Heh. In response to a ridiculous claim making the rounds (I get comment bombed at WUWT daily with that nonsense) which I debunked here: A misinterpreted claim about a NASA press release, CO2, solar flares, and the thermosphere is making the rounds
Dr. Roy Spencer employs some power visual satire, that has truth in it. He writes:
How Can Home Insulation Keep Your House Warmer, When It Cools Your House?!
<sarc> There is an obvious conspiracy from the HVAC and home repair industry, who for years have been telling us to add more insulation to our homes to keep them warmer in winter.
But we all know, from basic thermodynamics, that since insulation conducts heat from the warm interior to the cold outside, it actually COOLS the house.
Go read his entire essay here. <Sarc> on, Roy!
UPDATE: Even Monckton thinks these ideas promoted by slayers/principia/O’Sullivan are ridiculous:
Reply to John O’Sullivan:
One John O’Sullivan has written me a confused and scientifically illiterate “open letter” in which he describes me as a “greenhouse gas promoter”. I do not promote greenhouse gases.
He says I have “carefully styled [my]self ‘science adviser’ to Margaret Thatcher. Others, not I, have used that term. For four years I advised the Prime Minister on various policy matters, including science.
He says I was wrong to say in 1986 that added CO2 in the air would cause some warming. Since 1986 there has been some warming. Some of it may have been caused by CO2.
He says a paper by me admits the “tell-tale greenhouse-effect ‘hot spot’ in the atmosphere isn’t there”. The “hot spot”, which I named, ought to be there whatever the cause of the warming. The IPCC was wrong to assert that it would only arise from greenhouse warming. Its absence indicates either that there has been no warming (confirming the past two decades’ temperature records) or that tropical surface temperatures are inadequately measured.
He misrepresents Professor Richard Lindzen and Dr. Roy Spencer by a series of crude over-simplifications. If he has concerns about their results, he should address his concerns to them, not to me.
He invites me to “throw out” my “shredded blanket effect” of greenhouse gases that “traps” heat. It is Al Gore, not I, who talks of a “blanket” that “traps” heat. Interaction of greenhouse gases with photons at certain absorption wavelengths induces a quantum resonance in the gas molecules, emitting heat directly. It is more like turning on a tiny radiator than trapping heat with a blanket. Therefore, he is wrong to describe CO2 as a “coolant” with respect to global temperature.
He invites me to explain why Al Gore faked a televised experiment. That is a question for Mr. Gore.
He says I am wrong to assert that blackbodies have albedo. Here, he confuses two distinct methods of radiative transfer at a surface: absorption/emission (in which the Earth is a near-blackbody, displacing incoming radiance to the near-infrared in accordance with Wien’s law), and reflection (by which clouds and ice reflect the Sun’s radiance without displacing its incoming wavelengths).
He implicitly attributes Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 speech to the Royal Society about global warming to me. I had ceased to work with her in 1986.
He says that if I checked my history I should discover that it was not until 1981 that scientists were seriously considering CO2’s impact on climate. However, Joseph Fourier had posited the greenhouse effect some 200 years previously; Tyndale had measured the greenhouse effect of various gases at the Royal Institution in London in 1859; Arrhenius had predicted in 1896 that a doubling of CO2 concentration would cause 4-8 K warming, and had revised this estimate to 1.6 K in 1906; Callender had sounded a strong note of alarm in 1938; and numerous scientists, including Manabe&Wetherald (1976) had attempted to determine climate sensitivity before Hansen’s 1981 paper.
He says, with characteristic snide offensiveness, that I “crassly” attribute the “heat-trapping properties of latent heat to a trace gas that is a perfect energy emitter”. On the contrary: in its absorption bands, CO2 absorbs the energy of a photon and emits heat by quantum resonance.
He says the American Meteorological Society found in 1951 that all the long-wave radiation that might otherwise have been absorbed by CO2 was “already absorbed by water vapor”. It is now known that, though that is largely true for the lower troposphere, it is often false for the upper.
The series of elementary errors he here perpetrates, delivered with an unbecoming, cranky arrogance, indicates the need for considerable elementary education on his part. I refer him to Dr. Spencer’s excellent plain-English account of how we know there is a greenhouse effect.
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (April 18, 2013)
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Phil.:
re your assertions in your post at April 29, 2013 at 11:47 am.
Firstly, I made clear that your alteration was NOT a misrepresentation of my words by you. Indeed, I wrote to Shore saying
So, your complaint is without foundation when you write
And NO! Your alteration was not a “correction”. It was a distortion.
I wrote
You are saying you are “correcting” that by changing it to
One could argue about the difference between “34” and “about 34.5” but your alteration emphasises my point about the relative magnitudes of anthropogenic and ‘natural’ emissions.
More importantly, your alteration to my second sentence changes its subject from threat of dangerous effects to the subject of carbon cycle sinks. An alteration which changes the subject is not a “correction”.
Very importantly, your change to my second sentence alters my statement about assertion of dangerous effects of anthropogenic CO2 to be an assertion of no dangerous effects. I agree there would be no dangerous effects but I was talking about the view of Folkerts (which I thought you shared).
Richard
tjfolkerts:
Thankyou for correcting my misunderstanding with your post at April 29, 2013 at 11:51 am which says
Sorry for the formatting error in my post at April 29, 2013 at 12:25 pm
All quotation should have ended after
“In fact, I said nothing of the sort.”
Sorry.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
April 29, 2013 at 12:12 pm
The fundamental difference in our dispute about the cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is exactly about the definition of natural “emissions”. While these are huge, that doesn’t matter for the increase in the atmosphere, as long as the natural sinks equal the natural sources. In this case it is proven that the natural sinks exceed the natural sources, thus nature is a net sink for CO2, not a net source.
Even if the natural emissions were 1000 times larger than the human emissions, that doesn’t increase the levels in the atmosphere, as long as the natural sinks also are 1000 times larger than the human emissions, or more.
The natural emissions are part of a natural cycle. What counts is the net result of the full cycle and that is a net sink after a year for every single year in the past 50 years. The height of one part of the cycle is not of the slightest interest for the atribution of the rise in CO2 and distracts from the real cause.
If the rise is dangerous or beneficial is an unrelated question to the attribution…
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
April 29, 2013 at 11:53 am
Phil. says:
April 29, 2013 at 10:51 am
But not such a big difference in log(CO2), about a 5% increase.
That is exactly the problem: the temperature rise 1910-1945 is mostly attributed to natural factors in the models, where the 10 ppmv rise in CO2 has not much influence. The temperature rise 1976-2000 is near solely attributed to the 50 ppmv rise in CO2, which is a 5% log[CO2] increase. Still about 5 times even in log increase, compared to the previous period.
No the forcing is proportional to log(CO2) so 5% change not 5x change!
But the temperature increases (speed and height) are quite identical. The inbetween period and the period since 2000 are even more interesting: slight cooling and flat temperatures with rising CO2 levels.
The first cooler period is argumented away by a nice tuning knob: human induced aerosols, of which nobody can tell for sure if they cool the world or warm the world. The brown haze over India probably warms the world. But the reduction of over 60% in SO2 emissions in the Western world didn’t show any temperature effect at places where the largest effect should be found: downwind the largest emitters.
Don’t forget atmospheric nuclear bomb testing which was conducted from 1945-63, they injected massive amounts of particulates into the stratosphere, rather like multiple volcanoes.
The current period of standstill can’t be argumented by aerosols, as these didn’t change much over the recent decades: what the Western world cleaned up now is extra emitted in China, but even there one begins to clean up the emissions, because they have more and more problems.
Thus the main problem is what causes the current (and previous) standstill in temperature increase and what is its attribution to the warming in the other periods and what are the consequences for the sensitivity for 2xCO2.
ENSO effects mainly see: Foster & Rahmstorf
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022
richardscourtney says:
April 29, 2013 at 12:12 pm
Phil.:
re your assertions in your post at April 29, 2013 at 11:47 am.
Firstly, I made clear that your alteration was NOT a misrepresentation of my words by you. Indeed, I wrote to Shore saying
You quoted those words as mine. But even Phil had sufficient honesty to quote what I actually said, so you cannot have made a simple misunderstanding.
You pretended Phil’s words were mine then slagged them off.
So, your complaint is without foundation when you write
I didn’t alter what you said
Actually it does have a foundation, you assert that I altered your statement, I did not.
And NO! Your alteration was not a “correction”. It was a distortion.
I wrote
Then, of course, there is the little fact that nature emits 34 CO2 molecules for each CO2 molecule emitted from human activity. So, you are saying you are afraid that a trivial increase to CO2 emissions will change CO2 from being the ‘stuff of life’ into being the harbinger of Armagedon.
You are saying you are “correcting” that by changing it to
“And the other little fact that you omit mentioning that nature absorbs about 34.5 CO2 molecules for each CO2 molecule emitted from human activity, for a net natural sink effect.”
One could argue about the difference between “34″ and “about 34.5″ but your alteration emphasises my point about the relative magnitudes of anthropogenic and ‘natural’ emissions.
No it doesn’t, it shows that you are being disingenuous by only addressing part of the natural processes, in fact, using your figures, about 34 mole/mole of CO2 is generated naturally while about 34.5 mole/mole is removed naturally leaving the net effect of nature to be -0.5 mole/mole, which is contrary to your point about relative magnitudes.
More importantly, your alteration to my second sentence changes its subject from threat of dangerous effects to the subject of carbon cycle sinks. An alteration which changes the subject is not a “correction”.
I didn’t alter your statement I added one of my own pointing out your omission, so my statement most assuredly is a ‘correction’.
Very importantly, your change to my second sentence alters my statement about assertion of dangerous effects of anthropogenic CO2 to be an assertion of no dangerous effects. I agree there would be no dangerous effects but I was talking about the view of Folkerts (which I thought you shared).
Again no change was made to any of your statements, they were quoted accurately.
Friends:
I write to say that with one exception I agree everything in the post by Ferdinand Engelbeen at April 29, 2013 at 12:30 pm.
The exception is his saying
As Ferdinand knows, I absolutely disagree with that sentence.
The important point in this discussion is – as Ferdinand says –
Exactly so.
Richard
Phil.:
I strongly object to your claiming in your post at April 29, 2013 at 12:53 pm that I was being “disingenuous”.
My standards are much higher than yours and I am offended that you assume I would behave as you do.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
No, I quoted those words as Phil.’s http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/24/spencer-slays-with-sarcasm/#comment-1291419 (Hint: The “Phil. said:” at the beginning is a subtle clue.)
And, then remarked on the fact that you had, as Phil. noted, left out this important piece of information…a piece of information that is more than a little relevant to the issue.
richardscourtney says:
April 29, 2013 at 1:39 pm
Phil.:
I strongly object to your claiming in your post at April 29, 2013 at 12:53 pm that I was being “disingenuous”.
My standards are much higher than yours and I am offended that you assume I would behave as you do.
I speak as I find Richard, why else would you just compare the sources but not the sinks, you give totally the wrong impression about the influence of anthropogenic CO2 on the atmospheric concentration. Since I’m sure that you are well aware of the relative magnitudes of the sources and sinks I believe the omission to be deliberate, hence disingenuous. That’s not something I do so your standards aren’t there yet! You also led off with your usual ad hom and made false accusations which you still haven’t acknowledged let alone apologized for, low standards indeed!
Richard S Courtney says:
So, under these high standards that you speak of, what exactly does mentioning only one side (the slightly smaller side) of a nearly-equal two-sided process of emission and absorption of CO2 by nature constitute? It seems to me that “disingenuous” is perhaps a tad euphemistic.
Phil. says:
April 29, 2013 at 12:31 pm
No the forcing is proportional to log(CO2) so 5% change not 5x change!
The increase in forcing during the period 1976-2000 indeed is 5%, but compared to the period 1910-1945 (where the increase in forcing was about 1%) still 5 times in increase rate of the forcing. But the net result over both periods is near identical, which is quite strange if CO2 has a huge effect.
Don’t forget atmospheric nuclear bomb testing which was conducted from 1945-63, they injected massive amounts of particulates into the stratosphere, rather like multiple volcanoes.
Interesting thoughts, but I think that most surface tests were done on islands with relative small amounts of vegetation or other debris that could cause some stratospheric cooling. Compared to the Pinatubo eruption, human bombs seems to be of little impact, both in force and stratopheric debris injection. Most debris from the Pinatubo was falling out within a few months for the heavier particles, the SO2 aerosols lived for only a few years.
ENSO effects mainly see: Foster & Rahmstorf
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022
I see one fundamental problem with the Foster & Rahmstorf approach: ENSO is not an “exogenic” factor, not a forcing in the same sence as volcanoes or insolation. ENSO may be part of the cause of the trend itself (together with the PDO, NAO,…) and of the warming and standstill episodes. In times of positive PDO, more warm El Niño’s are prevalent, in times of a negative PDO, El Niño’s are more suppressed. The point is that El Niño’s show a residual warming while La Niña’s show little residual cooling.
Further, what causes ENSO and/or PDO and other oceanic oscillations?
After writing the above, I searched WUWT about this work and found that Bob Tisdale had similar objections:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/14/tisdale-on-foster-and-rahmstorf-take-2/
Richard,
I appreciate the apology.
I know it can be tough to keep track of who said what and “believes” what in a rapid-fire discussion like this. I have done it myself a time or two.
However, now you go a little TOO far the other way by one again trying to state what you think that I think: “and in future I will ensure that people recognise I know you think AGW will not be a serious problem.”
I would prefer that you just let me speak for myself (or quote my words). I am somewhere between the two positions you have attributed to me.
*****************************************************************
I am quite sure that …
1) CO2 does help plants grow and is beneficial everything else being equal
2) CO2 does warm the planet everything else being equal.
There is a middle ground of science for which I am less sure. For example,
* I am unsure what the climate sensitivity is for a doubling of CO2. The “raw” sensitivity seems to be right at 1 C/doubling. Depending on whom you ask, the feedbacks can change this number up or down between ~ 0 and ~ 4.5 C/doubling. I would seriously doubt it is 0.0, and I would seriously doubt it is above 4.5. I have seen “credible” scientific papers giving a wide range of estimates based on a wide variety of analyses. I keep my mind open.
* I am unsure how much the current weak sunspot cycle is influencing climate. There seems to be a broad but imprecise correlation between sunspots and temperature, so the current weak cycle could be foreshadowing a natural cooling cycle. Or it might not.
There is an even larger economic/ecologic/political question about how “catastrophic” this will be. My opinion is that global warming is, to a significant but not exclusive degree, due to human influences on land use and the atmosphere. But there is considerable uncertainly in the trajectory of future temperatures and even greater uncertainly in the impacts for specific regions and species.
I could throw out my own “guesstimates” on many of these topics, but I tend not to. I prefer to restrict my comments to the basic physics of IR radiation, lapse rate, 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, etc. These I know pretty well and these are pretty certain. That is why I tend to only comment in the “science” threads and not the political or op/ed threads.
tjfolkerts says (April 29, 2013 at 3:45 pm): [snip]
Well said.
In fact, I hope man/nature is actually turning up the thermostat just a bit, so I won’t have to. Have you seen what it costs to heat a home these days? 🙂
tjfolkerts says:
April 29, 2013 at 11:44 am
“PSI is so far over the line that even other skeptics are calling them out!”
—————————————————————————————–
Yes, the PSI thing did not really work too well at all. It seams that sceptics are not really the forces of “anti science” after all.
Other Assault Clowns have failed for similar reasons. All sceptics know that incident SW heats solids and liquids. Sceptics also know that incident LWIR can slow the cooling of most materials.
I guess Dr. Spencer likes D.C. around as he can then group any who challenge AGW into the same basket. Traffic volume and high scientific literacy means that the PSI thing was never going to work at WUWT. It would have needed a significant percentage of commentators linking to or repeating the junk. Next to no WUWT readers bought into it.
What rise in carbon dioxide?
From a post I’ve just made elsewhere:
The Callendar/Keeling fraud to pretend to track increasing levels of the not possible to tell apart man-made from volcanic carbon dioxide* by cherry picking a low start point is contradicted by measurements by real scientists.
This AGWScienceFiction’s Greenhouse Effect illusion has fraud written all the way through it.
* http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
“Both tectonic and volcanic CO2 are magmatic and depleted in both 13C & 14C. In the absence of statistically significant isotope determinations for each volcanic province contributing to the atmosphere, this makes CO2 contributions of volcanic origin isotopically indistinguishable from those of fossil fuel consumption. It is therefore unsurprising to find that Segalstad (1998) points out that 96% of atmospheric CO2 is isotopically indistinguishable from volcanic degassing. So much for the Royal Society’s unexplained “chemical analysis”. If you believe that we know enough about volcanic gas compositions to distinguish them chemically from fossil fuel combustion, you have indeed been mislead. As we shall see, the number of active volcanoes is unknown, never mind a tally of gas signatures belonging to every active volcano. We have barely scratched the surface and as such, there is no magic fingerprint that can distinguish between anthropogenic and volcanogenic sources of CO2.”
And more, real rational empirical proxy data via plant stomata:
http://debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/co2-ice-cores-vs-plant-stomata/
“Plant stomata suggest that the pre-industrial CO2 levels were commonly in the 360 to 390ppmv range.”
See also: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/stomata.html
Myrrh says:
April 30, 2013 at 3:20 am
Myrrh, please read what I have said before: magmatic CO2 from volcanoes is lower in 13C than subduction CO2. But still higher in 13C/12C ratio than what is already in the atmosphere. Thus it is impossible that volcanic CO2 is the cause of the 13C decline in the atmosphere.
Stomata data have far more problems than ice cores for CO2 levels: by definition stomata data are obtained from land plants, where the stomata index (SI – stomata density divided by total cell density) of one year is based on the average CO2 levels in the growing season of the previous year. But CO2 over land is highly variable and in average somewhat higher (40-50 ppmv) than background. That is taken into account by calibrating the SI data over the past century with direct measurements and CO2 levels in firn and ice cores. So far no problem.
The main problem is that nobody can tell you what the bias was 500 or 1000 years ago, with lots of changes in landscape over the centuries in the main wind direction. Even the main wind direction may have been changed between the MWP and the LIA and back…
Anyway, if the average levels in stomata data don’t agree with the average levels in ice cores, then the stomata data are certainly wrong.
Phil. and joeldshore:
I strongly object to your clearly deliberate misrepresentation of me as method to make the false and untrue assertion that I have been “disingenuous”.
I was NOT disingenuous – I was factual – when I wrote
And I asserted that the increase of the anthropogenic emission is a trivial increase to the total emission: IT IS.
There was no need for me to have mentioned the sinks. It was not relevant to my point.
You may agree with Ferdinand that the anthropogenic emission has caused the recent (measured at Mauna Loa since 1958) rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. But whether or not the rise is anthropogenic in part or in whole cannot be known on the basis of existing information (Ferdinand disagrees with this statement).
However, if such a trivial increase to total CO2 emissions as the anthropogenic emission can have a catastrophic effect on climate then it is a wonder that no such catastrophe has happened in the 4.5 billion years since the Earth gained an oxygen-rich atmosphere. And THAT WAS MY POINT.
Importantly, as Ferdinand says concerning atmospheric CO2 concentration
The assertion from you two weasels that I would be disingenuous is laughable.
Richard
Richard: Let me explain it to you this way. If one of my physics colleagues who is not up on the details of the subject of AGW came to me and said he had heard from AGW skeptics that for every one CO2 molecule we emit, nature emits 34 and asked me if this is true and I explained to him what was actually the case regarding both emissions and absorptions, do you think his reaction would be:
(1) Boy, those AGW skeptics are making a good point
OR
(2) Boy, those AGW skeptics are certainly using deceptive arguments
Who says there haven’t been events that were, or would today be considered catastrophic in the past? We know of at least 6 major extinction events in the past, some of which may have been due to climate change. We also know that sea levels have varied by 100’s of meters. Maybe that’s not a catastrophe from your point of view, but with modern civilization have built many significant population centers very close to sea level, I think it is of some relevance.
Furthermore, it is unclear when in the past there has been this rapid a rise in CO2 levels. The input by man might not sound like much compared to the rates that the biosphere, ocean mixed layer, and atmosphere trade back and forth, but it is fundamentally different to be taking carbon from a source that has been locked away for millions of years and liberating it into these reservoirs and doing so year in and year out. The fact is that CO2 levels have never been as high as they are now for at least 3/4 of a million years and likely several million years and that there is no evidence of nearly as fast a rise in CO2 even during the many glacial – interglacial cycles that the ice core record covers.
richardscourtney says:
April 30, 2013 at 4:23 am
Phil. and joeldshore:
I strongly object to your clearly deliberate misrepresentation of me as method to make the false and untrue assertion that I have been “disingenuous”.
Object all you like, you deliberately told half a story in an attempt to mislead, that is being disingenuous.
I was NOT disingenuous – I was factual – when I wrote
Then, of course, there is the little fact that nature emits 34 CO2 molecules for each CO2 molecule emitted from human activity.
And I asserted that the increase of the anthropogenic emission is a trivial increase to the total emission: IT IS.
No it is not because it’s an irrelevancy, what counts is the net change, to represent a balance sheet with only the earnings and not the expenditures is fraud, that’s what you attempted to do. You got caught out, face up to it.
Tell it like it is: annual anthropogenic emission is ~double the annual growth in CO2, how is that trivial?
Rate of growth of savings=annual salary-expenditures+bonus
Salary=$35,000, expenditures=$35,500, bonus=$1,000
you can tell someone that the bonus is trivial wrt the salary but the growth of the savings is crucially dependent on that bonus!
You may agree with Ferdinand that the anthropogenic emission has caused the recent (measured at Mauna Loa since 1958) rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. But whether or not the rise is anthropogenic in part or in whole cannot be known on the basis of existing information (Ferdinand disagrees with this statement).
I do agree with Ferdinand and have posted to that effect for years, your assertion that we don’t have enough information is incorrect.
Rate of change must equal sources-sinks, that cannot be wished away no matter how much you wish it could.
The assertion from you two weasels that I would be disingenuous is laughable.
Again more of your ad hominem attacks, you’re a rather unpleasant individual.
I would urge you to pay attention to the Sermon on the Mount:
“3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
Phil.:
I will be generous and assume your post at April 30, 2013 at 7:55 am demonstrates you have severe reading difficulties and need to undertake remedial classes in reading comprehension.
Your twaddle is – not unusually from you – a pack of lies.
My post at April 30, 2013 at 4:23 am fully explained why the “sinks” ARE NOT RELEVANT to my statement.
You are not merely “a rather unpleasant individual”: you are an anonymous coward who hurls abuse and lies from behind the shield of anonymity. I merely tell the truth as I see it.
As for quoting the Sermon On The Mount at me, I strongly suspect that my knowledge and understanding of it are at least superior to yours. But that is also not relevant to your having stated lies.
Richard
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
April 29, 2013 at 2:38 pm
Phil. says:
April 29, 2013 at 12:31 pm
“No the forcing is proportional to log(CO2) so 5% change not 5x change!”
The increase in forcing during the period 1976-2000 indeed is 5%, but compared to the period 1910-1945 (where the increase in forcing was about 1%) still 5 times in increase rate of the forcing. But the net result over both periods is near identical, which is quite strange if CO2 has a huge effect.
The forcing in the early period is according to you 1.01 which defines the slope, in the second period it is 1.05, an increase in slope from 1.01 to 1.05 is not a factor of 5!
“Don’t forget atmospheric nuclear bomb testing which was conducted from 1945-63, they injected massive amounts of particulates into the stratosphere, rather like multiple volcanoes.”
Interesting thoughts, but I think that most surface tests were done on islands with relative small amounts of vegetation or other debris that could cause some stratospheric cooling. Compared to the Pinatubo eruption, human bombs seems to be of little impact, both in force and stratopheric debris injection. Most debris from the Pinatubo was falling out within a few months for the heavier particles, the SO2 aerosols lived for only a few years.
The nuclear tests went on for more than a decade, even if the cloud is mostly water that results in a massive injection of water into the stratosphere which has significant impact and takes much longer to fall out than solid debris. To penetrate the stratosphere requires an explosion greater than a megaton:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nukecloud.png
Between them the US and Russia exploded 23 devices greater than 4 Mton, the Russian ones were all in the Arctic where the impact on the stratosphere would be greater because of the lower tropopause (one of those was over 50 Mton).
I don’t think the testing hypothesis can be as simply dismissed as you think.
“ENSO effects mainly see: Foster & Rahmstorf
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022”
I see one fundamental problem with the Foster & Rahmstorf approach: ENSO is not an “exogenic” factor, not a forcing in the same sence as volcanoes or insolation. ENSO may be part of the cause of the trend itself (together with the PDO, NAO,…) and of the warming and standstill episodes. In times of positive PDO, more warm El Niño’s are prevalent, in times of a negative PDO, El Niño’s are more suppressed. The point is that El Niño’s show a residual warming while La Niña’s show little residual cooling.
Further, what causes ENSO and/or PDO and other oceanic oscillations?
After writing the above, I searched WUWT about this work and found that Bob Tisdale had similar objections:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/14/tisdale-on-foster-and-rahmstorf-take-2/
Objections which have been addressed I believe, however whether the method is absolutely correct is not the point, what is clear is that ENSO correlates with global temperature so a period starting with an El Niño and ending with a La Niña will show a reduction in trend. Clearly this must be taken into account in order to determine whether there is still underlying GHG warming.
richardscourtney says:
April 30, 2013 at 8:20 am
Phil.:
I will be generous and assume your post at April 30, 2013 at 7:55 am demonstrates you have severe reading difficulties and need to undertake remedial classes in reading comprehension.
Your twaddle is – not unusually from you – a pack of lies.
My post at April 30, 2013 at 4:23 am fully explained why the “sinks” ARE NOT RELEVANT to my statement.
Actually so far you have made no attempt to explain your reasons you just assert that it’s true.
This is typical of you when challenged on an assertion, you make ad hominem attacks, bluster but never address the point. Just as you have done here.
You are not merely “a rather unpleasant individual”: you are an anonymous coward who hurls abuse and lies from behind the shield of anonymity. I merely tell the truth as I see it.
No abuse from me, that’s your stock in trade, and no lies from me either, you however still persist in the lie that I altered your statement for example.
As for quoting the Sermon On The Mount at me, I strongly suspect that my knowledge and understanding of it are at least superior to yours.
Not supported by your behavior here, I’m urging you to follow the advice, that you know it and understand it aren’t relevant to your not doing so!
But that is also not relevant to your having stated lies.
No lies from me, I note that you are unable to produce one. Posting a statement you disagree with is not lying!
Phil.:
I have reached the conclusion that you lie so often that you have forgotten what a lie is.
I will not take up several pages by itemising each of your lies in this thread. I merely point to some in your most recent post at April 30, 2013 at 8:59 am because it demands that I provide examples.
You lie
I explained it repeatedly. For example, in my post at April 30, 2013 at 4:23 am where I wrote
You lie
That is not only a lie, it is also a clear example of psychological projection.
(a)
Your statement that I am addressing is bluster but I do not bluster because I have no need to do it.
(b)
You throw ad homs. all the time. For example, you said to me, “you’re a rather unpleasant individual” but I did not reply with an ad hom.. Instead, I made a factual response saying,
“you are an anonymous coward who hurls abuse and lies from behind the shield of anonymity”.
(c)
I always address a point as I have here. Indeed, this argument is your refusal to address a point and, instead, changing the subject (from harmful warming to carbon sinks).
I could go on but there is no point. You are not worth bothering with and others can see the truth of the matter.
Richard
I have usually found it wise to (try to) adhere to a variation of “Hanlon’s Razor” during online discussions:
Calling a statement “half the story” is neutral; calling it “disingenuous” ascribes motives that cannot be independently verified.
Calling a statement “incorrect” is neutral; calling it “a lie” ascribes motives that cannot be independently verified.
Attacking someone’s motives is almost certain to lower the quality of a discussion, while addressing their words almost certainly raises the quality of the discussion. Whether or not someone is intentionally lying really has no bearing — the ideas stand or fall on their own merits.
So for example, we can address this statement by Richard:
And I asserted that the increase of the anthropogenic emission is a trivial increase to the total emission: IT IS.
Richard has already stipulated that 1/35 ~ 3% of the CO2 emissions into the atmosphere are anthropogenic (which sounds about right). So the questions becomes “is this 3% ‘trivial’?”
“Trivial” could mean “statistically insignificant increase to the total emissions each year”. While a 3% is a fairly small value, the other numbers for the carbon cycle seem well enough known that 3% is measurable within a given year.
“Trival ” could mean “statistically insignificant increase to the total emissions over time” but that is countered by graphs like this:
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap01/Image18.gif
For centuries, nature was “emitting 34 units” and “absorbing 34 units” of CO2 in a pretty steady balance, not varying much from 280 ppm total. Then the total started to up slowly. And then faster. And then faster yet. Coinciding almost perfectly with human emissions (and from what I understand, supported by isotope ratios). The net result is ~ 40% increase in the last 200 years, over half of which was in the past 50 years due to that extra “1 out of 34” anthropogenic CO2 molecules.
So the effect is statistically significant in each year AND has a long-term effect.
“Trivial” could also mean “no actual impact”. But we have from Richard himself that this change has impacted plant growth in a positive way (other factors being equal). Furthermore, most people ascribe at least SOME warming to CO2, which impacts heating and cooling costs, as well as agriculture and sea level. Warming even 1 degree C would significantly change all of these.
So the effect is statistically significant in each year AND has a long-term effect AND has real impacts (both positive and negative).
In what way is this anthropogenic CO2 “trivial”?