AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW FROM DOWN UNDER
Geologist & environmental scientist
Katharine Hayhoe, PhD, who wrote the December AITSE piece “Climate Change: Anthropogenic or Not?”, is an atmospheric scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She is senior author of the book “A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions”.
I am a senior research geologist who has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on palaeo-environmental and palaeo-climatic topics and also author of the book, “Climate: the Counter Consensus”.
Quite clearly, Dr. Hayhoe and I are both credible professional scientists. Given our training and research specializations, we are therefore competent to assess the evidence regarding the dangerous global warming that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) alleges is being caused by industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
Yet at the end of her article Dr. Hayhoe recommends for further reading the websites RealClimate.org and SkepticalScience.com, whereas here at the outset of writing my own article I recommend the websites wattsupwiththat.com and www.thegwpf.org (Global Warming Policy Foundation). To knowledgeable readers, this immediately signals that Dr. Hayhoe and I have diametrically opposing views on the global warming issue.
The general public finds it very hard to understand how such strong disagreement can exist between two equally qualified persons on a scientific topic, a disagreement that is manifest also on the wider scene by the existence of equivalent groups of scientists who either support or oppose the views of the IPCC about dangerous anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (DAGW).
In this article I shall try to summarize what the essential disagreement is between these two groups of scientists, and show how it has come to be misrepresented in the public domain.
Common ground amongst DAGW protagonists
Though you wouldn’t know it from the antagonistic nature of public discussions about global warming, a large measure of scientific agreement and shared interpretation exists amongst nearly all scientists who consider the issue. The common ground, much of which was traversed by Dr. Hayhoe in her article, includes:
· that climate has always changed and always will,
· that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and warms the lower atmosphere,
· that human emissions are accumulating in the atmosphere,
· that a global warming of around 0.5OC occurred in the 20th century, but
· that global warming has ceased over the last 15 years.
The scientific argument over DAGW is therefore about none of these things. Rather, it is almost entirely about three other, albeit related, issues. They are:
· the amount of net warming that is, or will be, produced by human-related emissions,
· whether any actual evidence exists for dangerous warming of human causation over the last 50 years, and
· whether the IPCC’s computer models can provide accurate climate predictions 100 years into the future.
Dr. Hayhoe’s answers to those questions would probably be along the line of: substantial, lots and yes. My answers would be: insignificant, none and no.
What can possibly explain such disparate responses to a largely agreed set of factual climate data?
How does science work?
Arguments about global warming, or more generally about climate change, are concerned with a scientific matter. Science deals with facts, experiments and numerical representations of the natural world around us. Science does not deal with emotions, beliefs or politics, but rather strives to analyse matters dispassionately and in an objective way, such that in consideration of a given set of facts two different practitioners might come to the same interpretation; and, yes, I am aware of the irony of that statement in the present context.
Which brings us to the matter of Occam’s Razor and the null hypothesis. William of Occam (1285-1347) was an English Franciscan monk and philosopher to whom is attributed the saying ‘Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate’, which translates as ‘Plurality should not be posited without necessity.’ This is a succinct statement of the principle of simplicity, or parsimony, that was first developed by Aristotle and which has today come to underlie all scientific endeavour.
The phrase ‘Occam’s Razor’ is now generally used as shorthand to represent the fundamental scientific assumption of simplicity. To explain any given set of observations of the natural world, scientific method proceeds by erecting, first, the simplest possible explanation (hypothesis) that can explain the known facts. This simple explanation, termed the null hypothesis, then becomes the assumed interpretation until additional facts emerge that require modification of the initial hypothesis, or perhaps even invalidate it altogether.
Given the great natural variability exhibited by climate records, and the failure to date to compartmentalize or identify a human signal within them, the proper null hypothesis – because it is the simplest consistent with the known facts – is that global climate changes are presumed to be natural, unless and until specific evidence is forthcoming for human causation.
It is one of the more extraordinary facts about the IPCC that the research studies it favours mostly proceed using an (unjustified) inversion of the null hypothesis – namely that global climate changes are presumed to be due to human-related carbon dioxide emissions, unless and until specific evidence indicates otherwise.
What hypothesis do we wish to test?
Though climate science overall is complex, the greenhouse hypothesis itself is straightforward and it is relatively simple to test it, or its implications, against the available data. First, though, we need to be crystal clear about precisely what we mean by the term.
In general communication, and in the media, the terms greenhouse and greenhouse hypothesis have come to carry a particular vernacular meaning – almost independently of their scientific derivation. When an opinion poll or a reporter solicits information on what members of the public think about the issue they ask questions such as “do you believe in global warming”, “do you believe in climate change” or “do you believe in the greenhouse effect”.
Leaving aside the issue that science is never about belief, all such questions are actually coded ones, being understood by the public to mean “is dangerous global warming being caused by human-related emissions of carbon dioxide”. Needless to say, this is a different, albeit related, question. These and other sloppy ambiguities (“carbon” for “carbon dioxide”, for example) are in daily use in the media, and they lead to great confusion in the public discussion about climate change; they also undermine the value of nearly all opinion poll results.
The DAGW hypothesis that I want to test here is precisely and only “that dangerous global warming is being caused, or will be, by human-related carbon dioxide emissions”. To be “dangerous”, at a minimum the change must exceed the magnitude or rate of warmings that are known to be associated with normal weather and climatic variability.
What evidence can we use to test the DAGW hypothesis?
Many different lines of evidence can be used to test the DAGW hypothesis. Here I have space to present just five, all of which are based upon real world empirical data. For more information, please read both Dr. Hayhoe’s and my book.
Consider the following tests:
(i) Over the last 16 years, global average temperature, as measured by both thermometers and satellite sensors, has displayed no statistically significant warming; over the same period, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 10%.
Large increases in carbon dioxide have therefore not only failed to produce dangerous warming, but failed to produce any warming at all. Hypothesis fails.
(ii) During the 20th century, a global warming of between 0.4O C and 0.7O C occurred, at a maximum rate, in the early decades of the century, of about 1.7O C/century. In comparison, our best regional climate records show that over the last 10,000 years natural climate cycling has resulted in temperature highs up to at least 1O C warmer than today, at rates of warming up to 2.5O C/century.
In other words, both the rate and magnitude of 20th century warming falls well within the envelope of natural climate change. Hypothesis fails, twice.
(iii) If global temperature is controlled primarily by atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, then changes in carbon dioxide should precede parallel changes in temperature.
In fact, the opposite relationship applies at all time scales. Temperature change precedes carbon dioxide change by about 5 months during the annual seasonal cycle, and by about 700-1000 years during ice age climatic cycling. Hypothesis fails.
(iv) The IPCC’s computer general circulation models, which factor in the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, project that global warming should be occurring at a rate of +2.0O C/century.
In fact, no warming at all has occurred in either the atmosphere or the ocean for more than the last decade. The models are clearly faulty, and allocate too great a warming effect for the extra carbon dioxide (technically, they are said to overestimate the climate sensitivity). Hypothesis fails.
(v) The same computer models predict that a fingerprint of greenhouse-gas-induced warming will be the creation of an atmospheric hot spot at heights of 8-10 km in equatorial regions, and enhanced warming also near both poles.
Given that we already know that the models are faulty, it shouldn’t surprise us to discover that direct measurements by both weather balloon radiosondes and satellite sensors show the absence of surface warming in Antarctica, and a complete absence of the predicted low latitude atmospheric hot spot. Hypothesis fails, twice.
One of the 20th century’s greatest physicists, Richard Feynman, observed about science that:
In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation, to see if it works.
It’s that simple statement that is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.
None of the five tests above supports or agrees with the predictions implicit in the greenhouse hypothesis as stated above. Richard Feynman is correct to advise us that therefore the hypothesis is invalid, and that many times over.
Summary
The current scientific reality is that the IPCC’s hypothesis of dangerous global warming has been repeatedly tested, and fails. Despite the expenditure of large sums of money over the last 25 years (more than $100 billion), and great research effort by IPCC-related and other (independent) scientists, to date no scientific study has established a certain link between changes in any significant environmental parameter and human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.
In contrast, the null hypothesis that the global climatic changes that we have observed over the last 150 years (and continue to observe today) are natural in origin has yet to be disproven. As summarised by an seo consultant in the reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), literally thousands of papers published in refereed journals contain facts or writings consistent with the null hypothesis, and plausible natural explanations exist for all the post-1850 global climatic changes that have been described so far.
Why is this conclusion not generally understood?
I commented earlier that science is not about emotion or politics, despite which it is uncomfortably true also that public discussion of the global warming issue is conducted far more in accordance with those criteria than it is about science. As discussed at more length in my book, there are three prime reasons for this.
First, as a branch of the United Nations, the IPCC is itself an intensely political and not a scientific body. To boot, the IPCC charter requires that it investigate not climate change in the round, but solely global warming caused by human greenhouse emissions.
Second, from local green activist groups up to behemoth NGOs like Greenpeace and WWF, over the last 20 years the environmental movement has espoused saving the planet from global warming as its leit motif. This has had two devastating results. One is that radical environmentalists have worked relentlessly to sow misinformation about global warming in both the public domain and the education system. And the other is that, faced with this widespread propagandization of public opinion and young persons, and by also by strong lobbying from powerful self-interested groups like government research scientists, alternative energy providers and financial marketeers, politicians have had no choice but to fall into line. Whatever their primary political philosophy, all active politicians are daily mindful of the need to assuage the green intimidation and bullying to which they and their constituents are incessantly subjected.
Third, and probably most influential of all, with very few exceptions major media outlets have provided unceasing support for measures to “stop global warming”. This behaviour appears to be driven by a combination of the liberal and green personal beliefs of most reporters, and the commercial nouse of experienced editors who understand that alarmist environmental reporting sells both product and advertising space.
But given that the science remains uncertain, shouldn’t we give earth the benefit of the doubt?
This famous slogan (and note its deliberately emotive phrasing) is attributed to News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch; it bears all the hallmarks of having been produced by a green focus group or advertising agency. The catchy phrase also reveals a profound misunderstanding of the real climatic risks faced by our societies, because it assumes that global warming is more dangerous, or more to be feared, than is global cooling; in reality, the converse is likely to be true.
It must be recognized that the theoretical hazard of dangerous human-caused global warming is but one small part of a much wider climate hazard that all scientists agree upon, which is the dangerous natural weather and climatic events that Nature intermittently presents us with – and always will. It is absolutely clear from, for example, the 2005 Hurricane Katrina and 2012 Hurricane Sandy disasters in the US, the 2007 floods in the United Kingdom and the tragic bushfires in Australia in 2003 (Canberra), 2009 (Victoria) and in January this year (widespread), that the governments of even advanced, wealthy countries are often inadequately prepared for climate-related disasters of natural origin.
We need to do better, and squandering money to give earth the benefit of the doubt based upon an unjustifiable assumption that dangerous warming will shortly resume is exactly the wrong type of “picking winners” approach.
Because many scientists, including leading solar physicists, currently argue that the position that the Earth currently occupies in the solar cycle implies that the most likely climatic trend over the next several decades is one of significant cooling rather than warming. Meanwhile, the IPCC’s computer modellers assure us with all the authority at their command that global warming will shortly resume – just you wait and see.
The reality is, then, that no scientist on the planet can tell you with credible probability whether the climate in 2030 will be cooler or warmer than today. In such circumstances the only rational conclusion to draw is that we need to be prepared to react to either warming or cooling over the next several decades, depending upon what Nature chooses to serve up to us.
What is the best way forward?
Given that we cannot predict what future climate will be, do we still need national climate policies at all?
Indeed we do, for a primary government duty of care is to protect the citizenry and the environment from the ravages of natural climatic events. What is needed is not unnecessary and penal measures against carbon dioxide emissions, but instead a prudent and cost-effective policy of preparation for, and response to, all climatic events and hazards as and when they develop.
As Ronald Brunner and Amanda Lynch have argued in their recent book, Adaptive Governance and Climate Change, and many other scientists have supported too:
We need to use adaptive governance to produce response programs that cope with hazardous climate events as they happen, and that encourage diversity and innovation in the search for solutions. In such a fashion, the highly contentious ‘global warming’ problem can be recast into an issue in which every culture and community around the world has an inherent interest.
Climate hazard is both a geological and meteorological issue. Geological hazards are mostly dealt with by providing civil defense authorities and the public with accurate, evidence-based information regarding events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, storms and floods (which represent climatic as well as weather events), and by mitigating and adapting to the effects when an event occurs.
New Zealand’s GeoNet natural hazard network is a world-best-practice example of how to proceed. GeoNet is New Zealand’s national natural hazard monitoring agency. GeoNet operates networks of geophysical instruments to detect, analyse and respond to earthquakes, volcanic activity, landslides and tsunami. The additional risk of longer-term climate change, which GeoNet currently doesn’t cover, differs from most other natural hazards only in that it occurs over periods of decades to hundreds or thousands of years. This difference is not one of kind, and neither should be our response planning.
The appropriate response to climate hazard, then, is national policies based on preparing for and adapting to all climate events as and when they happen, and irrespective of their presumed cause. Every country needs to develop its own understanding of, and plans to cope with, the unique combination of climate hazards that apply within its boundaries. The planned responses should be based upon adaptation, with mitigation where appropriate to cushion citizens who are affected in an undesirable way.
The idea that there can be a one-size-fits-all global solution to deal with just one possible aspect of future climate change, as recommended by the IPCC and favoured by green activists and most media commentators, fails entirely to deal with the real climate and climate-related hazards to which we are all exposed every day.
—————————————————————————————————————
Robert (Bob) Carter is a marine geologist and environmental scientist with more than 40 years professional experience who has held academic positions at the University of Otago (Dunedin) and James Cook University (Townsville), where he was Professor and Head of School of Earth Sciences between 1981 and 1999. His career has included periods as a Commonwealth Scholar (Cambridge University), a Nuffield Fellow (Oxford University) and an Australian Research Council Special Investigator. Bob has acted as an expert witness on climate change before the U.S. Senate Committee of Environment & Public Works, the Australian and N.Z. parliamentary Select Committees into emissions trading, and was a primary science witness in the U.K. High Court case of Dimmock v. H.M.’s Secretary of State for Education, the 2007 judgement from which identified nine major scientific errors in Mr Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth“. Carter is author of the book, Climate: the Counter Consensus (2010, Stacey International Ltd., London).
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rgbatduke says:
January 30, 2013 at 4:06 pm
“…the GHE was accepted as proven fact…
I share your impatience with people who attack the theory from a decidedly uninformed perspective. What is commonly called the GHE is, in its most basic form, proved every single minute of every single day, at the least by all the man-made satellites orbiting above. These would not function if they did not utilize thermal IR reflecting MLI blankets to keep them warm and toasty by trapping energy from the Sun and preventing its rapid egress into the cold of space. There can be no argument or misdirection in this example – there is no convection, no conduction of heat to space, it is all purely radiative transfer.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Anyone who thinks he or she has a silver bullet which will discredit the greenhouse theory on an elementary level is fooling his or her self. That said, one must be careful about applying theory beyond its realm of applicability. The theory definitely works in a simple framework such as the satellite example above. But, I would aver that the evidence for it behaving so simply in more complex situations, particularly on this Earth, is not very substantial, and the current warming hiatus is IMHO grounds for keeping an open mind.
The atmosphere of the Earth is very complex, being composed of several different GHGs which absorb and radiate in different parts of the spectrum, i.e., at different levels of energy. And, there are powerful convective effects moving heat from the ground to higher altitudes, as well as persistent changes of state in the most powerful GHG. I submit that it is likely true that the GHE is responsible for making the Earth warm enough to be habitable by life as we know it. But, whether that effect is monotonic at present conditions is, I would suggest, an open question.
Considering the temperature-CO2 relationship, it is apparent that temperatures drive CO2. Although my claim that it is the main driver is controversial, to say the least, nobody has yet denied to me that there is at least a short term causative relationship. And, that relationship is positive. If CO2 in turn drives temperature in a positive direction, then there is an overall positive feedback with a fairly high bandwidth, and we should be seeing wild swings in these variables, which could only be prevented from running away entirely by more significant negative feedbacks. The lack of such variability suggests quite strongly that the GHE from added CO2 is, at best, very weak.
In sum, I do not think the GHE works precisely as is commonly assumed in its most simple form on this very complex planet.
richardscourtney says:
January 30, 2013 at 1:41 pm
Thank you for taking notice. Most people, I think, are not ready yet to deal with the possibility that the whole controversy is flawed at its very heart. I keep posting the info because I hope that, little by little, people will begin to take notice, and realize that there really is no alternative. When temperatures begin falling precipitously in the near future, and the CO2 rate of change slackens off in lock step, then maybe more eyes will open.
rgbatduke says:
January 30, 2013 at 4:06 pm
……..”I do realize, of course, that at this point I will never convince you otherwise (or any of the others who are grasping at straws trying to “disprove” AGW altogether). You are just as religious in your opposition to the idea as Hansen is in his support. Just bear in mind that you are, in your own way, as damaging to the very point of view you wish to advance as Hansen is to his.”
==============
Piffle indeed.
We’re not playing games anymore.
“Science does not deal with emotions, beliefs or politics, ”
It does now Bob.
Bart says:
it is clear that temperatures are driving CO2.”
That is problematic:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2,Temperaturesandiceages-f.pdf
Cohenite,
I have to agree with Bart:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.25/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958
∆T drives ∆CO2.
Yes, my comment was ill considered; what Lansner’s article shows is that CO2 has no effect on temperature.
izen says:
January 30, 2013 at 3:26 am
You beat me to it!
Dr. Carter – excellent summary, loved it.
Thanks, Dr. Carter,
Excellent article, I have placed links to it in my climate pages.
Well, I was impressed until you wandered off from discussing science and into politics/economics. “Indeed we do, for a primary government duty of care is to protect the citizenry and the environment from the ravages of natural climatic events.” Uhggg – no, no, no. With this “duty” we could justify taxing the population to finance those who foolishly locate where the risk is high. For example, encouraging living on a hurricane coast through such government protection is essentially to misallocate capital, and that is the greatest evil of both the global warming believers and any other assumed government “duty”. Misallocation of capital through government mandate has caused more deaths than any other scourge.
Dr. Brown (rgbatduke).
+1000.
I enjoy reading every one of your comments. What would it take to get you to debate ANY of the ‘warmists’ . . . 😕 Hey, maybe some ‘Big Oil’ or Koch Brothers funding . . 🙂
( . . and I better put ‘sarc’ for the above . . . ).
As just a simple mechanical/aeronautical engineer (of over 30 years now), but with a bit of passion for the atmosphere (from my flying days), I dug into the CAGW after the 4th IPCC report, and came quickly to the realization that it was WAY overblown ( . .to me, very obviously ‘political’ . .), and always agree with your comments.
Those who try to dispute the ‘greenhouse effect’ often I think are looking at it wrong. As you say, it reduces the rate of cooling. Another way to put it is that it, ‘warms the surface of the earth AS COMPARED TO IF THERE WAS NO ‘GREENHOUSE GASES’. . .” . That to me is the crux. The last portion often is left off, so people read, ” . .the green house effect warms the surface of the earth” . . and look at it different,as if it is really ‘creating heat’. I fully accept the idea that more CO2 reduces the rate of cooling, therefore, theoretically, or “if all else remains unchanged’, temps would warm some. But the nature of the atmosphere and its dynamics, albedo, aerosols, solar cycles ( . .better be careful, don’t want to upset Leif – which by the way I do respect his comments . . ) ocean cycles, and the other items I haven’t mentioned is clearly a much greater effect on climates – that is, unless there is real EVIDENCE to the contrary for the ‘DAGW or CAGW’ of CO2. . .
Anyway, to keep this short ( . . probably a lost cause already . . 🙂 ) , seeing comments from people I truly view as ‘experts’ looking at the REALITY of this all is always great.
DirkH says:“What can possibly explain such disparate responses to a largely agreed set of factual climate data?”Follow The Money. The Canadian Katharine Hayhoe, living in Texas, runs her own company.She tries to sell “regional climate modeling” and looks for suckers to be parted from their money.”
I agree with DirkH’s approach.
“In 2012, documents stolen from The Heartland Institute revealed that Carter was paid a monthly fee of $1,667 (USD), as part of a program to pay ‘high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist [anthropogenic global warming] message’.”
Dr. Carter is yet another admirable person. You run into so many of them on WUWT.
Eugene WR Gallun
I would think that Super El Niño’s follow a long period of equatorial heating, thus increasing the thermal gradient between it and the polar regions, and as a consequence causing a lot of warm moisture rich air to advect toward the poles, depositing much of that moisture during its travels. Just a thought.
Thanks to Professors Carter and Brown for the gratuitous education. Their points of edification give lie to the cliche, “You get what you pay for.” Keep up the great work!
leif svalgaard says
http://www.leif.org/research/FFT-Power-Spectrum-SSN-1700-2008.png
interalia his other remarks also imply that he thinks that the guys who discovered the Gleissberg cycle with a periodic length of 88 years (analysing data going back 12000 years) must be wrong . All this of course because he believes his SSN data ar more important than any other data.
Henry@vukcevik,
As you know, I don’ trust SSN too much, going back in time. So we let Leif peddle with those SSN data. But it is interesting to note that there does seem to be a variability within the cycles.
What is important is: what has been observed in data other than SSN?
Well, for example, to explain weather cycles, before they started with the carbon dioxide nonsense, they did look in the direction of the planets, rightly or wrongly.See here.
http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/cycles-astronomy/arnold_theory_order.pdf
To quote from the above paper:
A Weather Cycle as observed in the Nile Flood cycle, Max rain followed by Min rain, appears discernible with maximums at 1750, 1860, 1950 and minimums at 1670, 1800, 1900 and a minimum at 1990 predicted.
(The 1990 turned out to be 1995 when cooling started!)
Please note: indeed one would expect more condensation (bigger flooding) at the end of a cooling period and minimum flooding at the end of a warm period. This is because when water vapor cools (more) it condensates (more) to water (i.e. more rain).
now look here:
1900- minimum flooding : end of warming
1950 – maximum flooding: end of cooling
1995 – minimum flooding: end of warming
if I look at my graph
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
it follows that this time around the cycle could have been around 95 years and indeed it would be possible for me to alter the wavelength from 88 to 95 years and still get most of the actual measured data (the blue line) near or on top of the red line. However, stretching it to 105 is definitely not possible, at least not with my data.
trafamadore says:
January 30, 2013 at 8:54 pm
“I agree with DirkH’s approach.
“In 2012, documents stolen from The Heartland Institute revealed that Carter was paid a monthly fee of $1,667 (USD), as part of a program to pay ‘high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist [anthropogenic global warming] message’.””
No, you got it wrong, it’s
“In 2012, documents stolen from The Heartland Institute revealed that Carter was paid a monthly fee of $1,000,000,000 (USD), […]”
See? Now, are you right or am I? Wrap your head around the concept of linking to your source.
That being said, fair’s fair. Now tell me how much Hayhoe is paid in her university job to prove CO2AGW, and how much profit she makes with her company.
Send out your wire fraudsters to retrieve the info, call Gleick.
I agree with Bart too. It’s the warmth that causes the rise in atmospheric CO2, not warming. The annual temperature cycle pumps the CO2 out of the oceans at this temperature level (~2 ppm/year). At the lower temperature levels ahead, the pump will reduce it’s output. I predict ~1.5 ppm/year in the 2010s, lower than in the 2000s (~2 ppm/year) in average.
Edim says
….not warming.
henry says
you meant: the increase in CO2 does not cause warming?
Here is something interesting that I picked up from one of Willis’ posts:
You must have noticed that anywhere on earth the temps. of the oceanic waters do not get much higher than 32-34C, no matter what. I have noticed the same thing here with my own swimming pool. But the heat going in still produces an enormous amount of water vapor eventually resulting in clouds & weather mostly at or near the equator (and e.g. high evaporation rate of the water if my pool gets close to 32C).
Thus, there must be a limit on the heating going in versus the rate of evaporation (=boiling at prevailing pressure) of the top layer of molecules of water.
Did you ever have some low boiling fluid like freon on your hand/armpits and did you notice how much energy it extracts (how cold your hand/arm pit becomes) as the fluid evaporates? You can actually get cold burn, if you are not careful.
The sun’s UV rays is what heats the oceans, mostly, due to the absorbency of water in the UV region. This means that most of those particular UV rays coming in on top will be converted to heat. Once this heat in the top layer of the molecules reaches boiling point, at the ruling pressure, you get evaporation and that extracts energy from the layer of molecules lying below. That is what is causing some sort of a balance. That is why you will never get the water above 32 – 34C (from the sun’s rays).
This means that the top layer of water comes easily to boiling and every first year chemistry student knows that if you boil water, the first smoke released is that of the CO2 dissolved. i.e.
HCO3- + heat => CO2 (g) + OH-.
so the current atmospheric CO2 concentration in the air is a function of the HCO3- content in the oceans.
it might be important to remember that.
@HenryP: The water vapor is at a high energy state, and then releases that energy into the atmosphere as latent heat energy. So in a way, the water temps have a hard time getting hot, but the heat goes somewhere, no? Isn’t this how the sun affects climate? I imagine this is why La Nina’s can make the world grow warmer. The solar irradiance, including UV, warms the colder water which is exposed due to less cloud cover, and sure the water that evaporates keeps the water cooler than it would be, but the energy is retained in the atmosphere. As well, warm air rises, and heat leaves through the upper atmosphere into space too. So, it’s complicated.
Thanks, Prof. Carter, for an excellent exposition of the situation, written so clearly that even a politician could understand it. The only problem I can see is that nowhere in it do I find a description of the gravy train resulting from the adoption of realism: without that, the politicians won’t be changing their “minds”, y’know.
lsvalgaard says: January 30, 2013 at 2:46 pm
A sure mark of a pseudo-scientist is lack of knowledge …..DK-syndrome again?
Hmmm…. ‘there you go again’, back to science:
Re:Gleissberg cycle
W. Gleissberg: “One long cycle is equal to 7 eleven-year cycles or 77.7 years” ( & maximum of the present 80-yr cycle).
Peter: cycle about 105 years
Hathaway: Gleissberg cycle = 88 years
Obviously the 7 year old was more astute than Dr. H.
L. Svalgaard:” …observed fact over the past 300 years. It even has a name: the Gleissberg cycle , varying between 75 and 125 years.”
Vukcevic: “Most importantly FFT power spectrum analysis shows that there is noting there between 50+ and 100+ years. ‘Gleissberg cycle’ as is not an accordion, stretching and squeezing to fit requirements.”
What Vukcevic discovered is not 105 year cycle, but the unique planetary formula
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC4.htm
describing the 105 year periodicity as shown in your spectrum
http://www.leif.org/research/FFT-Power-Spectrum-SSN-1700-2008.png
Henry, I mean it’s not the change in temperature but the temperature level that causes the change in atmospheric CO2 (dCO2/dt = f(Ta), Ta = T – T0). Constant temperature causes CO2 change and at some (lower) temperature the CO2 change is zero. At even lower temperatures the change will be negative. For the level of the 2000s temperature plateau it’s ~2 ppm/year.
The annual S(S)T cycle pumps CO2 into atmosphere.
vukcevic says:
January 31, 2013 at 3:27 am
‘Gleissberg cycle’ as is not an accordion, stretching and squeezing to fit requirements.
Ah, but it is. That is the point. It is not a real cycle with a fixed period. Hence not due to planets.
Henry@vukcevik
I think your Y2 maunder type curve (last graph) here
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC4.htm
looks reasonably good but it must be out by quite a few years.
Namely, whereas I can try to make a fit from a curve (with a certain amount of data from the near past) to the past and to the future where I do not have data,
– this is just to show more or less where we came from and where we are headed – ,
I cannot change the data within the curve where I do have data. In my case I have studied all daily maxima from 47 weather stations with more or less complete records (balanced by latitude and 70/30 @sea/inland from 1974. That equals 47 x 365d x 38yr = 651890 daily results. All trends that I do on these data e.g. linear, binomial, exponential, etc. all show with high correlation that we changed sign, from warming to cooling, somewhere in 1995, looking at maxima (=energy-in).
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Your Y2 meander type curve seems to suggest that it was around 1992?
Your Y2 meander type curve looks at means (which data set?) which we know lags maxima by at least 3 years, seeing that 1998 was the maximum on planet earth (looking at energy-out)
So, according to my results you are out by at least 5 or 6 years.
(it is not really that big a difference between two skeptics who used different methods of approach but it is a significant amount of years i.e. a large error. At least we both agree that it will get cooler )
Edim says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/30/global-warming-anthropogenic-or-not/#comment-1213161
Henry says
Agreed!
Just remember that the [HCO3-] not only depends on photosynthesis of previous ages, but also underwater volcanic action and other prevalent CO3 2- cycles, whether or not volcanic in origin, + cooler periods of the past and present:
CO2 + H2O + cooling => HCO3- + H3O+
So, there are a number of factors, that influence the final output, which is probably why the lag varies between as much as 700 and 1000 years (acc. to prof. Carter) – I heard figures of between 600 and 1200.
lsvalgaard says: January 31, 2013 at 5:54 am
…….
2009:
Dr.S. : It even has a name: the Gleissberg cycle , varying between 75 and 125 years
Vukcevic : Your FFT analysis shows clear ~108y, I have personal favourite (95 +118)/2 = ~107y
2013
Dr.S : …it is more like 105 years, but is not a real cycle.
Vukcevic : unique planetary formula describing the 105 year periodicity
Vuk does not play accordion with the cycles. .
Dr.S. : Hence not due to planets.
Strange that, another Vukcevic formula links to planetary hypothesis too
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
Whel known group of the pseudo-scientists, among them the old Ken McCracken ex-NASA’s scientist, Beer and Steinhilber are now subscribing to the ‘planetary hypothesis’. Since one can’t say they suffer from the D & K syndrome, perhaps they’ve gone loopy, not to say senile in the old age.
http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2012/12/aa19997-12.pdf
Dr. S. what do you say?
Even Nature magazine is at it:
The Sun’s magnetic activity varies cyclically over a period of about 11 years. An analysis of a new, temporally extended proxy record of this activity hints at a possible planetary influence on the amplitude of the cycle.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7434/full/493613a.html
Horror-scope science ay , …
Hi Henry
The Y2 curve
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC4.htm
was discussed many times with Dr.S, so there was no need to explain, but since you are not familiar I should point out that only thing you need to take into account is the zero crossings as approximate times of change of direction, no more no less. Actual max or min do not relate to any max or min either in SSN or temperature. Since we do not know if there is, and if there is what it is a transfer mechanism either to the SSN or the global temperature change (which is uncertain anyway) than few years in either direction may not be that important.