Guest post by Alec Rawls
In an interview with NewScientist magazine, Imperial College professor of atmospheric physics Joanna Haigh scoffs at the idea that late 20th century warming could have been caused by the sun:
Haigh points out that the sun actually began dimming slightly in the mid-1980s, if we take an average over its 11-year cycle, so fewer GCRs should have been deflected from Earth and more Earth-cooling clouds should have formed. “If there were some way cosmic rays could be causing global climate change, it should have started getting colder after 1985.”
What she means is that the 20th century’s persistent high level of solar activity peaked in 1985. That is the estimate developed by Mike Lockwood and Claus Fröhlich. The actual peak was later (solar cycle 22, which ended in 1996, was stronger than cycle 21 by almost every measure) but set that aside. Who could possibly think that cooling should commence when forcings are at their peak, just because the very highest peak has been passed?
Haigh’s argument against solar warming was in response to my suggestion that one new sentence in the leaked Second Order Draft of AR5 is a “game changer.” That is the sentence where the authors admit strong evidence that some substantial mechanism of solar amplification must be at work. The only solar forcing in the IPCC’s computer models is Total Solar Irradiance so if some solar forcing beyond TSI is also at work then all their model results are wrong.
No, no, no, Haigh told the NewScientist, it is “the bloggers” who have it all wrong:
They’re misunderstanding, either deliberately or otherwise, what that sentence is meant to say.
Look whose accusing people of misunderstanding. This woman thinks that warming is driven, not by the level of the temperature forcing, but by the rate of change in the level of the forcing. When a forcing goes barely past its peak (solar cycle 22 nearly identical in magnitude to cycle 21), does that really create cooling? Haigh should try it at home: put a pot of water on a full burner for a minute then turn the burner down to medium high. Does she really think the pot will stop warming, or that it will actually start to cool?
“Deliberately or otherwise,” this is an astounding misunderstanding of the very most basic physics, and Haigh is not the only consensus scientist who is making this particular “mistake.” Hers is the stock answer that pretty much every “consensus” scientists gives when asked about the solar-warming hypothesis. I have collected examples from a dozen highly regarded scientists: Lockwood, Solanki, Forster, Muscheler, Benestad, and more. Not surprisingly, it turns out that they are all making some crucial unstated assumptions.
Solar warming and ocean equilibrium
To claim that the 20th century’s high level of solar forcing would only cause warming until some particular date such as 1970, or 1980, or 1987, one must be assuming that the oceans had equilibrated by that date to the ongoing high level of forcing. That’s just the definition of equilibrium. After a step up in forcing the system will continue to warm until equilibrium is reached.
When I asked these scientists if they were making an unstated assumption that the oceans must have equilibrated by 1980 say to whatever forcing effect high 20th century solar activity was having, almost all of them answered yes, each giving their own off-the-cuff rationale for this assumption, none of which stand up to the least bit of scrutiny. Isaac Held’s two-box model of ocean equilibration is better than Mike Lockwood’s one-box model, but just move to the next simplest model, a three-box model of ocean equilibration, and any idea that longer term forcing won’t cause longer term warming collapses.
The well mixed upper ocean layer (the top 100-200 meters) does equilibrate rapidly to a change in forcing, showing a response time of less than ten years, but that isn’t the end of the story. As the top layer warms up it transfers heat to the next deeper ocean layers. If the elevated forcing persists then these next deeper layers will continue to warm on the time scale of multiple decades to multiple centuries. This warming will reduce the temperature differential between the upper and deeper layers, causing there to be less and less heat loss over time from the upper to the deeper layers, causing the upper layer to continue to warm on the time scale of multiple decades to multiple centuries.
This accords with what we actually see. Since the 50 year absence of sunspots that coincided with the bottom of the Little Ice Age, 300 years of uneven warming have coincided with an uneven rise in solar activity. Any claim that these three centuries of natural warming had to have ended by a particular 20th century date (never mind right when solar activity was at its peak), is at the very least highly speculative. To claim that we can be confident that this is what happened is borderline insane.
Or maybe it’s that other thing that Joanna Haigh insinuates about. Maybe there is an element of deliberateness to this “misunderstanding” where scads of PhD scientists all pretend that warming is driven by the rate of change of the temperature forcing, not the level of the forcing. How else to blame late 20th century warming on human activity? Some rationale has to be given for why it can’t have been caused by the high level of solar activity that was still raging. Aha, what if temperature were driven by the trend in the forcing rather than the level of the forcing? That would do it. Let’s say that one. Let’s pretend that even peak forcing will cause cooling as soon as the trend in the forcing turns down.
It’s one psycho-drama or the other: either Haigh’s insinuations about dishonesty are projection, accusing others of what she and her cohorts are actually doing, or she’s just dumber than a box of rocks.
Haigh also channels Steven Sherwood, pretending that the highlighted sentence is just about GCR-cloud
The draft report acknowledges substantial evidence for some mechanism of solar amplification and lists Henrick Svensmark’s GCR-cloud theory as an example of one possible such mechanism (7-43 of the SOD):
Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.
Haigh claims that the evidence about cloud formation being induced by cosmic rays points to a weak mechanism, then simply ignores the report’s admission of substantial evidence that some such mechanism must be at work:
Haigh says that if Rawls had read a bit further, he would have realised that the report goes on to largely dismiss the evidence that cosmic rays have a significant effect. “They conclude there’s very little evidence that it has any effect,” she says.
Rawls says that if Haigh had read the actual sentence itself, she would have realized that it isn’t about galactic cosmic rays, but only mentions GCR-cloud as one possible solar amplifier.
Aussie climatologist Steven Sherwood did the same thing, claiming (very prematurely) that the evidence does not support GCR-cloud as a substantial mechanism of solar amplification, then pretending away the report’s admission of clear evidence that some substantial such mechanism is at work:
He says the idea that the chapter he authored confirms a greater role for solar and other cosmic rays in global warming is “ridiculous”.
“I’m sure you could go and read those paragraphs yourself and the summary of it and see that we conclude exactly the opposite – that this cosmic ray effect that the paragraph is discussing appears to be negligible,” he told PM.
As JoNova and I blogged last weekend, this ploy inverts the scientific method, using theory (dissatisfaction with one particular theory of solar amplification) as an excuse for ignoring the evidence for some mechanism of solar amplification. Using theory to dismiss evidence is pure, definitional anti-science. Unfortunately, NewScientist gives this slick anti-scientist the last word:
“The most interesting aspect of this little event is it reveals how deeply in denial the climate deniers are,” says Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia – one of the lead authors of the chapter in question. “If they can look at a short section of a report and walk away believing it says the opposite of what it actually says, and if this spin can be uncritically echoed by very influential blogs, imagine how wildly they are misinterpreting the scientific evidence.”
Sherwood and Haigh are flat lying to the public about what a simple single sentence says, pretending the admission of strong evidence for some substantial mechanism of enhanced solar forcing was never made, then trusting sympathetic reporters and editors not to call them on it. This is why the report had to be made public. After my submitted comments showed how thoroughly the new sentence undercuts the entire report it was obvious that the consensoids who run the IPCC would take the sentence right back out, and here Sherwood and Haigh are already trying to do exactly that.
Too late, anti-scientists. Your humbug is on display for the whole world to see.
You know, I have mentioned the Wilson Cloud chamber and the streaks of cloud created in it by GCRs, and a variety of atomic particles passing though it on about 3 or 4 occasions on WUWT without seeming to elicit any interest in this fact. Charles T. R. Wilson, Scottish physicist invented it and received the Nobel Prize in 1927. Ten years later, Carl Anderson, US physicist received the Nobel Prize for discovering that GCRs contained positrons and muons using the cloud chamber. Donald Glaser won the NP for his improvement, the bubble chamber. How come I’m the only one that appears to have mentioned this in the context of GCRs and cloud formation. Does Svensmark and colleagues reference Wilson as the source of the idea? I note that many commenters express doubts about such a fanciful notion without the benefit of the knowledge that it was demonstrated in 1911 and generated 3 Nobel Prizes up to 1962. From this post, it seems apparent that Ms. Haigh, a physicist (British at that) is unaware of her countryman’s discovery. Why hasn’t this device or a more elaborate one been revisited to assess the effectiveness of GCRs on cloud formation. Models and CERN be darned. Watts up with that? Over and out.
herkimer says:
December 21, 2012 at 3:01 pm (replying to)
David Archibald
Indeed. The breakover between warming and cooling is a sunspot number of 40 which equates to a F10.7 flux of 102.
The annual average sunspot number for the last 10 years is only 29.3 , so there should be no surprise why cold temperatures are starting to crop up all over Northern Hemisphere , especially inland areas like Russia, eastern Europe and Canadian Prairies . The above decadal sunspot number will get even lower as we drop from near solar max to solar minimum so there could be some even colder winters ahead . The reason I switched to using decadal based figures is that there are too many other short term climate variables if you look at monthly or yearly figures that can mask the energy of the sun like ocean cycles and other . You also need at least a decade to get a real measurable impact.
OK, so – if your decadal choice is not explicitly based on 10 for any other reason – use 11 (or 11.5 years) rather than 10 for your averaging interval.
This way, you will average a ‘symptom” or “effect” of any possible sun spot relationship across a single sunspot cycle.
if an effect is increasing w/r sunspot numbers, then your relationship increases. If inverse to sunspot numebrs and shifted w/r to a date interval, you might see that effect. If proportional to sunspot numbers, then a 11 year cycle average ought to increase, steady, decrease, and then steady again.
if proportional some how to alternative positive and negative sunspot cycles, then a 22 year response might appear from a 11 year averaging period. An arbitrary 10 year period would hide all of these effects. Or worse, would “almost” show some of the effects, and hide others at different years. The result will be confusing, rather than enlightening.
lsvalgaard says:
You may think so, but it is clear that the IPCC authors were only referring to the ‘reported correlations between GCRs and climate’ and nothing else. You could fault them for that, not me.
One again, the “correlations between GCRs and climate” is not (as you stated) “all about GCRs”. The problem is not with what they said, it is with how you are mischaracterizing it.
Reference to correlations between GCRs and climate necessarily encompasses more than GCRs. It also includes climate (duh). And it also includes the correleation, which may be caused a factor that is neither GCR nor climate. The only thing explictly off the table for that discussion, according to IPCC, is TSI. Every other possible cause for the observed correlation is included.
Alec is correct. Haigh is dishonest. You are obtuse. Perhaps willfully.
Problem with that entire discussion is that the late twentieth century warming is an imaginary warming. Satellites show that the global mean temperature stood still from 1979 to 1997, an 18-year stretch. But ground-based temperature curves show it as a steady rise of temperature, that “late twentieth century warming.” Or Hansen warming if you prefer because that is the one he is supposed to have reported to the Senate in 1988. In truth there is no warming there, just El NIno peaks alternating with La Nina valleys, five full cycles of them. Real warming did not start until 1998 when a super El Nino arrived. It brought a large amount of warm water across the ocean and caused a step warming that raised global temperature by a third of a degree and then stopped. This is the only warming during the entire 33 years of satellite observations. It is oceanic in origin, not greenhouse, and not solar. It and not an imaginary greenhouse warming is the cause of the very warm first decade of this century. The warmth is certainly real and various ecological effects like migration of populations occur but they are not a consequence of the greenhouse effect as Hansen keeps telling us. Since the end of the step warming temperature has not risen for sixteen years, by Met Office count. At the same time, carbon dioxide kept going up relentlessly. If carbon dioxide goes up but temperature does not the climate sensitivity becomes zero. You can say that by this criterion climate sensitivity has been zero for the last 16 years. Looking back from the satellite era, it was preceded by another step warming in 1976 that then went by the name of the Great Pacific Climate Shift. It supposedly raised global temperature by 0.2 degrees but I cannot verify that. It has been attributed to the PDO changing from its cool to its warm phase, another oceanic phenomenon. The origin of such step warmings is what should be investigated, not arguing theories of how an imaginary warming in the late twentieth century may or may not have been caused . (Hint: it was anthropogenic.)
Carter,
Please spare us your video clowns. [“If you leave CO2 out nothing makes sense.”]
Obviously nothing makes sense to your wild-eyed arm waver. I couldn’t watch past 29 seconds, he was so crazy.
Now, how about you answer my questions @2:22 pm above, instead of always changing the subject? Explain for us your version of why the recovery from the LIA has been along the same trend line, whether CO2 was low or high.
And please, stop posting your lame ass videos. Speak for yourself. I will be more than happy to debate your reasoning, such as it is. But your stupid videos amount to nothing more than being your sock puppet. We can’t debate with a video. Especially not with one featuring an arm waving, wild-eyed lunatic like that.
Carter says:
December 21, 2012 at 3:07 pm
Well too bad the video ends before that guy explains what actually happened.
WHAT is scientific about CO2AGW?
The known fact that more CO2 in the atmosphere leads to a pressure broadening of the
absorption lines of CO2, retaining a slightly bigger amount of IR photons in that band.
Everything else is unscientific.
The conclusion that the pressure broadening of these few lines will lead to an inevitable
catastrophic warming of the earth is akin to the following analogy:
A kid watches a mountain creek. The kid throws a stone into the creek and walks away.
The added resistance by the stone hinders the water very slightly to move downstream, and
over time, this leads to the formation of an evergrowing lake.
Some day, the lake becomes so big that the villagers who lived nearby in the valley all drown.
The climate scientist resembles a figure that watches the kid as he throws the stone into the creek,
and runs to the village, warning everyone of the impending catastrophy.
Obviously, the climate scientist is the village idiot.
You are correct!!! Now let’s just skip past the Medieval Warm Period which was very localised in Australia, Greenland, Antarctica, South Africa, New Zealand and South America. Did I mention Europe?
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Gary Pearse says:
December 21, 2012 at 3:32 pm
You know, I have mentioned the Wilson Cloud chamber and the streaks of cloud created in it by GCRs, and a variety of atomic particles passing though it on about 3 or 4 occasions on WUWT without seeming to elicit any interest in this fact. Charles T. R. Wilson, Scottish physicist invented it and received the Nobel Prize in 1927.
Gary, thank you for mentioning it.
When I first heard of GCR years ago I though it is another fanciful “funny skeptic theory”, only when later the “cloud chamber” “magic words” came to my mind I realised the mechanism and started to give the theory mentally a chance. Shame on me, I did not thought from the very first moment at it.
I would say it is good to recall it in posts as there is no such record in wikipedia – only a mention in Svensmark’s page about “cosmoclimatology”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Svensmark
and no mention of the cloud chamber there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber
“The resulting ions act as condensation nuclei, around which a mist will form (because the mixture is on the point of condensation).”
To help people connect the dots is helping to increase the understanding of the phenomenon and the theory.
CO2 is opaque to IR photons in certain frequencies.
As Mosher reminds us from time to time, that means we can’t target heat-seeking missiles in those particular IR frequencies.
But the CO2 absorption is a fleetingly small nano-second of time. Within a nano-second, that CO2 molecule has transferred the absorbed energy to another N2, O2 or Argon molecule. Then what happens? Anyone know? Does it even matter at all that a CO2 molecule absorbed that photon? Anyone know?
Jimbo,
You forgot the Arctic, which matches the Antarctic and Greenland ice cores in showing the MWP.
I don’t want to make Carter’s head to explode, but where is the global warming??
Is the IPCC clairvoyant?
Please replace “Look whose accusing people …” with “Look who’s accusing people …”. See wikipedia: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/who%27s#English . “Whose” is a possessive but nothing is being possessed here. Instead the sentence could read “Look who is accusing people …”, with “who is” abbreviated correctly to “who’s”
I doubt that even the English dictionary will change lsvaalgaard\s mind.
His problem in understanding the simple, straightforward sentence may not be with language, but instead with inability to let go of his preconception of what the report “must” say.
If I talk Like Trenberth maybe it will work.
So my feeble suggestion is indeed, Lief, that you ask a non climate-science-involved person to read that sentence and tell you what it says.
Bill Illis says:
December 21, 2012 at 4:16 pm
CO2 is opaque to IR photons in certain frequencies.
As Mosher reminds us from time to time, that means we can’t target heat-seeking missiles in those particular IR frequencies.
But the CO2 absorption is a fleetingly small nano-second of time. Within a nano-second, that CO2 molecule has transferred the absorbed energy to another N2, O2 or Argon molecule. Then what happens? Anyone know? Does it even matter at all that a CO2 molecule absorbed that photon? Anyone know?
Bill, will try to answer this…
I understand there would be several thousands hits with other molecules before the CO2 would re-emit a photon.
I always found very interesting such heat flows as depicted on page 4 in the post above by Leif:
…
http://www.leif.org/research/Does%20The%20Sun%20Vary%20Enough.pdf slide 20.
One point that the CAGW crowd ignores is that the complete radiation story is the 26 W net transfer from ground to higher atmosphere (the difference of the greenhouse fat arrows).
So all that “greenhouse” can do is influence this net energy transfer flow.
Only thinking in net energy transfers makes sense to me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Breakdown_of_the_incoming_solar_energy.svg
Furthermore only a part of those 26W are due to CO2. Gases are very bad emitters of IR.
I remember in school we made a comparison between a H2 fire and a candle. The candle is apparently warmer as it contains tiny solid particles which radiate heat. The H2 fire appears to be colder (even if being much warmer in fact) as gases do radiate heat very poorly.
The IR ground absorbtion is in the first several tens of meters for CO2 bandwidth and I understand that Miszkolczy found no reduction in the transparency – interesting enough.
Isvalgaard:
“Given a variation in solar output of 0.1%, the resulting temperature change is a quarter of that, i.e. 0.025% which of 288K is 0.07 degrees, which is a factor of ten smaller than the actual LIA change in temperature.”
So a 100% increase (doubling) in solar output would only result in a 7 degree warming???
AndyG55 says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:47 pm
Kev-in-Uk says:
WTF? the last time I checked, there were 1000 millimetres in a metre!
Chuckle..
Methinks young Carter his hit his head on the ceiling waaaay too often
(comes from standing on the shoulder of giants 😉
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Darn it now I have to clean my screen again
Gary Pearse says:
December 21, 2012 at 3:32 pm
You know, I have mentioned the Wilson Cloud chamber and the streaks of cloud created in it by GCRs…..
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Thank you for bring it up. As Lars P. @ur momisugly December 21, 2012 at 3:57 pm indicated it seems to be getting buried under the rug. (That rug is getting awfully lumpy)
More due to the tilt of the earth, yielding a warmer arctic (a source of ‘cool’ air-masses BTW) what with the ‘warming’ seen there in summer, coupled with fewer cold fronts (composed of arctic air-masses) that make their way south to say the 35th parallel (and the bulk of the US mainland) in July into August, otherwise, we *might* see some cooling off after the summer solstice (but the earth and weather systems are not so simple with heat-energy distribution as reflected in measured temperature)
IOW, there are darn good meteorological reasons we don’t see an immediate cool-down after June 21st and no single reason should be cited.
.
ecoGuy says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:44 pm
…………I just wish one or two wind turbines could be preserved, with the following notice:
A memorial to Dumb Group Think – never let your science be led by a political agenda – the results are always illogical, expensive and totally useless.
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And perhaps a quote or two from Eisenhower.
Love of liberty means the guarding of every resource that makes freedom possible—from the sanctity of our families and the wealth of our soil to the genius [of] our scientists…
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
JJ said
“Reference to correlations between GCRs and climate necessarily encompasses more than GCRs. It also includes climate (duh). And it also includes the correleation, which may be caused a factor that is neither GCR nor climate. The only thing explictly off the table for that discussion, according to IPCC, is TSI. Every other possible cause for the observed correlation is included.”
JJ wrote correctly, getting everything.
Seems to be a basic failing of some when attempting to couple physically-observable evidence (as in his experiment) with logos (an ‘evidentiary logic failure’ perhaps); one can lead a horse to the cloud chamber but one cannot make him see the streaks nor draw conclusions or implied causes.
I have always wanted to see the difference in cloud chamber appearance (the tracks and performance!!!) at sea level vs FL 340 or FL 400 (40,000 feet) say … I understand ‘in the day’ they accomplished this through ‘ballooning’, but we live now today in the age of YouTube.
.
“Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.”
I must admit that I find some of the discussion on this particular point to be bizarre and wrong headed. Quite clearly IMO the above is saying at least two things.
1.The three listed papers imply the existence of an amplifying mechanism and
2. One of those potential amplifying mechanisms is the GCR cloud hypothesis
By simple logic, falsifying 2 does not establish that 1 is not valid regardless of what the title of the section this statement appears in. If the authors really wanted to argue that the falsification of 2 requires the falsification of 1, they would’ve had to make a different statement.
Cheers, 🙂
This is not surprising. Cloud formation is limited in different ways at different altitudes. As I understand it, it is mainly at high altitude that we expect cloud formation to be limited by a lack of nucleation. Also the cooling effect from clouds differs with altitude. High altitude clouds are believed to cool more. They are the ones Svensmark is mostly talking about anyway.
I have a different reason to be skeptical about the Svensmark model. As we all know aircraft contrails, ship trails, SO2 from power plants, fine particulates – these things all cause cloud nucleation and their levels have been up and down like a whores drawers over the past century. It seems likely to me that these factors today would swamp or obliterate any Svensmark GCR influence on the rate of cloud formation. Perhaps the Svensmark mechanism once worked and can explain part of the historical climate record. But whether it still works today with all these other factors also in play is another question.
LazyTeenager says:
December 21, 2012 at 2:24 pm
Who could possibly think that cooling should commence when forcings are at their peak, just because the very highest peak has been passed?
———-
Me! The earth’s energy balance is in equilibrium with the rate of solar energy input equal to the rate of earth infra red energy output.
Any change in forcing will affect the primary absorber, the near surface layers of the ocean immediately. And this will affect air temperatures on very short time scales.
Alec’s boiling pot analogy is a false analogy…..
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Gerard Roe’s paper applies just as much here as it does in the Milankovitch theory since both deal with a change in the sun as viewed from earth. The effect is not to change the absolute value or the speed/rate of rise or fall, it is to change the acceleration (first derivative) and that is exactly what we are seeing.
As for any “….change in forcing will affect the primary absorber, the near surface layers of the ocean immediately. And this will affect air temperatures on very short time scales….” It depends on the definition of “immediately” because we ARE starting to seeing changes however the oceans hold a heck of a lot of water which has a very high specific heat.
You can see the changes here
here
here
here
The evident changes in the Jets I picked up on a few years ago. – The Prevailing Westerlies used to make figuring out the weather easy a decade ago, but they are no longer ‘trustworthy.’ Since my business is completely dependent on the weather I have to very accurately predict the short term weather 100% of the time or pay up to a $1000 a day penalty when I mess-up. I am much better at it than the radio weathermen in my area because I scrutinize the jet streams and the rest of the weather maps.
The 2010 Russian heat wave: blocking high, not global warming and the current Cold Blast Claim[ing] Over 600 Lives Across Eastern Europe/Russia…” are both manifestations of these changes in the jets from zonal to meridional flow patterns.
Anyone who says “So even if the predictions are correct, the effect of climate change will outstrip the sun’s ability to cool even in the coldest scenario” hasn’t a clue.
The “sun’s ability to cool” ??????????????????????????????????????????