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Traveling this weekend, posting will be light.
Discuss any topics per our policy page.
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I’ve been looking through old Meccano Magazines and the parallels with today are interesting.
This issue from December 1962 has two article you might find interesting.
The first one is called “Synthetic Petrol – Spirit of The Future?” and starts with:
The second is called “The Modern British Winter” and begins with:
DR says:
March 9, 2013 at 8:29 pm
“So where will you be when the stock market crashes this time?”
I have already switched everything to Gold. Gold and M2 have a correlation of 0.96 so Gold should profit from the global money printing; relatively speaking of course, compared to debasing currencies like the USD, the Euro and the Yen – and the Renminbi which is debased synchronously with the USD.
After the crash I will likely switch back into stocks.
D. B Stealey
The hypotenuse of the composite “triangle” isn’t a straight line in either case. The area should be 32.5 squares (if my arithmetic on a post it note is correct), but the individual shapes only add up to 32.
I’m on the road, but I don’t see a reference above from true believers at the Facebook “Scientific Mensa” group (save me…), comes this link to our impending planetary emergency:
http://ameg.me/
rogerknights says:
March 9, 2013 at 4:18 pm Hey – I made the list!
A nice little cold snap on the way for the UK.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/early-spring-comes-to-europe/
Ric Werme says:
March 10, 2013 at 5:17 am (quoting the Arctic Methane Emergency Group)
Well, Rick, it appear that the extremists at the Arctic Methane Emergency Group have not run the numbers.
When you actually calculate the heat balances for August and September in the Arctic Ocean – at the latitudes where sea ice is actually now present – you find that the melting arctic sea ice cools the ocean. There is not enough solar radiation present at time of minimum sea ice extents in mid-September, and in the weeks leading up to that minimum sea ice extent, to be absorbed into the newly exposed ocean to make up for the increased evaporative and convective and radiative cooling that takes place.
Dr Curry also reports that the increased evaporation from the extra exposed water of recent years can be linked to increased snow and ice coverage on the land around the Arctic Ocean.
And, also ignored by these extremists: The significant INCREASE in Antarctic sea ice extents at the same time as the Arctic sea ice decreases IS at a latitude that DOES reflect more inbound solar energy!
Thus:
Less Arctic Sea ice in September = More cooling of the Arctic Ocean.
Less Arctic sea ice = More land ice and snow = More cooling of the land, more energy reflected.
More Antarctic Sea Ice = More energy reflected from the southern ocean = more cooling.
What’s there not to like about a mechanism that puts us even deeper in to the next ice age? .
Green the dessert. Bridge?
Lay a pipeline to the nearest big source of water. Gathering up all the global warming extremists at the end of the pipe. If they can suck in just one tenth of what they blow out… you’ll have it in thirty seconds.
All extremists for that matter.
Crash? What crash, did the Republicans get back in office?
D.B. Stealey says:March 9, 2013 at 3:53 pm
Sue Smith says:March 10, 2013 at 3:57 am I have to agree with your logic Sue WRT the numbers not adding up and the figures are not exactly drawn. But, admittedly there is something I don’t get. Even a stick in the sand drawing should convey the logic of the apparent discrepancy as a symbol of perfect depiction. The picture doesn’t detract from the logic of the missing 0.5 squares of what should be total area = (0.5 *(5 * 13)) = 32.5 missing from the sum of the parts area = (0.5 * (3 * 8)) + (0.5 * (2 *5)) + 7 + 8 = 32.0. Nor does it detract from the second sum of parts = 31.5 as the overall area = 32.5, since it is obviously the latter minus the one missing square. Below I noted some the drawing’s differences which do not offer a solution.
http://i47.tinypic.com/4lswee.jpg
I’ve asked this question at Judith Curry’s site twice now because I wanted to get the take of the consensus types, but no luck. So perhaps one of the more sciency skeptics here would be willing to tell me what I am missing?
In short, my question is why the AMO and ENSO should have any effect whatsoever on global average temperature. They are apparently both oscillations internal to the Earth’s climate system. According to what I read on the consensus sites, no one claims that either adds head/energy to the climate. They just represent the concentration, or dispersal, of heat that is already here.
So I can see why they would affect surface air temperatures, sea surface temperatures, and weather across the globe. But how do they raise and lower the global average temperature? Or more properly put, should they? If the GAT increases with an El Nino and decreases with a La Nina, shouldn’t those oscillations just be controlled for, like UHI?
Or is there some mechanism by which an El Nino, even a super El Nino in 1998, actually raises the average temperature of the climate as a whole? If we are already accurately measuring GAT, shouldn’t the increase in heat that is concentrated in an El Nino, be matched by a decrease elsewhere, with the average staying the same?
Ric Werme on March 10, 2013 at 5:17 am
“I’m on the road, but I don’t see a reference above from true believers at the Facebook “Scientific Mensa” group (save me…), comes this link to our impending planetary emergency:”
For people who claim to be so smart, they sure are idiots.
First, is that 32 degree open water radiated many times more heat to space than -30 or colder ice.
Second, Sun light at low angles reflects off water.
I keep coming to the same sort of stupid arguments, that would seem to be easily dismissed by observation of the outdoors. Do these people never go outside?
GaryM says:
March 10, 2013 at 9:24 am
“Or is there some mechanism by which an El Nino, even a super El Nino in 1998, actually raises the average temperature of the climate as a whole? If we are already accurately measuring GAT, shouldn’t the increase in heat that is concentrated in an El Nino, be matched by a decrease elsewhere, with the average staying the same?”
Measuring GAT, Global average temperature? It’s an artificial construct; and no, it’s not measured properly. The Shannon theorem is violated in spatial and temporal dimensions. Furthermore Averaging doesn’t have a meaning because temperatures are not normally distributed; the law of large numbers does therefore not apply and the average is undefined.
( http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/do-temperatures-have-a-mean/ )
As for why an ocean oscillation can influence GAT as it is used: The first 3 meters of the oceans contain as much energy as the entire atmosphere. So whether cold water or warm water is upwelling in a large swath of the pacific can change the atmospheric temperature a lot.
“The atmosphere is the continuation of the oceans with other means.” (Don’t know the source)
Goode ’nuff says:
March 10, 2013 at 7:57 am
“Crash? What crash, did the Republicans get back in office?”
The crash that will happen as soon as QE4EVER is interrupted. It will be interrupted as soon as China sees widespread protests due to the inflation they import.
Steve Keohane:
“Below I noted some the drawing’s differences which do not offer a solution.
http://i47.tinypic.com/4lswee.jpg”
You found the key when you describe the hypotenuse as “concave”. The two segments have different slopes- one is 2/5 = 0.4, and the other is 3/8 = 0.375. So you can’t calculate the total as (0.5 *(5 * 13)) = 32.5. that would be the area IF the total hypotenuse were a straight line with slope 5/13. The difference in area is 0.5.
When re-arranged, the hypotenuse is now convex, adding 0.5. The total area enclosed is 33, allowing the hole.
[Reply: And we have a WINNAH! (Sue wins, too!)— mod.]
DirkH says:
March 10, 2013 at 10:01 am
“As for why an ocean oscillation can influence GAT as it is used: The first 3 meters of the oceans contain as much energy as the entire atmosphere. So whether cold water or warm water is upwelling in a large swath of the pacific can change the atmospheric temperature a lot.”
This is the same problem I ran into, twice, at Climate Etc.
I am not asking how the oscillations affect atmospheric temperatures. That seems fairly obvious. But a transfer of heat from the ocean, regardless of its higher specific heat, to the atmosphere, should not affect the average of the two. Not if it is being properly measured.
Which is my point. Most news articles use “global average temperature” when they are referring to global average land temperatures. But there are graphs showing the land-sea average, and those show the same spikes in El Nino years.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/
If an El Nino represents the release of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere, then whatever increase in temperature there is in the atmosphere, should be offset by a decrease in the ocean temperature. But the reported temperature averages all show both atmospheric and sea temperatures rising during El Ninos.
GaryM says:
March 10, 2013 at 10:42 am
“If an El Nino represents the release of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere, then whatever increase in temperature there is in the atmosphere, should be offset by a decrease in the ocean temperature. But the reported temperature averages all show both atmospheric and sea temperatures rising during El Ninos.”
But that’s the Sea SURFACE temperature; you would expect to see the according drop in OHC, not in SST. The drop in total OHC would albeit be tiny and we probably are nowhere near the precision necessary to notice it.
Have heard that, but the markets look pretty rational to me. Icahn..? Sure, you can get a pull back, but there could be enough other economic good news to make that short lived and healthy btw.
Not that you shouldn’t take profits when exuberance spikes and look for better entry points on pullback. But I wouldn’t say crash. It could…. I mean, Mr/Ms Markets are like weather. Not for a long time…. imho
Super wealthy have increased theirs big time… so why not employ scare tactic. They don’t care one little ****’n bit about the small people working hard.
We’re going up big time and LNG will play a major role. Gold dips down any buy it, too rare and expensive to produce.
Ozarks humor, you know, at least it’s less insulting over here. 🙂
No more cat blasting jokes! I promise
DirkH says:
March 10, 2013 at 10:51 am
“But that’s the Sea SURFACE temperature; you would expect to see the according drop in OHC, not in SST. The drop in total OHC would albeit be tiny and we probably are nowhere near the precision necessary to notice it.”
In one sense, that is my point. If there is no actual addition of heat to the climate, then the reports of substantially increased global average temperature are spurious. Precisely because we are not measuring the average temperature of the globe at all. Surface temperatures, land surface air temps and SSTs combined, do not represent the total heat content of the climate.
But more to the point, I do not think the increase in GAT can be accounted for by the transfer of heat from the cooler, lower levels of the ocean, to the warmer sea surface and atmosphere.
Dr. Curry has answered on her blog that El Ninos do transfer heat from the ocean to the atmosphere, which I already got. But she adds that the increases air temp means more clouds,m which will retain more heat that would otherwise be radiated.
That would at least indicate a mechanism by which ENSO could actually raise GAT, but I have asked her whether there is research that shows it does. Clouds can prevent radiation from the atmosphere, but also prevent solar radiation from entering the climate system by reflecting it.
My opinion, as a non-scientist, is that the increases reported in the GAT as a result of the ENSO and AMO are spurious results of our inability to measure GAT accurately at all. Which to me seems to undermine the CAGW scare even more than the problems with UHI. The reported effects of El Ninos on GAT are dramatic.
But I am perfectly prepared to learn that I have missed something, which is why I first asked the question at Climate, Etc. To see if the consensus and lukewarmer types who accept the reported temps as accurate could answer the question.
rogerknights says:
March 9, 2013 at 4:18 pm
Thanks for the post Roger, it made my day! I give it a go fro Friday Funny.
Bernie Hutchins says:
March 9, 2013 at 11:08 am
Can someone help with the details of the correct argument here?
If the Earth were in danger of going into thermal runaway (a “tipping point” as a result of CO2-caused heating, kicking up more water vapor), why would it not have already happened due to water vapor chain-reacting WITH ITSELF?
For the same reason it did not run in thermal runaway at the last interglacials which were warmer and all that methane in the arctic was supposedly released, with the o so potent methane greenhouse gas, or it did not runanway when CO2 concentration was 17x more, etc.
CO2 is a (mini) player which can influence only the net heat transfer done by CO2 radiation from the surface to space, which is so minimal that nobody cares really to calculate it. Even the accepted 1°C for CO2 doubling may be wrong.
The delta warming attributed to greenhouse gases is a very high level calculation which ignores for instance the warming of the atmosphere directly from the sun.
In the Earth energy budget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Breakdown_of_the_incoming_solar_energy.svg
from 174 PW 33 PW are directly absorbed by the atmosphere (19%) I saw also 23% in the NASA budget.
If we exclude water vapor from the calculation, and knowing the atmosphere can lose heat only to space (ignoring the earth in a first calculation) knowing the gases limited capacity to radiate, you will get that the atmosphere is getting warmer then needed.
For the fun of it one should consider only CO2 can radiate to space, it is the major radiative gas isn’t it?
Considering the gases law PV=RT you have about the atmosphere temperature at several levels.
With only CO2 radiating to space we would have hothouse Venus here, as CO2 is incapable of radiating enough to space, and this all not due to greenhouse effect which was not even considered.
It gets to different results to the assumption the atmosphere is warmed only from the surface through IR.
As the Earth never was into runaway hot house it is very preposterous to consider it will run now due to the fact that we liberate some of the carbon sequestrated in the crust and add it to the carbon cycle.
Long time readers of this blog might recall I posted comments quite often back then but seldom do so now. In part this reflects the the growth of the blog, by the time I am ready with a comment there are probably dozens ahead of me many saying more eloquently or concisely than I the point I had in mind: so my mite becomes superfluous.
But it also reflects other changes in the blog, in the early days there were not so many of us and few speciaiists: today you can read here detailed posts on almost every aspect of climate change. Indeed the real scientific debate on this has moved away from academe and onto the blogs. Which is not to say that all the arguments put forward here are solidly grounded, some are, but it makes for lively debate and gradually sorts the wheat from the chaff: as well as casting light into the deep shadows where unsupported speculation hides under the cloak of supposed scientific authority.
And quite right too. Natural Philosophy has a long tradition of of the talented amateur making their contribution: after all where would our astronomical colleagues be without the many amateur star gazers scanning the heavens and reporting what they see? For be you a mechanician, hit it with a hammer and see what happens, or a bug hunter, count the number of creepy crawlies, it is all natural philosophy. We observe, we tally and we learn. What we do NOT do is make up the numbers to suit some political position, however fashionable it may be, that is advocacy not science.
So here I raise my colours.
I am an antique physicist and engineer from the days when intellectual rigour was everything. You calculated precisely to the best of your ability, you pointed out what might be wrong with your figures, as far as you knew, and so forth: and expected to have them checked especially in engineering. Useless verbiage was becoming important at that time, clear concise writing was being overwhelmed by it, it was a standing joke if you wanted a PhD you needed to add at least several thousand words to your succinct summary and various scientific publications would offer jocular suggestions of the necessary obfustication that would impress but never be read.
That was then, and everybody understood the joke: and that academic skullduggery, forgery and fraud went on. It was as usual as was the poisonous debates between academics and so on. But this was essentially local stuff on a small scale. Indeed in the common rooms of those days, in my experience anyway, there might be experts on many things only too pleased to answer questions and discuss matters and whilst you might not agree with their point of view you could disagree politely and they took in good heart.
It is a world long gone, today it is all political correctness and innumeracy. If the manufactured statistical figures don’t fit the political narrative well they can easily be changed to suit. Again there is nothing new about this, it has certainly been happening all my lifetime. Indeed I used to set a test for my students which went out of ten wooden soldiers treated with Cuprinol, a branded UK wood preservative, nine said their those felt better for it. Discuss.
The simple fact is I suspect one develops a very sharp nose for pseudoscientific balderdash and claptrap having seen so much of it. And at first I took little notice of AGW as such. it was only when it started to gain traction over ten years ago that I started to ask some questions and was horrified. Propelled by political activism this was not physics or science, it was a series or unsupported suppositions which belong in the realm of metaphysics: literally beyond physics, because you are trying to extract some kind of meaning out of something that cannot be quantified.
And once I had a grasp of what was going on I was astounded at the sheer scale of this politically driven claque whose tentacles reached from academia through the MSM to politicians and their clients. it was a creature of it’s time I suppose, a strange meeting of minds, of those bent upon evil ends in the name of what they dignified as progress knowing or believing that they would never suffer from it. Well successful revolutions tend to eat their children so perhaps they should be thankful theirs failed: at least they can fade away quietly into the night with their ill gotten gains.
And what they fastened on to perpetrate this enormous deception was figures, which are are endlessly discussed upon this blog. But nobody asks whether they have any meaning. Yes there are things you cannot quantify, but when it comes to things you can the question becomes does the result mean anything. This is a serious question. Numbers of themselves mean nothing beyond the ability to count and add up. It is important to understand that which numbers have meaning in the real world, as opposed to statistical fictions or other wild speculations which do not. .
So what do these numbers mean? if anything? .And because I think many on this blog have become lost or intoxicated by numbers, however obtained, to get to the nub of the matter: what do these numbers mean?
.
Frankly very little.
To suppose that some kind of mean temperature over the surface of the globe spinning in space with one half lit by the sun and the other staring into the blackness of the cosmos has some meaning is absurd. It can be calculated to some degree of precision, satellites do it better, met stations which do not exist in the oceans rather worse, but the resulting figure, whatever it might be is meaningless. It is a mere statistical artifact: nothing more.
And to further to suppose that any fluctuation in the value of such a meaningless statistical artifact has any meaning of itself is to delude oneself. It comes from nothing and it means nothing. If you wish to know whether the earth is warming or cooling then watch whether the ice is advancing from the poles towards the equator or retreating. Inconvenient I know and takes rather a long time but very reliable. Or so I believe.
Likewise so called climate sensitivity. This based upon a notion that changes in CO2 or other gasses will produce change in the earth’s mean temperature: but since the latter is a meaningless statistical artifact it is hard to see what this outre notion means,
Well nothing of course. Yet things become stranger still. Apparently it is supposed that burning fossil fuels will double the CO2 levels in the atmosphere at some time in the future. But again there is no reason to suppose that is true.
Once again this is an attempt to concoct with numbers some idea that the CO2 released by human activity has any perceptible effect on the composition of the global atmosphere. Whereas these numbers take no account is made of the outgassing of the earth, chiefly under the oceans, or how thisCO2 is transported through the oceans up to the atmosphere is not quantified or could be in the current state of our knowledge.
So now I nail my colours to the mast.
Numbers are handy things which can describe the real world very well. And are useful. But never every imagine that because some numbers exist they must necessariiy describe the real world. Or be of any use.
To put it simply there are things which can be quantified and give useful results in the real world in which we live, how much wallpaper do you need? etc. There are also things which can be quantified but are useless because they have no meaning in the real world: so the effort to quantify them is and was a waste of time. And finally there are things which cannot be quantified which will not stop people trying. .
So now I have nailed my colours to the mast. And that is all.
Kindest Regards .
r
.
.
. .
Thanks to all who have replied to my question about water vapor feedback (second comment from top). As I stated there, it was my feeling that negative feedbacks had to dominate (I’m an electrical engineer), but supposed there should be a better case than I had seen so far to be made for a proposed “tipping point”. I felt that the warmist needed to explain why any tiny CO2 increment was not swamped by extreme variations in water vapor doing the same thing the CO2 was supposed to trigger. Indeed, you all have verified that any such proffered special-pleading support for a supposed impending run-away is even more vacuous than the proposition itself. The usual hole-ridden formula script of the warmists.
@a jones
Fascinating essay.
Thank you rogerknights!
I laughed till I cried.
A wonderful compilation. I look forward to seeing more of your collection.
Cheers!
So I did some looking around, thanks to you guys. Yes, markets likely will give up some if not all of their recent gains, bottom line next 6 months the actual earnings growth will be substantially lower than what is currently imbedded in stocks prices.
Congress last week pushing concerns about a budget battle into September, from the earlier March deadline on the continuing resolution to fund the budget. That issue could heat up in the fall and weigh on the market.
We need to see the inefficient politicians agree to more spending cuts, and agree to do it rationally. This would help the stock market and the economy. So far, they are not doing it.
Sold some last week, sad, looks like it’s time to do some more. 🙁
New survey shows Antarctica has quite a bit more ice than previously thought.
http://www.thegwpf.org/british-antarctice-survey-antarctic-ice-previously-thought/
Persistence of solar rotation 27 day period heliomagnetic field (HMF, a.k.a. IMF where I = interplanetary) sector structure at Earth is related to both multidecadal & ~9 year sunspot area heliographic asymmetry:
http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/7220/hmf27dpersistenceheliog.png
Background:
Ballester, J.L.; Oliver, R.; & Carbonell, M. (2005). The periodic behaviour of the north-south asymmetry of sunspot areas revisited. Astronomy & Astrophysics 431, L5-L8.
http://www.uib.es/depart/dfs/Solar/Preprints/A+A431.pdf