Readers may recall this WUWT story: Nature’s ugly decision: ‘Deniers’ enters the scientific literature.
Meanwhile, the discussion continues at John Nielsen-Gammon’s Climate Abyss website on Skeptics are Not Deniers, with part 3 now posted. Part 4 will likely be at this link today
At Jo Nova’s she has a response from Dr. Paul Bain. She writes:
Dr Paul Bain has replied to my second email to him which I do most appreciate. (For reference, see the letter he is replying to here: “My reply to Dr Paul Bain — on rational deniers and gullible believers” ). He deserves kudos for replying (it’s easier to ignore inconvenient emails), and also for taking some action to improve the article he published. I will reply properly as soon as I can. For the moment, and for fairness’s sake, it’s here for all to see.
… No, I don’t think there is any scientific reason (or definition in the English language) that validates the term “denier”, but Nature is going to publish an addendum this time, and that will be noticed by other researchers in the field. That is progress. Though there is a long way to go. — Jo
Bain writes:
As we all know, after publication it quickly became clear that the “denier” label was causing offence, and I contacted the journal’s editors to canvass options for addressing this. As the article was already published, it was agreed that the most practical option would be to include an addendum to the paper where we publicly expressed our regret about any offence we caused. This will be appended to both the online and printed versions of the paper. As you said, you yourself did not mention a link with Holocaust denial (and I myself did not hold such a link), but this was by far the most common association made by people who took the time to write to me personally to express their offence. By doing this, I don’t expect this to resolve (or even reduce) any issues (I fear that the damage is done), but I thought this was an appropriate thing to do nonetheless.
Full story here at Jo Nova’s
docrichard said:
“Wobble: a warm world means that forests are drier, so they tend to catch fire more easily, and fires are more extensive. That is what is happening, big time, in the USA right now.”
Preposterous. A warmer planet means more evaporation, which means more precipitation and humidity. And we are only talking about a tiny ≈0.8ºC rise over a century and a half. At times over the past 15,000 years, temperatures have risen 10º+ in little more than a decade.
The current natural warming is extremely mild. For all practical purposes, it is flat. And it is not accelerating. Blaming forest fires on a minuscule 0.8º rise is nothing but an alarmist scare tactic. It is pseudo-science.
What is happening right now is the result of bad enviro-policies over the past fifty years, in which the Forest Service was precluded from clearing out brush and fallen pine needles, which were up to four feet deep in many places. That dry tinder was fuel just waiting for the right conditions. Global warming had nothing to do with it.
@docrichard
>”Crispin, you seem to believe that climate science consists only of modelling. It does not.”
After reading hundreds of papers on the subject I am convinced that ‘climate science’ is not really a science at all, it is a great deal of conjecture with very little substance and a great deal of money behind it. The ‘product’ of climate science is the Copenhagen agreement, a version of which was being flogged in Durban. It palpably has nothing to do with ‘saving the planet from CO2’ but a great deal to do with trying to fund development in poor regions or countries. Good for them (the developers). The poor and the needed rquire our assistance. But the inefficiency of trying to do it through the mechanism of carbon taxes and an unelected elite in charge sucks, big time.
>”Evidence for climate sensitivity can be calculated from changes in the earth’s energy budget from investigations into paleoclimatology, Ocean heat uptake, solar cycles, changes over the last century, and volcanoes. ”
You have made a grave logical error: Evidence is not calculated. Evidence is the raw data. When one is shown a hockey-stick temperatrue chart and asks for the evidence, none is provided. Have you not noticed this? There have been several books written about it.
Investigations into paeleoclimatology all show that there is nothing remarkable about the present climate. Surely you are aware of that? It would not take long to find out if you did not know already.
Incidentally you will get nowhere trying to blame forest fires in Colorado (I was just there) on ‘global warming’. First the concept is silly and second it is not presently warming. The continental USA has been cooling for 30 years – did you not know that? Go to the National Weather Service website and look for yourself. Trying to blame ‘old warming in the 1990’s would be just as silly so take that argument to a different channel, not WUWT. We have reveiwed the topic many times in detail, all of which are thoughtfully archived at WUWT for your presual and edification.
>”The fact is that models point to the same value as these investigations.”
The models can point where they like. In fact the models can be made to point anywhere the modellers want them to which is exactly what I think is going on. The reality on the ground is that the core ‘greenhouse effect’ does not exist – a heated layer between 8 and 16 km above the ground, caused by CO2 intercepting IR from below and re-radiating it back to the surface. They call it ‘back-radiation or ‘down-welling’ IR. I am quite sure you are familiar with the concept as it appeared in a famous movie and has been blogged about on RC, SkS etc for years.
It does not exist. It only exists in the models you hold in such high regard. In the past few years a lot of people have been sending up instrument-laden balloons looking for it. There will be a section on this in the soon-to-come AR5. Look for it as it is important to your argument.
>”Models are tested by hindcasting – that is, by setting them running with data from a historic starting point and seeing how close they come to the observed record.”
I see you are familiar with the principles. Note that the models do not forecast the present 16 year hiatus in temperature rise though CO2 has risen faster than expected. In fact the temperature snuck up a tiny bit but only at the model-forcasted rate that was to be expected if all CO2 from people were stopped completely in 1999. CO2 has ramped up even faster than the modeled scenario but the temperature has behaved as if all CO2 emissions have been halted. Perhaps you were not aware of that. I find that unlikely because if the temperature was continuing to rise you would have used that as part of your argument that CO2 is still ramping up temperatures. It is pretty obviously not doing so.
>”More here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm
SkS is a well known site that has outrageous editorial policies and contains such unscientific ‘information’ that is it no longer taken serious by anyone around here. It even has a special section on the right of this page listing it as ‘unreliable’ because of the editing of incoming comments that were ‘too much’ (meaning too powerful as arguments) for which the list owner had no coherent response and the post facto editing of old comments to ‘weaken their argument’. You can read all about it in the archives here if you did not realise you were being manipulated by SkS.
>”You say “‘skepical view.’
I am personally quite skeptical that the IPCC’s models can predict the climate 10 or 20 years into the future. The idea that they can predict forest fires and weather is laughable. They cannot predict the 1990’s given 1880-1979. Surely you are aware of that?
I note that you had no response at all to the idea that melting glaciers and ice fields will absorb CO2. Surely you are aware that multiple claims have been made for glacial ice field melting as surely as the claim that the temperature will consistently rise with an increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere? You have heard of glacial melt, right?
Do you know much ice is in Greenland? The Arctic Islands? You mentioned the melting of the permafrost but did not note the amount of CO2 that will be absorbed by the melted ice in that permafrost. Do you know much many million cubic kilometers of permafrost there is in Alaska, Canada, Mongolia and Russia?
Have you ever seen a climate modeller talk about how the CO2 will be drawn out of the atmosphere at a catastrophic rate if that ice were to melt? Ice has no CO2 in it, water does – it absorbs it very quickly once it melts.
Have you considered that there are frozen forests flat on the ground in the permafrost regions? How did they get there? I doubt that dog sleds were used to haul them from Arctic Red and spread them from Inuvik to Baker Lake for paeloeclimatologists to find. I think they grew there when it was a lot warmer than now. Do you agree or do you perhaps subscribe to the, “God put those tree trunks there when He created the world to confuse the scientists” school of history?
You see Doc, you are engaging a pretty well-read group here at WUWT. That is why we come here. We don’t have to churn through all that guff being sold at RC and SkS and the outrageous Desmogblog (that guy should be on the Comedy Channel with a fake nose, big plastic glasses and hairy eyebrows).
Further, no one here buying the appeals to authority. The worst sort of appeal to authority is an appeal to one’s own authority. Some people show up here and say, “Well I am an expert in such-and-such, trust me.” We don’t trust anyone anymore because of the lying weasels who have dominated the climate science scene. We demand to see the evidence, the method of calculation, the computer code that attempted to make the calculation and of course a reproducible result which we will then interpret as we understand the universe. In my universe facts trump models every time because I model stuff then check it against the real world.
There is no detectable greenhouse effect from CO2 trapping IR in the tropical troposphere. Did you know that? The whole kit and caboodle of AGW is based on the theory and then the models based on that theory saying there is such a ‘hot zone’. You say the measurements of the real world match the models thus validating them. Fine. Show me the hot zone in the radiosonde data. I hope you have read the definitive paper by Monckton on the subject. If you do, at least you will know what you are looking for and the sort of evidence that would be classified as sufficient proof if you should find it. You will get a Nobel Prize if you do, I am sure.
And don’t forget to read AR5 and its inevitable discussion of it, eh? If the IPCC can’t show it is there, there is nothing left to discuss. Don’t accept hedging and beating around the bush. The flagship heating is there or it is not.
As Smokey has pointed out, remarkable claims require at least some proof. CAGW is a remarkable claim. There is not yet any proof of the claimed physical effect. Does that bother you? The fact that you have not already pointed me to a paper where the measurements show that warming at the hot spot is real is an indication of the poverty of the claims that ‘the physics are correct’.
The physics are wrong, incomplete or fudged – I am not sure which and it does not matter. I have nothing to prove because I have made no catastrophic claims. You have.
I notice docrichard still imagines theoretical warming due to IR absorption by CO2 is ~0.8 K/doubled [CO2]. It’s not and cannot be so. That assumes all IR flux in the absorption bands is converted to extra kinetic energy of mostly O2 and N2. This cannot happen because of quantum exclusion. The only pathway is for the excited GHG molecule to collide with an unexcited GHG molecule and in the collision transfer the quantum to extra kinetic energy for both molecules with no quantum vibrational state. Because there are so few GHG molecules, this is a low probability event.
In reality, because molecules have no memory [Gibbs’ ‘Principle of Indistinguishability’], the most likely event is for an already thermally excited GHG molecule to emit the same energy photon in a random direction thus making zero net energy gain in that local volume of gas, no local temperature increase.
The new photon is absorbed far away and another photon generated in a new direction, pseudo-scattering. The GHGs are an energy transport medium. Thermalisation is mostly at heterogeneous interfaces or the energy goes to space. The proof is the IR spectrum is very different under clouds, low GHG peaks compared to grey background. It’s because IR energy pseudo-scattered to and absorbed in the droplets is re-emitted as a grey body much in the ‘atmospheric window’. This is one way Nature ensures GHG warming is limited.
The other way is as described above: because the GHG is in the self-absorption mode, when you illuminate the lower atmosphere with more IR in those bands, you increase the emissivity in the reverse direction. This increased band-specific, Prevost Exchange Energy fills the same specific emitter sites at the earth’s surface, reducing its emissivity in those bands. In turn increasing the energy emitted outside those bands, much in the ‘atmospheric window’, similar to the clouds.
Please Dear Readers, particularly docrichard who appears to be particularly naïve, forget what the climate people tell you about IR radiation physics. It’s much more subtle and GHG warming is rigorously controlled by the physics to be much less than the climate people claim, and is probably kept at a constant level, Miskolczi’s observation.
The mechanism is extraordinarily subtle and I suggest you read up the physics before commenting in areas you don’t understand, particularly you docrichards. You are clueless, a dumb receptor for climate propaganda aimed at 9 year old level.
Jonas N said :
That is correct. Basic radiative transfer theory of a GHG well-mixed in an atmosphere in a gravitation field predicts reduction of radiation to space in the absorption bands of that GHG.
Sure there are. Using just radiative transfer theory, if you know surface temperature, and gas composition in our atmosphere in a gravity field (yielding a lapse rate), the expected space-bound IR spectrum can easily be calculated. Here is the example for the US standard atmosphere and surface temperature :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ModtranRadiativeForcingDoubleCO2.png
Note the big dig in ‘space-bound’ radiation for CO2 absorption bands, which causes a significant reduction in radiation to space. I think ‘turnedoutnice’ called it “the emissivity asymptotes”. Conveniently, the same emission graph is also shown for doubling of CO2 concentration.
Now before we get into the significance of that dip, and the 2x CO2 graph, and what it means for this planet’s surface temperature, I’d like to see if anyone disputes this graph or the underlying basic physics of radiative transfer theory, the (gravitational) origin of the lapse rate in our atmosphere, or the fundamental IR obsorption spectra of gases in our atmosphere.
If not, then we all agree that basic physics can quantify at least the first order effect of CO2 in our atmosphere, the effect it has on the surface temperature, and can quantify the first order effect of a doubling of CO2 in our atmosphere, and thus of AGW.
And when we are talking about feedbacks in the climate system, does anyone dare to estimate the increase in heat absorption due to the 6 million km^2 snow cover anomaly June 2012 ?
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/07/Figure5a.png
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/07/Figure5b.png
Hint, the area affected receives upward of 250 W/m^2 in June.
@Ron Dekker
“If not, then we all agree that basic physics can quantify at least the first order effect of CO2 in our atmosphere, the effect it has on the surface temperature, and can quantify the first order effect of a doubling of CO2 in our atmosphere, and thus of AGW.”
Your super-simple model does not come close to estimating the first order effect of CO2. Good grief. Were it so, the temperature would be going up as does the CO2 level. Looking back, the temperature would stabilise if the CO2 level did. I am sure you are aware fo the very poor correlation coefficient between CO2 and temperature – what is it….about 0.53?
On a short term scale there is a really good correlation between cloud cover and temperature, the physics of which are just as sound: cloud shades the ground and reflects sunlight. Willis wrote and we discussed a good article on cloudiness over the Pacific demonstrating this.
Regarding the snow cover: dare anyone dare estimate the amount of CO2 absorbed by the melting snow and ice as it equilibriates with the atmosphere? Were you aware that the freezing of water expells CO2 into the air? You are good at math: calculate the amount of CO2 that moves in and out of ice/water during a NH winter. Interesting, neh?
David Ross says: July 13, 2012 at 7:43 am
By all means David – please carry on the debate with DocRichard and I shall bow out.
My point is we have been ASSUMING that the radical enviros share our human values and THAT assumption is FALSE.
The radical enviros are anti-human and consistently oppose moves to increase supplies of economic energy that will improve the wellbeing of humankind. This explains their apparently nonsensical opposition to oil and gas pipelines, hydraulic fracturing, the Canadian oilsands, etc. and their apparently irrational support for inefficient, ineffective and environmentally destructive wind and solar power schemes.
The radical enviros stance is NOT primarily about the environment – that is a smokescreen – their objective is to increase energy costs, cause energy starvation and reduce human population. Their seemingly nonsensical positions are all consistent with this theme and are also consistent with their following statements.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/28/newsbytes-world-cooling-to-global-warming/#comment-1020878
(h/t to Wayne for the following quotations)
”My three goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First!
”A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Ted Turner,
Founder of CNN and major UN donor
”The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
Jeremy Rifkin,
Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
”Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies,
Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
”The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.”
Sir James Lovelock,
BBC Interview
”We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
Lead author of many IPCC reports
”Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
Sir John Houghton,
First chairman of the IPCC
”It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
Paul Watson,
Co-founder of Greenpeace
”Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
David Brower,
First Executive Director of the Sierra Club
”We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
”No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
”The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
Emeritus Professor Daniel Botkin
”Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong,
Founder of the UN Environmental Program
”A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-Development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies,
Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
”If I were reincarnated I would wish to return to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh,
husband of Queen Elizabeth II,
Patron of the Patron of the World Wildlife Foundation
”The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization we have in the US. We have to stop these third World countries right where they are.”
Michael Oppenheimer
Environmental Defense Fund
”Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
Professor Maurice King
”Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
Maurice Strong,
Rio Earth Summit
”Complex technology of any sort is an assault on the human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”
Amory Lovins,
Rocky Mountain Institute
”I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. it played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
John Davis,
Editor of Earth First! Journal
**********************************
Yes, and we can also agree that the “first order effect” suggests that a dropped piece of paper will take t=(2d/g)^0.5 seconds to reach the ground.
We can also agree that the “first order effect” suggests this even on a windy day.
Now, we can also agree that the “first order effect” might not be the primary effect which governs the outcome. Right?
Wow, seems like a huge positive feedback. Are you comfortable with your ability to model all the feedbacks that exist in the climate system?
Here are Willis’s WUWT threads on thermostatic effects. The first and last are the most important.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/14/the-tao-that-can-be-spoken/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/25/taotriton-take-two/
Willis: “This [below] is the third in a series of occasional posts regarding my somewhat peripatetic analysis of the data from the TAO moored buoys in the Western Pacific.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/15/cloud-radiation-forcing-in-the-tao-dataset/
Willis: “I hold these results out as strong support for my hypothesis that the temperature of the tropics is regulated by the combined action of clouds and thunderstorms. The difference in the temperature response of the warm and cool days shows the homeostatic mechanism in action, with warm mornings having cooler afternoons, and vice versa. All of this shows the clouds and thunderstorms at work.”
I am less concerned about the “labels” people use to describe their fellow humans.
I am much more interested in how people formulate their opinions on subjects such as the HYPOTHESIS of catastrophic humanmade global warming (“CAGW”).
I am further interested in whether they re-examine their opinions as new data becomes available.
I evaluate the quality of their opinions based on the accuracy of their PREDICTIVE RECORD when compared with actual measurements – one of the few true tests of scientific hypotheses.
Most global warming acolytes have developed their opinions by relying upon others – supposed “experts” and the popular press – appeals to authority. This is understandable because most people have neither the time nor the skills to independently verify the climate science.
Few global warming acolytes have demonstrated the ability to change their views based on new data – notable exceptions are James Lovelock and Fritz Vaherenholt, who have observed that the absence of global warming for the past ~decade casts doubt on the CAGW hypothesis. These gentlemen have been savaged for reversing their positions – they did not just leave the Church of Global Warming, they were vilified and excommunicated in absentia.
Finally , I examine the predictive record and conclude that the CAGW alarmists have failed utterly – ALL their dire predictions of climate catastrophe have proven FALSE.
Finally there is strong evidence of dishonesty within the CAGW elite. The warming alarmists have attempted to change their narrative several times – first it was “global warming” – then it was “climate change” – now it is “sustainability”. Then there are the ClimateGate emails, further evidence of deceit and corruption by the High Priests of the Church of Global Warming.
These FACTS should be sufficient to develop an informed opinion on the CAGW debate.
The warming alarmists are losing the debate because there is no significant global warming for a decade or more, despite increased atmospheric CO2. After squandering a trillion dollars on a falsehood, the manmade global warming crisis has been cancelled.
Alan MacRae: you must understand that the IPCC modelling is based on the religious beliefs of John Houghton and then we have 100s of people indoctrinated in the false science.
Look at his book and he makes two key mistakes. The first is to assume the emissivity of the atmosphere is 1. The second is to fail to understand that a two-stream approximation breaks down at boundaries.
The net result is that the models have a built in imaginary heat excess of 40% 100.[333-238.5]/238.5 and an increase in the IR of 400%. You get this from a simple energy balance.
The models offset this imaginary warming by using for example double real low level cloud optical depth and other corrections to hind cast. This is why they can’t predict climate.
The trouble is Houghton was IPCC co-founder and got Maggie Thatcher to build the Hadley centre;
turnedoutnice says: July 14, 2012 at 12:04 pm
“The models offset this imaginary warming by using (for example) double real low level cloud optical depth and other corrections to hind cast.”
Thank you Nice:
Are you referring in part to the following subject, raised in discussion with D. V. Hoyt in 2006?
My conclusion at that time was:
Global warming modelers have typically exaggerated Climate Sensitivity (to atmospheric CO2) by about one order of magnitude (~10x) in their climate models, and in so doing have produced model results that predict catastrophic manmade global warming. In order to force their models to hindcast past temperatures, particularly the global cooling period from ~1940 to ~1975, these same modelers FABRICATED aerosol data to simulate this cooling – In effect, to fudge the desired results.
Please see the communications below with Douglas Hoyt regarding aerosols:
http://climateaudit.org/2006/07/19/whitfield-subcommittee-witnesses-to-be-questioned/
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=755
Douglas Hoyt:
July 22nd, 2006 at 5:37 am
Measurements of aerosols did not begin in the 1970s. There were measurements before then, but not so well organized. However, there were a number of pyrheliometric measurements made and it is possible to extract aerosol information from them by the method described in:
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. The apparent atmospheric transmission using the pyrheliometric ratioing techniques. Appl. Optics, 18, 2530-2531.
The pyrheliometric ratioing technique is very insensitive to any changes in calibration of the instruments and very sensitive to aerosol changes.
Here are three papers using the technique:
Hoyt, D. V. and C. Frohlich, 1983. Atmospheric transmission at Davos, Switzerland, 1909-1979. Climatic Change, 5, 61-72.
Hoyt, D. V., C. P. Turner, and R. D. Evans, 1980. Trends in atmospheric transmission at three locations in the United States from 1940 to 1977. Mon. Wea. Rev., 108, 1430-1439.
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. Pyrheliometric and circumsolar sky radiation measurements by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1923 to 1954. Tellus, 31, 217-229.
In none of these studies were any long-term trends found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly. There are other studies from Belgium, Ireland, and Hawaii that reach the same conclusions. It is significant that Davos shows no trend whereas the IPCC models show it in the area where the greatest changes in aerosols were occurring.
There are earlier aerosol studies by Hand and Marvin in Monthly Weather Review going back to the 1880s and these studies also show no trends.
So when MacRae (#321) says: “I suspect that both the climate computer models and the input assumptions are not only inadequate, but in some cases key data is completely fabricated – for example, the alleged aerosol data that forces models to show cooling from ~1940 to ~1975. Isn’t it true that there was little or no quality aerosol data collected during 1940-1975, and the modelers simply invented data to force their models to history-match; then they claimed that their models actually reproduced past climate change quite well; and then they claimed they could therefore understand climate systems well enough to confidently predict future catastrophic warming?”, he close to the truth.
____________________________________________________________________
Douglas Hoyt:
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:37 am
Re #328
“Are you the same D. V. Hoyt who wrote the referenced papers?” Answer: Yes.
_____________________________________________________________________
Allan MacRae: the aerosol issue is fascinating. The bare aerosols were calibrated by Mt Pinatubo. However, the AIE is bunkum, It;’s easy to prove. just look at rain clouds getting dark underneath and understand that according to Sagan’s aerosol optical physics, that’s supposed to be a small droplet phenomenon. I have corrected Sagan’s physics, All the net AIE is wrong, So are most derived satellite data. The work needs restarting under proper leadership.
@RogerKnights
Thanks for the references. It is interesting from how many angles CAGW fails on first order analysis. The wonder of it all is how long this ‘crisis’ has been stretched out.
Wobble said :
Indeed, a pretty decent positive feedback. Did you calculate how much (in W/m^2) this snow anomaly albedo effect in June contributes to heating the Northern Hemisphere ? As compared to GHG focing ?
Of course, nobody claimed to be able to “model all the feedbacks that exist in the climate system” as you request.
GCMs implicitly model most of the known significant feedbacks (positive and negative), but still show poor performance when predicting observational parameters like Arctic sea ice :
http://www.realclimate.org/images/seaice10.jpg
Notice how the IPCC models grossly underestimate sea ice loss by modeling the ‘known’ feedbacks in the climate system.
In fact, AR4 models predicted 6.8 million km^2 summer Arctic sea ice minimum this September, while WUWT readers will be much closer with the 4.55 million km^2 forecast.
With such a gross underestimation of Arctic sea ice loss, it is clear that IPCC GCMs did not account for many of the positive feedbacks that mother Nature has put into the Northern Hemisphere’s climate system.
Good morning turnedoutnice and Crispin,
I agree that Climate Sensitivity to CO2 is insignificant – based on actual climate and CO2 data. See my post below from 2009.
I also recall the strong correlation between cloud cover and temperature.
In 2008 I became 90% convinced that humanmade CO2 emissions are NOT the primary driver of increased atmospheric CO2, rather global temperature is.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
Murry Salby has since produced a video discussing the same observation.
There could also be other contributors to increased atmospheric CO2 that are more significant than fossil fuel combustion, such as deforestation.
I further agree that climate science needs a thorough review, starting with the basics.
Regards, Allan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/10/polar-sea-ice-changes-are-having-a-net-cooling-effect-on-the-climate/
Excerpt from 2009:
All this is of considerable academic interest to me, but my core conclusion remains unchanged: Climate change is natural and cyclical, and CO2 is an insignificant driver of global warming.
I think it is safe to conclude that the sensitivity of Earth’s temperature to CO2 is insignificant.
Further, we cannot even say for certain that humankind is causing the increase in atmospheric CO2 – it is possible that this too is largely natural.
The AIRS CO2 animation is worth watching, at
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
No, I didn’t calculate it. Please provide the actual numbers for me in comparison to GHG forcing.
But certainly this level of heating has pushed us past the tipping point since it will obviously cause even more heating from additional snow anomaly albedo effect.
Then obviously warming will be much worse, much more catastrophic, and occur much more quickly than IPCC models have estimated. Observed warming will obviously exceed IPCC model expectations in short order. Right?
Oh. So, “nobody” would claim that this “grossly” underestimated positive feedback that were discussing (which dwarfs GHG forcing) is dwarfed by other climate feedback mechanisms?
What claims DO the IPCC modelers make about the overall accuracy of their feedback assumptions?
I’m learning so much!
I’ve been watching this argument develop ever since 2003, when John Daly went up against the Australian Met staff. That’s 9 years…
During all that time, I have never actually seen a ‘denier’, as defined by Dr Brown. As far as I can see, in the beginning everybody believed in the ‘climate scare’, except for a few activists like Daly and Steve McKintyre, who were capable of researching the raw data and examining it. The vast bulk of humanity, including all those who didn’t bother to think about it, all suported the ‘hockey-stick’ temperature interpretation. After all, the only other interpretation on offer was that the hockey stick was wrong because of some very arcane maths, which was never published in any mass circulation periodical. You really had to work to understand the issues involved.
Around 2006/7 Steve McKintyre came into world prominence because of the incessant attacks on him by the team. At this time the pro-AGW team were full of assertions that there were an ‘army of deniers funded by Big Oil’ out there somewhere – but I could never find any of them. There were just a few brave researchers with a growing following of people who read their arguments – none of whom fit the ‘mindless denier’ label…
By now the ramshackle AGW scientific structure has collapsed, as Steve and the few others have completely dug the foundations away. And mainstream publications are beginning to accept that the science is ‘iffy’. Even so, when I look at comments in the papers the people arguing against ‘catastrophic human-induced climate change’ are all well-informed – it’s the defenders of AGW who spout claptrap about the precautionary principle and refuse to say what would constitute a disproof of their position. As far as I can see, they are the only deniers that exist…
Dodgy Geezer says: July 15, 2012 at 11:40 am (excerpt)
“As far as I can see, in the beginning everybody believed in the ‘climate scare’, except for a few activists like Daly and Steve McIntyre, who were capable of researching the raw data and examining it. The vast bulk of humanity, including all those who didn’t bother to think about it, all supported the ‘hockey-stick’ temperature interpretation. After all, the only other interpretation on offer was that the hockey stick was wrong because of some very arcane maths, which was never published in any mass circulation periodical. You really had to work to understand the issues involved.”
John Daly, bless his soul, was one of the true pioneers. Other pioneers who had the ability and courage to speak out included Richard Lindzen, Pat Michaels, Tim Patterson and Sallie Baliunas. Sadly, Pat and Sallie have left their universities and Richard is about to retire.
Steve McIntyre is indeed an expert mathematician who meticulously dissected the Mann “hockey stick” and exposed its fatal flaws.
I do not have Steve’s considerable math skills (I only have 2 engineering degrees) but it was also obvious to me from the outset that the Mann hockey stick was false. Mann1998 contradicted our knowledge of both the Medieval Warm Period AND the Little Ice Age. Furthermore, eight years after its publication the Divergence Problem (“Hide the Decline”) was revealed in testimony and it demonstrated the total failure of the Mann paper.
My message is there is a “micro” level of analysis that only a few experts like Steve McIntyre can perform, and then there is a “macro” analysis that can be performed by those with some lesser scientific skills.
I first heard the CAGW story in 1985, and I knew it was nonsense even then, based on my background in the earth sciences. The rest has been a rather enjoyable exercise in sorting out the details…
Climate science is rather challenging and lots of fun. Climate political science… not so much.
wobble said :
I gave you the numbers in my July 14, 2:10 am post. Since you insist, let me work out some more details for the first part for you :
The June 2012 6 million km^2 snow anomaly is in an area all around the Arctic, which receives 250-280 W/m^2 insolation on the ground in June.
Assuming that albedo of snow is 0.8 and albedo of snow-free surface is 0.1, this means that an extra 1050 – 1180 TW (TeraWatt) is absorbed during June 2012 than during an average June a few decades ago.
If that heat would be spread out over the entire Northern Hemisphere this would imply 4.1 – 4.6 W/m^2 extra radiative forcing.
About GHG forcing, you can find estimates in many places [do some searching yourself].
Nothing is ‘obvious’ apart from the fact that something like 1000 TW over a month is a LOT of heat, and that heat will go somewhere. Luckily (or maybe not so) not all warming results in surface warming. Some of that 1050-1180 TW will end up warming oceans, which absorb the heat so quickly that it will not show up on surface temperature anomaly plots. Another part will go to melting Arctic sea ice, which will show up in heavy top-melting of Arctic sea ice, reduced volume (thinner ice) and reduced area and extent. Kind of what we are observing right now…
The IPCC modelers estimate a 1.5-4.5 C global average increase for doubling of CO2. That is a very wide spread, which is mostly caused by not knowing feedback mechanisms accurately. Now, IPCC models pretty clearly show Arctic amplification, but have clearly underestimated feedback mechanisms in and around the Arctic. Else the models would have predicted snow cover reduction and Arctic sea ice reduction consistent with observations, instead of the current gross underestimates.
So, yes, next time when you hear that some climate effect presents itself “sooner than scientists expected” then you know that again scientists underestimated another feedback mechanism, and again you know that mother Nature can’t be fooled, no matter if you are a AGW believer, a ‘skeptic’ or a ‘denier’.
I would like to answer a question and some points.
Tony G asks if wobble is in denial, in my opinion. I have no opinion on that, and if I did, I would not express it here, as the one thing I have learned here is that the d-word is not PC.
David Ross argues that current temperatures are not unprecedented. I accept that. The Eemian waqrm period was 114k years ago. To put that in context, anatomically modern humanity began 200k y/ago, and became behaviourally modern 50k years ago, Civilisation began about 12k y/ago.
OK, part of northern Greenland was ice free 4k y/ago. However, the Vostok core goes back 420k yrs. We cannot extrapolate from one region of Greenland to the whole world. We have to spread the net of data as wide as possible.
David then helpfully refers to evidence of forest fires in the MWP, supporting my point that increased forest fires are to be expected in warm times, and that this will unfortunately provide another positive feedback. In providing this argument, David contradicts Smokey and Crispin. Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_fires#Effect_of_weather says “Heat waves, droughts, cyclical climate changes such as El Niño, and regional weather patterns such as high-pressure ridges can increase the risk and alter the behavior of wildfires dramatically.”
I have to confess that I am not sure what turnedoutnice is arguing. Which is a big pity, since he is addressing the key point of my argument, which is that the effect of anthropogenic CO2 on climate is generally agreed, since it is derived from basic physics (as Rob Dekker has set out).
Is there anyone on this list who can summarise what turnedoutnice is saying? Is it agreed by all, or the majority on this list? Because if it can be sustained, it represents a revolution not just in climate science, but in physics.
If it is not, we must all accept as fact that (1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas, (2) that it is increasing, (3) that this increase commits the earth to a modest increase in temperature, and therefore (4) we must debate climate sensitivity and decide on the importance of this increase on the climate as a whole.
docrichard says:
Tony G asks if wobble is in denial, in my opinion. I have no opinion on that, and if I did, I would not express it here, as the one thing I have learned here is that the d-word is not PC.
I ask because from the discussion, and from your own admission, wobble is obviously more informed about the subject than you are. Is it possible that you may be the one in denial, and are refusing to look at facts that counter your predetermined conclusion?
As to your ‘facts’, you lose it at #3, because you assume that there is only ONE feedback mechanism (CO2). Climate is much more complex than that.
You didn’t even try to answer my question.
What claims DO the IPCC modelers make about the overall accuracy of their feedback assumptions?
It’s strange that you seem content to play trial-and-error on feedback mechanism assumptions one at a time. Frankly, it’s incredibly strange. Obviously, we don’t know enough about the mechanisms to accurately model the earth’s climate system – especially since the results are incredibly sensitive to the accuracy of the assumptions.
I don’t have a problem with the PC issue. My argument is that the term “in denial” isn’t accurate.
Am I “in denial” for disagreeing that 2+2=5? Am I “in denial” because I disbelieve claims that mermaids exist? I’m I “in denial” because I refuse to believe that NASA faked the moon landing?
Is everyone that refuses to believe Claim XYZ “in denial” regardless of what Claim XYZ actually is? Shouldn’t the credibility of Claim XYZ be debated BEFORE you claim that a disbeliever is “in denial”?
Now, if Person A understands the issues associated with Claim XYZ much better than Person B, then Person B isn’t in a position to say that Person A is “in denial.” Right?
Can we extrapolate from one region of Yamal to the whole world?
So, how do you model something that “can” happen? Saying that something “can” happen means that it might happen or it might not happen. What quantitative value do you assign to that in a model?