2012: The Year Greenland Melted (AKA Alarmists Gone Wild) and Manhattan-sized Icebergs!

Good stuff Dave Middleton.
If possible, please separate your article into two different articles on WUWT.
Your “Manhattan-sized Icebergs!!!” section is very interesting and should be a stand alone article, so it gets more views. You can still put in links from one article to the other, but I think a lot of people would like to see your Manhattan-sized Icebergs!!! write-up by itself. It could give it more widespread distribution. As it is, it may be buried so far into the first article and missed by too many people, who would like to see it and pass it on. Just a suggestion.

I got it, I know where the lost ice has gone – It fell on Canberra!

Robin says:
August 17, 2012 at 8:53 am
Well here’s the latest in the related junk science education push. NSF just granted $19 million to push the manmade global warming meme in US classrooms on malleable, captive minds.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2012/08/nsf_promotes_climate-change_ed.html?print=1

Good grief! How can we put a stop to the federal government promulgating junk science to kids?
Just electing a new President isn’t going to do it. The entrenched bureaucracies aren’t going to change unless people are fired and replaced.
/Mr Lynn

I love the way they have nicked the albedo graph from a real scientist, Jason Box’s blog. People should read Jasons blog rather than this empty headed psuedoscience.
REPLY: Pay “dorlomin” no mind, he obviously can’t reconcile the fact that the graphs and discussion he’s whining about don’t show what he wants, so therefore he must issue the usual condemnation. Watching “dorlomin” over the years, he has yet to contribute anything to the debate except complaints. He’s one of those commenters who’s comments are entirely predictable. – Anthony

Good job David and very enlightening.
I particularly appreciated the amount of work you put into the graphics. They really put the issue into much needed perspective.

I suspect that like the more famous Muir Glacier (Glacier Bay, Alaska), this glacier blossomed during the Little Ice Age and has been retreating since the warming commenced around 1850.
Interestingly enough, Indian legends and recent botanical/paleoclimate studies concur on the history of Glacier Bay. And the park rangers up there, some being Indians, have little belief in CAGW. Particularly since their ancestors experienced catastrophic natural cooling.

“The GRACE measurements upon which the accelerating ice loss claims are based are heavily dependent on the Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA). While not as large as Antarctica (where the GIA’s margin of error is nearly as large as the asserted ice loss), GIA variations can result in totally different ice loss values…”
This is very important information I was not aware of.
Can somebody explain in which way is it depending on it? Do I correctly understand that they assume Greenland and Antarctica are lifting up even with the whole ice on them?
So the ice lost measurement by GRACE are again dependent of a modelled quantity…
Speaking of this John Daly had an interesting posting about the whole sea level rise in 20th century:
http://www.john-daly.com/ges/msl-rept.htm
“The world’s public was given the clear impression that the claimed 18 cm sea level rise for the 20th century was an observed quantity. It is now clear that this is not the case. The 18 cm figure arrived at is the product of combining data from tide gauges with the output of the ICE-3G de-glaciation model.
The logical equation here is simple.
an observed quantity ± a modeled quantity = a modeled quantity
Thus, the claimed 18 cm sea level rise is a model construct, not an observed value at all.
Worse still, the model which has created it is primarily focused on the North Atlantic basin which shows relative sea level trends quite unlike those observed outside that region. Thus, global estimates cannot be inferred with any confidence from modeled trends which mainly affect only that basin.”
Somebody said it already…models all the way down..

Lars P. says:
August 17, 2012 at 10:33 am
“The GRACE measurements upon which the accelerating ice loss claims are based are heavily dependent on the Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA). While not as large as Antarctica (where the GIA’s margin of error is nearly as large as the asserted ice loss), GIA variations can result in totally different ice loss values…”
This is very important information I was not aware of.
Can somebody explain in which way is it depending on it? Do I correctly understand that they assume Greenland and Antarctica are lifting up even with the whole ice on them?
———————————————————————-
This paper discusses ground level measurements of the isostatic uplift or sinking of Greenland rocks, to give a more accurate GIA to complement the GRACE data.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2005GeoJI.163..865D

To simplify, the GRACE satellite keeps a running check on its position based on the GPS satellite network. This allows its orbit to be monitored to sufficient accuracy to detect changes due to mass concentrations like the Greenland ice sheet, effectively measuring the mass of the ice sheet.
Greenland floats on the Earth’s mantle like a boat in water. Like a boat, if weight is removed it floats higher. This is the GIA and happens if the ice mass decreases.
Since the effect of the ice sheet’s gravity on GRACE increase with mass and closeness to the satellite, ground based GPS measures of the uplift of the underlying rock are needed. This allows orbital changes due the mass of the ice to be distinguished from changes due to uplift, giving a more accurate measurement of ice mass and a better view of whether ice mass is changing with time.

The Danish DMI noted on July 27, 2012 that the Greenland Summit regularly gets above 0.0C in the summer.
This DMI report was done in response to the original “science/myth” pushed out by NASA and a NASA-based Greenland ice core scientist Lora Koenig.
Google English translation version of the DMI on July 27, 2012 and they don’t sound pleased.
http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&u=http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/t_vejr_pa_gr_nlands_top
http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/groenland2.gif
Record temp at the Summit is +4.4C.

Neil Gundel says:
August 17, 2012 at 11:24 am
“The portion relating to calving seems to be making the unremarkable point that this is normal during periods of global warming, which he seems to concede is now happening.”
————————————————
A glacier forms inland and flows downhill. On land it melts when it reaches the 0C temperature contour, this defines the tip. In Winter the lower temperatures allow the tip to move downhill and in Summer it retreats uphill. The highest tip position during Summer is used to define the length of the glacier
If the climate warms, the Summer 0C contour moves uphill and the glacier melts higher up the valley. If climate cools the 0C contour moves downhill and so does the melting tip of the glacier.
If a glacier reaches the sea, the end floats and, as well as melting, pieces break off the tip or the entire tip detaches. This is calving and happens every year at the position where the tip of the glacier reaches 0C.
In Winter or in a a cold period the glacier extends the full lenght of its fjord and the tip pushes out into the sea ice. In Summer it calves in the fjord. As the Summer warms the calving front recedes up the fjord, furthest inland at the peak Summer temperatures.
A long-term warming trend causes a trend in calving points, with the Summer minimum moving further inland over the years. This shows in the Jakobshavn Isbrae photos, in which the ice flows from a source on the right towards the sea on the left, while the Summer maximum calving point has moved inland to the right over the last 162 years.

Entropic man says:
August 17, 2012 at 11:51 am
…..If you want to convince the climate scientists that these cycles, and not cAGW, responsible for the changes we see, you ned to demonstrate that they better fit the real world data. that these cycles, and not cAGW, responsible for the changes we see, you ned to demonstrate that they better fit the real world data.
_____________________
NOPE, you have it backwards. Climate scientists have to convince ME that there is something going on that is not typical of Earth’s climate.
A look at the last five interglacials Vostok Graph show there is no excess heating in the Holocene. The Holocene isn’t even as hot as other interglacials were. A look at the Greenland Holocene Graph shows the earth is not warming but gradually cooling during the Holocene. And more than one paper states were are heading into a glaciation.

Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, USA et al
…Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3° C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present.

Recent research has focused on MIS 11 as a possible analog for the present interglacial [e.g., Loutre and Berger, 2003; EPICA community members, 2004] because both occur during times of low eccentricity. The LR04 age model establishes that MIS 11 spans two precession cycles, with 18O values below 3.6 o/oo for 20 kyr, from 398{418 ka. In comparison, stages 9 and 5 remained below 3.6 o/oo for 13 and 12 kyr, respectively, and the Holocene interglacial has lasted 11 kyr so far. In the LR04 age model, the average LSR of 29 sites is the same from 398{418 ka as from 250 {650 ka; consequently, stage 11 is unlikely to be artificially stretched. However, the June 21 insolation minimum at 65N during MIS 11 is only 489 W/m2, much less pronounced than the present minimum of 474 W/m2. In addition, current insolation values are not predicted to return to the high values of late MIS 11 for another 65 kyr. We propose that this effectively precludes a “double precession-cycle” interglacial [e.g., Raymo, 1997] in the Holocene without human influence.”
http://web.pdx.edu/~chulbe/COURSES/QCLIM/reprints/LisieckiRaymo_preprint.pdf

From Tim Folkerts on August 17, 2012 at 11:48 am:

I’m not particularly an expert on the subject, but aren’t you simply confusing sea ice and ice shelves? Every winter, sea ice forms around most of Greenland; every summer most of that seas ice around Greenland melts again.

Google Maps: Jakobshavn Isbrae (zoom out as needed)
From DMI: Satellite images of Disko region
Recent AQUA satellite image, Jakobshavn Isbrae calving area clearly visible:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Disko/20120816AQUA.jpg
Do you think that could be sea ice instead of calved-off ice shelf chunks? With the calving front more that 30 miles inland?

“The world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change”
Really?
Which is the most viewed site on the science of global warming and climate change?
[Reply: One and the same, note the content and the awards on the sidebar. ~mod]

JJ says:
August 17, 2012 at 1:28 pm
The satellite’s been up thirteen years and has so far given 12 years of data. As to the validity of my analysis, if n<30 the variance gets very large, but it does not affect the basic technique.
"Real world"? There is one, unless you are a solipsist. I'm trying to understand it better using whatever comes to hand. What are you doing?

Gunga Din says:
August 17, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Gail Combs says:
August 17, 2012 at 12:50 pm
NOPE, you have it backwards. Climate scientists have to convince ME that there is something going on that is not typical of Earth’s climate.
=======================================================================
A few times on different post I’ve asked just what (ice, sea level, temps, climate, etc.) is SUPPOSED to be if Man’s influence were removed from the equation. I’ve never seen anyone answer that.
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
I get that a lot here, Gunga Din. These people are negative. They are good at sounding doubtful about cAGW, but have problems coming up with alternatives.
Consider Gail Combs. She has a hypothesis that the temperature variations we see are driven by three interlocking cycles of different lengths. Does she present data and calculations to demonstrate that this is so?
She does not.
This double standard is very evident here. I am constantly asked to prove my own ideas, , but few of the sceptics ever even try to prove their own. Those that do try, tend to present strange graphs and say “Look, this proves it!”. They provide no background argument or explaination.
The only time Gail convinced me of anything was to improve my understanding of the complexity of air conditioner/ weather station interactions. Even then I had to do most of the legwork.
In any proper scientific forum these people would be slaughtered, which is probably why they hide here among friends instead of doing real science and taking it out into the real world.
Mr. Watts 2012 paper is a valiant effort to operate at the level of professional scientific debate. I hope it reaches publishable standard. Most of the rest of the sceptic comments here follow the old rule that 90% of everything is rubbish.

Entropic man says:
The satellite’s been up thirteen years and has so far given 12 years of data.
Reasking that which remains unanswered: You hold that 12 years of data produces a distribution that assigns exactly what meaning to the terms “divergence” and “normal variation”, exactly?
As to the validity of my analysis, if n<30 the variance gets very large, but it does not affect the basic technique.
It does affect the relevance of the results that are obtained by applying the basic technique. Principally by adding an “IR”.
“Real world”? There is one, unless you are a solipsist.
Oh, that isn’t in dispute. But your use of the term suggests that you also conceptualize an unreal world which somehow determines sub 2 sigma deivations from the mean here on earth. Do tell.
What are you doing?
Laughing at your posts.
Say, how goes the effort putting numbers to the other scary stories that you were telling about melting ice on the other thread:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/13/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-10-arcus-august-sea-ice-outlook-posted-plus-worries-over-arctic-storm-breaking-up-sea-ice/#comment-1059199
Perhaps when you did, you found it wasn’t so scary anymore, huh?

Smokey says:
August 17, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Entropic says:
“Climate scientists have to convince ME that there is something going on that is not typical of Earth’s climate.”
^That^ statement shows unequivocally that Entropic is not a scientist.
———————————————————————————
Sorry to disappoint you, Smokey, but Gail Combs made that statement in her August 17th, 12.50pm comment.

A great post here to use against the endless media blitz on ice melt/sea level rise that we’re used to.
I also read the Lomborg post on Slate referred to above. A lot of confused comments on that. Inconsistent, tho there were the usual regulars who resented anyone from “the outside” treading on what they considered to be their territory (not uncommon on blog site comment threads).
I put up this comment myself on Lomborg’s Slate post, ideas I think the common thread there has never considered:
“Thank you to Slate for getting a rational person like Lomborg to post here. The long litany of carbon dioxide’s ills now sounds like a broken record. Some readers are apparently obsessed. It is not possible to change the weather by driving your car or building a power plant. Droughts come and droughts go, so do hurricanes and tornadoes. A tiny molecule consisting of two atoms of oxygen and one atom of carbon cannot move the jet stream at 200 miles per hour (to direct a storm), or create a giant 1000-mile wide high pressure dome (to bake the earth with descending air).”
“One fatal flaw in CO2 theory is conceptual. Some folks seem to give the molecule a kind of spirtual “essence of evil”. It is to them “The Evil Gas with Roots in Hell”. But CO2 is a material object. It is not an actor in weather, it is acted UPON. The theory’s proponents have never identified a MECHANISM by which CO2 would be capable of doing all the nasty things it is reviled for.”
“It must have quite a potent essence of evil to be able to do what it is accused of. It’s only 4 molecules out of every 10,000 in the atmosphere. That’s a puny amount. We are dealing with theology here, not science.”

David, It’s somewhat misleading to talk about glaciers flowing downhill in the context of Greenland. Greenland is basically a large ice filled depression surrounded by mountains. The weight of the ice pushes the edges of the ice out through gaps in the mountains forming outlet glaciers. It’s analogous to toothpaste being squeezed out of a tube.
For me the interesting point is the albedo change. Its a +ve feedback and must be contributing a significant proportion of the melt. To what extent is the albedo change natural, and to what extent is it due to anthropogenic particulates? And to what extent is the melt due to insolation changes?
Elsewhere in the world we see south facing glaciers (in the NH) retreating, while north facing ones aren’t (Himalayas, Cascade volcanoes). I strongly suspect this also the case in Greenland.

RACookPE1978 says:
August 17, 2012 at 4:28 pm
“Even though we have found aircraft frozen under the ice by hundreds of feet since WWII, they have decided that the Greenland Ice Cap IS melting, and that the entire change in mass they observe is due to the icecap melting, and NOT any other movement of the trillions of tons of rock getting pushed down by the increased icecap load.”
This is the only part of your comment that I can answer in the short time I have left.Talk to David Middleton about GRACE.
The Greenland ice sheet grows from above each Winter as snowfall accumulates.Finding an aircraft like the P-38 now restored as “Glacier Girl” 260 feet down indicates that ice accumulates at about 4 feet a year. The weight on top of the ice sheet causes it to spread, with most melting taking place from the bottom and the edges, with some surface melt from warming in Summer and during occasional flash warming events like July 12th. It might take up to 100,000 years for a water molecule falling as snow on the icecap to return to the ocean. Whether the ice volume increases or decreases depends on the relative rates of accumulation and melting.
You might like to read the links in my 3.41pm comment. Some of these processes are discussed.
Goodnight , all.

The southern third of Greenland is too far south to have an ice-sheet. The summer solar insolation is too high to allow glaciers to build up. The only reason the ice-sheet is there is because of the ice accumulation in the centre/north during the ice ages.
If the interglacials last for 20,000 to 25,000 years (rather than the typical 10,000 to 15,000 years), the southern third of Greenland melts out and the centre/north height will drop by 500 metres or so.
The last time this happened was the interglacial at 400,000 years ago, which was not a particularly warm one (less than current temperatures probably), and the southern third of Greenland melted out and small trees even grew there.
The Greenland ice-sheet has been shrinking since the last glacial maximum and will continue to do so for 50,000 years or even 120,000 years (when the Milankovitch Cycles turn low enough for the next ice age to begin – they don’t until then).
That is the science .

@Gail
TAR
Section 1.3.1 of TAR stated:
…It has been suggested that the absorption by CO2 is already saturated so that an increase would have no effect. This, however, is not the case. Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation in the middle of its 15 mm band to the extent that radiation in the middle of this band cannot escape unimpeded: this absorption is saturated. This, however, is not the case for the band’s wings. It is because of these effects of partial saturation that the radiative forcing is not proportional to the increase in the carbon dioxide concentration but shows a logarithmic dependence. Every further doubling adds an additional 4 Wm-2 to the radiative forcing.

Actually, I’d dispute this as a distortion,the assumption about this falls out of the Comparison of Earth and Venus (1, and 100ATM atmospheres ) Spectrographic analysis shows that the width of the CO2 absorption band is wider on Venus than Earth. But Lets add in Mars, Mars has an atmospheric pressure of 0.007 ATM or about 0.7% of that of the earth, almost all carbon dioxide, while the Earths CO2 partial pressure is about 0.04% (400ppm) so Mars has 0.7/0.04 or 17.5 times the CO2 in its atmosphere than Earth does, but has NARROWER absorption bands than Earth. This leads my mind to conclude that the width of the CO2 Absorption band is related to Atmospheric density and not the amount (partial pressure) of CO2.
The corollary of this is that for CO2 to widen the absorption band, it must add to the volume of the atmosphere, however we note that when we burn things, we combine two oxygen atoms from the atmosphere with carbon from the fuel and produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as the oxygen we extract. CO2 does not therefore add to Atmospheric pressure and is incapable of widening the absorption bands. CO2 will therefore actually saturate. I don’t think the Physics here is quite right.
It may be that I am wrong here, so I’m quite open to being corrected.

Bobl says:
August 17, 2012 at 9:07 pm
As far as I remember from the course some 45 years ago, it is the total number of molecules in the light pathway which is of interest. In the CO2 case, that is percentage of CO2 molecules x air density x length of the pathway. Thus for Mars, the percentage of CO2 is high, but density and pathway are way smaller than on earth…

Reblogged this on Globalcooler's Weblog and commented:
A short time ago I made a comment in one of my articles that the Arctic Ice might be one of the largest summer minimums in at least 5 years. I appears thet will not be the case. That requires that I point out my error and replace my prediction with a rational view of what is actually happening. One of the best is this by David Middleton.

Lars P. says:
August 18, 2012 at 2:08 am
Entropic man says:
August 17, 2012 at 10:57 am
Thank you, for the answer and the link, however the link does not seem to work… eventually could you write it in full so that I can copy-paste and try to read the article?
Sorry, I cant get back to the accursed link myself!
Try the links in my Aug 17,2012 at 3.41pm comment. I think they cover a lot of the same ground.

Gail Combs says:
NOPE, you have it backwards. Climate scientists have to convince ME that there is something going on that is not typical of Earth’s climate.
Robert Austin says:
August 17, 2012 at 5:49 pm
They convince us, not we convince them. Capiche?
My own view of climate change without humanity was written in my Aug 17, 4.25pm comment. Add “Since 1880 cAGW has reversed the downward trend towards a glacial period.” and you have a complete idea of my thinking.
Can give me your world view in a similar way, in about the same detail, with an idea of the mechanisms you think are controlling the system and some numbers. ( Specifics please, not vague generalisations like natural variation.) Some things we may already agree on. For example do you accept the long term pattern of Milankovich cycle driven glacials and interglacials?
I need to know clearly what you mean by typical, before I can construct proper counter arguments. If you are not clear, yourself, what you believe there would be no point in trying to refute foggy thinking.

The Standardized Melting Index (SMI) is defined as the number of days where melting occurs multiplied by the surface area. So, the SMI for 2012 in Greenland is at an all time high after 33 years of data. The satellites being used are capable of measuring the area of the melt, but are incapable of measuring the thickness of the melt from the agw crowd. Will someone please tell me what possible significance there is to knowing time multiplied by area? Anyone?
Area of wetness means nothing. The sudden SMI increase could be the result of a parked high pressure area or change in surface albedo.
Volume of melt on the other hand, like cubic kilometers per day,would be of utmost significance. These satellites do measure elevation of ice. However, since there has been no discussion on any ice elevation change, one can only conclude that if the elevation was dropping, indicating an ice loss, we certainly would have heard about it by now.

Gail, I am just pointing out to the assembled readers, that in fact the assumption that the CO2 / Temperature follows a log law, presupposes that CO2 adds to the atmosphere, if that isn’t happening then the log characteristic is actually likely to break down at some point and become saturated.
For example project backwards using the IPCC numbers 390PPM (33 deg GHE) 190 PPM (30 deg GHE) 95 (27 deg GHE), 47, 22, 11, 5.5, 2.5, 1.2, 0.6, 0.3PPM where do I stop, is really the step between 0.15PPM and 0.3 PPM really going to result in a 3 degree temperature rise for 0 deg GHE to 3deg GHE. What happened for the doubling before that 0.075 to 0.015 since we are right back to the black-body temperature does the relationship break down there? Or are we going to get a temperature less than the backbody temperature, a greenhouse cooling ;-). The point is that this will not be a strict log law relationship, there will be practical limits at both ends, one is the available energy input, the other is the infinite slope of the log curve at zero, real world has to be something less than that
CO2 can only ever increase absorption 17% over what it does now (85 % energy saturated). Since the rise from all sources so far is 33 deg, the absolute maximum that could occur even in a 100% CO2 atmosphere is 5.2 degrees, feedback or not. Even if that occurred, it’d still not be catastrophic – Mind you we’d all be dead of asphyxiation, since we’d run out of oxygen long before we get to 100% CO2
Instead we get told 3 degrees per doubling giving more than 5.2 degrees rise by the time we get to 1600 PPM (0.6% CO2) – Just Ridiculous.

@Entropic man – Some Numbers for you – you wanted hard numbers right?
1. IPCC 6 Degrees by 1600PPM (0.16% CO2 atmosphere)
BOBL’s calc 33 Deg GHE so far, CO2 85% Saturation, Remaining energy 15% ratio 15/85 17% increase in GHE above amount so far = 5.2 Degree rise (for 1 ATM 100% CO2 Atmosphere) – This is called a bounds test BTW
2. SCIENCE – Rise for last 100PPM 0.7 deg
IPCC Forecast for next 100PPM 1.2 – 2.4 deg
Temperature/CO2 relationship is a log (ln) law – Please reconcile how the rise for the next 100 PPM can be greater than the last 100PPM if the relationship is a log law – Numbers please?
3a. Gain for feedback is a nett of 3 degrees due to feedback, proportion of output fed back to input (loop gain) IPCC – 0.67 – Q 1 – How is it this is stable.
3b – There are significant negative feedbacks in the climate, Lapse Rate feedback, Radiative Loss, Cloud Albedo amounting to an attenuation of the direct effect of C02 by a factor of 5 (1/5th). This implies a counteracting positive feedback resulting in a multiplication of 15 must exist, requiring a total positive feedback loop gain (proportion of output fed back to input) of more than 0.95 – Please explain how this is stable. Bode plot to prove stability please Entropic?
Lets see if Entropic can come up with Post-Normal mathematics?

Bobl says:
August 18, 2012 at 6:52 pm
2. SCIENCE – Rise for last 100PPM 0.7 deg
IPCC Forecast for next 100PPM 1.2 – 2.4 deg
You quote a rise of 0.7C for the change in CO2 from 0.028% to 0.038%. You make the elementary mistake of assuming that the temperature change due to this CO2 increase has gone to completion, and is therefore going to be less than the temperature rise due to the change from.0.038% to 0.048%. You forgot that the latter is a prediction to equilibrium while the effect of the former is ongoing as equilibrium has not yet been reached.
As you pointed out temperature is proportional to log[CO2], To suggest that the first quantity should be less than the second is mistaken.
If the rest of your attempt to drown me in mathematics is of the same quality, it is probably not worth answering.

I’m not getting any closer to finding out what a sceptic consensus on the science looks at.
Should I be talking to the sceptic scientists who regard a doubling of [CO2] as causing 1.1C warming from direct back radiation and 0.3C forcing ( the reference is on WUWT, I think, but a search didnt pick it up), or to Smokey who does not regard it as a greenhouse gas at all?
Should I be talking to JJ and David Middleton who regard n=13 as too small a sample size of years for analysis of Greenland albedo trends, or to Robert Carter who regards n=13 as enough years to confidently predict that global warming has stopped?

Smokey says:
August 19, 2012 at 1:29 pm
Entropic presumes far too much based on zero scientific evidence. Any effect from human emitted CO2 is too small to measure. And of course, from years to hundreds of millennia, rises in CO2 have always followed rises in temperature, not vice-versa.
And where’s that global warming, anyway?
__________________________________
Rather than cherrypicking one graph which shows what you want from the SSMI data , I thought I’d include all four decadal trend maps and let people decide for themselves what is happening.
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?type=trend&channel=tlt
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?type=trend&channel=tmt
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?type=trend&channel=tts
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?type=trend&channel=tls
To quote from the SSMI website:-
Globally averaged trends computed over latitudes from 82.5S to 82.5N (70S to 82.5N for channel TLT) are shown in the table below, and include data through July, 2012:
___________Start Time______Stop Time______# Years______Global Trend
Channel TLT__1979__________2012-07________ 30+_______0.133 K/decade
Channel TMT__1979__________2012-07________30+_______0.078 K/decade
Channel TTS__1987__________2012-07________22+_______-0.011 K/decade
Channel TLS__1979__________2012-07________30+_______-0.301 K/decade

Smokey says:
August 19, 2012 at 1:29 pm
“And where’s that global warming, anyway?”
—————————————
Rather than cherrypicking one channel from SSMI, which shows the trend you want, I thought I would give all four and let people make up their own minds. Remember that these maps exclude the high Arctic and the Antarctic plateau.
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?type=trend&channel=tlt
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?type=trend&channel=tmt
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?type=trend&channel=tts
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?type=trend&channel=tls

David Middleton says:
August 17, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Thank you, great!
richardscourtney says:
August 18, 2012 at 3:33 am
I see, thanks! I always try to check all information that looks reasonable. I found my answer in David’s post, somehow I missed it first time I checked

JJ says:
August 19, 2012 at 3:26 pm
You hold that 12 years of data produces a distribution that assigns what meaning to the terms “divergence” and “normal variation”, exactly?
In the context of the albedo data. I regarded the values within 2 Standard Deviations of the minimum albedo mean as normal variation.
The 2011 and 2012 values were more than 2 Standard Deviations from the mean, indicating that the probability of their being part of the normal range of variation was less than 5%. I used divergence as a convenient shorthand for this.
Thinking on the matter later it occured to me that the 6/7 events per milennium frequency quoted gave an annual probability of occurence of about 0.6%, which agreed with my probability derived from the data in the graph.
In other scientific contexts I have tended to find that if two independant lines of evidence relating to the same phenomenon agree, one can have increased confidence in their validity.
As for putting words into your mouth, I interpreted your earlier comment as expressing unhappiness that the sample size was not larger. I would prefer n>30 for statistics involving 95% confidence limits myself, but in the case of the albedo data perforce went with what was available.

Philip Bradley says:
August 19, 2012 at 11:48 pm
Entropic man-I’m not getting any closer to finding out what a sceptic consensus on the science looks at.
Science isn’t about consensus. Science is about constructing theories, looking for evidence and seeing if the evidence supports or falsifies the theory. Remember, no amount of evidence will ever prove a theory correct.
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Within sciece I would agree with you. Unfortunately, in practice, scientists are expected to advise political decision makers.
Politicians have no liking for “a range of probabilities” or ” some of us think ” or “Fred’s theory says this and Charlie’s theory says that” . They demand a consensus opinion on the science to put alongside other factors such as voter pressure, economics, etc.
This creates oddities like the North Carolina state commission on seal level rise.A group of academics were asked to forecast the amount of sea level rise to 2100. Individual estimates varied from 18″ up to 55″. The politicians demanded a single figure and got 39″. They then decided mitigation would be too expensive and tried to pass a law banning anyone from discussing the matter.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/03/us-usa-northcarolina-idUSBRE86217I20120703
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=north-carolina-sea-level-rises-desipte-senators
The IPCC reports are the consensus response of climate scientists to the same political requirement for scientific advice on climate change. Like it or hate it, AR4 is what decision makers requested. Their response to it varies with the political and other realities of their own situations. In Tuvalu they are bying land in Fiji to resettle their population if necessary. In the US a strong anti-climate change lobby forces politicians to keep their heads down.
What is missing on the sceptic side is some credible equivalent to AR4, a consensus document advising decision makers what to expect if IPCC are mistaken. I have seen documents describing a consensus among sceptic scientists that the impending doubling of [CO2] would produce a warming of 1.1C, plus 0.3C forcing, but outside the sceptic community that has not been widely reported. It may have been drowned out by the cacophany of different ideas coming from different factions within the community.

@ Entropic man, Physics doesn’t change there may or may not be warming in the pipeline, it was as true of the past as now, therefore the 0.7 deg includes any in-pipeline warming, which by the log law, would have Greater effect than today. (Some pipeline since Global temperatures are heading down). Now where are your Numbers, I gave you numbers I want yours in return. You demand numbers, expect to have the same demanded of you,

Wow! I come in after lunch for a quick look at WUWT and find more than I have time to answer!
Briefly:-
Mr. Courtney- Politicans do indeed take advice from all directions. I do not want Lysenkoism. I want them to get the best advice possible. Did you notice my use of the word credible. From their viewpoint the IPCC have more credibility than NIPCC . Get your sceptic scientists singing from one sheet, get several demonstrably accurate predictions on record and, above all, separate NIPCC publicly and visibly from any perceived links with political lobby groups. They might then have more influence. Dont rail at me, get out there and convince your own population.
Smokey- Science is not a democracy, it is a test of theory versus reality. No matter how many votes it gets, if a theory fails that test it is wrong. Telling that to politicians is, however, an uphill struggle. Like Mr Courtney, stop railing at me and get a convincing case together. If you can successfully reassure the government of Tuvalu you should be able to convert many others too.
Gail-“We are not Warmist Scientists, we do not “DO” consensus science”. This is why you remain on the fringe. A cacophany of different opinions is useless to the man planning sea defences or irrigation systems or wondering whether to buy more snowploughs.

Entropic man says:
In the context of the albedo data. I regarded the values within 2 Standard Deviations of the minimum albedo mean as normal variation.
The question was, what does “normal variation” mean to you. i.e. what significance do you associate with it? “Normal variation” is not a term with a single connotation. In addition to having a dry and unevocative meaning which describes the result of a statistical calculation, it is also, not surprisingly, a normative term. Unfortunately, people tend to equivocate on the statistical and normative meanings that they associate with that term. This is not the “how did you calculate that” question. This is the “So what?” question.
The 2011 and 2012 values were more than 2 Standard Deviations from the mean, indicating that the probability of their being part of the normal range of variation was less than 5%.
So what?
See.
Thinking on the matter later it occured to me that the 6/7 events per milennium frequency quoted gave an annual probability of occurence of about 0.6%, which agreed with my probability derived from the data in the graph.
The 6/7/mil frequency was quoted for melt events. The graph tracks albedo. You’re making fruit salad.
As for putting words into your mouth, I interpreted your earlier comment as expressing unhappiness that the sample size was not larger.
That was not a comment, it was a question. The size of a sample does not affect my happiness absent an inappropriate use of that sample. I was inquiring as to the nature of the use to which you are putting that sample.
I would prefer n>30 for statistics involving 95% confidence limits myself, …
Why? Why are you not content with n=13? What do you think you would get for n=30 that you don’t have now? Why would that be important? Why N=30, vs say, N=60, or N=100? How are you making these choices?
… but in the case of the albedo data perforce went with what was available.
Why? You seem to be yearning for n=30, as if that would have some important effect on your conclusions, but you go right ahead and draw those conclusions with less than half that sample size. Why would you do that?

Entropic man says:
August 18, 2012 at 3:24 pm
Ms Combs, while reading up on Bond events and Daasgaard-Oeschger oscillations I ran across this paper….
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Thanks. And yes I do think Milankovitch had it correct.
Where I have a problem is the zeroing in on CO2 before the first step in “Troubleshooting” was ever taken. That step is listing every conceivable possible variable. For chemical batch processes it would be temperature, pressure, mixing time and rate, personel/shift, mix equipment raw material lot/vendor…. As far as I am concerned we are still at that step.
For the sun we know there is a 22 yr Hale cycle.
Gleissberg came up with the 88-year solar cycle, Joan Feyman et al confirmed it with the Nile flooding/aurora records and there is this paper Persistence of the Gleissberg 88-year solar cycle over the last ∼12,000years: Evidence from cosmogenic isotopes
The name of the 200 year cycle is the de Vries or Suess cycle. Again confirmed by Joan Feyman et al and this paper The influence of the de Vries (∼ 200-year) solar cycle on climate variations: Results from the Central Asian Mountains and their global link among others.
Heck even the US government acknowledges these solar cycles.

U.S. Geological Survey

….and, by inference, in solar activity, have periodicities of about 200 years (so-called Suess Cycles; Damon and Sonnett, 1991), and cycles with similar periodicities can be seen in the longer ∆14C record (fig. 2). Note that the sunspot minima lead the ∆14C maxima by 20–60 years, which is the time it takes for the effect of solar activity on 14C production to cycle through the atmosphere-ocean system. When a spectral analysis is performed on the ∆14C record, a number of peaks appear in addition to spectral peaks at about 2,000 and 200 years (fig. 4). Two other prominent spectral peaks occur with periodicities of about 400 and 88 years. The 88-year cycle is called the Gleissberg Cycle and is thought to be the result of amplitude modulation of the 11-year Schwabe Cycle (Sonnett and Finney, 1990). A 22-year periodicity (not shown in fig. 4), the so-called “double sunspot” or Hale Cycle, also may be the result of amplitude modulation of the 11-year Schwabe Cycle. The prominent 200-year cycles of Maunder-like minima (so called “Suess wiggles”) may be the result of modulation of the ≈ 2,000-year cycle (Sonnett and Finney, 1990). This makes it difficult to assign a cause to all but the basic 11-year sunspot cycle…..

I am rather surprised you were not aware of these solar cycles.
The there is Variation in Earth Rotation and Global Temperature (An example paper from Colorado State Uni)

Abstract-
Variations in the rate of Earth rotation have been correlated with the non-dipole portion of the Earth’s geomagnetic field. Long period variations have been correlated to geomagnetic polarity bias, and short period variations have been attributed to non-dipole induced electromagnetic coupling between the outer core and the lower mantle. It is believed that the polarity bias is a manifestation of core-mantle boundary topography influencing the otherwise random behavior of the non-dipole portion of the field. Mass transfer at the core-mantle boundary due to topographic changes (perhaps due to oceanic trench redistribution) may result in the required changes in the Earth’s angular velocity, due to conservation of angular momentum. On a shorter time scale, electromagnetic coupling may produce a sufficient torque on the lower mantle to affect drag. Short period fluctuations of rotation correlate well with mean global temperature variations. It is proposed that circulation in the core, mantle, lithosphere, and atmosphere are interrelated.

And this Solar Activity, Geomagnetic Field, Earth Rotation Rate, and Climate a series of papers presented in 2007?, and this Long Term Variations in the Length of Day and Climatic Change and this from NASA: Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field Discovered
You should already be aware of Svensmark and Friis-Christensen’s Variation of Cosmic Ray Flux and Global Cloud Coverage – a Missing Link in Solar-Climate relationships and the confirming tests. CERN experiment confirms cosmic ray action Also Article originally appeared in PhysicaPlus: Cosmic Rays and Climate by Dr. Nir J. Shaviv
Also by Shavir on CERN experiment: The CLOUD is clearing
And then there are other factors outside the earth. Shavir’s The Milky Way Galaxy’s Spiral Arms and Ice-Age Epochs and the Cosmic Ray Connection
On top of that is plate tectonics and the movement of the Caribbean plate closing the Isthmus of Panama that is thought to have caused a change in ocean circulation, resulting in the gulf stream and the Ice Ages.
Then there are the oceans that act as climate modifiers and have a major contribution to the climate much of which is still not understood. Bob Tisdale is writing a book on just one part of that.
That is just quickly off the top of my head. Heck they are just now figuring out that CO2 is not uniform in the atmosphere PHOTOS: Global Carbon Dioxide -AIRS Data, July 2008 and July 2009 (scales are not the same)
Do I know what factors regulate the climate? No but I do know it is not just one factor but a combination and CO2 is just a tiny part of it. The Sun, our only source of energy has got to be in the middle of it even though we have not figured out the how and the oceans/water cycle have to play a big roll since land temperature follow sea temperatures and not vice versa.

Why do I smile?
I have just been harangued from three directions.
I have been haragued about science by a man demonstrating that he knows little of science
I have been harangued about politics by a man demonstrating that he knows little of politics.
I have been harangued about statistics by a man demonstrating that he knows little of statistics.
Ms. Combs, thank you.At least one person is discussing science.
You describe ten different cycles, some I’d never encountered before, and a number of other sources of complexity in the system. From context, I think you regard this complexity as a barrier to understanding it.
This is not necessarily a problem.I worked in ecology and was bedevillied by the same difficulty. The solution was to look for the drivers of the system. In ecology we quickly found that if we concentrated on energy flow and nutrient cycles, plus a limited number of environmental variables like temperature and water, the apparant complexity bcame self cancelling. The non-driving variables were either of small influence or cancelled each other out.
In studying climate the same thing may happen . With a large number of cycles acting simultaneously on the atmosphere, land and oceans, some will be warming, some cooling and some neutral at any time and most will be self cancelling.
The cycles driving the system will be the ones showing strong correalations with the climate data. I suggest five possible candidates.
On the largest scale would be the 100,000 year Milankovich cycle of orbital eccentricity, which matchs the glacial/interglacial cycle well.
If the Sun does show grand minima and grand maxima, then we may have a 1000 year cycle, explaining MWP, LIA and the present warming though I would as yet regard that as speculative, our measured solar data has too short a baseline.
On a decadal scale we have ENSO, and the NAO, both showing in the record. THe 11 year solar cycle also shows in the data, though I would like to see a much more strongly establised link before I accepted that cosmic rays rather than insolation are the mechanism by which it interacts with us.
Models are disliked here, perhaps because the sceptics expect too much from them. A model is a simplified simulation of reality, working, within its limitations, using the same physics. What you can do with a model is to try the things you cannot do with only one Earth available. Different cycles can be included or left out and the effects observed. It quickly becomes apparant which are the drivers and which are not.
If a sceptic scientist is listening, with access to climate modelling software; try producing a workable model in which the driving cycles can be shown to generate the temperature record of the last milennium, overwhelming any variation due to increasing CO2. That would be the sort of evidence which I, and hopefully the rest of climate science, would take notice of.

@ Entropic man
Excuse me? Exactly when did we start having a pipeline 1850, 1900, 1970, whenever you were born?. The last 150 years has just as much of in-pipeline warming/cooling and is just as much not in equilibrium as now, climate is a dynamic thing, after all this “Pipeline” is simply speculated to be a Temperature lag produced by a Physical process (presently unknown). The supposed Pipeline (lag) is also a problem with the feedback hypothesis, lags create temporal instability (oscillation) when they are in a feedback loop, to have such a large lag in a feedback loop of such gain, oscillation is inevitable – so now you need to demonstrate that oscillation occurs.
By the way we still haven’t seen your calculations, nor have you proven me wrong …
Hmm guess I remain unrefuted on all three points
bobl 3
Entropic Man 0

Entropic man says:
JJ- Read this.
Nothing there has any relevance to the questions I asked of you. Note that those questions use that word “you” which indicates that they reference your understanding and implementation of the concepts involved.
Your understanding and use of standard deviation and confidence intervals is not correct. Perhaps you gathered that from reading a wiki page, and that is why you run and hide.