one really understands climate change fully, or even more than slightly. That is nothing to be ashamed of, but is a very big deal indeed if we are basing political policy and massive expenditire on an unproven and distinctly shaky premise.
“All on the flawed premise of an Earth centered solar system.
Computer models can explain many things and yet be completely wrong on the fundamental science. AGW is the modern epicycle.”
Just a point of order: There is nothing unscientific about describing the movement of objects relative to your chosen point of reference. That does not in practice make it a “flawed premise”. We do not describe for instance the trajectory of an arrow with the sun as our point of reference. Nor do we for a trip to the supermarket. For that we probably use our home as the chosen point of reference, and it works perfectly and is absolutely not unscientific. Thus, looking at the solar system with earth as the chosen point of reference is not a flawed premise if you only interested in the practical observed relationships. Of course, the scientific explanation would be a different subject altogether.. 🙂
Phil Clarke says: @ May 11, 2012 at 12:06 am
…. The basic physics behind the model are fine, one of its input parameters was too high by about a third, is all.
________________________
The basic physics behind the models are not “fine” and even the more truthful climate scientists acknowledge the fact that large chunks are missing.
To put it bluntly we are still a bunch of blind men, tied in place who are trying to describe an elephant. Even though some good work is being done, we don’t KNOW what influences on the climate we are completely missing.
At least most skeptics acknowledge the fact we do not know diddley squat about the climate yet and are only now, despite all the obstacles thrown in true scientists path, beginning to ferret out some of the pieces. Clouds are a prime example.
RealClimate made available the data Hansen used in his 1988 paper.
Scenario temps projections. Scenario B is +1.065C in 2012.
http://www.realclimate.org/data/scen_ABC_temp.data
GHG levels. Scenario B CO2 level 390.99 ppm in 2011 (0.5 ppm too high but close enough).
http://www.realclimate.org/data/H88_scenarios.dat
Effective Forcing. Scenario B is +2.14 W/m2 in 2011 (very close to the number IPCC AR5 is using for 2011).
http://www.realclimate.org/data/H88_scenarios_eff.dat
So Scenario B is very close to the actual scenario which occured. Skeptical Science and others have tried to take 10% or so off that but the effective forcing numbers say no change is required.
jeez says:
May 11, 2012 at 1:47 am
Floyd,
Here is a copy of the oldest GISS dataset we could previously find. It should be very very close to the 1999 set.
——————————————
Thanks jeez. The baby ice is still growing, now in pre-kindergarten. We need to find the oldest NCDC dataset too.
Myrrh says:
May 11, 2012 at 1:51 am
“And what’s worse, you can’t see anything wrong in it..”
They don’t know that they don’t know.
LazyTeenager says:
May 11, 2012 at 1:29 am
“Now let’s say a geophysicist was involved in preparing an assessment of an ore body based on drilling and seismology. Then the ore body is exploited and the actual yeild is recorded. Just how good or bad would the agreement have to be for that geophysicist to be judged competent or incompetent? How would they compare to Hansen?”
Floyd has a license to practice Geofizziks. Roscoe P Coal Train does not.
Somewhat OT, but perhaps relates to the apparent conversion of Hanson from scientist to advocate.
Science and Sex have a common trait.
They both can be beautiful, amazing things. When it’s right, you know it.
However both can also be obtained with money.
This purchased science or sex is reduced to – you get what you pay for. No more, no less.
Eric Adler
You say that we shouldnt discount the possibility that aerosols, clouds, ENSO, volcanoes, and solar decline are all contributing to slowing or counteracting the warming – and I take your post to be just that – a reminder that there might be factors masking or preventing warming and that we should see what we have learned so far and review it – all very sensible and I agree.
We didnt know these things in 1998 but are aware of them now. In 1988 all sorts of dire predictions were made without these factors being included. Obviously we might find out something else tomorrow or the day after that we don’t know today and today’s predictions must be equally likely to be discounting factors that we do not yet understand or which we have not yet uncovered, and so are equally likely not to come to fruition. I have no problem with that and note that you ask that we think like scientists and not like lawyers (or presumably from other non-science perspectives). So when do we know that we know enough to make confident predictions? Caution would appear to be the watchword here.
But in his op-ed in the NYT of 10.5.2012 Hansen says the science of the situation is CLEAR. He gives all sorts of doomsday facts about the catastrophe that will happen – at some point in the future – with no apparent regard for the fact that we have found out a lot of relevant stuff since 1988 and that we might find out something else at any time that changes our view or the balance of the evidence. He ignores peer reviewed science on the attribution of extreme weather events and says that it IS caused by human induced climate change. He maintains that if Canadian tar sands and tar “shale” are exploited we WILL add enough CO2 to hit 500 ppm and at that level it IS game over. Ice sheets will disintegrate, sea level rises will drown coastal cities, and global temperatures will become “intolerable” with up to 50 of all species dying out. He knows this – he says there would be no hope of avoiding this outcome although over what time scale this will happen he doesn’t say. But we are to understand that we will be leaving our children a climate out of control, and essentially a planet in tatters.
Given that you accept that there might be factors that we dont understand properly and concede by necessity the fact that we are always learning – Do you believe that Hansen “thinks like a scientist” and not, for example, like an activist?
Hansen has been working behind the scenes more than we knew. Just what are our tax dollars paying this man to do?
Hansen initiated a lawsuit to be filed by some kids in California against the Federal Government to demand that the Government stop Global Warming.
“Olson and other supporters of the suit believe that having kids as plaintiffs makes a particularly visceral appeal to adults to take action. Indeed, many of the adults involved said that their own children and grandchildren had inspired them. “Becoming a grandfather motivated me to speak out,” said climate scientist James Hansen, the director of the U.S. NASA Goddard Space Institute and the man who first brought Loorz and Olson together. Hansen, in his free time, is a conscientious objector to U.S. energy policy who has been arrested three times at peaceful protests.
In support of the children’s suit, Hansen has drawn up recommendations as to how the U.S. government can meet the greenhouse-gas reduction goals, through cuts in fossil-fuel-powered electricity and reforestation. “My talents are mainly in the sciences,” he said, “but it just became so clear that no one is doing anything to prevent what is becoming scientifically a very clear picture. I didn’t want my grandchildren to say that “Opa” (Dutch for “grandpa”) knew what was happening but didn’t do anything about it.””
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/an-inconvenient-lawsuit-teenagers-take-global-warming-to-the-courts/256903/
I have been following Jim Hansen’s workings for over two decades. Sometime along the way Jim crossed the boundary between science and obesession. So when we look back we often see Jim the scientist. We don’t see much of that today.
I believe that Jim honestly believes in the truth of what he is saying; he is not motivated by the left wing ideology and yearnings for control that we see so often. But he has become more frustrated as Mother Nature has refused to cooperate, and the political process has produced little of the action he would like to see.
Wayne Douglas says:
May 10, 2012 at 10:20 pm
Well, what a surprise! All the representatives of the fossil fuel industry have checked in. As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein, “Follow the money!” It sure doesn’t lead to Hansen.Yeppers, ya gotta just follow that money!
====================================================================
Many involved in politics don’t primarily have just a lust for money but a lust for power, control over others. That’s what has given this mistaken hypothesis of CAGW legs and why so much of the taxpayers’ money is being dumped into its promotion. The hockey stick is just a club used by them to beat us into submission. When its no longer useful to them, they’ll drop it and look for something else to use. CAGW has replaced “The Ozone Hole”.
Sent to the NYT yesterday:
In “Game Over for the Climate”, James Hansen notes his 1981 Science
>paper predicted a global warming signal would emerge from historical
>climate variability by the late 1990s. His subsequent work, a more
>sophisticated model, was published in 1987, and he used it to forecast
>global warming in a famous Congressional hearing on June 23, 1988,
>dramatically overstating the subsequent warming trend of 0.3°C. His
>”business as usual” emissions scenario forecast 0.7° of warming, and
>his “Scenario B” warming, which includes some emissions reductions,
>yielded 0.6°. Figures are based upon his own temperature records and
>computer output, rounded to the nearest 0.1°, about as much precision
>as we can expect.
>
>
>
>Predicting over twice as much warming as was observed leads me to
>similarly discount his projections of gloom and doom, which are being
>severely challenged by the earth’s reluctance to warm as he had forecast.
>
George E. Smith says:
May 10, 2012 at 10:24 pm
“”””” Chuck Wiese says:
May 10, 2012 at 9:17 pm
Hi.
I once had a bit of an exchange with Lacis. Evidently, the supposed positive feedback from h2o due to the co2 increase is a decrease in cloud cover. Let the temperature go up slightly and one starts losing cloud cover. That must mean we’re at a relative maximum of cloud cover with only 62% average coverage. Lower T means less h2o vapor to form clouds – so less cover. And according to hansen and lacis, higher T means more h2o vapor (to form clouds) and less cloud cover. This is an assumption by lacis and hansen presented as such in an early paper from two decades ago. In the paper, they admit it was an assumption and not the only plausible one. Since then, it seems to have become the gospel. It doesn’t come from their gcm models but is based upon lacis’ one – d model and pure (self serving) opinion.
Another thing I noted with lacis is a gross tendency to overestimate everything in his favor and to underestimate values for anything that opposes his viewpoint as compared to what would be commonly accepted.
Eric Adler says:
May 10, 2012 at 7:22 pm
If you want to argue like a scientist instead of a hack, you would have noted that due to the short life expectancy of sulfates in the atmosphere, that any cooling caused by them would be concentrated first in the northern hemisphere, and secondly close to China. Since neither of these is the case, it is clear that the sulfate hypothesis has failed completely.
Wayne Douglas says:
May 10, 2012 at 10:20 pm
Are you actually trying to claim that Hansen hasn’t gotten rich from his promotion of AGW????
His financial statements beg to differ.
David Falkner says:
May 10, 2012 at 8:15 pm
“Eric Adler says:
…you would not neglect mentioning the possibility that a cooling effect due sulfate aerosols emitted by the rapidly developing Chinese economy , is slowing the increase in temperature…
I thought the cooling effect of aerosols was local and short lived? And could you point to a warming event to match the effect of the Chinese economy? I mean, the West did do a pretty good job of cleaning up the aerosols and since they are so short lived, we should be able to pick up some signals of equal amplitude, right?”
The aerosals are being emitted continously and are increasing as Asia becomes more industrially developed. When and if the SO2 gets cleaned out of the exhaust as it has in Western Europe and in the US, or the SO2 emissions get capped, because the pollution is intolerable to the health of the people living nearby, the rise in temperature will resume at an accelerated rate.
“Sceptical lefty says:
May 10, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Eric Adler,
when James Hansen testified before the U.S. Senate he was expecting to have a serious influence on the future direction of public policy and disbursement of public funds. So, maybe he neglected to take account of Chinese aerosols. If this, and other (possibly unknown) factors, are to be accepted as a reasonable excuse for the falsification of his predictions, then the question has to be asked: Why take any notice of the man at all? He clearly does not have an adequate grasp of his subject. He is also unlikely to run out of excuses.
Floyd Doughty has addressed himself to the substance of Hansen’s utterances and the ‘straw man’ accusation is unwarranted.”
Sceptical Lefty ,
Hansen’s first scientific work was on the climate of Venus, where Sulfate particles play a strong role in the climate of the planet. What he may have missed was prediction of the course of the Chinese economic growth, how much coal they might use, and what their policy on sulfate pollution might be. The IPCC does include sulfate aerosals as part of their forcing and it accounts for a lot of the uncertainty in the radiational forcing of the climate, along with the feedback due to clouds.
philincalifornia says:
May 10, 2012 at 9:15 pm
“Eric Adler says:
May 10, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Your straw man argument is certainly not the only interpretation that can be made. If you are really going to argue like a scientist, rather than a lawyer, you would not neglect mentioning the possibility that a cooling effect due sulfate aerosols emitted by the rapidly developing Chinese economy , is slowing the increase in temperature.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
….. I thought I read somewhere that it was because the missing heat was sneaking down into the depths of the ocean and hiding.
When thieves fall out !!!!”
Phil,
You are guilty of a false dichotomy here. There is a lot of uncertainty the measurements of both phenomena, and both are capable of introducing errors into the modelling of climate. Better measurements are needed.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.1140.pdf
Of course if you believe that climate scientists are thieves, it is irrelevant to discuss science done by scientists with you.
Clearly Lindzen was closer to reality. Even Nansen should be able to see that by now. We are left questioning whether he is practicing self deception or dishonesty.
Scenario C might better be named ‘We were totally wrong about CO2 and how it effects the climate’.
After all this sets out a case we KNOW did not happen, no more CO2 after 2000. Wherever else the temperatures go, the closer they remain to Scenario C the closer we are to understanding what does NOT drive the climate.
The aerosals are being emitted continously and are increasing as Asia becomes more industrially developed.
—
Completely irrelevant to the issue of whether short lived aerosols have the ability to affect temperatures world wide.
I didn’t know there was a John Edwards manual of public vs. private conduct that many year ago. Or maybe it was the other way around. In the same vein, what has Hansen fathered?
RB says:
May 11, 2012 at 6:32 am
“Eric Adler
You say that we shouldnt discount the possibility that aerosols, clouds, ENSO, volcanoes, and solar decline are all contributing to slowing or counteracting the warming – and I take your post to be just that – a reminder that there might be factors masking or preventing warming and that we should see what we have learned so far and review it – all very sensible and I agree.
We didnt know these things in 1998 but are aware of them now. In 1988 all sorts of dire predictions were made without these factors being included. Obviously we might find out something else tomorrow or the day after that we don’t know today and today’s predictions must be equally likely to be discounting factors that we do not yet understand or which we have not yet uncovered, and so are equally likely not to come to fruition. I have no problem with that and note that you ask that we think like scientists and not like lawyers (or presumably from other non-science perspectives). So when do we know that we know enough to make confident predictions? Caution would appear to be the watchword here.
But in his op-ed in the NYT of 10.5.2012 Hansen says the science of the situation is CLEAR. He gives all sorts of doomsday facts about the catastrophe that will happen – at some point in the future – with no apparent regard for the fact that we have found out a lot of relevant stuff since 1988 and that we might find out something else at any time that changes our view or the balance of the evidence. He ignores peer reviewed science on the attribution of extreme weather events and says that it IS caused by human induced climate change. He maintains that if Canadian tar sands and tar “shale” are exploited we WILL add enough CO2 to hit 500 ppm and at that level it IS game over. Ice sheets will disintegrate, sea level rises will drown coastal cities, and global temperatures will become “intolerable” with up to 50 of all species dying out. He knows this – he says there would be no hope of avoiding this outcome although over what time scale this will happen he doesn’t say. But we are to understand that we will be leaving our children a climate out of control, and essentially a planet in tatters.
Given that you accept that there might be factors that we don’t understand properly and concede by necessity the fact that we are always learning – Do you believe that Hansen “thinks like a scientist” and not, for example, like an activist?”
Projections of what will happen are uncertain, and Hansen does a good job, as a scientist at pointing out where more work should be done to get better data, so that models and projections can be improved.
What fuels his activism is the knowledge that humans react to immediate threats that they can sense easily, and fail to act against evolving threats that are not immediately visible. He understands that it takes advance planning to reduce emissions, and that the effects are delayed, but and that climate engineering is not a safe strategy to rely on when climate change damaging to humans and their habitat becomes evident. He believes the downside risk is very great, and the costs of taking action are marginal, relative to the benefits of playing it safe. His viewpoint seems to be shared by a great majority of climate scientists and other scientific organizations. His activism is based on scientific knowledge.
Floyd Doughty wrote:
“The truth is that the observations, opinions, and views I have expressed are the result of independent critical thought, are strictly my own, and do not in any way represent those of my employer, the oil industry in general, or any other entities.”
Floyd,
I don’t doubt what you say. However there are statistics that show economic geologists, who work on resource extraction are among the most skpetical of AGW:
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
“The two areas of expertise in the survey with the smallest percentage of participants
answering yes to question 2 were economic geology with 47% (48 of 103) and meteorology with 64% (23 of 36)..”
My personal opinion is that the opposition to AGW among these groups is not because of pressure by their employers. It is more a question of cognitive dissonance related to their opinions acquired while engaging in their profession.
In the case of petroleum and coal geologists, they are focused on finding and extracting resources. If they believed that AGW would be the result of their efforts, it would be emotionally difficult for them to continue doing what they do. So many of them find reasons to reject AGW.
In the case of meteorologists, where 64% of the sample accepted AGW, their training and job is to look at the short term evolution of weather, and use certain kinds of prediction algorithms to do that. The idea of using different models and methodology, conflicts with their previous training, which is somewhat different from climatologists. Only 36% didn’t accept the reality of AGW.
Babsy says:
May 11, 2012 at 5:41 am
Myrrh says:
May 11, 2012 at 1:51 am
“And what’s worse, you can’t see anything wrong in it..”
They don’t know that they don’t know.
===
But…., when I tell them they don’t know? When I tell them they’re excluding the direct, beam, heat from the Sun? They don’t even stop to think about it.. I can’t make them out.
This is the real scandal here, it used to be taught. In industries which need to understand the difference between light and heat applied scientists still understand it. But where is it in these arguments?
The only missing heat here is that which comes direct from the Sun, thermal infrared, which we feel as heat because it is capable of heating matter..
How do they get their clouds?? They just appear magically in their empty space atmosphere where ideal gas hard dots of molecules without weight or volume or attraction rush around at tremendous speeds bouncing off each other and thoroughly mixing..
What’s the matter with them?? And on a blog run by a weatherman!
There was a post by mydogsgotnonose in the Bishops discussion Anthony linked to, http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/5/9/the-yamal-deception.html
he said:
“Manabe and Wetherald 1967 assumed SW down = LW up, a gross exaggeration but not physically incorrect. Houghton assumed all heat transfer is by radiation and is comprised of two LW components, up and down, the two-stream approximation, and black body although this is ambiguous.”
So it was Manabe and Wetherald who first excluded the direct heat from the Sun to the Earth? Were they the ones who came up with the ridiculous fictional fisics that shortwave heats land and oceans? And that the direct, beam, heat from the Sun, thermal infrared, didn’t reach the Earth’s surface? Gosh, so the KT97 and all the comic cartoon AGW energy budgets come back to this?
Hmm, this from wiki: “Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Manabe’s research group published seminal papers using these models to explore the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to changing greenhouse gas concentrations. These papers formed a major part of the first global assessments of climate change published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
Were they the originators or did someone else create the fictional world this comic cartoon energy budget is based on? Why did they exclude the direct heat from the Sun in their fictional concept in 1967? Where they the ones who missed out the Water Cycle?
Do you know who came up with the ludicrous notion that oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide are ideal gases in this cartoon? [Without weight, volume and attraction – and so not subject to gravity and therefore ‘spontaneously diffusing into the atmosphere to mix thoroughly travelling at great speeds through empty space bouncing off other hard dot imaginary molecules’, and so carbon dioxide, which in the real world is heavier than air, ‘accumulating for hundreds and even thousands of years’ in this fictional empty space atmosphere so thoroughly mixed it can’t be separated out without work.]
I’d really like to know where these fictional fisics came from. Was there a master mind behind all this? Someone had to know real physics very well if these were deliberate tweaks.
As I said, I really don’t know what to make of them. They take out the direct heat from the Sun reaching the surface and heating it, which everyone can feel and which bog standard, absolutely basic physics, knows is longwave infrared, that’s why it’s called thermal.. But, they don’t have anything in their comic cartoon that explains what happens to it.. It just sort of disappears. It’s a joke, right?
Errors in the observed data aside, looks like we ended up roughly tracking Scenario C.
Philip Bradley says:
May 10, 2012 at 10:28 pm
“you would not neglect mentioning the possibility that a cooling effect due sulfate aerosols emitted by the rapidly developing Chinese economy , is slowing the increase in temperature.
While sulphates have increased over east and south Asia. There has been a comparable decrease in sulphates over Europe and N America.
Since effect of sulphate aerosols is restricted to the region they are emitted lets look at the temperature trends for these regions.
The USA and likely all of N America (ex Arctic) has warmed substantially less than the global average since 1975, while east Asia has warmed faster than anywhere else (excluding the Arctic) in the last 2 decades.
http://adrem.org.cn/Faculty/GongDY/docu/Enhancement%20of%20the%20warming%20trend%20in%20China.pdf
While south Asia has warmed in line with the global average, all the S Asia warming is in the maximum temperature, which has increased several times faster than the global average. The sulphate cooling theory requires that the cooling be in the maximum temperature.
I think we can safely say the sulphate cooling hypothesis is falsified by the data.”
Your understanding is incorrect, and you can’t safely say that.
The effects of black carbon aerosals are local. These are created by by cooking fires in Asia. Sulphate aerosals are distributed more globally:
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2009/07/black-carbon-and-global-warming/
“….More recent work by Hansen and Ramanathan estimates climate forcing from black carbon to be considerably higher – two to four times higher than IPCC estimates, making it the second largest anthropogenic forcing after CO2. Figure Two shows how estimates of black carbon forcings from Ramanathan and Feng compare to IPCC estimates and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The negative forcing resulting from sulphate aerosols (as discussed in a previous Yale Forum article) still considerably outweighs the positive forcing caused by black carbon, and the increases in estimated forcing by Hansen and Ramanathan relative to the numbers used in the IPCC 2007 report do not necessarily require any reassessment of the positive forcing associated with anthropogenic greenhouse gases, given the wide uncertainty range in negative aerosol forcings. …”
Eric Adler
Thanks for your reply. Hansen’s activism is based on scientific knoweldge? What knowledge? Where is the science that supports each and every one of the extreme claims he make in his recent NYT op-ed?
But isn’t it the case that most balanced and non-activist scientists say that in reality we know very littl?. Isn’t it really the case that most thinking mature scientists/engineers, etc. accept that climate science is in its infancy? And that we might learn more at some point in the future?
So what is the value of Hansen’s “knowledge”?
Isn’t it actually true that he speaks from a position of best guess/zealous belief/faith? Given this, why should I listen to what he says? Isn’t it true that his (rather indiosyncratic) pronouncements of doom are very much in the minority? Are Hansen’s wailings about the end being nigh part of the “consensus”? Warmists have been excoriating many distinguished scientists for years for being in the minority – and yet here you are defending Hansen who seems to me to be little more than a soap box zealot telling us we are all going to die whilst sensible peopleare trying to find out what is really happening.
RB says:
May 11, 2012 at 11:42 am
“Eric Adler
Thanks for your reply. Hansen’s activism is based on scientific knoweldge? What knowledge? Where is the science that supports each and every one of the extreme claims he make in his recent NYT op-ed?”
The science behind what he says can be found in the most prestigious scientific publications.
It is a fact that high concentrations of CO2 are associated with deglaciation. There are publications which project drought and warming in the American southwest as a result of global warming. Hansen isn’t making this stuff up out of his imagination. I don’t have the time to dig up the links for you. As far as extinction of species goes, here is a diagram from the IPCC report. The numbers may not be exactly what Hansen says, but they are considerable especially at the highest level of temperature change
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/figure-4-4.html
“But isn’t it the case that most balanced and non-activist scientists say that in reality we know very littl?. Isn’t it really the case that most thinking mature scientists/engineers, etc. accept that climate science is in its infancy? And that we might learn more at some point in the future?”
I don’t have any polling results of climate scientists that say that. Pielke and Annan polled climate scientists, and about 70% agree that the IPCC consensus is about right, or too conservative regarding the impact of AGW.
So what is the value of Hansen’s “knowledge”?
“Isn’t it actually true that he speaks from a position of best guess/zealous belief/faith? Given this, why should I listen to what he says? Isn’t it true that his (rather indiosyncratic) pronouncements of doom are very much in the minority? Are Hansen’s wailings about the end being nigh part of the “consensus”? Warmists have been excoriating many distinguished scientists for years for being in the minority – and yet here you are defending Hansen who seems to me to be little more than a soap box zealot telling us we are all going to die whilst sensible peopleare trying to find out what is really happening.”
Hansen has been doing scientific research for many years. His predictions are based on the results of scientific research. There may not be the dead certainty in all of it that you would like, but given the probability of a good bit of it being correct, relative to the cost of reducing emissions, which is a small percentage of GDP, his reaction doesn’t seem wrong to me. The difficulty is that the predictions of problems are based on sophisticated analysis, and the costs of prevention, although modest are more real to people. The politicization of the reaction in the US, and some other countries has created a lower level of credulity of the science among the general population according to polling.
However, in general, is is well known that scientific organizations in most disciplines, have generally agreed that AGW is a threat, and action is necessary. I don’t see how you can deny that fact.
Eric Adler says:
May 11, 2012 at 1:32 pm
“However, in general, is is well known that scientific organizations in most disciplines, have generally agreed that AGW is a threat, and action is necessary. I don’t see how you can deny that fact.”
Ahhhhhh! The consensus! I completely forgot about it. There ya go!
Eric Alder; Your solution is typically devoid of critical thinking. Lets say you are correct and the government needs to “act”. By placing draconian regulations on business to capture Co2, (which technology does not exist), besides raising prices on everything and collapsing our economy, it only serves to drive businesses and jobs overseas to India and China where they have no limitations on REAL pollution. Would that satisfy you? Don’t be a drone.
Eric Adler said: “relative to the cost of reducing emissions, which is a small percentage of GDP, his reaction doesn’t seem wrong to me. The difficulty is that the predictions of problems are based on sophisticated analysis, and the costs of prevention, although modest are more real to people. The politicization of the reaction in the US, and some other countries has created a lower level of credulity of the science among the general population according to polling.
However, in general, is is well known that scientific organizations in most disciplines, have generally agreed that AGW is a threat, and action is necessary. I don’t see how you can deny that fact.”
Eric: I calculated that there is approciamtely 1.24 E-10 ppmv/tonne of atmospheric CO2. The annual growth factor is ~2.5 ppmv. The total annual emissions in the USA are about 5.8 billion metric tonnes of CO2. Even if you wiped out ALL of those emissions ( which would be impossible in the USA and very difficult to achieve worldwide ) you would only reduce the annual growth of CO2 by .72 ppmv or 28.8%. At the current equilibrium pressure with the oceans, it is literally impossible to stop atmospheric CO2 growth without the oceans cooling off. According to Hansen’s modeling, cooling cannot occur unless the atmospheric concentrations fall.
Your assumptions are the calculus of a fool if you stop and think about it and realizing that humans cannot stop CO2 growth and therefore temperature increases according to Hansen should make anyone pause and take note of the fact his modeling and assumptions are fatally wrong and flawed. Observations are now proving this. Carbon reduction schemes are based upon fraud and trickery and being foisted on the the public by all sorts of political BS that has become self serving to government and all of the others who ride its coat tails for public funding that has become the AGW gravy train. I’d like to get off of this wasteful funding junket and so would a lot of others.
Eric Adler says:
May 11, 2012 at 1:32 pm
RB says:
May 11, 2012 at 11:42 am
“Eric Adler
Thanks for your reply. Hansen’s activism is based on scientific knoweldge? What knowledge? Where is the science that supports each and every one of the extreme claims he make in his recent NYT op-ed?”
The science behind what he says can be found in the most prestigious scientific publications.
==
This is where I get stumpted, agin and agin. How does carbon dioxide drive global temperatures to the great heat necessary to get us out of our Ice Age and into interglacials when it lags temperature increases by c800 years? I think you’re deliberately keeping this a secret from us because I haven’t been able to find the method and no one is willing to explain how it does this – tell us, truthfully, this is some kind of alchemical magic, right? That only believers can understand? Or maybe carbon dioxide is just pretending it’s an ordinary molecule, quite wimpy with no heat capacity to speak of and hardly much of it around anyway, but it’s really an alien from a far superior civilisation with tremendous powers, able to raise the temperature of the Earth and melt gazillions of tons of ice in a few years raising the sea level 350 ft plus and making the Earth all balmy for his arrival 800 years later, and then, with super superpowers he can make a huge insulating blanket of himself all around the Earth heating it more and more and, how exactly does he do this when there’s still nuttin much of him even if quadrupled in amount and he’s still practically, as far as the non-initiates can see, 100% holes?
Or, maybe you don’t how either.
I am having trouble understanding why Doughty wrote this blog post. Looking at the GISS temperature record since 2000, 8 of 11 points are actually touch the Scenario B line and only 3 are closer to Scenario C than B. What is the big deal? This is not a lot of data. If you examine the ENSO index for the years where the points are low, they are La Nina years – 2008 2009 and 2011.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
Eric Adler
“Sceptical Lefty ,
Hansen’s first scientific work was on the climate of Venus, where Sulfate particles play a strong role in the climate of the planet. What he may have missed was prediction of the course of the Chinese economic growth, how much coal they might use, and what their policy on sulfate pollution might be. The IPCC does include sulfate aerosals as part of their forcing and it accounts for a lot of the uncertainty in the radiational forcing of the climate, along with the feedback due to clouds.”
You appear to have missed my point, which wasn’t about the effect of sulphate aerosols. It was about the fact that Hansen’ predictions, on the evidence he adduced, turned out to be wrong! Now, whether it was sulphate aerosols, or CFCs, or a spontaneous release of submarine methane, or anything else, the fact remains that he was wrong. For this he is not to be particularly blamed, for climate science is poorly understood and there is a plethora of variables, some of which are not yet known. Where he IS to be blamed is for making bold ‘scientific’ assertions on a subject about which far too little is known — by him or anyone else. Great decisions of policy were supposed to be made on the basis of this. His attitude was grossly irresponsible, at best.
I am not about to waste space with examples of general consensus overturned, or scientific mistakes and deceptions. There have been plenty. If we could just admit that WE DON’T KNOW, then the proper attitude would be to proceed with caution — not go into blind panic at the vague possibility of a worst possible outcome.
Myrrh says:
May 11, 2012 at 5:17 pm
I’ve been thinking. You know, it was a good thing that the Apollo 13 crew had an excess of CO2 in their spacecraft because if that hadn’t occurred they would have frozen to death on their trip back home. The extra CO2 on board kept them warm. Since CO2 warms the atmosphere, I mean. It truly is the Magic Gas, is it not?
Eric Adler says:
Your understanding is incorrect, and you can’t safely say that.
The effects of black carbon aerosals are local. These are created by by cooking fires in Asia. Sulphate aerosals are distributed more globally:
All your link says is that Hansen and others assert that the sulphate cooling is greater than the black carbon warming. And note I didn’t say anything about BC warming.
Otherwise, I can’t see any evidence based argument against the data falsifying the sulphate cooling hypothesis.
If sulphates are causing cooling show me where this is occurring.
You can start with the graphic I posted above that shows high sulphate levels are exclusively over central and eastern China.
It is a fact that high concentrations of CO2 are associated with deglaciation.
Indeed they are ‘associated’, but cause MUST precede effect. We know from the ice cores that CO2 concentrations rise after temperatures rise and presumably deglaciation occurs.
As a result we can say the following with absolute certainty based on the ice cores.
Increasing CO2 concentrations do NOT cause increasing temperatures or cause deglaciation.
Increasing temperatures and deglaciation MAY cause increasing CO2 concentrations.
Eric, you are clearly not a scientist and aren’t capable of the kind of logical, fact based argument that science requires.
The problem for them is that you can’t extort trillion$ out of the public coffers if graph line “C” is the reality….
Eric Adler says:
May 11, 2012 at 5:19 pm
“I am having trouble understanding why Doughty wrote this blog post. Looking at the GISS temperature record since 2000”
Maybe this chart would be clearer for you?
http://neighbors.denverpost.com/album_pic.php?pic_id=10622&sid=61fd10a0c0ec6869d17a0083df6fe85c
dougetit says:
May 11, 2012 at 8:09 pm
“Eric Adler says:
May 11, 2012 at 5:19 pm
“I am having trouble understanding why Doughty wrote this blog post. Looking at the GISS temperature record since 2000″
Maybe this chart would be clearer for you?
http://neighbors.denverpost.com/album_pic.php?pic_id=10622&sid=61fd10a0c0ec6869d17a0083df6fe85c”
I don’t know the origin of the chart you posted in the above link. It looks different from Doughty’s.
My comment referred to Doughty’s graph, which did not make Hansen’s prediction look very bad.
I’ve never considered plotting Hansen’s Co2 projections or even looked them up, but the actual’s plot basically a straight line since the 50’s when standard measurements started, with only seasonal ups and downs. Those graphs were done on a previous computer and are gone. It would be interesting to do it again though with updated numbers
The most informative graph would just show Scenario A, the associated CO2 level projection, the actual CO2 observations, and the temperature record.
That would show that his algorithm is even further off than A indicates.
Eric Alder Says “I don’t know the origin of the chart you posted in the above link. It looks different from Doughty’s. My comment referred to Doughty’s graph, which did not make Hansen’s prediction look very bad.”
The author is listed in the lower right corner of the graph. I used actual GISS and UAH numbers and the graph uses Hansen’s 1988 computer projections, which shows a more dramatic incline. Remember, this is what Hansen needed to do to grab the politicians/publics attention/funding. If he had failed, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Doughty’s chart is on Hansen’s 1999 graph which seems to be toned down a bit just as his future projections will be as well so as to be more in-line with empirical evidence. The lesson here would be that Hansen doesn’t hesitate to move the goal posts, and certainly unable to admit that he was wrong.
More of my graphs can be found at: http://neighbors.denverpost.com/album_personal.php?user_id=97114
dougetit says:
May 11, 2012 at 11:18 pm: Oops.. Just noticed I omitted the word Increase in “basically a straight line since the” Sorry.
Eric Adler
…..is slowing the increase in temperature.
Henry says
Sorry to spoil the party again. You got it all wrong as to the real reason….
It is the maximum temperatures dropping that is the problem,
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
It must be to do with something to do with the sun?>
Initially I had been thinking that it (i.e. the drop in maxima) could also be caused by increasing cloud formation but then one would expect global RH% increasing, and not dropping, as is being observed.
Eitherway, eventually that drop in maxima is going to work its way down and realize a change in means and minima, as is also already somewhat observable.
Maxima is defintely the better variable to use to evaluate whether we are in a global warming or global cooling state.
.
Eric Adler:
With reference to sulphate aerosol cooling (at May 11, 2012 at 10:22 am) you assert;
“We didnt know these things in 1998 but are aware of them now.”
That is a falsehood.
The sulphate aerosol cooling was then being adopted as a ‘fudge factor’ in the climate models as a method to overcome the models ‘running hot’ (i.e. indicating more global warming over the twentieth century than was observed).
Indeed, in 1999 I published a peer-reviewed paper that showed this ‘aerosol fix’ was not correct and the aerosol hypothesis could not be the real reason why the models ‘run hot’.
(ref. Courtney RS An assessment of validation experiments conducted on computer models of global climate using the general circulation model of the UK’s Hadley Centre Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 491-502, September 1999).
And before you blather about 1999 is after 1998, I point out that it would have been impossible to obtain the data, conduct the analysis and publish the paper in less than a year.
Richard
Babsy says:
May 11, 2012 at 6:42 pm
Myrrh says:
May 11, 2012 at 5:17 pm
I’ve been thinking. You know, it was a good thing that the Apollo 13 crew had an excess of CO2 in their spacecraft because if that hadn’t occurred they would have frozen to death on their trip back home. The extra CO2 on board kept them warm. Since CO2 warms the atmosphere, I mean. It truly is the Magic Gas, is it not?
==
I’m still waiting for Warmists to show how it can be backradiated into my central heating system..
I’ve been thinking lately that Latour was far too polite in his “No Virginia” rebuttal to Spencer. These people might well be able to impress with their use of esoteric mathematical symbols and number crunching, but their magical mystery mumbo jumbo is science incompetence and is embarrassing to watch..
Initially I had been thinking that it (i.e. the drop in maxima) could also be caused by increasing cloud formation but then one would expect global RH% increasing, and not dropping, as is being observed.
Increasing clouds with decreasing relative humidity is the signature of aerosol (and GCR?) cloud seeding.
BTW Henry, there’s no hyphen in inland.
Real physics versus mumbo jumbo:
http://www.slayingtheskydragon.com/en/blog/185-no-virginia-cooler-objects-cannot-make-warmer-objects-even-warmer-still
“Pierre R Latour, PE, PhD Chemical Process Control Systems Engineer rebuts Dr. Roy Spencer’s article,’Yes, Virginia, Cooler Objects Can Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer Still’ (published July 23, 2010). [1.]
“I have admired and learned from Roy Spencer’s work on AGW & GHG for several years. He taught me a lot. He is well recognized in his field. Now I write to return the favor and teach him about the errors in his posting and how he can learn from my field.”
“Blankets, coats and gloves reduce the rate of heat loss from one’s body, and hence the required shivering metabolism rate to maintain 37°C. They do not warm cold stones. To confirm my opening sentence, turn a fan on. You feel cooling because the fan increases the convective heat transfer coefficient at your skin, increasing Q at constant T. You feel increase in Q. Besides your experiment is about radiant energy transfer only, you ruled out conduction and convection, so the blanket conduction analogy is invalid if radiant and heat transfer are different mechanisms. Radiant energy transfer does not work the same way as conductive & convective heat transfer, as you know. Energy from colder cannot heat hotter further because the second law of thermodynamics says so, because nature says so; always and everywhere.”
“Energy from colder cannot heat hotter further because the second law of thermodynamics says so, because nature says so; always and everywhere.
Philip Bradley says
Increasing clouds with decreasing relative humidity is the signature of aerosol (and GCR?) cloud seeding.
BTW Henry, there’s no hyphen in inland.
Henry says:
Sorry about all the hyphens. I checked. You are right. Thx.
Dropping temperatures, as observed by me in maxima, means and minima
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
must mean that the air is cooling. Cooler air absorbs less moisture, or rather: cooler air drops more humidity out of the atmosphere as water (l). Initially this gives some warmth but eventually less humidity in the air means less GHG in the air. Now, unlike the CO2, we know for sure that water vapor is a GHG. So, as the cooling from the sun becomes more evident so the cooling is further enhanced and accelerated by more water vapor dropping out of the atmosphere. That is why I am worried that we could already be cooling by more than we think.
HenryP says:
May 12, 2012 at 12:26 am
“Eric Adler
…..is slowing the increase in temperature.
Henry says
Sorry to spoil the party again. You got it all wrong as to the real reason….
It is the maximum temperatures dropping that is the problem,
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
It must be to do with something to do with the sun?>
Initially I had been thinking that it (i.e. the drop in maxima) could also be caused by increasing cloud formation but then one would expect global RH% increasing, and not dropping, as is being observed.”
The short term reduction in the rate of warming we have seen recently seems to due to a number of phenomena – La Ninas, reduction in solar activity and aerosols. A recent paper by Foster and Rahmsdorf did regression analysis of the global temperature analysis against those variables and found a trend which would be expected from GHG forcing reappeared.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/
“Eitherway, eventually that drop in maxima is going to work its way down and realize a change in means and minima, as is also already somewhat observable.
Maxima is defintely the better variable to use to evaluate whether we are in a global warming or global cooling state.”
In fact the increases in average temperature during the last 40 years have been driven by increase in minimum temperatures. This is consistent with forcing being due to GHG’s, which cause an increase in minimum nightime temperatures due to the reduction in the escape of heat from the earth atmosphere system. . Even when the temperature dropped due to global dimming in the 1960’s, the minimum nightime temperature was increasing. Even when aerosols decreased in the 80’s and 90’s, and more sunlight was reaching the earth, the GHG warming was sufficiently strong to make the minimum nightime temperature increase faster than the maximum temperature.
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/wild/2006GL028031.pdf
Myrrh says:
May 12, 2012 at 2:18 am
“….Energy from colder cannot heat hotter further because the second law of thermodynamics says so, because nature says so; always and everywhere.
Your understanding of the physics of the Greenhouse Effect is so screwed up it seems hopeless to comment, but I will try to enlighten others who may be confused by your comment. The Greenhouse effect doesn’t occur by net flow of heat from cooler air to the surface of the earth. There is no NET FLOW of energy from colder to hotter regions happening, which would be prohibited by the second law of thermodynamics.
What happens is that the rate o fCOOLING of the earth’s surface is reduced by the presence of gases which absorb outgoing radiation and send a portion of it back to the earth by radiating what they absorbed equally in all directions. The rate of cooling is reduced below what it would be if the radiation were totally transmitted directly to outer space. The gases do not actually heat the earth, which would violate the second law, but reduce the rate of cooling as a result of their presence. Less radiation is returned to the earth by GHG’s than was emitted by the warmer surface of the earth. Thus the second law of thermodynamics is not violated by the greenhouse effect.
It is unfortunate that you keep posting misinformation which has the potential to mislead the unwary.
richardscourtney says:
May 12, 2012 at 1:25 am
Eric Adler:
With reference to sulphate aerosol cooling (at May 11, 2012 at 10:22 am) you assert;
“We didnt know these things in 1998 but are aware of them now.””
What I said was the extent to which sulphate aerosal emissions would increase as a result of Asian economic development was not anticipated. The fact that Sulphate Aerosals have a cooling effect was well known by James Hansen, who modeled the effect when he began his career studying the atmosphere of Venus.
HenryP says:
May 12, 2012 at 4:52 am
Why should we use the 44 weather stations we selected, rather than HADCRUT, GISS , NCDC or data sets?
These are far more complete than yours!
They don’t show that the earth has a real cooling trend currently.
richardscourtney says:
May 12, 2012 at 1:25 am
“Indeed, in 1999 I published a peer-reviewed paper that showed this ‘aerosol fix’ was not correct and the aerosol hypothesis could not be the real reason why the models ‘run hot’.
(ref. Courtney RS An assessment of validation experiments conducted on computer models of global climate using the general circulation model of the UK’s Hadley Centre Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 491-502, September 1999).
And before you blather about 1999 is after 1998, I point out that it would have been impossible to obtain the data, conduct the analysis and publish the paper in less than a year.
Richard”
Energy and Environment is not really [SNIP: Eric, don’t even think of going there. You’ve gotten extraordinary latitude here and you are pushing it. Put forth substantive arguments or get lost. -REP]
Eric Adler says:
“Energy and Environment is not really a peer reviewed journal.”
E&E really is a peer reviewed journal. Adler expressing his ignorance again by repeating false talking points. The guy can’t think for himself.
Furthermore, E&E is far more honest than most climate Pal Review journals. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion spells out in detail the corruption of the climate journal industry. But Adler won’t read Montford’s book, because it would make his head explode.
Eric Adler:
In your post at May 12, 2012 at 1:25 am you lie;
“Energy and Environment is not really a peer reviewed journal. ”
IT IS.
I am now on the Editorial Board of E&E and so I know as a certain fact that E&E has a much more stringent peer review system than e.g. Nature and Science.
And if your lie were not a falsehood then that would not change the fact that you said the info. was not known in 1998 but the publication date of my paper proves that the info, was then known and was incorporated in at least one climate model..
I really do wish there was a way to cut-off the pay from the trolls now infesting WUWT. As your post proves, some of you are not even competent as trolls.
Richard
Eric Adler:
Having cooled down a bit following my reading your outrage at May 12, 2012 at 1:25, I am now responding to your daft post at May 12, 2012 at 1:33 pm.
Firstly, your making the two posts in reply to my one suggests you recognise that I had proven your assertion was wrong. One reply would have been enough to disprove my point if you thought you could.
Secondly, your post at May 12, 2012 at 1:25 ‘moves the goal posts’. You said the sulphate aerosol effects “were not known” in 1998 and when I showed they were incorporated in at least one climate model you have changed that (in your post at May 12, 2012 at 1:25) to be;
“What I said was the extent to which sulphate aerosal emissions would increase as a result of Asian economic development was not anticipated.”
No, that was not what you said. Indeed, if you had said that then it would have been wrong because
fourthly, Hansen’s 1998 forecast was a projection of anticipated climate change from increased emissions of anthropogenic GHGs notably CO2. The CO2 emission increase happened because of Asian coal burning: where else was it supposed to have happened? And that coal burning released the aerosols.
Fifthly, the putative aerosol cooling should have caused localised cooling over China because the aerosol washes out of the air in days. But that cooling has not happened so the aerosol excuse is known to be wrong.
I could cite my paper that reports the nonsense of the SRES scenarios, but you would be unlikely to understand that and I have said sufficient to show your assertions are wrong, so I will stop here.
Richard
Eric Adler said: “In fact the increases in average temperature during the last 40 years have been driven by increase in minimum temperatures. This is consistent with forcing being due to GHG’s, which cause an increase in minimum nightime temperatures due to the reduction in the escape of heat from the earth atmosphere system. . Even when the temperature dropped due to global dimming in the 1960′s, the minimum nightime temperature was increasing. Even when aerosols decreased in the 80′s and 90′s, and more sunlight was reaching the earth, the GHG warming was sufficiently strong to make the minimum nightime temperature increase faster than the maximum temperature.”
Eric: You are wrong about this, too. Your paper’s references do not cite where the data comes from that shows minimum temperatures to be increasing but I already know where the increases are coming from. Most of the stations warmers like to use to make their fake claims about CO2 come from using urban settings where additional urbanization has occured over time, thus increasing the UHI effect. This is a well known and understood phenomena that was studied yeras ago.
But if you look at rural stations where surface conditions have remained unchanged and unurbanized with time, there has been no warming of minimum temperatures and a clear cooling trend has emerged. Three such stations that show this trend are the Corvallis, OR agrimet station, the Idaho National Engineering lab and Hanford Washington. Atmospheric Co2 increased in these places just like any others globally but there is no minimum warming signal. These records completely falsify the claims of Foster and Rahmsdorf as well as yourself about CO2 and the claims that it is driving minimum temperatures upward. The sloppiness and selective use of data by you people is truly disgusting. It is an outrage! YOU and the other warmers are the ones manipulating statistics to get a desired result and to continue to cover up your incompetence. See the references below:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/marka/inl_cfa.1950-2011.png
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/marka/hanford.png
http://democratherald.com/news/opinion/editorial/climate-predictions-versus-what-we-see/article_6ccdd584-70b3-11e1-a0ba-001871e3ce6c.html
HenryP says:
May 12, 2012 at 4:52 am
Dropping temperatures, as observed by me in maxima, means and minima
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
must mean that the air is cooling. Cooler air absorbs less moisture, or rather: cooler air drops more humidity out of the atmosphere as water (l). Initially this gives some warmth but eventually less humidity in the air means less GHG in the air.
Cooler air and less humidity means less heat transport by convection and less heat lost upwards to space, and hence climate warming. The hydrological cycle regulates the climate.
A couple of days ago I pointed out at Warwick Hughes site that the conventional explanation for UHI is likely wrong, because cities generally have a higher albedo than surrounding areas. The cause of UHI is likely reduced evapotranspiration.
Which suggests that the most important anthropogenic effect on climate, particularly land surface temperatures, isn’t through GHGs, but through manipulation of the hydrological cycle, irrigation, storm drains, dams, etc.
Philip Bradley: I think it is an accurate assessment of yours that UHI will increase as a result of decreased evapotranspiration in the urban environment but remember, that is still a local effect. Water vapor as a GHG is very powerful, intercepting IR at most of the wavenumbers of infrared from the ground. If you decrease the absolute humidity of the troposphere, radiational cooling at the water vapor upper boundary will most suredly increase as it will occur at a lower altitude. That cannot go without a consequence of increasing radiational cooling of the ground as well, which would have to increase low level cloudiness. Not good for a waming case inspite of the 85 Wm-2 of surface energy that is given back to the troposphere from the hydro cycle at its current level.
I would bet the cloudier lower levels would block more incoming solar shortwave rather than increase it compared to the amount of heat gained at the surface by a reduction in global precipitation. For example, in rough numbers, if the effective emission height of the earth is lowered by 1 Km from a lower absolute tropospheric humidity, the increase in OLR from the surface would go up by over 20Wm-2. A very large amount. There would be a defininate unspooling effect of cooling temperature from that process and it would have to end up blocking more solar IR from a much higher lower tropospheric relative humidity. It would make sense that earth glacial periods had a lot of lower clouds and fogs compared to interglacials, but regardless, changes in radiational components of the earth would have a much faster effect on changing temperature than the hydro cycle. That would just follow the change in available surface energy to evaporate water which the hydro cycle also self regulates in a positive or negative direction depending on whether the surface is warming or cooling by radiation, but the direction would be a positive feedback to radiation and temperature. The upper limit on temperature constrained by the vapor pressure of the tropical oceans and the respective saturation vapor pressure of the air over lying it ( which increases evaporation from increasing sea surface temperature, which produces more latent heat near 30 degC than sensible and increases the hydro cycle, not water vapor, as the increased vapor also causes radiational cooling of the troposphere in exchange for the surface GH effect, enhancing convection, therefore increasing cloud amount and or thickness as you point out, thus increasing moist convection and precipitation, which takes the vapor back out and hence, more blocked solar shortwave and thus, the constrained balance from available solar shortwave and GH effect. ) and the lower limit by some sort of balance that would be obtained by decreasing OLR from increased cloudiness vs. available solar shortwave.
So to summarize, what I’m stating as a meteorologist to you is that the hydological cycle definately acts to amplify or deamplify warmimg or cooling as you state and it does help set the uppper and lower constraints by self regulating the positive feedbacks, but the change in radiation components dictate whether the climate warms or cools and that can include any change in radiation off of the sun from infrared wavelengths up through ultraviolet, as well as the increase or decrease in the solar wind that modulates the amount of inter galactic cosmic ray flux into the atmosphere, which according to Henrick Svensmark, changes the ionization of hyroscopic nuclei that can modulate the cloud to water vapor balance irrespective of the actual change in solar irradiance absorbed at the ground.
By the way, CO2 doesn’t add much if any warming because it also causes radiational cooling of the troposphere in exchange for a higher emission height. That counter acts the growth of water vapor by lowering the tropospheric saturation vapor pressure of water…the exact opposite of what Lacis and Hansen keep claiming and a counter reaction to the increased radiative absorption by the gas if it goes up in concentration.
PDO, ENSO and La Nina have variations to the above, but it seems as though the effects of global warming and cooling are more related into how increases in tropical convection cause changes in the jet stream and redistribution of precipitation patterns. For example, in the Pacific Northwest, ENSO brings a sunnier, dryer winter and shuns the polar jet stream further east and north. The net effect is warmer temperatures. Somehow that theme dominates the world climate to favor some warming. Likewise, in La Nina and cold phase PDO, lessened tropical convection and the likes do the opposite, expanding the dominance of the polar jet and causing some cooling by expansion of the southward reaches of the polar jet.
OK. Off my soap box and done. Hope these explanations help some ( even though you didn’t ask for them 😀 )
Chuck Wiese says:
May 12, 2012 at 3:48 pm
“Eric Adler said: “In fact the increases in average temperature during the last 40 years have been driven by increase in minimum temperatures. This is consistent with forcing being due to GHG’s, which cause an increase in minimum nightime temperatures due to the reduction in the escape of heat from the earth atmosphere system. . Even when the temperature dropped due to global dimming in the 1960′s, the minimum nightime temperature was increasing. Even when aerosols decreased in the 80′s and 90′s, and more sunlight was reaching the earth, the GHG warming was sufficiently strong to make the minimum nightime temperature increase faster than the maximum temperature.”
Eric: You are wrong about this, too. Your paper’s references do not cite where the data comes from that shows minimum temperatures to be increasing but I already know where the increases are coming from. Most of the stations warmers like to use to make their fake claims about CO2 come from using urban settings where additional urbanization has occured over time, thus increasing the UHI effect. This is a well known and understood phenomena that was studied yeras ago.
But if you look at rural stations where surface conditions have remained unchanged and unurbanized with time, there has been no warming of minimum temperatures and a clear cooling trend has emerged. Three such stations that show this trend are the Corvallis, OR agrimet station, the Idaho National Engineering lab and Hanford Washington. Atmospheric Co2 increased in these places just like any others globally but there is no minimum warming signal. These records completely falsify the claims of Foster and Rahmsdorf as well as yourself about CO2 and the claims that it is driving minimum temperatures upward. The sloppiness and selective use of data by you people is truly disgusting. It is an outrage! YOU and the other warmers are the ones manipulating statistics to get a desired result and to continue to cover up your incompetence. See the references below:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/marka/inl_cfa.1950-2011.png
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/marka/hanford.png
http://democratherald.com/news/opinion/editorial/climate-predictions-versus-what-we-see/article_6ccdd584-70b3-11e1-a0ba-001871e3ce6c.html”
You must be joking. You use 2 temperature stations in the US that show mean temperatures to make counter an argument that global temperature minimim nightime temperatures have been rising faster than maximum temperatures! Using 3 stations in the Northwestern US, to represent the entire globe is a statistical travesty. There is a large variation in trends between stations and regions of the globe, with a sizeable number of negative trends, but the overall global trend is definitely positive. Then you complain about selective use of data, sloppiness and manipulation of statistics by climate scientists. It is really ironic.
The most recent study of the Urban Heat Island effect was from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project:
http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-uhi.pdf
Their conclusion is as follows:
“The effect of urban heating on estimates of global average land surface temperature is
studied by applying an urban-rural classification based on MODIS satellite data to the
Berkeley Earth temperature dataset compilation of 39,028 sites from 10 different publicly
available sources. We compare the distribution of linear temperature trends for these sites to
the distribution for a rural subset of 16,132 sites chosen to be distant from all MODISidentified
urban areas. While the trend distributions are broad, with one-third of the stations
in the US and worldwide having a negative trend, both distributions show significant
warming. Time series of the Earth’s average land temperature are estimated using the
Berkeley Earth methodology applied to the full dataset and the rural subset; the difference of
these shows a slight negative slope over the period 1950 to 2010, with a slope of -0.19°C ±
0.19 / 100yr (95% confidence), opposite in sign to that expected if the urban heat island
effect was adding anomalous warming to the record. The small size, and its negative sign,
supports the key conclusion of prior groups that urban warming does not unduly bias
estimates of recent global temperature change.”
Your lack of perspective is unbelievable.
Eric Adler: And you don’t seem to think that the dropping of rural stations from the records over time and using Hansen’s algorithm’s to “massage missing data areas” don’t add any bias to your claims. That is what is unbelievable. And if CO2 is causing nightime temperatures to rise as you claim, then explain why the record shows cooling in these cases! If nightime minimum temperatures were rising during the period of record, the daytime maximums would really have to be cooling for you to be correct about averages. I know that hasn’t happened because it would mean cloudiness had to increase substantially in these areas that are composed mostly of a continental climate, excuding Corvallis, which is maritime, but that strengthens my case, cooling occured there as well.
Further, increasing temperatures by themselves do NOT prove ANYTHING about CO2! Anyone who does not understand this is not a scientist. So explain why, if you are correct, that daytime maximums would have to cool substantially to average out to a cooling trend with minimus increasing when Hansen and people like you claim adding more CO2 causes maximum extremes!
And further, explain why these stations didnt follow the mantra that adding CO2 causes warming. The period of record is far too long at all of them to be a “fluke” in the global system, especaially when one of them is right by the ocean and CO2 went up at these stations just like all the others!
You’re [snip] Adler and as full of contradictions as from any warmer I’ve ever spoken with. But I do look forward to your explanations of how these stations can be dismissed from the records that Hansen and GISS make that want warming to never cease when Co2 went up and maximums would have had to fall greater to average a cooling trend at all three with different climate regimes.
Eric Adler says:
In fact the increases in average temperature during the last 40 years have been driven by increase in minimum temperatures. This is consistent with forcing being due to GHG’s, which cause an increase in minimum nightime temperatures…..
Henry says
Check again the 3 lines of the relevant graph reported by the IPCC
the red line actually shows that night time temps (minima) have been dropping…..
Either way, I did my own investigations on this,
in fact I had a discussion just now with Village idiot, here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/10/uah-global-temperature-up-in-april/#comment-982122
I have found that maxima are a better variable to evaluate rather than average temperatures.
Eric Adler: Here is more indegestion for you. Below is the link to the NCDC climate records for the 48 lower US. When you click on this, select the last ten to fourtenn years of record and use a thirty year mean or longer base period and select the annual mean US temperature record.. Here you will find that my cooling trends are not limited to but a few select stations. So again, explain why CO2 would cause nightime temperatures to rise,but daytime maximums to fall greater to average out to a nation wide cooling trend, and match that up to the claims that CO2 causes the climate to warm. I will love to read your explanation. I’m sure it will be a breakthrough in science:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
Eric, please identify the fingerprint of AGW, or aerosoles in this graph:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/files/2012/05/Mean-Temp-1.jpg
Chuck Weise says:
“So to summarize, what I’m stating as a meteorologist to you is that the hydological cycle definately acts to amplify or deamplify warmimg or cooling as you state and it does help set the uppper and lower constraints by self regulating the positive feedbacks, but the change in radiation components dictate whether the climate warms or cools and that can include any change in radiation off of the sun from infrared wavelengths up through ultraviolet, as well as the increase or decrease in the solar wind that modulates the amount of inter galactic cosmic ray flux into the atmosphere, which according to Henrick Svensmark, changes the ionization of hyroscopic nuclei that can modulate the cloud to water vapor balance irrespective of the actual change in solar irradiance absorbed at the ground. ”
Are you really a meteorologist?
That is one hell of a run-on sentence that doesn’t lead to any conclusion.
I don’t see why you bother to mention Svensmark and cosmic rays. There is no real evidence to support the idea that cosmic rays influence the formation of clouds. Svensmark had to wait over a week for clouds to result from a burst of cosmic rays, in a few cherry picked cases. Real analysis of a larger number of events showed no correlation between Cosmic Rays and cloudiness.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009GL041327.shtml
William says:
May 13, 2012 at 3:16 am
“Eric, please identify the fingerprint of AGW, or aerosoles in this graph:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/files/2012/05/Mean-Temp-1.jpg”
You need to change the scale to 100C full scale. I can still use a protractor to see the increase in temperature with the 30C full scale that you use.
Chuck Wiese says:
May 13, 2012 at 12:01 am
“Eric Adler: Here is more indegestion for you. Below is the link to the NCDC climate records for the 48 lower US. When you click on this, select the last ten to fourtenn years of record and use a thirty year mean or longer base period and select the annual mean US temperature record.. Here you will find that my cooling trends are not limited to but a few select stations. So again, explain why CO2 would cause nightime temperatures to rise,but daytime maximums to fall greater to average out to a nation wide cooling trend, and match that up to the claims that CO2 causes the climate to warm. I will love to read your explanation. I’m sure it will be a breakthrough in science:”
There are a number of things wrong with your argument. First of all the US is 3% of the earth’s surface. Global warming does not mean that all areas warm at equal rates, and even over the long term, some areas get cooler and some get warmer. Other factors, El Nino, solar and aerosols which are sources of noise, can have short term effects larger than CO2.
If you look at good versus bad stations in the US, even over a center, there is a distribution of trends which ranges form -1 to plus 2 degrees per century, regardless of station quality. Look at figure 3 of the following report:
http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-station-quality.pdf
HenryP says:
May 12, 2012 at 4:52 am
“A couple of days ago I pointed out at Warwick Hughes site that the conventional explanation for UHI is likely wrong, because cities generally have a higher albedo than surrounding areas. The cause of UHI is likely reduced evapotranspiration.”
So explain why night time temperature is influenced more by the UHI than daytime temperature? Doesn’t evaporation occur during the daytime and condensation at night? Doesn’t condensation release heat? Your argument doesn’t make any sense.
Eric Adler,
Show us your “–1 to +2º per century:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/files/2012/05/Mean-Temp-1.jpg
Eric Adler says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/10/a-blast-from-the-past-james-hansen-on-the-global-warming-debate-from-13-years-ago/#comment-984198
Henry says
It seems you got me confused with somebody else. I never said any such thing as what you claim.
I told you why I looked at maxima rather than any of those other stupid variables that everybody who is anybody in climatic science looks at and where I cannot even find out how often and how precise they are calibrated?
Because of this, hey – all of them, including you and all of the sceptics here – do not actually see what is most obvious.
http://letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
If you think my sample of 44 is too small then I challenge you to repeat my test with another 44 stations and at the same balance by latitude and 70/30 sea -inland. See what you get and then you get back to me?
Eric Adller said: “Are you really a meteorologist?
That is one hell of a run-on sentence that doesn’t lead to any conclusion.”
“I don’t see why you bother to mention Svensmark and cosmic rays. There is no real evidence to support the idea that cosmic rays influence the formation of clouds. Svensmark had to wait over a week for clouds to result from a burst of cosmic rays, in a few cherry picked cases. Real analysis of a larger number of events showed no correlation between Cosmic Rays and cloudiness. ”
Eric: To someone like you who is not a meteorologist, I can understand why it doesn’t make sense. You make no sense to me. The upshot of the statement is that solar shortwave radiation controls the saturation vapor pressure of the atmosphere by absorptive warming and convective heat transfer. GHG’s do not, in fact, they lower the saturation vapor prressure of air through radiational cooling of the troposphere in exchange for a higher effective emission height of the ground radiation and surface GHG effect. That puts a brake on GHG growth unless the solar short wave is increased. That is basic physics, but apparently too hard for you to understand claiming some sort of climate experise.
Svensmark’s new paper has drawn a lot of atttention. The jury is out on the actual physical verification, but the correlations are as astounding as the solar magnteic correlation is to temperature. Only a fool would discard those correlations in favor of CO2 causing warming, considering its r squared is about .38 compared to > = .92 for solar magnetic to temperature.
Eric Adler said: “There are a number of things wrong with your argument. First of all the US is 3% of the earth’s surface. Global warming does not mean that all areas warm at equal rates, and even over the long term, some areas get cooler and some get warmer. Other factors, El Nino, solar and aerosols which are sources of noise, can have short term effects larger than CO2.
If you look at good versus bad stations in the US, even over a center, there is a distribution of trends which ranges form -1 to plus 2 degrees per century, regardless of station quality. Look at figure 3 of the following report:”
Eric Adler: No. There are a number of things wrong with your argument. The 3% nonsense is al the more reason to be suspicious of your reasoning. If the oceans can truly buffer the total earth climate, then why does that small 3% refuse to warm? And the rest of your comments are as ridiculous as the first. So if the USA cooled for the last 14 years, which is what it has done, how did that happen as CO2 radiation has increased? Have we had a long wave trough persist in this part of the world acting as a cold air dump from the arctic while everyone else warmed for 14 years? Sorry, Eric, not in the records. So what is causing the cooling? Like every warmer I have spoken with you NEVER answer the question except for answering the above with unrelenting poppycock that makes no sense!
So I’ll ask you again because you did not answer the question. Why is the continental USA cooling when CO2 radiation increased in these areas? Why are GLOBAL temperatures not warming when Hansen’s models said they would? Hansen’s modeling predicted warming everywhere and don’t tell me it didn’t because I am in posession of climate model forecasts for the Pacific Northwest that predicted 1 degF of warming per decade through this past decade when , in fact, the Northwest COOLED by 1.61 degF, which makes a huge error of 2.61 degF. Explain that! The cooling in some places and warming in others does not fit any synoptic matching of jet stream patterns that would cause a persistant outflow of cold from the arctic in any one region. So like I’ve said, if you can’t explain the cooling in a rational, verifiable scientific way that can justify the claim that CO2 is causing global warming, the divergence in temperature trends compared to modeling forecasts completely invalidates and falsifies your claims and all the claims of Hansen and the warming priests. I am again waiting for a satisfactory answer that is not made of poppycock and blather.
Eric Adler said: “So explain why night time temperature is influenced more by the UHI than daytime temperature? Doesn’t evaporation occur during the daytime and condensation at night? Doesn’t condensation release heat? Your argument doesn’t make any sense.”
Eric: This again proves you don’t understand basic meteorology or physics. The night UHI effect is not caused by condensation. It is caused by radiational cooling from the ground that causes a temperature inversion and reduced vertical mixing up a dry adiabat to warmer air above relative to its hydrostatic height. That is especially true in the winter and cooler weather months. That decreased mixing allows for a discernable difference in temperature in urban vs. rural areas because the building heat energies do not get large enough to break a nightime inversion and some day inversions to convect away the small amount of heat energy that accumulates into the surrounding air and raises the temperature compared to rural settings with less heat emitting structures. The less convection, the lesser amount of Joules of energy transfer to raise the local ambient air temperature.
Chuck Wiese says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/10/a-blast-from-the-past-james-hansen-on-the-global-warming-debate-from-13-years-ago/#comment-984352
Henry@Chuck
I think I can confirm what you say there
I refer specifically to my table on minima
http://letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
(the third table, on the bottom)
Note that Las Vegas here has the highest warming rate on (my) record
e.g. compare to Cheyenne (in the same minima table)
but I do think that increasing vegetation especially in Las Vegas – it used be desert- may also have played its role here/
it (i.e. the new vegetation) is doing the same thing, giving an additional UHI effect?
Rgrds.
Henry
If chinese sulfates are cooling the planet, should not the planet have been cooling from 1900-1940 when the US was building an enormous amount of coal power plants and dumping huge amounts of sulfates into the atmosphere? The planet was warming at that time and it is blamed on CO2 emissions by the US? What gives? Chinese power plants are cooling the earth and ours before SO2 scrubbing were warming itt?
Also I think Hansen’s scenario A is the proper one to be compared to actual temperatures. Mount Moana Loa shows steadily increasing CO2 content…. business as usual has been occurring.
Chuck Wiese wrote:
“Eric: To someone like you who is not a meteorologist, I can understand why it doesn’t make sense. You make no sense to me. The upshot of the statement is that solar shortwave radiation controls the saturation vapor pressure of the atmosphere by absorptive warming and convective heat transfer. GHG’s do not, in fact, they lower the saturation vapor prressure of air through radiational cooling of the troposphere in exchange for a higher effective emission height of the ground radiation and surface GHG effect. That puts a brake on GHG growth unless the solar short wave is increased. That is basic physics, but apparently too hard for you to understand claiming some sort of climate experise.”
Of course the sun is the supplier of the energy which heats the earth’s surface, and evaporates water from the surface. This does not negate the physics of the greenhouse effect, which says that greenhouse gases absorb some of the upwelling radiation and emit about 1/2 of it in a downward direction back to the earths surface Your account omits this effect.. In fact the lapse rate and the higher emission altitude due to the presence of GHG’s is what keeps the earth’s surface temperature higher. This lowers the rate of energy lost to outer space. This makes nights on earth much warmer than they would otherwise be without GHG’s in the atmosphere. If GHG’s increase in concentration in the atmosphere, slightly less upwelling radiation will be transmitted to outer space. Blocking by GHGs, of radiation which is coming from the sun, is not high enough, to prevent a net increase of heat to the surface. GHG’s are transparent to short wave radiation.
At the same time, the warming of the surface increases evaporation of H2O which is a greenhouse gas, enhancing the warming effect. In fact warmer ocean surfaces will also enhance the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere, which is a positive feedback mechanism, which was responsible for deglaciation which ended past ice ages.
When the surface becomes warm enough to produce enough upwelling radiation so that its rate of escape to outer space, matches the incoming solar radiation, the warming stops. I guess that is what you mean by a “brake”. But really the term “brake” as applied to GHG’s is not a proper description and is misleading. If the GHG’s were absent the earth would be much colder, because at a given temperature, the absence of GHG’s would cause an increase in the rate of escape of long wave radiation to outer space.
The description I provided was a simple one dimensional one, which doesn’t phenomena that are important to weather and climate such as clouds, ocean currents wind, terrain etc.
alcheson says:
May 14, 2012 at 7:04 am
“If chinese sulfates are cooling the planet, should not the planet have been cooling from 1900-1940 when the US was building an enormous amount of coal power plants and dumping huge amounts of sulfates into the atmosphere? ”
You are omitting the fact that the intensity of the sun’s radiation was increasing during that time. Climate is complicated and using one variable to determine what is happening is wrong. In fact we need a huge number of measurements and computers to do the job.
The earth’s population was smaller and consumption was less than it is now. Check out some old hindcasts on this web site.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm
Eric Adler says:
May 11, 2012 at 5:19 pm
I am having trouble understanding why Doughty wrote this blog post….
Eric, I’m sorry you are having trouble understanding. I also apologize for not responding sooner. I have been without internet service since last Thursday evening, and this is the first chance I have had to respond. Hopefully you are still monitoring the comments.
If you don’t understand why I wrote the post, I suggest you re-read the post, as well as Dr. Hansen’s original article. I made an attempt to explain myself at May 10, 2012 at 9:03 pm . My comparison of Dr. Hansen’s predictions to the observational record was simply a humorous device to introduce his original article to a wider audience. I would not ask anyone to draw significant conclusions from my crude attempts to manually compare the predicted temperatures to the subsequent measurements. I was simply trying to make people aware of Dr. Hansen’s original 1999 article and stimulate discussion. Based on the comments, it seems as if I was successful. In particular, regarding Dr. Hansen’s Table 1, spelling out “Key Differences with Skeptics”, I expected the informed reader to use his or her own judgment to determine which items have become more or less resolved with time, if any. You may have noted that Tom Murphy at May 10, 2012 at 7:38 pm did just that. In addition, I thought Dr. Hansen’s expectations for timing of the resolution of the global warming question were significant. According to him, the issue should have been resolved by now. Also, I thought it was worth highlighting the spectacular irony of Dr. Hansen’s attitude toward “skeptics” then as compared to now. Perhaps I was too subtle for you. My mistake – and I apologize. If that doesn’t clear things up for you, I’m afraid it is hopeless.
In regards to your comment at May 11, 2012 at 10:49 am Eric, where you challenge my objectivity, I am very glad that you brought up the issue of cognitive dissonance. It just so happens that about three months ago I responded to a relative’s friend, who questioned why so many who call themselves “climate scientists”, and who are ostensibly well-educated, are convinced that the CAGW dogma is a correct view of the world. The following is a portion of my response:
“The new crop of scientists who got into the field in the late 80’s and early 90’s all had what could be considered to be good motives. They were mostly environmentalists who wanted to do something truly great in their science careers. So they developed a near-messianic mission in their own minds to “save the earth”. What nobler calling could there be? But that presumes that the earth needs to be saved. A better, less biased goal would have been “to better understand the mechanisms of climate”. Unfortunately, they bought into those old, faulty climate theories and have based their life’s work on them. They have published papers pointing out the evils of CO2 and predicting doom unless we reduce our CO2 emissions. Their entire professional lives have been spent railing against CO2. And since they were surrounded by others who also didn’t question the status quo (“CO2 is bad”), they fell prey to groupthink. Is it any wonder that it is difficult, if not impossible, for them to accept that their entire career has been spent chasing a specter that didn’t exist in the first place? Talk about demoralizing. I’m not saying they’re bad people. They truly wanted to do the right thing. It would be difficult for any of us to admit consciously that our entire world view and life’s work was, in fact, worthless and wrong. I truly believe that many of them are incapable of unbiased investigation into the AGW issue, because subconsciously they are really terrified of proving themselves wrong”.
So you see Eric, the cognitive dissonance is on the pro-AGW “climate scientist” side, not the skeptics.
Another point that you might consider regarding the “…statistics that show economic geologists, who work on resource extraction are among the most skpetical of AGW:
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
“The two areas of expertise in the survey with the smallest percentage of participants
answering yes to question 2 were economic geology with 47% (48 of 103) and meteorology with 64% (23 of 36)..”
Eric, you proposed that geoscientists and meteorologists held their views regarding AGW largely due to cognitive dissonance, but there are alternative explanations for those statistics. Geoscientists are better aware than the general public that the climate of the earth has always been in flux, and has experienced much greater atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the past, with generally beneficial results. Meteorologists have a deep understanding of the mechanisms of weather and climate, and therefore realize that attributing any significant effect to a trace gas is simply ludicrous. There is simply no hard data (that doesn’t suffer from one or more of the basic logical fallacies) that supports the concept of CO2 climate forcing. And meteorologists are all about the hard data.
As for me personally, if I could fuel my car with magic pixie dust that produced only CO2 emissions, but at a higher rate per mile than my current hydrocarbon-based fuel (even at a slightly elevated price), I would gladly do so – even though my career has been spent searching for and discovering new sources of hydrocarbons. Why? I am a rational environmentalist, and additional CO2 in the atmosphere is much more preferable to the other emissions that result from the burning of fossil fuels (as small as they may be). And expensive catalytic converters would no longer be needed. As a geoscientist, I am more familiar with the geologic record than most people. Compared with most of geologic history, the earth is currently starved for CO2. You must know that when atmospheric CO2 concentration was at many times current levels, the biosphere was much more robust and prolific. The earth was lush with green. Huge coral reefs larger than the Great Barrier Reef and massive limestone beds were formed. Life diversity exploded. It is the ultimate hubris for CAGW proponents to claim that they and they alone know what the optimum concentration of CO2 should be in the atmosphere.
One final item relating to your suggestion that I may be subject to prejudice:
Since college, I have always been a strong supporter of nuclear power, although I would derive no financial benefit from its increased implementation. Nuclear power makes sense to me. Where power generating stations are needed far from traditional natural gas or coal reserves, nuclear power is the best option.
That’s about all I can do for you Eric. Based on the number of your comments, it is apparent that you very much enjoyed reading and discussing this post. I’m glad I could be of service.
F.
Floyd,
You wrote:
“Geoscientists are better aware than the general public that the climate of the earth has always been in flux, and has experienced much greater atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the past, with generally beneficial results. ”
Economic geologists are not the worlds leading expert on the history of the earth.
The gelologists who are most expert on paleontology, American Quaternary Association , and the International Union for Quaternary Research both support the IPCC position on global warming.
The International Union has stated:
http://www.inqua.org/documents/iscc.pdf
“Human activities are now causing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses – including carbon dioxide, methane, tropospheric ozone, and nitrous oxide – to rise well above pre-industrial levels….Increases in greenhouse gasses are causing temperatures to rise…The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. A lack of full scientific certainty about some aspects of climate change is not a reason for delaying an immediate response that will, at a reasonable cost, prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system
….Minimizing the amount of this carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere presents a huge challenge but must be a global priority… ”
For people who understand the science there is sufficient hard data to justify action to reduce emissions.
Eric Adler said: “This does not negate the physics of the greenhouse effect, which says that greenhouse gases absorb some of the upwelling radiation and emit about 1/2 of it in a downward direction back to the earths surface Your account omits this effect.. In fact the lapse rate and the higher emission altitude due to the presence of GHG’s is what keeps the earth’s surface temperature higher. This lowers the rate of energy lost to outer space. This makes nights on earth much warmer than they would otherwise be without GHG’s in the atmosphere. If GHG’s increase in concentration in the atmosphere, slightly less upwelling radiation will be transmitted to outer space. Blocking by GHGs, of radiation which is coming from the sun, is not high enough, to prevent a net increase of heat to the surface. GHG’s are transparent to short wave radiation.
At the same time, the warming of the surface increases evaporation of H2O which is a greenhouse gas, enhancing the warming effect. In fact warmer ocean surfaces will also enhance the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere, which is a positive feedback mechanism, which was responsible for deglaciation which ended past ice ages.
Eric: You’re wrong…..again. My account does not omit the GHG effect. I described it quite well but you don’t understand basic radiation and are just repeating the seltzered out bromides of Lacis and Hansen. The GHG effect is not due to the downward flux ( 1/2 sphere ) of radiation that is absorbed by the GHG’s alone. It is defined as the the difference between the surface directed upward flux from the ground and the outgoing longwave radiation that reaches space.
It is G = Sg-OLR, where G is the greenhouse factor. The upwelling radiation at TOA is not the other half of the direction of propagation of the flux or upward flux. That radiation, Su, is dependent on the respective optical depth of each absorbing constituent, which is a function of the respective density, ( concentration ) path length, and absorption coefficient as per the Beer/Lambert equation. The equation of radiative transfer is the determinant of what radaition actually gets out to space after it enters the gas phase from absorption and is a function of emission as detailed by tropospheric temperature profiles and it is not 1/2, it is far greater,
Your story goes astray and becomes poppycock the minute you assume adding more CO2 causes additional surface evaporation of water that leads to amplification of water vapor and additional greenhouse effect from this. There is no proof of this and the records indicate the founding work was correct, not the Lacis/Hansen baloney. Absorption of IR by CO2 in the presence of a hydrological cycle is not a forcing on temperature and proves nothing. The 61 year NOAA record shows the mean precipitable water vapor in the troposphere decreased by .649%.
Like I said, GHG’s cool the troposphere, and that is a fact for both CO2 and water vapor. Adding more CO2 causes a lowering of the effective emission height of water vapor due to increased cooling and a lower saturation vapor pressure. You can expect that the emission height of water vapor will counter CO2 by either lowering or creating more cloud cover from an enhancement of the hydro cycle and it would take very little change to wipe out the effects of CO2 in terms of any rising temperatures because of this fact. The founding work demonstrated that water vapor alone absorbs and emits enough IR BY ITSELF to trigger moist convection to 10 Km, which means its thermodynamic properties caused it to self mitigate by radiational cooling of the troposphere and starting a hydrological cycle.
Water vapor and the hydro cycle regulate the earth’s greenhouse factor, not CO2. That assumption is crap. It was from the day Hansen and Lacis assumed it to be so without studying or providing any refutations to this important founding work.
You also continue not to answer any of my questions above in this thread, including the calculation I offered you on carbon reduction and the fact that this proportionality constant of mass to ppmv shows quite well that any global or local reduction efforts are fraudulent and will accomplish nothing except to make the special interest sloths very wealthy and give the government more of everyone’s hard earned money to waste.
You have no credibility from my point of view from your failure to answer any of these questions using anything of scientific value or failing to be able to explain the falling temperatures and stasis.
@ Henry P: Nice work up on the global temperatures. I’m not familiar with all of the settings of Las Vegas, but if there was increased vegitation planted around the area, that could definately add to a night UHI effect from a higher water vapor concentration in the area which would reduce outgoing IR compared to desert ground. But in the day, that works to an opposite effect with higher temperatures. Bottom line is that GHG gases elevate the mean temperatures but reduce extremes in both direction.
Chuck Wiese says:
@ Henry P: Nice work up on the global temperatures
Nice work there from you too, @Eric Adler,
unfortunately there are none so blind as those who do not want to see…
I am hoping that people will now start looking at the right variable….before it is too late….
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/12/tisdale-an-unsent-memo-to-james-hansen/#comment-985677
Regards,
Henry
Chuck Wiese says:
May 13, 2012 at 12:09 pm
“Eric Adler said: “So explain why night time temperature is influenced more by the UHI than daytime temperature? Doesn’t evaporation occur during the daytime and condensation at night? Doesn’t condensation release heat? Your argument doesn’t make any sense.”
Eric: This again proves you don’t understand basic meteorology or physics. The night UHI effect is not caused by condensation. It is caused by radiational cooling from the ground that causes a temperature inversion and reduced vertical mixing up a dry adiabat to warmer air above relative to its hydrostatic height. That is especially true in the winter and cooler weather months. That decreased mixing allows for a discernable difference in temperature in urban vs. rural areas because the building heat energies do not get large enough to break a nightime inversion and some day inversions to convect away the small amount of heat energy that accumulates into the surrounding air and raises the temperature compared to rural settings with less heat emitting structures. The less convection, the lesser amount of Joules of energy transfer to raise the local ambient air temperature.”
I am having difficulty parsing the run-on sentence which makes up the main part of your explanation. I don’t see how radiational cooling can cause the temperature near the ground to be warmer in urban areas versus rural areas. Also what is the antecedent to “its” in the phrase “reduced vertical mixing up a dry adiabat to warmer air above relative to its hydrostatic height.”? Being a meteorologist doesn’t excuse the use of overly complex sentences which are hard to prase.
I didn’t claim that nighttime UHI effects had anything to do with condensation. You were the one who mentioned condensation as part of your explanation, and I was disputing that. Lack of Evapo-transpiration would account primarily for daytime warming, versus rural areas with more plant life and more cooling during the day by transpiration.
According to what I have read, the UHI is mainly a result of urban environments absorbing more heat during the day, due to materials used, and the tall buildings reducing the rate of upwards directed radiation which cools the earth’s surface at night. The reduction in wind velocity leading to reduced convection is believed also a factor but somewhat less important than the others I mentioned.
Chuck Wiese says:
May 14, 2012 at 7:29 pm
“The GHG effect is not due to the downward flux ( 1/2 sphere ) of radiation that is absorbed by the GHG’s alone. It is defined as the the difference between the surface directed upward flux from the ground and the outgoing longwave radiation that reaches space.
It is G = Sg-OLR, where G is the greenhouse factor. The upwelling radiation at TOA is not the other half of the direction of propagation of the flux or upward flux. That radiation, Su, is dependent on the respective optical depth of each absorbing constituent, which is a function of the respective density, ( concentration ) path length, and absorption coefficient as per the Beer/Lambert equation. The equation of radiative transfer is the determinant of what radaition actually gets out to space after it enters the gas phase from absorption and is a function of emission as detailed by tropospheric temperature profiles and it is not 1/2, it is far greater, ”
There is no contradiction between my statement about the mechanism that is responsible for the greenhouse effect, and your definition. Some upwelling radiation is outside the absorption spectrum of the gases in the atmosphere and goes directly from the surface of the earth into space. I never claimed that 1/2 of the upwelling radiation exits.
“Your story goes astray and becomes poppycock the minute you assume adding more CO2 causes additional surface evaporation of water that leads to amplification of water vapor and additional greenhouse effect from this. ”
Nobody I know of claims that CO2 by itself causes more evaporation. It is the temperature increase due to CO2 that causes more evaporation, ending up with more water vapor in the environment.
“There is no proof of this and the records indicate the founding work was correct, not the Lacis/Hansen baloney. Absorption of IR by CO2 in the presence of a hydrological cycle is not a forcing on temperature and proves nothing. The 61 year NOAA record shows the mean precipitable water vapor in the troposphere decreased by .649%.”
The NOAA record is based on weather balloon measurements, which are screwed up. This has been understood quite well since 1991.
http://www.arl.noaa.gov/documents/JournalPDFs/Elliott&Gaffen.BAMS1991.pdf
More recent satellite measurements show water vapor content in the atmosphere increasing with increasing surface temperature according to what would be predicted from the Clasius Clapeyron relationship for saturation water vapor content of air, versus temperature. Since evaporation is a rapid process, this feedback process can be established by short term measurements.
Your claim that CO2 does not reduce outgoing radiation is a ridiculous. This has been understood and accepted since 1859. Hansen and Lacis did not invent this idea.
“Like I said, GHG’s cool the troposphere, and that is a fact for both CO2 and water vapor. Adding more CO2 causes a lowering of the effective emission height of water vapor due to increased cooling and a lower saturation vapor pressure.”
The emission height is not relevant. It is the emission temperature of the radiation that determines how much radiation escapes. What happens is that as the CO2 concentration increases less radiation in the absorption bandwidth reaches the top level of the troposphere, which becomes cooler. This lowers the effective emission temperature in the band. This is also true for water vapor. This has been observed by satellite measurements of the outgoing radiation:
.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
It is very easy to write a sentence which is totally BS. It takes more work to prove it is wrong. I don’t have the time to counter every single piece of nonsense that you write.
REPLY: I call BS on your last sentence Mr. Adler. You spend countless hours here haranguing people. In fact doing a search of comemnts for your common handle “eadler” yields 1337 items. So, clearly you have time. But I’ll help you out and give you the time you need. Take a 48 hour time out – Anthony
Eric Adler (or is it Addle-r) says:
May 14, 2012 at 5:14 pm
“The gelologists who are most expert on paleontology, American Quaternary Association , and the International Union for Quaternary Research both support the IPCC position on global warming”.
Haven’t the Ad Verecundiam and Ad Populum logical fallacies suffered enough abuse from those of your kind, Mr. Steig?
[Moderator’s Note: Good try, but he really is Eric Adler and making fun of people’s names is not really good form. -REP]
Floyd Doughty says:
May 16, 2012 at 8:32 am
“Eric Adler (or is it Addle-r) says:
May 14, 2012 at 5:14 pm
“The gelologists who are most expert on paleontology, American Quaternary Association , and the International Union for Quaternary Research both support the IPCC position on global warming”.
Haven’t the Ad Verecundiam and Ad Populum logical fallacies suffered enough abuse from those of your kind, Mr. Steig?”
You claimed that economic geologist’s knowledge of the history of the earth’s climate explains their opposition to the theory of AGW. I claim that the official position of the Quaternary Science community, who know the most about AGW disproves your hypothesis that economic geologists’ position is based on superior knowledge. I consider that a fair argument. If we are talking about the opinion of a majority of experts, this is not considered to be an Ad Populum logical fallacy. The term comes from the idea that the opinion of an uneducated populace cannot be relied on.
Economic geologists are unique among earth scientists in the proportion who disagree with AGW, according to the Doran Poll.
I don’t object to being mistaken for Eric Steig. Since I am not a climate scientist by profession, it seems to me a tribute to my erudition as an amateur, although I certainly don’t have the expertise that he has.
Floyd Doughty says: @ May 14, 2012 at 12:36 pm …..
_________________________
Thank you for the clarification.
I agree with you about demonizing a vital plant nutrient (CO2) that was getting to be in critically short supply according to Mauna Loa data. It is not only idiotic but potentially suicidal over the long term to limit or sequester CO2. I also agree that nuclear esp. thorium should be exploited to the fullest as an energy source.
What many people do not seem to realize is the increase in inventions and creativity is directly proportional to the amount of energy available to a civilization. If your total focus is putting enough food on the table it is really hard to thing about coming up with new inventions.
Henry@Eric Adler
I must tell you, again, that
a) there is no global warming, eehhh, at least not from 1994
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
(as investigated independently by myself)
b) others have confirmed that global warming is over,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/12/tisdale-an-unsent-memo-to-james-hansen/#comment-985514
i.e. the extent of the warming/cooling does not fall within the errors of current measurement
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/12/tisdale-an-unsent-memo-to-james-hansen/#comment-985677
c) earth’s capacity to store energy, in oceans, in vegetation, in weather systems/hydrological cycles,etc. is able to hide the fact that earth has started cooling down – as my results also show, but eventually that spare energy will run out……
d) I’m hoping that Orssengo is wrong and that global cooling will stop before 2030
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/orssengo3.png
e) From all of this, I predict that before this year has ended people will seriously begin to wonder whether global cooling is here (remember my name!)
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
Blessings.
Henry
Henry says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/12/tisdale-an-unsent-memo-to-james-hansen/#comment-987003
Eric Adler said: “The NOAA record is based on weather balloon measurements, which are screwed up. This has been understood quite well since 1991.
http://www.arl.noaa.gov/documents/JournalPDFs/Elliott&Gaffen.BAMS1991.pdf”
OK. There has been some criticism about this like there is anytime that warmers get confronted with data they don’t like. So here is a merging of satellite water vapor data:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0154323443c4970c-pi
It is obvious that water vapor absolute humidity is not growing. If anything it is decreasing. That is not consistent with modeling projections. It is way off because the models assume constant realative humidity with rising temperatures, which means they are way off the mark with absolute humidity as the projected warming of the last decade hasfailed as I have already pointed out.
Eric Adler said : “The emission height is not relevant. It is the emission temperature of the radiation that determines how much radiation escapes. What happens is that as the CO2 concentration increases less radiation in the absorption bandwidth reaches the top level of the troposphere, which becomes cooler. This lowers the effective emission temperature in the band. This is also true for water vapor. This has been observed by satellite measurements of the outgoing radiation”
Another statement that proves you don’t understand basic meteorology. The emission heioght is absolutely relevant! It is a function of temperature in a non homogeneous, hydrostatic atmosphere like the earth’s and is directly proportional to the emission temperature and related through the relationship dp/dz = – pg/RT. Let’s see. I think I see a T for temperature and a z for pressure altitude here. z = TaveR[ln(p/Po)] Solved in this manner, z is the geopotential thickness of two pressure surfaces and expans and contracts as a function of the maen TEMPERATURE.
Eric Adler said: “Your claim that CO2 does not reduce outgoing radiation is a ridiculous. This has been understood and accepted since 1859. Hansen and Lacis did not invent this idea.”
In the presence of GHG gas like water vapor that changes phase, this has not been proven. The only thing people like you do is look at the theoretical absorption and call it a forcing on temperature. That is absolutely false if you can’t prove that water vapor is amplified atmospherically by CO2 and you haven’t proven this. The opposite seems to be the case as one would expect from the founding principles. Again, look at the real data.
Eric Adler said: “It is very easy to write a sentence which is totally BS. It takes more work to prove it is wrong. I don’t have the time to counter every single piece of nonsense that you write.”
Eric: It is also easy to change the subject and ignore relevant questions that you refuse or cannot answer. You still have not satisfactorily explained the declining temperatures and stasis and you haven’t addressed the fact that any CO2 reduction strategies will fail to stop atmospheric CO2 growth, which means according to you and Hansen, we are all going to suffer not because of what we have done with carbon emissions, but that the earth is adding CO2 and not absorbing enough to stop growth, so the earth is what is going to kill us all off, not ourselves. Care to explain this? I’ve asked you three times already and you keep bobbing and ducking the questions. Answer them. Please!
Correction to the equation above. Forgot the gravity term: z = TaveR[Ln(p/Po)] / g
Eric Adler says:
May 16, 2012 at 9:28 am
“I don’t object to being mistaken for Eric Steig. Since I am not a climate scientist by profession, it seems to me a tribute to my erudition as an amateur, although I certainly don’t have the expertise that he has”.
Mr. Adler, I sincerely apologize for doubting your identity. I now understand that I was completely wrong to do so, and that you are not employing a pseudonym. I was very much impressed with your extraordinary grasp of the standard climate alarmist talking points, and therefore erroneously concluded that you must be a professional in the field.
Also, please understand that it was never my intention to mock your name. I had thought that perhaps you had chosen the nom de plume of “Adler” as a play on “Addle – er”, meaning that your goal was to “addle” or confuse the discussion.
I hope you can accept this explanation, and I genuinely beg your pardon.
F.
Chuck Wiese says:
May 16, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Looking at the question of humidity even the long term satellite data base is questionable. It seems pretty clear from the graph that you linked that there are shifts in data between the different satellite records, indicating that calibration is flawed. Short term studies show a positive correlation between water vapor concentration and temperature which would be expected from basic physics:
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler10.pdf
“We have analyzed five different reanalyses, including the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis. Rather than calculate trends with time, as P09 did, we instead regressed atmospheric
humidity against surface temperatures for the tropics and midlatitudes. In response to short time scale climate variations (e.g., ENSO cycles), there is good agreement among the reanalyses on the connection between atmospheric water vapor and surface temperature: specific humidity increases with increasing surface temperature in the tropical mid and upper troposphere, as well as almost everywhere else. This is in good agreement with both theory and observation.”
The influence of CO2 on humidity is not claimed to be direct. It is the temperature increase that increases humidity. T
The physics says emission rate is proportional to T^4 where T is the absolute temperature. There is no direct dependence on height. As I pointed out in the post which you are disputing, measurements of outgoing long wave radiation show a decrease in emission for wave lengths in the absorption spectrum of greenhouse gases. This is proof that the Greenhouse Effect is working according to the theory. In addition, there is data showing that the tropopause has risen between 1979 and 2003, indicating warming of the Troposphere.
Floyd Doughty says:
May 17, 2012 at 9:43 am
“I hope you can accept this explanation, and I genuinely beg your pardon.
F.”
Your interpretation is strange to me. I felt that my arguments were direct and straightforward, and well supported with evidence. I don’t see how you could interpret them as calculated to confuse anyone.
I sense that you are a good guy and genuinely sorry for mocking me. I believe your opinions are honestly arrived at, and genuine, but wrong nevertheless. Your apology is accepted.
Eric Adler suffers from terminal confirmation bias. Everything he sees confirms climate doom. Unfortunately for Adler, he is wrong. He is basing his beliefs on computer models, not on real world evidence. Adler says:
“The influence of CO2 on humidity is not claimed to be direct. It is the temperature increase that increases humidity.”
Adler is saying the temperature increase is caused by CO2, which increases humidity. But humidity is steadily decreasing, thus Adler’s conjecture is falsified.
Adler also says: “In addition, there is data showing that the tropopause has risen between 1979 and 2003, indicating warming of the Troposphere.” Not true; Adler is quoting computer models and calling it “data”.
Adler is referring to the models, which have been decisively falsified by the daily radiosonde balloons and satellite data over many years.
As usual Adler is wrong about everything. But he is not interested in learning, he is only interested in arguing his repeatedly falsified conjectures. Orwell called Adler’s disability “doublethink”. Festinger called it “cognitive dissonance”. I call it belief in models, vs reality.
Eric Adler said: “The influence of CO2 on humidity is not claimed to be direct. It is the temperature increase that increases humidity. ”
What humidity? Increasing temperature causes the relative humidity to decrease and the absolute humidity cannot increase unless there is a vapor pressure gradient into the air from a body of water that it may overlie. That is not always the case. Take for example the upper limit on sea surface temperature. To take the surface temperature up 1 degC from 29-30 degC and reset the wet bulb temperature to that value from a 29 degC prior saturation requires an additional 4.75 Wm-2 acting to vaporize the additional water via the Clausius/Clapeyron equation. If you want to consider the heat energy coming from the air, that requires that the ambient sea air surface temperature rise 4.5 degC above the sea surface water temperature to a value of 33.5 degC. How is that possible? Where is the heat coming from to do this if it is supposedly from CO2 radiation? The mean 60 year “forcing” as calculated by MODTRAN and owing CO2 was ~.5 Wm-2 to match up to the claimed ocean heat content rise graphs which only changes the 700 meter depth by .22 degC or less than half of the observed change which Hansen claims was in the .4 to .6 degC range. NONE of the basic numbers add up to giving your claims any credibility. They all point to a much stronger source of radiation as to causing the now ceased warming and I would bet it is increased insolation/decraesed cloudiness and or thickness in the tropics.
Eric Adler said: ” The physics says emission rate is proportional to T^4 where T is the absolute temperature. There is no direct dependence on height. As I pointed out in the post which you are disputing, measurements of outgoing long wave radiation show a decrease in emission for wave lengths in the absorption spectrum of greenhouse gases. This is proof that the Greenhouse Effect is working according to the theory. In addition, there is data showing that the tropopause has risen between 1979 and 2003, indicating warming of the Troposphere.”
Eric: This is compounded stupidity on your part. Emission has no direct dependence on height? Really? Then why is the earth’s surface effective emission temperature found at ~5.5 Km at 255K? It is moist convection and HYDROSTATICS as in the equation above that define this and all adiabatic processes. It is most ceratinly height dependant. How do you think that RT modeling is done to estimate changes in OLR by CO2? How is the temperature profile derived? It is through hydrostatics. In the second part of your comment here, you again assert incorrectly that any measured emission decrease by CO2 is proof the GHG theorty works. I have pointed out to you that without knowing the spectrally integrated OLR, there is no way you can assert that CO2 is affecting the surface temperature unless it is demonstrated that the spectrally integrated OLR is found to be moving with CO2. That HAS NOT ever been demonstrated to date. And I notice you don’t provide any new data beyon 2003 to support your claims. That is because the newer data shows cloud top emission has actually lowered in the last decade. Not a good sign to bolster your claims.
Eric, you argue just to argue. You can’t back up what you say with anything but “reanalysis” of data from the usual skunks that have their reputations and scientific credientals on the line with this junk science. And you, again, for the fourth time have refused to answer my questions above and I know you won’t have any for the questions on this post that are accurate or make any sense either. On that score, I think Anthony is correct. You act more like a troll than anything else and it has become pointless to argue with you when you can’t concede or acknowledge relevant facts. This is the behavior of someone who has religious political convictions, not someone who is debating science.
Chuck Wiese says:
May 17, 2012 at 7:08 pm
“Eric Adler said: “The influence of CO2 on humidity is not claimed to be direct. It is the temperature increase that increases humidity. ”
What humidity? Increasing temperature causes the relative humidity to decrease and the absolute humidity cannot increase unless there is a vapor pressure gradient into the air from a body of water that it may overlie. ……………They all point to a much stronger source of radiation as to causing the now ceased warming and I would bet it is increased insolation/decraesed cloudiness and or thickness in the tropics. ”
Is your calculation supposed to be a rebuttal of the point I made, that increasing air and sea surface temperature will increase the absolute humidity of the air, and this is a positive feedback mechanism? Are you claiming that this would not happen? In fact it has been observed as a result of short term satellite measurements according to Dessler’s paper. Your calculation doesn’t prove that it hasn’t happened, neither does your name calling.
The point that I made, that the emission rate of GHG’s do not depend directly on height explicitly is correct. Temperature in the troposphere usually decreases with height, but not always.
In fact, the graph that I showed is of the effective emission temperature as a function of wave length. It showed that the brightness temperature decreased somewhat at all wave lengths between 700 and 1400 cm-1. So this graph is a valid argument for the GHG theory of warming.
In addition measurements have shown that downwelling radiation has been increasing as well, another confirmation of the theory that GHG’s are causing the global warming.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD011800.shtml
“Global atmospheric downward longwave radiation over land surface under all-sky conditions from 1973 to 2008
Kaicun Wang
Department of Geography, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
Shunlin Liang
Department of Geography, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
…The decadal variations in global L d under both clear and cloudy conditions at about 3200 stations from 1973 to 2008 are presented. We found that daily L d increased at an average rate of 2.2 W m−2 per decade from 1973 to 2008. The rising trend results from increases in air temperature, atmospheric water vapor, and CO2 concentration. … “
Eric Adler says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/10/a-blast-from-the-past-james-hansen-on-the-global-warming-debate-from-13-years-ago/#comment-988291
Henry says
I am still not sure if you really understood why we doubt about the CO2,
doing anything much at all
Why don’t you begin here,
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
and then you look here
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
and if you still have some time left you must end up here
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
Once you have read all of that you will come to understand why the CO2 is currently the least of my worries…..
God bless you.
Henry
Henry,
You are deceiving yourself with the argument that the absorption spectrum of CO2 causes more cooling than warming. Your claim seems to be that CO2 deflects more incoming solar radiation than it does long wave radiation.
http://www.google.co.za/imgres?imgurl=http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/userimages/Sun2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page11.htm&h=965&w=963&sz=341&tbnid=I4bPEwmMiTNtKM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=90&zoom=1&docid=Y0dkNn0-Wh0hUM&sa=X&ei=OOtaT8WOK8LMhAeXx8yoBA&ved=0CEoQ9QEwBQ&dur=2256
Looking at the spectrum of incoming radiation from the sun, and comparing it with the outgoing spectrum, you see that intensity of the incoming radiation at the wave length that the CO2 absorbs is much lower than the intensity of the outgoing radiation in the absorption band of CO2. It is clear by inspection your idea is wrong. It is clear from the diagram that a larger fraction of outgoing radiation is intercepted by CO2 than incoming radiation. Your post says that you are unconvinced, but you don’t show any evidence to counter the diagram to which you have linked. Why should we trust your belief if you can’t show evidence.
Why should we accept the evidence from your 44 stations, over the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature data base, that includes over 39,000 stations?
In your post, “More Carbon Dioxide is OK OK?” you make the argument that more water vapor is put into the air than CO2, so why worry about CO2. This is a dumb argument. It neglects the fact that if more CO2 is put in the air than comes out during a year, this excess lasts many years. It can take hundreds of years for this to go down to previous levels.
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704.long
On the other hand an excess of H2O concentration is removed very rapidly by precipitation.
Every one of your arguments which I have analyzed so far is flawed, I don’t think I should bother reading your work any further.
Eric Adler says:
“…you make the argument that more water vapor is put into the air than CO2, so why worry about CO2. This is a dumb argument.”
Pure projection, because Adler’s argument is actually the stupid argument, which I deconstructed above. Adler cannot show global harm due to anthropogenic CO2. There is no such evidence. So why worry about CO2? More CO2 is a net benefit, with no downside. More is better.
Eric Adler says
Looking at the spectrum of incoming radiation from the sun, and comparing it with the outgoing spectrum,…
Henry says:
you have not understood it, yet, because you are quoting back to me the links that I also I quote in my summary on not believing that CO2 is a GHG, so obviously you have not read it properly.
You have to prove to me that CO2 SW re-radiation (from the sun) is smaller than CO2 LW re-radiation (from earth) in the right dimensions, (do not come with “intensity” stories – the sun puts a lot more W/m2 on us than earth puts away from us? you have to come with the actual balance sheet, W/m2)
Eric Adler says
Why should we accept the evidence from your 44 stations, over the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature data base, that includes over 39,000 stations?
Henry says
Because B. and just about everyone else are all looking at the wrong parameter.
Average temp. or avarage temp. anomaly is not a good variable. The reason why we are alive today is because earth is able to store energy for lean years, like just about, now. It stored energy in the oceans, in the vegetation, in the hydrological cycles, in the weather, etc.
but unfortunately the questionj is now if that store is big eneough for the cooling that is coming up for the next 10 years or so…..
I did some more maths on my 45 stations.
My correlation coefficient for the drop in maximum temps. is now up to 0.997
unfortunately, still cooling since 1994 but closer to 1995 now,
According to my latest maths. on this, maxima are now dropping at about 0.2 degrees C per annum.
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
I am afraid trying increasing our “carbon” footprint is not going to help much, but be my guest, you can try….Remember my name….
5% of CO2 is because of man…..
….5ppm increase
Who would have thought the climate was that sensitive
but even when CO2 levels were in the thousands ppm…..it still went somewhere