One of the regular alarm stories that comes from the global warming machine is that atmospheric methane with soon run amok and cause a tipping point. We are regularly treated to scare stories like this one from The Guardian on November 27th, 2012:
UN: methane released from melting ice could push climate past tipping point
Doha conference is warned that climate models do not yet take account of methane in thawing permafrost
The United Nations sounded a stark warning on the threat to the climate from methane in the thawing permafrost as governments met for the second day of climate change negotiations in Doha, Qatar.
Thawing permafrost releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, but this has not yet been included in models of the future climate. Permafrost covers nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere at present and is estimated to contain 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon – twice the amount currently in the atmosphere. As it thaws, it could push global warming past one of the key “tipping points” that scientists believe could lead to runaway climate change.
Note the word “could” in the last sentence. That comes from models, not observations. Note also this scary quote:
Doha conference is warned that climate models do not yet take account of methane in thawing permafrost
So how do the IPCC methane models stack up against reality? Not so hot…
Clearly, nature isn’t cooperating with IPCC science as atmospheric methane trends have fallen well below even the lowest range of all the IPCC scenarios. The First Assessment Report (FAR) projection has methane at 5 times the current value, and each subsequent IPCC report lowered the projection by about half each time, and they still missed it. Once again, observations trump models. Add this to the other bombshell graph from the same chapter and you have to wonder how the AGW issue continues to have any traction.
But that won’t stop scare stories like the ones below from appearing, because as we’ve noted, alarmists aren’t good at assimilating new contrary factual data in a way that mutes their zeal in spreading the alarm.
Here’s one from a couple of years ago, where naturally occurring methane from decomposition gets ignited by an activist, and Dan Miller at Berkeley turns that into climate alarm:
And yet, despite these alarming stories, according to the IPCC report showing observations versus the models in figure 1.7, atmospheric methane concentration isn’t accelerating, nor is it currently within the forecast bounds of any of the IPCC climate models.
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FAO papiertigre
From your references:
‘This atmospheric methane conversely creates a GREENHOUSE effect on Titan’s surface, without which Titan would be FAR COLDER’ Therefore greenhouse equals warmer!
Yet you say
‘Comparison between Titan and Hyperion shows without a room for a doubt that Methane has absolutely NO green house effect at all’
But as you can see the two statements can’t be correct! I guess you must be wrong!
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 2:09 pm
FAO Gail Combs
‘Why did the earth go from a warm moist dinosaur haven to Ice ages?’
Because
‘Nearer our own time, the coming and going of the ice ages that have gripped the planet in the past two million years were probably triggered by fractional changes in solar heating (caused by wobbles in the planet’s orbit, known as Milankovitch cycles’
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11650-climate-myths-global-warming-is-down-to-the-sun-not-humans.html
LOL
A 2007 article is referenced. It ends with “ So for the period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically …”
Uh, where is the dramatic warming in the last 15 years or so? If it isn’t the sun, and it doesn’t correlate to the increase in atmospheric CO2, what has been causing the relative flat, non-warming of the beginning of the 21st Century?
[Jon Lovitz] Perhaps alien piloted UFO contrails? Yeah, that’s the ticket! Just ask my wife, uh, Morgan Fairchild [/John Lovitz]
Carter says:
“I thought FAO was universal in the English speaking world!”
That might be the case on your planet. But show me another commentator here who uses “FAO”. Just one will be enough.
Not that I mind, it’s kinda cute in its own way. But your “universal” comment is similar to your other misconceptions.
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 11:55 am
FOA Bill Illis
‘He was talking about some imaginary data’
Well watch him telling you everything you wanted to know about co2 and Global Warming, but are too scared to ask about!
————
You are new here Carter obviously.
I have all the data (and when I write that … I mean I have ALL the data) so I am not scared about the CO2/Temperature correlation. There isn’t one. And Richard Alley was runnning a BS routine on everyone at AGU (but of course the audience lapped it up). It was only in his imagination and that is what this science has become. Just tell everyone what they want to hear (as opposed to the reality) and you can get published in Nature.
Now if you want to talk about Richard Alley’s Greenland temperature ice core history, I have more to say about that too. He and a few partners have set-back Greenland ice core science by 20 years and it is onlynow starting to be corrected.
john robertson says:
December 18, 2012 at 8:36 am
“Eugenics, To better the race, selective breeding and kill the unfit. Central planning, for the good of the human race. The reason the enviro’s look like 1930 Germans. Just another wave of unreason, mob hysteria, but sneakily the beast has tried, once again, to pretend to be science and reason.”
From the Wikipedia page for old Svante,
“Racial biology
Svante Arrhenius was one of several leading Swedish scientists actively engaged in the process leading to the creation in 1922 of The State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala, Sweden, which had originally been proposed as a Nobel Institute. Arrhenius was a member of the institute’s board, as he had been in The Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene (Eugenics), founded in 1909.[9]”
The apple has not fallen far from the tree.
Another error out side of the error bars….
how inconvenient for the warmists….
From the Guardian report posted above: Permafrost covers nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere at present and is estimated to contain 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon
“a quarter of the northern hemisphere” ; no way – does not compute. Somebody goofed.The Guardian, or the UN, or somebody is off by a huge factor.
>>> “An OT but humorous anecdote: earlier this year a beaver moved into one of the drainage >>> ponds, that are a mandated part of all new housing developments, and started to dam up >>> the drain. The city sent out someone to trap it before it turned the drainage pond into a
>>> permanent lake and floods the neighborhood. He is setting the trap when one of the local >>> stay-at-home moms comes by and asks him what is going to happen to it. Unfortunately he >>> tells the truth (they are going to put it down) and explains why (it will just come back) —
>>> mom freaks out, her kids love the beaver, threatens to call the papers, prime minister, etc. >>> He stops what he is doing and it takes weeks for the s&*t storm to die down and they can >>> get rid of it.”
Same thing happened in Martinez California a few years ago when two beaver dammed a creek and it backed up into a lake, threatening to send a cascade of water through the downtown if the dam broke. After a long local uproar involving shool children, the beavers, now a family, were allowed to stay (no floods —- yet).
Methane bubbling up out of Arctic ice is more likely to be off-gassing from known source rocks for petroleum and gas (as in North Slope and offshore). Gas regularly is released, along with petroleum, through cracks in the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico. An oil seep at sea level near Santa Barbara California has been leaking oil since it was first discovered by the Spaniards.
Titan without an atmosphere (a greenhouse effect), depending on vagaries in the reflective nature of methane, which if the lakes and rivers are an indication would only go in the wrong direction, the coldest it could get would be as cold as an airless rock floating out there at the same distance from the sun. By golly we have one of those handy. It’s called Hyperion. And it’s temperature is 93 Kelvin.
But wait a minute. Titan’s temperature, blanketed in a thick cosy methane layer 200 kilometers thick, is 93 Kelvin.
Let me do the math real quick. Nuthin from nuthin leaves… carry the zero.
“Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 12:19 pm
‘So why aren’t we as hot as Venus’
Because it has a runaway co2 atmosphere! With I suspect, no likely hood of changing in the foreseeable future!”
Did Carter really say “Venus has a runaway CO2 atmosphere”? Really, you need to polish up your knowledge of atmospheric mass, pressure and temperature.
Carter says:
“I thought FAO was universal in the English speaking world!”
In Ireland, FAO means the rather impolite ‘Feck Away Off’.
Otherwise, ‘For the Attention Off’, I’d call archaic. Probably dates from pre-WWII when many people had personal secretaries and much of a person’s correspondence would in fact be deal with by their secretary. Never seen it used on the Internet.
Bruce Cobb says:
December 18, 2012 at 5:06 am
Interesting. Just what effect do you think it’s having on the “energy balance”? Please show us the basis for your worry. Your C02 bogeyman doesn’t seem to be working out so well.
Strawman argument. I never mentioned CO2 bogeyman.
I am concerned that because Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that it will alter the energy balance of the earth. Ie the higher the methane concentration, the bigger the greenhouse effect, the more heat the earth will retain.
The more the heat the earth retains, the more methane is liberated and we have a positive feedback loop.
I am interested in any evidence you can bring forward to show that this scenario is wrong, as I don’t like being worried.
Looks like AR5 might get the CH4 trend right, based on the trend from FAR to AR4.
But there will have to be a caveat, such as “its still worse than we might have thought if we had under-predicted it”, or “its worse than we thought because it isnt going down” or some such rubbish.
‘FAO’ Philip Bradley
‘Never seen it used on the Internet’
I’m starting anew trend!
FAO D Böehm
‘But show me another commentator here who uses “FAO”. Just one will be enough.’
‘ papiertigre says:
December 18, 2012 at 3:01 pm
FAO Carter’
As you requested!
LetsBeReasonable:
At December 18, 2012 at 5:06 am you ask (I suspect disingenuously)
The change of methane in the atmosphere shows there is no need to “worry”.
See the plot of atmospheric CO2 over time as shown by the Vostock and Law Dome ice cores and marine boundary layer at this warmunist web site
http://zipcodezoo.com/Trends/Trends%20in%20Atmospheric%20Methane.asp
Please note the gee-whiz scale which is from 800 to 1800 ppb so exaggerates the increase of methane in the air.
The graph shows that methane in the atmosphere has increased by a factor of ~2.5 since about 1850. But that increase slowed dramatically around 1990 and has reduced to almost zero now.
The reduction to the increase was before the cessation in global warming which did not commence until 1996.
Clearly, global temperature and atmospheric methane concentration are NOT directly linked as you say you fear. Indeed, the “worry” you express is another example of an old climate scare that has not kept pace with the growth of climate data.
The methane scare is so twentieth century. Change to ocean pH is the now fashionable false scare.
Richard
IRT – Steve Tabor said
I would guess that there would be chemical fingerprints in the “gaseous expulsions” to be able to determine if the methane was from Peat or Petroleum. I don’t know if they’ve done any chemical analysis or just made an assumption. Of course these are respected scientists and we all know the standards that all scientists adhere to.
BTW.. Since FAO has become popular recently, I’d thought I’d throw in IRT, I feel it’s more fitting because the comments here are generally for public consumption… Generally..
( In Reference To)
FAO Carter (I like Carter’s pretext. It has an element that registers as vaguely profane and dismissive.)
You quote Wikipedia’s Titan page one sentence blurb about the nonexistent global warming,
“This atmospheric methane conversely creates a greenhouse effect on Titan’s surface, without which Titan would be far colder.”, but then leave out the reference they put up to support their pretense.
Link number [38] tracks back to a Space.COM story about the oil and petro -chemicals that abound on Titan; Titan has more Oil than Earth.
In turn, that story only features one unsubstantiated blurb regarding global warming, which doesn’t even jibe with the Wikipedia entry.
It says;
That’s it. That’s all they got to base their insistence that Titan’s temperature conforms to the global warming boogie man.
Never mind that the evidence shows the consensus was conclusively wrong on the origin of oil, (no such thing as dead dinosaurs on Titan, yet the moon is awash in oil). Wiki rides right past that fact.
But they also change the words of their reference, creating unwarranted certainty where it doesn’t exist. Instead of saying “Titan could become much colder” the Wiki says, “Titan would be far colder”
To illustrate how large a difference that one word makes note the last sentence quoted from the Space dot com above;
“If so, the amount of methane, and the temperature on Titan, may have fluctuated dramatically in Titan’s past.”
Why did they say “may have”? Because there is absolutely no way for anyone to talk with authority about climate changes on Titan. This is so profoundly true that it renders Wikipedia’s change of “could” into “would” a deceit, with malice of forethought.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out the word change was executed by William Connolley.
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 12:08 pm
FTT Carter,
Because the climate is a dynamic process and it doesn’t, yet, stay still.
Exactly! That is what we keep trying to tell you people. C02 and Methane are bit players, whose effect on climate is logarithmic. Other factors, such as sun and ocean changes are far more important.
(BTW, FTT means For The Troll, but everybody knows that).
That’s not needed, because we already have “wrt”–with regard to.
FAO isn’t needed because we already have “@”.
(Also, Carter, the challenge to you was obviously meant with the unexpressed caveat, “before today.”)
‘FAO isn’t needed because we already have “@”’ but it’s more formal and better English! And ‘“wrt”=with respect to!
“””””…..mpainter says:
December 18, 2012 at 2:23 pm
george e. smith says: December 18, 2012 at 1:58 pm
I would opine that a viewpont not based on the theory of radiation physics is also a woefully inadequate view.
===================================================================
I should have said that a viewpoint based *solely* on the theory of radiation physics is woefully inadequate. However, the AGW theory can be refuted by the same radiation physics that is used to justify it, i.e., the absorbency spectrum of water. Do you not agree?…..”””””
Well m I really didn’t have any quarrel with your original statement; it was simply that your wording just begged for the truth (also) of the converse statement; too good to pass up.
So I should answer no to your new question; since you did not ask ; ‘do you agree’, which I would answer in the affirmative.
There’s an awful lot of actual “heat” energy propagating upward from the surface, via conduction, convection, and evaporation, which seem compelled by the lapse rate temperature gradient to go from hot to cold. Hard to see how much “heat” energy can find a mechanism to return to the warmer surface. Temperature driven vertical ciculation can only bring cold air back to the surface; not hot air.
And ocean water seems to have been designed to absorb solar spectrum radiation; but at a modest rate, so it penetrates deeply; whereas, returning LWIR radiation, is capured in the top few microns, promoting prompt evaporation, rather than energy storage.
So yes, the radiative energy (not “heat”)transport processes also seem highly biassed towards storing solar energy, and losing surface thermal radiation energy (LWIR), aided and abetted by the ocean water absorption spectrum. which covers an absorption range of about 10^6 or more between around 0.5 microns and 3.0 microns. But 3.0 micron radiation from the earth, seems to be rather scarce, and more likely sun sourced.
Yes, exactly. The ocean stores insolation as heat but IR is converted to latent heat at the surface (evaporation) which is transported aloft, released (clouds, rain, increased albedo, convective cooling) and radiated to space via a much thinner atmosphere, the whole process moderating the heat of insolation. The greenhouse effect plays this role:
GHE—>IR—>latent heat—>enhanced cooling.
Thus increased water vapor adds IR to the atmosphere which adds more water vapor (latent heat) until a “tipping point” (ah ha!) triggers a convective column (transport of latent heat aloft) with the result as given above. The assertion of AGW theory that water vapor acts as a net forcing confuses the role of water in determining climate, in which it indeed plays an important role, but not in the manner put forth by the AGW proponents. The fact is that water in all phases behaves variously as a coolant, and this important fact is given scant significance by AGW theory and the modelers. Hence the crash of the models.
Given a figure of 1 cm/day of evaporation from tropical oceans, this works out to about 7 microns evaporated per minute, or 8.5 seconds per micron, diurnally averaged. This illustrates how transitory is the IR induced heat caught on the water’s surface (IR is absorbed within a few microns), and why the greenhouse effect makes no contribution to SST. IR converts immediately to latent heat, a step in water’s role as a coolant. Thus IR has an important role in the cooling cycle as a prime factor in generating latent heat. This notion is blasphemy to the modeling confraternity.
So what effect do greenhouse gases have on SST?. None. Yet the ocean covers 71% of the planet, and SST is a big factor in climate, etc., yet SST is determined solely by insolation, or lack thereof (omitting here considerations of cold current upwelling).
Big question: Since insolation solely determines SST, how is it that SST has increased in this last warming trend? This explained, gives insights into the cause the last warming trend and will add a lot to our understanding of climate. Don’t look to the climate modelers to advance our understanding here. Their ideological constraints forbid it.
Carter can easily be trained to not understand he’s being manipulated. The AGW meme has nothing scientific to back claim. However, they present all kinds of “true things” which do not mean anything substantive. They then use these of evidence of what CO2 is doing.
Specifically, here’s a partial list of what confuses Carter into thinking he knows something valid:
1)True -CO2 has been increasing
2)True -the term green house gas has been applied to CO2, water vapor, methane
3)True -Glaciers can and do melt
4)True -Polar Bears can be seen swimming in water
5)True -Ice cover can recede in North Hemisphere
6)True -Temperature “records” showed an increase from some recent time periods to 1998.
7)True -If temperature increases 5C, there would likely be significantly elevated ocean levels
But here is what’s not said by people like Carter
1)That there is “no” evidence that CO2 is the “cause” of what the climate does.
2)Water Vapor has not shown to have only a positive feedback… evidence shows quite the opposite
3)Glaciers that are growing, propagate by slipping on melted ice under pressure… and advance into warmer areas away from the poles where they can calve in warmer waters.
4)Polar Bears are good swimmers and there is good evidence that they are thriving signifcantly more so than 50 years ago.
5)There is no mention that ice cover has increased in South Hemisphere.
6)Temperature records show no global increase for a longer length of time than was said to have been possible by Carter’s teachers.
7)There is no evidence that temps will increase 5C.
There is no evidence that CO2 is or can impact the climate in a measurable way. However, if temperatures do increase, and we waste our energy and resources doing things that cannot prevent this increase, then we will not be preparing or adapting – but instead spending all of our energy trying not to adapt.
This period in time will be viewed as the greatest dumbing down of societies in the history of the planet. Carter believes that man can or should no longer adapt to climate. In fact, he believes that mankind has achieved the status of the gods. That is, we can and are commanding the climate.
Somewhere in here, I see a high level of arrogance and stupidity. A dangerous combination.