This may be the only entry ever made by Bob Tisdale that doesn’t contain a graph. I thank him for the unsolicited notice he gives to WUWT – Anthony
Date: May 11, 2012
Subject: New York Times Op-Ed Titled “Game Over for the Climate”
From: Bob Tisdale
To: James Hansen – NASA GISS
Dear James:
I just finished reading your opinion that appeared in yesterday’s New York Times. I enjoyed the title “Game Over for the Climate” so much that I’m considering changing the title of my book to something similar, like “Game Over for the Manmade Global Warming Scare.” Yes. That’s got a nice ring to it. Thanks for the idea. I’ll have so see how difficult it would be to change the title of the Kindle edition. Yet, while I enjoyed the title, the content of your opinion shows that you’re still hoping to appeal to those who are gullible enough to believe your claim that carbon dioxide is responsible for the recent bout of global warming. I hope you understand that many, many persons have weighed your opinions and found them wanting.
The internet has become the primary medium for discussions of anthropogenic global warming, as I’m sure you’re aware. You have your own blog. Your associate at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Gavin Schmidt is one of the founders of the once-formidable blog RealClimate. What you may not be aware of is that one of the other contributors to RealClimate Rasmus Benestad in a recent post expressed his feelings that all of their work there might have been for naught [my boldface].
However, if the notion that information makes little impact is correct, one may wonder what the point would be in having a debate about climate change, and why certain organisations would put so much efforts into denial, as described in books such as Heat is on, Climate Cover-up, Republican war on science, Merchants of doubt, and The Hockeystick and Climate Wars. Why then, would there be such things as ‘the Heartland Institute’, ‘NIPCC’, climateaudit, WUWT, climatedepot, and FoS, if they had no effect? And indeed, the IPCC reports and the reports from the National Academy of Sciences? One could even ask whether the effort that we have put into RealClimate has been in vain.
I can understand Rasmus Benestad’s doubts when a website skeptical of manmade global warming, WattsUpWithThat, has gained visitors since 2008 while RealClimate is floundering. The web information company Alexa shows that WattUpWithThat’s daily reach began to surpass RealClimate’s in May 2008. And for the last 6 months, Alexa could no longer rank RealClimatebecause its percentage dropped too low. On the other hand, the daily reach of WattsUpWthThat increased greatly and WattsUpWthThat has become the world’s most-viewed website on global warming and climate change.
Over the past 30 years or longer, James, you’ve created a global surface temperature record called the GISS Land-Ocean Temperature Index. It shows global surface temperatures have warmed since 1880. While there are some problems with that dataset we need to discuss, it is something you can be proud of. But in those 3 decades, you’ve also developed and programmed climate models with the sole intent of showing that manmade greenhouse gases were responsible for that warming. Those models are included, along with dozens of others, in the archives used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for their reports. Unfortunately, your efforts with climate models, and the efforts of the other modeling groups, have not been successful. Far from it. And since your opinions are based on the results of your climate models, one has to conclude that your opinions are as flawed as the models.
I’m one of the independent researchers who study the instrument-based surface temperature record and the output data of the climate models used by the IPCC to simulate those temperatures. Other researchers and I understand two simple and basic facts, which have been presented numerous times on blogs such as WattsUpWithThat. Keep in mind WattUpWithThat reaches a massive audience daily, so anyone who’s interested in global warming and climate change and who takes the time to read those posts also understands those two simple facts.
Fact one: the instrument-based global surface temperature record since 1901 and the IPCC’s climate model simulations of it do not confirm the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming; they contradict it.
The climate models used in the IPCC’s (2007) 4th Assessment Report show surface temperatures should have warmed about 2.9 times faster during the late warming period (1976-2000) than they did during the early warming period (1917-1944). The IPCC acknowledges the existence of those two separate warming periods. The climate model simulations are being driven by climate forcings, including manmade carbon dioxide, which logically show a higher rate during the later warming period. Yet the observed, instrument-based warming rates for the two warming periods are basically the same.
If the supposition you peddle was sound, James, manmade carbon dioxide and other anthropogenic greenhouse gases should have warmed the surface of our planet at a much faster rate in recent decades, but they have not. In other words, there’s little evidence that the carbon dioxide you demonize in your op-ed has had any measurable effect on how fast global surface temperatures have warmed. We independent climate researchers have known this for years. It’s a topic that surfaces often, so often that it’s joked about around the blogosphere.
Some independent researchers have taken the time to present how poorly climate models simulate the rates at which global surface temperatures have warmed and cooled since the start of the 20th Century. We do this so that people without technical backgrounds can better understand that very fundament flaw with the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming. I resurrected it again in a two-part post back in December 2011 (see here and here), both of which were cross posted at WattsUpWithThat. I’ve published numerous posts about this since December using different datasets: sea surface temperature, land surface temperature and the combination of the two. I’ve published so many posts that show how poorly the IPCC’s climate models simulate past surface temperatures that it’s not practical to link them all. The posts also include the new and improved climate models that were prepared for the IPCC’s upcoming 5thAssessment Report. Sorry to say, they show no improvement.
Fact two: natural processes are responsible for most if not all if the warming over the past 30 years, a warming that you continue to cite as proof of the effects of greenhouse gases.
In your opinion piece, you mentioned the predictions you made in the journal Science back in 1981. Coincidentally, that’s the year when satellites began to measure the surface temperatures of the global oceans. Those satellites provide much better coverage for the measurement of global sea surface temperatures, from pole to pole. You use a satellite-based dataset as one of the sea surface temperature sources for your GISS Land-Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI) data. That NOAA sea surface temperature dataset is known as Reynolds OI.v2. It is the same dataset I have used to illustrate that natural processes, not greenhouse gases, are responsible for surface temperature warming of the global oceans since 1981. Since land surface temperatures are simply along for the ride, mimicking and exaggerating the changes in sea surface temperatures, the hypothesis you promote has a significant problem. Climate models are once again contradicted by observation-based data.
I’m one of very few independent global warming researchers who study sea surface temperature data and the processes associated with the natural mode of climate variability called El Niño-Southern Oscillation or ENSO. ENSO is a process that is misrepresented by many climate scientists when they use linear regression analysis in attempts to remove an ENSO signal from the global surface temperature record. Those misrepresentations ensure misleading results in some climate science papers.
ENSO is a natural process that you and your associates at GISS exclude in many of the climate model-based studies you publish, because, as you note, your “coarse-resolution ocean model is unable to simulate climate variations associated with El Niño-Southern Oscillation processes.” In fact, there are no climate models used by the IPCC that are capable of recreating the frequency, magnitude and duration of El Niño and La Niña events. And I know of no scientific studies that show any one climate model is capable of correctly simulating all of the fundamental coupled ocean-atmosphere processes associated with ENSO.
If climate models are not able to simulate ENSO, then they do not include a very basic process Mother Nature has devised to increase and slow the distribution of heat from the tropics to the poles. As a result, the climate models exclude the variations in the rates at which the tropical Pacific Ocean releases naturally created heat to the atmosphere and redistributes it within the oceans, and those climate models also exclude the varying rate at which ENSO is responsible through teleconnections for the warming in areas remote to the tropical Pacific.
Climate scientists have to stop treating ENSO as noise, James. The process of ENSO serves as a source of naturally created and stored thermal energy that is discharged, redistributed and recharged periodically. Because these three functions (discharge, redistribution and recharge) all fluctuate (see Note 1), impacts of ENSO on global climate vary on annual, multiyear and multidecadal timescales. Common sense dictates that global surface temperatures will warm over multidecadal periods when the frequency, magnitude and duration of El Niño events outweigh those of La Niña events, causing more heat than normal to be released from the tropical Pacific Ocean to the atmosphere and to be redistributed within the oceans. And the opposite will occur, global surface will cool, when La Niña events dominate ENSO over a multidecadal period. It is no coincidence that that is precisely what has happened since 1917.
Note 1: El Niño events (the discharge mode) are not always followed by La Niña events (the recharge mode). Both El Niño and La Niña events can appear in a series of similar phase events like the El Niño events of 2002/03, 2004/05 and 2006/07 and the La Niña events of 2010/11 and 2011/12. El Niño and La Niña events can also last for more than one year, spanning multiple ENSO seasons, like the 1986/87/88 El Niño and the 1998/99/00/01 La Niña. When a strong El Niño is followed by a La Niña like the El Niño events of 1986/87/88 and 1997/98 it is very obvious that two portions of ENSO are acting together and redistributing warm water that’s left over from the El Niño. The results of the combined effects are actually difficult to miss in the sea surface temperature records.
The satellite-era sea surface temperature data reveals that ENSO, not carbon dioxide, is responsible for the warming of global ocean surfaces for the past 30 years, as noted earlier. It illustrates the effects of La Niña events are not the opposite of El Niño events. In fact, the satellite-based sea surface temperature data indicates that, when major El Niño events are followed by La Niña events, they can and do act together to cause upward shifts in the sea surface temperature anomalies of the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific Oceans. And since the Eastern Pacific Ocean has not warmed in 30 years, those ENSO-induced upward shifts in the Atlantic-Indian-West Pacific data are responsible for practically all of the global sea surface temperature warming for the last 3 decades.
I have been presenting and illustrating those ENSO-caused upward shifts for more than 3 years. I have plotted the data, discussed and animated the process of ENSO using numerous datasets: sea surface temperature, sea level, ocean currents, ocean heat content, depth-averaged temperature, warm water volume, sea level pressure, cloud amount, precipitation, the strength and direction of the trade winds, etc. And since cloud amount for the tropical Pacific impacts downward shortwave radiation (visible light) there, I’ve presented and discussed that relationship as well. The data associated with those variables all confirm how the processes of ENSO work for my readers. They also show and discuss how those upward shifts are caused by processes of ENSO. I’ve written so many posts on ENSO that it is impractical for me to link them here. A very good overview is provided in this post, or you may prefer to read the additional comments on the cross post at WattsUpWithThat.
James, you are more than welcome to use the search function at my website to research the process of ENSO. With all modesty, I have to say there’s a wealth of information there. I’ve assembled that same information in my book If the IPCC was Selling Manmade Global Warming as a Product, Would the FTC Stop their deceptive Ads? You might prefer the book since then you’d have a single source of more detailed discussions on the topics presented in this memo. It also illustrates and discusses how the climate models used by the IPCC in their 4th Assessment Report show no skill at being able to reproduce the global surface temperature record since 1901. Using those IPCC climate models in another group of comparisons, it shows that there are no similarities, none whatsoever, between how the sea surface temperatures of the individual ocean basins have actually warmed over the past 30 years and how the climate models show sea surface temperatures should have warmed if carbon dioxide was the cause. An overview of my book is provided in the above-linked post. Amazon also provides a Kindle preview that runs from the introduction through a good portion of Section 2. That’s about the first 15% of the book. Refer also to the introduction, table of contents, and closing in pdf form here. My book is written for those without technical backgrounds so someone like you with a deep understanding of climate science will easily be able to grasp what’s presented.
In closing, I was sort of surprised to see your May 10, 2012 opinion in the New York Times. I had discussed in the second part of my August 21, 2011 memo to you and Makiko Sato that ENSO, not carbon dioxide, is responsible for the recent 30-year rise in global sea surface temperatures. You must not have read that memo. Hopefully, you’ll read this one.
Sincerely,
Bob Tisdale
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Steve Keohane says
Couldn’t a cooler atmosphere both condense and precipitate more quickly? Clouds would stay lower in the atmosphere, slowing heat transport out to space?
Henry says
I still have to confirm this but I suspect that we are already 0.75 %RH lower on average, globally, since global cooling started in 1994. So there is less water vapor available to make clouds. The atmosphere cannot contain more water. That is the problem. Remember that although I doubt whether CO2 is a GHG we know for sure that water (clouds) and water vapor do trap heat. If there is less water vapor to make clouds and less water vapor as well then less heat gets trapped, of course. That is why I say: global cooling as exhibited in dropping maxima will accelerate a bit once it gets going – which is now.
My results seem to suggest that we could already be cooling by as much 0.1 degree K per annum. If true that could be horrendous. I think that the Orssengo curve is more or less correct but that it must be corrected a bit. I am thinking the maximum drop might not be in 2030 but quite a bit earlier/
I hope.
Gail Combs says:May 14, 2012 at 7:13 am
Steve Keohane says:May 14, 2012 at 6:29 am
Steve, Henry, you might want to check out Willis Eschenbach’s paper:
I suspect my thinking is influenced by Willis’ Thermostat Hypothesis, although I would not claim to be able to reiterate it precisely. It seems to be a large piece of the climate puzzle that is intuitively obvious if one can get past the fallacies of the CO2 propaganda. It’s hard to believe it was almost three years ago Willis posted that here.
Willis’s Thermostat Hypothesis is a worthy starting point but he limits it to the equatorial regions and doesn’t follow through globally.
Nor does it include any top down solar effect on the air circulation patterns.
Henry P,
The thing about clouds is that they can slow the exit of heat a bit but that is as nothing compared to their ability to increase albedo and thereby deny energy to the system in the first place.
Energy denied to the system is lost forever and no longer available to be slowed down in its exit so higher albedo will always lead to a decline in system energy content which can never be offset by a bit more cloud insulation.
Bob writes:
“In fact, there are no climate models used by the IPCC that are capable of recreating the frequency, magnitude and duration of El Niño and La Niña events.”
And the IPCC wants me to believe they can predict [where] it’s going to rain and where it’s not 100 years from now.
Stephen Wilde says: “I think that so far as the Trade Winds are concerned that is only half the story.
“The strength of the Trade Winds is also influenced by the rest of the global air circulation to the polewardin both hemispheres, not just by the current state of ENSO…”
As I suggested to you earlier, Stephen, for more detailed discussions, try using Google Scholar. There are a multitude of papers regarding ENSO and trade winds, about the influences of, and on, Hadley and Walker circulation, atmosphere and oceanic Kelvin and Rossby waves, Bjerknes feedback, wind stress curl, surface and subsurface ocean currents, etc. There may be a paper that confirms your thoughts and visions, and others that contradict it. Remember, Stephen, it’s all about the data that YOU can provide to support your conjecture. When you do that, I will be happy to confirm your results.
Gail Combs says:
May 14, 2012 at 6:37 am
Myrrh says: @ur momisugly May 14, 2012 at 12:14 am
….Shortwave can’t do this. Can’t…..
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Myrrh, that puzzled me a bit too since my physics courses were more than forty year ago, so I asked my physicist husband and did a bit of looking on the internet.
The concept you are missing is that “Conservation of Energy” does not rule out the Transformation of Energy.
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Gail, I can assure you I’m not the one missing something here… 🙂
The problem with trying to explain a con is that there has to be knowledge of all the parts, then you can how the Piltdown Man was put together.
There are numerous tweaks to real physics to get the AGWScienceFiction version, the Water Cycle missed out completely, the atmosphere empty space and not the heavy fluid gas ocean above us because they have called the molecules of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide ideal gas, therefore they have no volume, weight or attraction but like the imaginary construct ideal gas are hard dots that zoom around empty space bouncing off each other in elastic collisions, don’t mention gravity to some who post here, they don’t know what it is and think it’s some new fangled idea unknown to ‘real’ physics..
So, what they have done is to take out the direct heat from the Sun completely, as they’ve done the Water Cycle, and instead they have given the properties of the Sun’s thermal energy to visible light and the shortwaves either side – they claim this is what converts land and ocean directly to heat which then heated up radiates out thermal infrared, heat. The Shortwave in Longwave out mnemonic. They say that the direct thermal infrared from the Sun doesn’t even reach the Earth’s surface! The Sun’s great heat which we feel as heat because it does physically warm us up, has been completely excised. The confusion is because this isn’t understood. The confusion is deliberate, they have given this heat to visible light which isn’t hot, which isn’t thermal energy.
Discussing what light does is a distraction here, so I’ll mention just one, it is used in photosynthesis to convert to chemical energy, sugars, this is not the conversion to heat which is claimed by AGWSF in giving the actual properties of thermal infrared to visible in shortwave in longwave out.
The con is simple.., it’s putting together two things that don’t belong together, visible light from the Sun is not capable of physically heating land and ocean, in the real world it’s still the direct thermal infrared from the Sun doing this. This is the real missing heat from the comic cartoon energy budget.
As I said earlier, the last straw for me was finding that they were deliberately dumbing down the basic science education for children – I hope I’ve explained it well enough now.
NASA: “Far infrared waves are thermal. In other words, we experience this type of infrared radiation every day in the form of heat! The heat that we feel from sunlight, a fire, a radiator or a warm sidewalk is infrared.
Shorter, near infrared waves are not hot at all – in fact you cannot even feel them. These shorter wavelengths are the ones used by your TV’s remote control.”
This is what they used to teach, now NASA teaches that thermal infrared doesn’t get through the atmosphere..
When I first began looking at it here and was told by a PhD that it was the visible light we feel as heat as we do from an incandescent lightbulb, I had no more doubt that I had wondered into a very strange world.. I had previously been told by a PhD physicist who taught the subject that carbon dioxide would spontaneously diffuse into the atmosphere without any work being done. Sigh.
Anyway. Just like taking out the Water Cycle is the sleight of hand to give the impression that there is a temperature rise from -18°C to 15°C, the Greenhouse Effect, so this taking out of the real heat from the Sun which is the actual physical means of heating land and ocean is also a sleight of hand. Now they can concentrate of this ‘backradiation’ from the upwelling thermal infrared of a heated Earth because the thermal infrared direct from the Sun isn’t there to confuse with the ‘backradiation of heat from the atmosphere’ they’re measuring… 🙂
And of course, since their atmosphere is the empty space of ideal gas in a container in a lab they don’t have to concern themselves with convection either, so all the arguments about radiation and all energy from the Sun ‘the same’, all creating heat, no difference is properties and processes and effects. And they don’t understand the joke when I say they can’t hear me, (no sound in their empty space) or that they have clouds which appear magically because they have no mechanism for their existence (no weight, volume, attraction of the real fluid gas atmosphere)..
They’ve got away with it because like all clever cons there’s just enough truth there to give the appearance of reality, no one notices the elisions and substitutions because the arguments take it for granted that these are real physics basics – they began introducing this into the education system a few decades ago. It’s actually very cleverly done, someone had to know real physics very well indeed to make the subtle tweaks in this AGW fisics.
So, not to distract further.. They’ve taken out the direct heat from the Sun. Their energy budget can’t be anything but nonsense, a real comic cartoon of impossible happenings.
Stephen Wilde says: “ENSO primarily governs tropospheric temperatures up to a decadal timescale but going multidecadal and centennial ENSO simply modulates the solar influence.”
Hmm. I have in numerous post illustrated how and why ENSO governs sea surface temperatures for the past 30 years, which sounds awfully like a multidecadal time period to me.
Smokey says:
The irony…It burns. Smokey continues to object to the analogy between “evolution skeptics” and “AGW skeptics” and yet he continues to borrow arguments that correspond directly to those that “evolution skeptics” use: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7rJmd3ECBk
Smokey, I think you’d do a better job at trying to convince people that the analogy is not apt if you actually didn’t provide such a living illustration of how apt the analogy is.
HenryP says: May 14, 2012 at 7:51 am
Henry, while a cooler atmosphere can hold less water, I assume it would take less water to condense into clouds, and they would form at a lower altitude. I’m just looking at what the difference between winter and summer seems to be from personal observation/experience. Perhaps I am not communicating it well, but I would also assume a balancing ratio of RH% and temperature, and as I’m thinking about it, pressure as well. I was not thinking of the clouds as ‘warming’ per se, more at a thermostatic balance to inhibit further cooling by transport. Just one of the natural cyclic balances that excludes the fantasy of tipping points of runaway climate change. It is an ironic amusement that the proponents of CAGW are complaining about living in a warm period that exists for 10% of the time on our planet, yet is the only reason they have a civilization to be born into and whine about.
Stephen Wilde says: May 14, 2012 at 8:04 am
Stephen, I agree about your point in albedo affecting energy into the system. I was thinking along the lines of a cooler atmosphere equals less convective cloud-building/vertical transport airflow, as I see very little of it below 50°F at the surface.
The only things burned around here are joel shore’s brain cells. Both of them, if he thinks that his True Belief in CAGW has any empirical evidence backing it up, when it does not. In fact, the belief in catastrophic AGW is based on zero real world evidence. It is only a belief, like the belief in a tooth fairy. Joel shore cannot produce any testable evidence measuring X amount of global warming per Y increase in CO2. Why not? Because there is no such evidence. Joel shore is trying to sell us a pig in a poke.
I do not “object to the analogy between ‘evolution skeptics’ and ‘AGW skeptics’,”. Rather, I am pointing out the plain fact that there is no difference between joel shore’s true belief in CAGW, and true belief in Creationism. None. Both are faith-based, and the analogy is apt. Both belief systems are ‘real’ to their believers. But without any testable, empirical evidence, they are no more than evidence-free conjectures. In the case of shore’s bent prism, non-believers in CAGW are motivated by ‘ideology’. But that is only in joel shore’s fantasy world. At WUWT we discuss science — something joel shore seems to always avoid.
Bob said:
” I have in numerous post illustrated how and why ENSO governs sea surface temperatures for the past 30 years, which sounds awfully like a multidecadal time period to me.”
The solar effect steadily takes over as the time period becomes longer.
I don’t think you have dealt with the reason for the upward stepping from one Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation to the next have you ?
We know ENSO causes it but where did ENSO get the extra energy from on a long enough timescale ?
That is what interests me and many others.
and:
“When you do that, I will be happy to confirm your results.”
No need. I’m not asking you to agree with me since different phenomena interest each of us and where your threads lead others to go beyond your basic data then I join in the discussion.
In any event, new data is adding to the scene and generally supporting my case without me needing to confuse the issue by digging into unreliable old data.
The new overview that I propose casts all the old stuff into a new light anyway.
Smokey says:
Both are faith-based, and the analogy is apt.
Henry says
Actually, I don’t like that analogy. In this case it is you who puts the horse behind the carriage although you might not see this (yet).
Namely, Christian scriptures teach that the only way to hear, see and experience God is by faith.
Just that: by faith. Look at
http://www.shroud.com
The picture is a 3d photographic negative.
Can you explain to me how somebody forged that in around 1200-1300 AD? With all the correct details of a crucufiction?
Now, had the Shroud of Turin been dated to 0 AD we would all have believed or started believing in the resurrection. But, ….obviously there is a reason why things are the way that they are….
God, as the Creator, in wisdom that yet cannot be determined, decided that the only way to get to the other side is:: by faith.
Anyway, I do agree with you that we must keep to science here at WUWT. (Actually, science and religion are two ways that both lead to the Truth)
I have shown you all that we (on earth) are busy cooling. Already. See
http://letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
Those here, including Joel, that still believe earth is warming must come to me with the figures;
and if you come to me with UAH, or whatever, you must be able to tell me the precision and accuracy of your equipment and how often is calibrated. Note that my tables are reasonably well balanced by latitude and 70/30 sea/inland (longitude does not matter as earth rotates every 24 hours). How was that done with the measurements that you bring to me that must prove to me that earth is still warming?
I will be waiting, right here, for anyone who “believes” that earth is still warming.
Stephen Wilde says:
May 14, 2012 at 8:04 am
Willis’s Thermostat Hypothesis is a worthy starting point but he limits it to the equatorial regions and doesn’t follow through globally…..
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Stephen from my quick little check on Willis’s Thermostat Hypothesis, I found it seems to regulate temperatures in the 90F – 100F range when you have a lot of moisture available. I took a quick and dirty look at the east coast of the USA using Wunderground monthly data. The check showed precipitation during the summer went from about 20 days per month in Florida down to 10 days per month in Fayetteville NC. After that it was very spotty. That is why it can not follow through globally. However it certainly helps regulate the upper temperature for hot moist areas such as the tropics.
Willis’s Hypothesis shows that there are a heck of a lot of different factors effecting climate and I think that is the biggest idea you learn from his hypothesis… Blind men and an elephant comes to mind.
Myrrh says:
May 14, 2012 at 8:35 am
…..So, what they have done is to take out the direct heat from the Sun completely, as they’ve done the Water Cycle, and instead they have given the properties of the Sun’s thermal energy to visible light….
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Believe me I am well aware we are dealing with Conmen.
However even William Connelley’s beloved WIKI has not disappeared the solar heat …YET. They just do not mention it much. It is like your crazy great aunt in the attic, she is there but never mentioned.
So what about the other large chunk of energy visible light? And this is where the mis-direction comes in. I have an all metal stock trailer part is painted white part is painted black. During the summer in North Carolina, when I stand inside if I put my hand on the part painted white on the outside it is warm. If I put my hand on the part painted black on the outside it will raise blisters it is so hot.
Here is an example of the misdirection from the DOE “ask a scientist” US government web site.
And there is the untruth. The color white will reflect most of the visible energy but the reason we see a color is because all the visible wavelenghs are absorbed except the specific colored light that is reflected. That is a red ball will absorbed the other colors and bounce the red light.
Back to the ocean.
Yes water is mostly transparent. It is the compounds dissolved in it and the particles suspended in it that do the absorbing of whatever light is transmitted just like that red ball. That is why very clean water has high visibility and other water has differing visibilities. (DON”T cave dive without a safety line)
Here is the absorption of water as ice, liquid and vapor: http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html
It has a really nice graph (three quarters down) labeled The visible and UV spectra of liquid water, that shows the visible color bands and that water absorbs energy in much of the other areas. Note that blue is the color it absorbs the least (tip of the plunging of the line) which is why water looks blue.
HenryP,
I just knew I would be stepping on some toes by mentioning Creationists. My apologies, I wasn’t intending to be critical. Faith is essential to religion. I have no problem with that, and I think religion, despite it’s occasional excesses, has been a civilizing influence. Teaching morality is a good thing. However, I see no difference between Creationist faithful and CAGW faithful. Their beliefs are based on faith, not science [not that very religious folks don’t make the best scientists. In may cases they do, as history shows].
Smokey says:
May 14, 2012 at 12:43 pm
HenryP,
I just knew I would be stepping on some toes by mentioning Creationists. My apologies, ….
_______________________
And I have no doubt that Joel’s remark about the subject was done with that very intent in mind. Divert the thread and all.
By the way I do appreciate all you and HenryP bring to the conversation. Even if I might not agree with everything said it gets me thinking.
joeldshore says:
May 13, 2012 at 6:10 pm
Gunga Din: The point is that there is a very specific reason involving the type of mathematical problem it is as to why weather forecasts diverge from reality. And, the same does not apply to predicting the future climate in response to changes in forcings. It does not mean such predictions are easy or not without significant uncertainties, but the uncertainties are of a different and less severe type than you face in the weather case.
As for me, I would rather hedge my bets on the idea that most of the scientists are right than make a bet that most of the scientists are wrong and a very few scientists plus lots of the ideologues at Heartland and other think-tanks are right…But, then, that is because I trust the scientific process more than I trust right-wing ideological extremism to provide the best scientific information.
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What will the price of tea in China be each year for the next 100 years? If Chinese farmers plant less tea, will the replacement crop use more or less CO2? What values would represent those variables? Does salt water sequester or release more or less CO2 than freshwater? If the icecaps melt and increase the volume of saltwater, what effect will that have year by year on CO2? If nations build more dams for drinking water and hydropower, how will that impact CO2? What about the loss of dry land? What values do you give to those variables? If a tree falls in the woods allowing more growth on the forest floor, do the ground plants have a greater or lesser impact on CO2? How many trees will fall in the next 100 years? Values, please. Will the UK continue to pour milk down the drain? How much milk do other countries pour down the drain? What if they pour it on the ground instead? Does it make a difference if we’re talking cow milk or goat milk? Does putting scraps of cheese down the garbage disposal have a greater or lesser impact than putting in the trash or composting it? Will Iran try to nuke Israel? Pakistan India? India Pakistan? North Korea South Korea? In the next 100 years what other nations might obtain nukes and launch? Your formula will need values. How many volcanoes will erupt? How large will those eruptions be? How many new ones will develop and erupt? Undersea vents? What effect will they all have year by year? We need numbers for all these things. Will the predicted “extreme weather” events kill many people? What impact will the erasure of those carbon footprints have year by year? Of course there’s this little thing called the Sun and its variability. Year by year numbers, please. If a butterfly flaps its wings in China, will forcings cause a tornado in Kansas? Of course, the formula all these numbers are plugged into will have to accurately reflect each ones impact on all of the other values and numbers mentioned so far plus lots, lots more. That amounts to lots and lots and lots of circular references. (And of course the single most important question, will Gilligan get off the island before the next Super Moon? Sorry. 😎
There have been many short range and long range climate predictions made over the years. Some of them are 10, 20 and 30 years down range now from when the trigger was pulled. How many have been on target? How many are way off target?
Bet your own money on them if want, not mine or my kids or their kids or their kids etc.
Stephen Wilde says: “The solar effect steadily takes over as the time period becomes longer.”
Support you position with data, Stephen.
Stephen Wilde says: “We know ENSO causes it but where did ENSO get the extra energy from on a long enough timescale ?”
The initial additional energy (Ocean Heat Content) for the 1982/83 and 1986/87/88 El Nino events came from the 1973/74/75/76 La Nina, with the 1983/84 & 1984/85 La Nina events replacing/recharging some of the heat discharged during the 1982/83 El Nino. There were a series of moderate to small El Nino events in the early 1990s. In fact some papers describe that period as one, long, moderate El Nino. Then the 1995/96 La Nina created the additional warm water needed for the 1997/98 El Nino. And the 1998/99/00/01 La Nina replaced it. And here’s the data to support it, with the NINO3.4 SST anomalies scaled and inverted to make the relationship easier to see:
http://i46.tinypic.com/5ey39x.jpg
Stephen Wilde says: “In any event, new data is adding to the scene and generally supporting my case without me needing to confuse the issue by digging into unreliable old data.”
And that’s why I don’t extend my analysis back before the satellite-era. No Reason to.
Regards
stacase says: “And the IPCC wants me to believe they can predict [where] it’s going to rain and where it’s not 100 years from now.”
It will be interesting to see how the IPCC presents their regional short-term projections since ENSO and sea level pressure have such strong impacts.
Smokey says:
May 14, 2012 at 12:43 pm
HenryP,
I just knew I would be stepping on some toes by mentioning Creationists. My apologies, I wasn’t intending to be critical. Faith is essential to religion. I have no problem with that, and I think religion, despite it’s occasional excesses, has been a civilizing influence. Teaching morality is a good thing. However, I see no difference between Creationist faithful and CAGW faithful. Their beliefs are based on faith, not science [not that very religious folks don’t make the best scientists. In may cases they do, as history shows].
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I think it was Newton that said, “Science is thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”
I’m not a Creationist. I do believe (and study) the Bible. (The first “was” in Genesis 1:2 is the Hebrew frequently translated “It came to pass”.)
Whatever one chooses to believe about how we got here, we are here. We are surrounded by physical laws that govern the physical world we live in. That’s what this site deals with. Anthony ahs drawn a sometimes fuzzy line that I’m not willing to cross here. Meet me one the street, that’s another story. (I once got sucker punched by a Hare Krishna!)
Gunga Din says:
Fine…If you agree not to emit any CO2 into the atmosphere, which is not yours to do whatever you want with but is a common resource, then I won’t bet your money. The point is that we are betting other people’s money and livelihoods and health either way…So, we would be wise to make such bets on the basis of the best science available rather than the science that aligns with a certain group’s preconceptions of what they want the science to be based on their own belief systems and political ideology.
joeldshore says:
May 14, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Gunga Din says:
There have been many short range and long range climate predictions made over the years. Some of them are 10, 20 and 30 years down range now from when the trigger was pulled. How many have been on target? How many are way off target?
Bet your own money on them if want, not mine or my kids or their kids or their kids etc.
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Fine…If you agree not to emit any CO2 into the atmosphere, which is not yours to do whatever you want with but is a common resource, then I won’t bet your money. The point is that we are betting other people’s money and livelihoods and health either way…So, we would be wise to make such bets on the basis of the best science available rather than the science that aligns with a certain group’s preconceptions of what they want the science to be based on their own belief systems and political ideology.
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I see no evidence that someone emitting CO2 is a problem. If you do, then you’re welcome to follow your beliefs.
Me, I’ll place my “bet” this November. It won’t be on the UN’s IPCC or “treemometers” or the polar ice disappearing before the election.
PS I never even heard of Heartland until the billboard thing came up. Why do you keep bringing politics into this? Do you think politics are involved in the promotion of CAGW?
Joel, no one can stop emitting CO2, that happens to be just one of the fallacies in your belief system.
Think about it. You can build windmills with steel. But you can’t make steel with windmills.
You are buying into a false economy on the basis of false science.
That other scientists trust the frauds will be to their shame and disgrace in time.
I can tell you that it is the side that you represent that operates more from ideology than science but I know you are not interested in the professional malthusian catastrophist history of some of the more well-known proponents of your belief system.
Nonetheless you are trusting the same people who have endorsed countless made-up catastrophes based, I suppose on their own neuroses, and shoved down the public throat
simply so such professional wolf-cryers and their minions could feel good about themselves.
Your histrionics really do sort of mark you as a brainwashed minion.
The best science says this has all happened before, nothing to see here , move along, but there is no feel-good component for you in that, and you don’t get to control anyone’s emissions with simple facts and history.
And you have not made any lurch toward quantifying all those nasty could-bes that Mr. Din brought up in his post about the incompleteness of your understanding of the future based on
incomplete modeling.
jimash1 says:
May 14, 2012 at 2:58 pm
…. You are buying into a false economy on the basis of false science.
That other scientists trust the frauds will be to their shame and disgrace in time…..
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Boy, I really would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the puppet masters picked CO2 and global warming as the mechanism to grab control of the world.
It was actually bloody brilliant.
First start with pollution which really needed to be cleaned up.( First Earth Summit 1972) That set the hook with something everyone with a lick of sense could agree with. Then flex the muscle a bit about a generation later with the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987) and see if the hook is well set. Then go for the gold with CAGW. (IPCC established in 1988)
Gunga Din says:
Well, that’s kind of strange, isn’t it? You certainly probably have heard of Greenpeace and Sierra Club and have opinions about them but you have not heard about one of the political organizations feeding garbage science to the public debate that happens to align with what you want to believe.
I’m not the one bringing politics into it. I am just pointing out the politics that actually exists. And, yes, there is politics on both sides. However, only one side is claiming that the politics has corrupted basically all the respected scientific organizations on the planet and thus that instead of listening to those scientific organizations, we should be listening to the science promoted by Heartland and its minions and fellow travelers.
I’m not telling you to listen to science put out by Greenpeace and Sierra Club; I’m telling you to listen to the respected scientific organizations. (And, I am also in many threads, although it hasn’t been my focus of this one, patiently explaining the science as it is understood and fighting all of the deceptions and falsehoods that are put out by the anti-science crowd).