NOTE: This is a “sticky” top post, new posts will appear below this one.
No, I’m not asking for money, only your ability to research and encapsulate an idea.
I have another big project in the works, and I’m inviting you all to be a part of it because this is an idea that lends itself to crowd-sourcing very well. I’ll have a press release forthcoming as to what it is all about, but in the meantime I decided to give you an opportunity to pitch in and help.
The concept is simple and revolves around the question “Did you know?” and climate science.
Here’s how it works.
Every one of us has some little tidbit of information they learned about climate science that isn’t being told by the MSM and doesn’t fit the narrative. I’m looking for a series of “Did you know?” tidbits to use in an upcoming presentation. For example:
==============================================================
Did you know?
The infrared response of Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is curved (logarithmic) rather than straight (linear) as is often portrayed in science stories?
This means that a runaway greenhouse effect is not possible on Earth.
===============================================================
As shown above, the concept and supporting graphic fits on a single slide. That’s what I’m shooting for.
Using the example above, I’d be indebted to you if you could provide similar examples in comments. Please provide a URL for a supporting graphic if you have one, along with a URL that provides a source/citation for the information.
Concepts that are just words without graphics are acceptable too, provided they are short and succinct. They have to fit on a single slide.
Other readers are also welcome to fact check the submissions in comments, which will help make my job easier.
This post will remain a top post sticky for a few days. Thank you for your consideration.
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Phil & Netdr
The sun was about 1% less luminous for every 110 million years back you go in time, so during the Mesozoic was 1-2% cooler.
Polar bears are a recent species. IIRC the oldest known sure specimen is from only 70 kya, but proto-polars must have existed during the Eemian interval (130-114 kya), the previous & much warmer interglacial, or at least brown bears specializing in ringed seal hunting.
Did you know that some of the “new record high temperatures” in your area may be “new” because the old records have been changed?
For example, here is a comparison of the list of record highs for Columbus Ohio as of 2007 and as of April 2012.
New as of April ’12 Old from ’07 (did not include ties)
6-Jan 68 1946 Jan-06 69 1946 Same year but “new” record 1*F lower
9-Jan 62 1946 Jan-09 65 1946 Same year but “new” record 3*F lower
31-Jan 66 2002 Jan-31 62 1917 “New” record 4*F higher but not in ’07 list
4-Feb 61 1962 Feb-04 66 1946 “New” tied records 5*F lower
4-Feb 61 1991
23-Mar 81 1907 Mar-23 76 1966 “New” record 5*F higher but not in ’07 list
25-Mar 84 1929 Mar-25 85 1945 “New” record 1*F lower
5-Apr 82 1947 Apr-05 83 1947 “New” tied records 1*F lower
5-Apr 82 1988
6-Apr 83 1929 Apr-06 82 1929 Same year but “new” record 1*F higher
19-Apr 85 1958 Apr-19 86 1941 “New” tied records 1*F lower
19-Apr 85 2002
16-May 91 1900 May-16 96 1900 Same year but “new” record 5*F lower
30-May 93 1953 May-30 95 1915 “New” record 2*F lower
31-Jul 100 1999 Jul-31 96 1954 “New” record 4*F higher but not in ’07 list
11-Aug 96 1926 Aug-11 98 1944 “New” tied records 2*F lower
11-Aug 96 1944
18-Aug 94 1916 Aug-18 96 1940 “New” tied records 2*F lower
18-Aug 94 1922
18-Aug 94 1940
23-Sep 90 1941 Sep-23 91 1945 “New” tied records 1*F lower
23-Sep 90 1945
23-Sep 90 1961
9-Oct 88 1939 Oct-09 89 1939 Same year but “new” record 1*F lower
10-Nov 72 1949 Nov-10 71 1998 “New” record 1*F higher but not in ’07 list
12-Nov 75 1849 Nov-12 74 1879 “New” record 1*F higher but not in ’07 list
12-Dec 65 1949 Dec-12 64 1949 Same year but “new” record 1*F higher
22-Dec 62 1941 Dec-22 63 1941 Same year but “new” record 1*F lower
29-Dec 64 1984 Dec-29 67 1889 “New” record 3*F lower
TonyG says:
October 22, 2012 at 1:17 pm
richardscourtney says:
Mauna Loa station is not the only atmosphericCO2 measuring site. It is the site where the longest series of atmosphericCO2 measurements has been obtained (since 1958).
Thank you for the correction. I must have misunderstood what I’ve read. Do you happen to know offhand where I could find information about the other stations and when they’ve come on/off line? (If not, I’ll look it up myself after work – thanks)
Try here:
http://co2now.org/Know-CO2/CO2-Monitoring/co2-measuring-stations.html
TonyG:
re your question to me at October 22, 2012 at 1:17 pm
I think you want to open the folder on ‘Atmospheric Trace Gases’ at
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/data_catalog.html#
I hope that helps.
Richard
34 Green-jobs Flops: Electric cars (Obama’s Voltswagen), wind power makers, solar panel makers, . . .
35 The EU’s cabon-trading market is way down. The US’s carbon-trading exchange has collapsed.
36 The supposed success of Spain, the one-time poster-child for green energy, has turned out to be considerably exaggerated upon closer examination. The success of Denmark is due to special factors that don’t apply elsewhere.
37 Wind and solar power is destabilizing the grid, or on the verge of doing so, in countries like Germany.
38 Energy poverty due to rising fuel and electricity rates as a result of green policies is causing homes to go unheated or underheated in Europe in the winter, leading to increased sickness and death. Environmental reporters don’t report this nearly as much as the (lower number of?) deaths and sickness due to the French heat wave of 2003.
39 Nearly every environmental journalist qualified for their job by developing expertise in environmentalism at green organizations and/or from taking green-biased college courses, and thus likely has a greenie mindset.
40 Environmental reporters are drenched in press releases and other PR from greenie organizations n researchers. They receive comparatively little PR material from the skeptical side.
41 Environmental reporters have a greater need to maintain friendly access to their orthodox sources than their skeptical ones, and thus have a vested interest in favoring the orthodox spin.
By that thread’s criteria, the little boy was a fake skeptic but the King’s tailors were true skeptics. (“the King’s tailors” is a good term for The Team.)
George E. Smith says:
October 22, 2012 at 12:05 pm
As a result there is a range of Frequencies/wavelengths that can be emitted or absorbed by a CO2 for example molecule, and it simply is not true that the emitted re-radiation is necessarily at a lower energy, than the absorbed photon was.
While Phil has couched his explanation in terms of the quantum mechanical energy level picture of the process, one only needs to invoke things like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to see that any such absorption/ emission process, necessarily has a finite rbandwidth associated with it, and both atmospheric Temperature (mean particle velocity) and gas density (mean time free path length) influence the GHG absorption/emission processes, which is why the measured spectra are bands of broadened lines, rather than the much sharper lines of low pressure atomic absorption lines, characteristic of atomic spectra.
Thanks George, I was reluctant to talk about broadening in answer to someone who thought that there was a cost of stimulating the vibrational modes!
Did you Know:
that, before Climategate, on October 9, 2009, former UK Met Offfice weatherman, Paul Hudson, from the BBC, wrote:
BBC: Paul Hudson: What happened to global warming?
For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8299079.stm
Did you Know:
on 13 October 2012, it was reported:
Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals UK Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released–chart-prove-it.html
Good luck validating this stuff. You might start by eliminating all of the “hearsay”. In other words, ignore everything without a reference. Consider links to most unsourced blog posts skeptically.
Then you might post each candidate “Did you know?” separately and ask readers for their best counter-arguments. The opposition is going to focus everyone’s attention on any mistakes that you make. To some extent, the credibility of any such project hangs on the reliability of its least credible component.
A high portion of those who reside in my community are engineers, scientists and educators. Even so, when I quiz my neighbors on their thoughts about climate science, their response is invariably first one of benign indifference, and secondly, a parroting of the spin sold by the MSM. It seems that even educated people with technical backgrounds consider climate issues unimportant in their lives and few have any sense of the cost to them of pending and proposed CO2 mitigation strategies. The media’s incessant omission of natural elements of climate science passes unnoticed, inducing little reflection of how poorly reports on climate themes jive with what they learned in K through twelfth-grade. The media, and thus warmist scientists, are thus free to miss-frame climate science issues. Per the media, it is climate scientists vs. skeptics, not vs. skeptical climate scientists. It is skeptics who don’t believe that the world is warming vs. skeptics who find no evidence that increased levels of greenhouse gasses cause substantial warming. I thus suggest that the “Did you know?” stream needs to lead with remedial reminders of climate basics to first put things in perspective.
Below is my list of basics that I think the public needs to know for them to better judge climate reporting. Having made this list, I see that many of these items have been mentioned by others, so I am in effect reinforcing the need to include them in your “Did you know?” list:
• Did you know that less than 4% of CO2 emissions come from man’s activities? Cite Houghton 2007, Balancing the Global Carbon Budget, to wit: Natural emissions from oceans = 330.0 Gt CO2/yr, from vegetation (respiration) = 216.3 Gt/yr, from soil (decomposition) = 214.5 Gt/yr. vs. anthropogenic emissions from burning fossil fuels = 23.1 Gt/yr, and from land use change = 7.3 Gt/yr. Total CO2 emissions = 791.3 Gt/yr; Natural CO2 emissions = 760.8 Gt/yr = 96.2%; Anthropogenic emissions = 30.4 Gt/yr = 3.8%.
• Did you know that over 98% of CO2 emissions are sequestered within one year; by the biosphere and the oceans? Cite Houghton2007, to wit: the oceans = 337.3 Gt/yr, the biosphere (photosynthesis) 440.0 Gt/yr. It is the remaining ~13.9 Gt/year of CO2 emissions that is accumulating in the atmosphere, resulting in the ~2 ppm annual increase in atmospheric CO2 levels. The media does not provide this perspective, but rather categorizes the remaining CO2 as anthropogenic and thus miss-frames the issue as “about half of CO2 emissions remain in the atmosphere.”, based on 13.9 Gt/yr remaining divided by 30.4 Gt/yr anthropogenic CO2 emissions = 45.8% (i.e. natural emissions are ignored. The study of Ballantyne et al. 2012, as reported by WUWT on 2Aug12, is an example of this misrepresentation.). In reality only ~1.8% of total CO2 emissions remains in the atmosphere (13.9 Gt/791.3 Gt).
• Did you know that the ocean holds 48.7 times the CO2 equivalent of the current atmospheric CO2 load? Houghton 2007 states that the atmosphere currently contains 2,860 Gt of CO2, whereas the oceans contain 139,344 Gt of CO2 equivalent (mostly as bicarbonate and carbonate ions). The biosphere holds 7,518 Gt of CO2, or 2.6 times that of the atmosphere.
• Did you know that plants thrive on higher levels of CO2, with the planet’s uptake of carbon doubling in the last 50 years? Cite WUWT article Earth’s CO2 sinks increasing their uptake, 2Aug12, although the referenced press release by Ballantyne et al. of the University of is full of unsubstantiated attributions.
Figure 1 from Ballantyne et al. 2012: a, The annual atmospheric CO2 growth rate (dC/dt). b, Fluxes of C to the atmosphere from fossil fuel emissions (FF) are plotted in red and those from land-use changes (FL) are plotted in brown. c, Annual global net C uptake (ΣN) is plotted a…
• Did you know that there is zero chance that the oceans will become acidic? By definition, for a liquid to be acidic, it would have a pH of less than 7.0; any pH greater than 7.0 is basic or alkaline. Freely et al. 2009 states that the pH of today’s oceans range from 8.231 in the Arctic Ocean to 8.068 in the North Indian Ocean. Several technical papers and the last IPCC report calculate that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from present levels (i.e. from ~392 ppm to 800 ppm) could decrease the pH to ~7.8. This 0.4 pH reduction is still solidly within the alkaline range. The pre-industrial CO2 level was ~280 ppm. The 112 ppm change since the industrial revolution thus has resulted in about a 0.1 decrease in ocean pH.
• Did you know that sea life adapts to gradual changes in pH? Several studies have shown that mollusks adapt to decreases of 0.4 pH and more. McConnaughey and Gillikin, 2008 conclude that “most calcifying species, including mollusks, are able to concentrate Ca2+ and CO32- ions at the site of calcification”. In other words, the sea chemistry around the organism may vary, but the organisms have the capability to adjust the chemistry at the critical site where structure is built. CO2Science.org lists many other references on the ability of mollusks and corals to adapt to pH changes.
• Did you know that the sea level on average has been rising at a rate of only 1.7 mm/year from before 1930 to 2010 and that there is no evidence that this rise rate is increasing?
HOUSTON, J.R. and DEAN, R.G., 2011. Sea-level acceleration based on U.S. tide gauges and extensions of previous global-gauge analyses. Journal of Coastal Research, 27(3), 409–417. West Palm Beach (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.
• Did you know that sea level rise is very spatially non-uniform…..?
Reference Houston & Dean, 2011 for above figure. …..and Did you know that winds are responsible for much of the differences in sea level around the world? The above figure, in part, reflects the dominance of westerly winds across the Pacific during the period shown. These winds are a condition of the La Nina phase of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which has dominated the recent period. [cite Bob Tisdale’s Who Turned On The Heat?.]
• Did you know that shallow water corals grow faster than the rate of sea level rise? For example, the growth of the branching coral, Pocillopora eydouxi, measured in the Eastern Pacific, was 2.1 to 3.9 cm/yr [Reference: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Coral_growth_and_climate_change%5D. Massive corals are slow growing at 0.5 to 1.0 cm per year, whereas branching corals may grow more quickly at 10 to 20 cm/yr http://krupp.wcc.hawaii.edu/BIOL200/powerpnt/corlanat/sld034.htm. The growth rate of Porites coral in the Great Barrier Reef has been found to be 1.5 cm/year (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7807943.stm). These growth rates are significantly greater than the current sea level rise rate of 0.17 cm/year. This means that coral atolls are in no danger of being inundated from rising seas.
• Did you know that rising ocean surface temperature enhances the growth rate of corals, even with the projected slight decreases in the water pH? Experiments indicate that the rate of coral growth can be nearly doubled by increasing the temperature five degrees Celsius, or increasing the carbonate content of sea water. [A.A. Roth, ‘Coral Reef Growth’, Origins 6(2) 88–95, 1979.] Many other references to this positive relation of acceleration of coral growth rate with increasing temperature can be found at
http://www.co2science.org/subject/c/summaries/calcification.php
• Did you know that since the end of the last glacial period, there have been at least three periods warmer or as warm as the present: the Holocene, the Roman Warm Period, and the Medieval Warm period. These periods were interspersed by cooling periods. The reason for these cycles are not fully understood. The factors that induced these warming periods must be understood to know to what extent they are operative in the current warming. To the extent that they are operative, the impact of rising levels of atmospheric CO2 on warming the earth is proportionally reduced.
• Did you know that water is the dominant greenhouse gas? In terms of warming effect, water vapor induces about 70% of “greenhouse warming of the atmosphere, followed by clouds, (which are mostly condensed water) that contribute about 20% of the warming of our atmosphere. The remaining 10 % of greenhouse gases are frequently referred to as “well-mixed” gases because they are uniformly dispersed around the globe, as opposed to water vapor and clouds, which vary considerably over regions of the earth. About 8.5% of the warming comes from well-mixed greenhouse gases, mostly CO2 and methane, that come from natural processes. Thus, only 1.5% of greenhouse gas has an anthropogenic origin. Of the anthropogenic gases, CO2 has been estimated to provide as much as 0.975 % of atmospheric warming (1.5 X .65), followed by methane with a contribution possibly as high as 0.375% (1.5X.25). Halocarbons, nitrous oxide, and ozone add a trace amount of atmospheric heating. [Lenz and Cozzarini, Emissions and Air Quality, 1999]
Did you know that you can not heat water from above. The heat directed at thr surface is deflected by the surface tension. You can test this by simply directing heat from a heat gun at the surface of water in a bucket.If you want to heat water from above, the only way to do it is to first cover the surface with a floating object, killing the surface tension then apply the heat to the floating object.
The only energy to enter the ocean is the sun’s radiation, atmospheric heat plays no part because of surface tension. It is for this reason that AGW cannot exist and is a complete nonsense. It is not possible to heat a gas and have the heat stored in the ocean. The ocean reacts to the sun’s radiation only and thats why Trenberth’s heat is “missing” and the climate models don’t work.
The reason we have got into the silly situation that we are in is that scientists have assumed that the second law of thermodynamics applies universally without bothering to check. The surface of water is not a surface as they see it because it has surface tension.
davidmhoffer says:
Did you know that earth’s radiance to space increases with T^4 making the statement above utterly ridiculous?
It turns out that I do know that. I was specifically responding Anthony’s initial “Did you know?”.
He points out that the effect is logarithmic, rather than linear. In fact, neither model works all that well (for a variety or reasons, including the one you point out about the Stefan-Boltzmann Law). But the mere FORM of the model does not preclude the possibility of large heating due to changes in CO2, as Anthony claims (“This means that a runaway greenhouse effect is not possible on Earth.”)
* The total amount of CO2 that could be produced by burning all the known fossil fuels limits the total warming from CO2.
* The feedbacks could enhance (or diminish) the effects of CO2.
But the mere fact that T vs CO2 is logarithmic is, in and of itself, insufficient to preclude a “runaway greenhouse effect” resulting from more CO2. (And in my experience, “science stories” rarely have made the “linear” claim, as Anthony claimed.)
Marty Cornell says: “The media does not provide this perspective, but rather categorizes the remaining CO2 as anthropogenic and thus miss-frames the issue as “about half of CO2 emissions remain in the atmosphere.”
I like your writing style and the fact that you present to back up your case, but I have a little different take on a couple things.
In this case, I don’t think they are misframing the issue. I think it is quite legitimate to clam that about half of ANTHROPOGENIC (from fossil fuel burning and land use change) CO2 emissions remain in the atmosphere. I think that is what most people think of when talking about “CO2 emissions”
On the other hand, if you want to talk about ALL CO2 emissions, then you would have to say that the SMALL human contribution has a cascading effect on the HUGE natural emissions.
In either case, the human contribution that thru off the previous equilibrium is pretty clearly what is responsible for the small by steady increases in CO2 over the past ~ 100 years.
“Did you know that there is zero chance that the oceans will become acidic?”
This is mostly a matter of semantics. Yes, the oceans are never going to become truly acidic, but they are moving more toward the acidic end of the scale. I suppose it would be more accurate to say the “de-basification” of the oceans rather than the “acidification” of the ocean, but that is awkward. To me this is like saying that a furnace that raises the temperature of a room from 0C to 5 C results in “warming” of the room, even though 5C is certainly not warm. But I will grant you that terminology leaves plenty of room for misinterpretation by the uninformed.
robert barclay say: October 23, 2012 at 4:15 am
“Did you know that you can not heat water from above. “
Put cold water into two identical styrofoam boxes. Put them in a dark room. Put a lid on one. I will guarantee the water in the open container will warm up faster than in the covered container. This can only be due to the “heating from above by the air”.
I will grant you it is tough to heat any liquid from above by any means because no convection is created. And air has a small heat capacity compared to water. But it is certainly possible and necessary that warm air in contact with cool water will transfer energy from the warm air to the cool water.
Did you know that:
Old sea levels around Greenland could indicate slightly higher sea levels in the past but they could just as likely indicate a cooler world? Because sea levels around Greenland are around 100 metres higher than they would be if the Greenland Ice Sheet didn’t exist. This is a basic application of Newtons Law of Gravitation. Just as the gravitational pull of the moon causes tides, so to the gravitational pull of large ice masses raises sea levels near them. So higher seas around greenland in the past of a few meters only need a few percent increase in the mass of the Greenland Ice Sheet as one would expect in a cooler world.
Did you know that we can’t assess sea level rise from tide gauges unless we allow for ‘other factors’:
The impact of gravitational attraction to continents and ice masses.
The effect on ground levels near cities that pump ground water and cause subsidence.
The impact of being near major subduction zones that can cause land to be rising or falling.
The effect of Iso-Static rebound that causes some regions to rise, making sea levels seem to rise more than they actually have.
The effect of increases in water mass in an ocean basin causing the relatively thin crust beneath that ocean to sink meaning that ocean basin seems to hold more water and sea level rise doesn’t seem as high.
Levering effects near the boundaries between continents and oceans such that extra water in the ocean can cause the continents to tip up a bit, confusing readings derived from coastal tide gauges since the main ‘hinge point’ is at the edge of the continental shelf rather than the tide line.
That melting ice will transfer mass from the polar regions to lower latitudes where the earth’s average distance from it’s axis of rotation is increased. Just like an ice skater who spreads out their arms and slows down, so too the rotation of the earth slows ever so slightly. And thus centrifugal forces don’t tend to make sea level bulge out at the equator quite so much.
That ocean currents and salinity differences cause local bulges in sea level.
That airpressure affects local sea level – high pressure system lower local sea level, low pressure systems raise local sea level, so we need to take account of this.
Didd you know that if we didn’t consider all these factors we could draw totally wrong conclusions from simple tide gauge measurements.
So: ” Did you know that sea level rise is very spatially non-uniform…..?”
Yep – see the above comments.
Did you know that Relative Humidity is not actually a measure of how much water vapour is in the atmosphere – as someone else here suggested.
Did you know that the huge decline in CO2 levels during the Ordovician/Silurian Ice Age doesn’t register in very coarse estimates of ancient CO2 levels produced by GeoCarb. It is a model after all, and its minimum calculation step is every 10 million years, with an averaging period of 50 million years. So it wont report shorter term CO2 fluctuation of a million year or so.
Did you know that the major impact of changes in GH gas concentrations occurs in the stratosphere. More GH gases reduce the amount of re-radiation out to space at those altitudes. Additional absorbtion near the surface isn’t the important factor.
Did you know that the radiation to space based on the surface temperature would be about 340 Watts/M^2. In fact actual radiation to space is closer to 240 Watts/M^2.
Did you know that of this 100 Watts/M^2 difference, CO2 is responsible for around
60% of the difference?
Did you know that less than 4% of CO2 emissions come from man’s activities? Yep, give or take. But did you know that 0% of CO2 absorption comes from man’s activities. So the human contribution is relative to the difference between the emission amd absorbtion rates.
Did you know that plants thrive on higher levels of CO2, but only if other factors increase as well – this is known in Agronomy as Liebigs Law of the Minimum. Plant metabolism is limited by whatever nutrient or raw materiel is in shortest supply. Adding more of one thing doesn’t help unless you add more of something else as well. This is why Greenhouse operators add CO2. AND Warmth, water, every sort of nutrient or fertiliser; just adding one thing doesn’t help.
Did you know that the rate of hear accumulation in the oceans is 3-4 times faster than could be sourced from any heat source here on Earth? So the only possible source of this heat involves some sort of energy imbalance with space. And since the Sun has if anything been cooling slightly over the last 1/2 century, the only remaining possible conclusion is that something is restricting the flow of energy out tspace. I wonder what that could be?
I wonder what else I could think of?
REPLY: Did you know that I’m not interested in what you can “think of” but rather those that you can prove with citations? Read the instructions. Given your position at SkS and the irresponsible things that outfit is known for, your opinion isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit – Anthony
robert barclay:
re your post at October 23, 2012 at 4:15 am
No, I did not know that, and I doubt it. Please explain the physics which enables surface tension to reject heat.
Richard
Thanks everyone I’ve got more than enough. Thanks also to the SkS denizens for trying a counteroffensive.