Guest essay by Ed Hoskins.
Some simple numbers on the effect of CO2 concentration on temperature
As the temperature increasing effect of atmospheric CO2 is known to diminish logarithmically with increasing concentration, these notes clarify the actual amount of warming that might result from additional CO2 released into the atmosphere by man-kind and the temperature reduction impact of any policy actions to control CO2 emissions.
To understand exactly what might be achieved by political action for de-carbonisation the table below gives the likely warming, (without positive or negative feedbacks), that will be averted with an increase of CO2 from 400 ppmv to 800 ppmv, a full extra 400 ppmv, assuming that the amount of CO2 released by all world nations in future is reduced in future by 50%.
It shows the impact of the following countries or country groups with the range of both sceptical and alarmist assessments.
So the impact for the whole of the EU (27) is somewhere between 9 -73 thousandths of degree Centigrade and for the UK the range is between 1-9 thousandths of degree Centigrade.
To achieve this irrelevant and miniscule result the UK, European and other free world governments are willing to annihilate their economies to solve a problem that does not exist.
Western politicians should, “Have the courage to do nothing”.
UPDATE: A fuller essay is in this PDF: Ed_Hoskins_CO2_concentrations
“don’t just do something, stand there” is often the best advice.
I great money scam would be to sell backyard thermometers ‘accurate’ to 1/1000 of a degree so that the average citizen could keep track of the global warming occurring in his backyard.
It is called ‘Masterly Inactivity’
They already have crippled the economy with those green policies. If they would stop subsidizing the green agenda the economy would jump start like a homesick angel.
While I can appreciate this article, it means nothing to the eco fascists – they have accepted the “agenda” lock , stock and you-know-what, so the watermelons would never even consider such ideas or information. The greens will go to their death with the belief in the supreme being ( Gore ) and the devil ( CO2 ). This is the altar they worship at – it’s a war now, people, wake up !
I agree that carbon dioxide is not the root cause of the observed global warming from 1980 to 1996. Even if it were, with China’s carbon dioxide emissions increasing 11% per year (~800 million tonnes per year) there is nothing that can be done to halt the rise global carbon dioxide content, much less reduce the current level. Air pollution in China is probably helping reflect solar energy back into outer space but at some point China will have to clean up their atmosphere. This will allow the global temperature creep up a bit higher.
Not just do nothing but roll back the nonsense already in motion and spend half of that money on getting clean water to everyone on the planet and real sustainable energy via thorium based nuclear reactors (and maybe fusion, though that seems elusive for the time being).
I have an impression that politicians don’t like to do this. I think it’s contrary to their nature. People who think the best thing to do is leave something alone generally don’t become politicians in the first place.
The best place to find the benefits of increased atmospheric CO2
is CO2Science.org Here one finds that crops are growing faster
than 70 year ago, thus helping feed seven billion people
Ed. I’m part of a UK organisation which is questioning the price of power within the UK which has more than it’s fair share of swivel-eyed Greenies in high places. While I don’t question your essay, it’ll need a lot more than one man’s opinion to go to war with. Please can you give references and rationale for your conclusions?
I agree wholeheartedly with your premise of NOT taxing or limiting CO2 (and would go further and say we ought to repeal E.P.A. auto-emissions restrictions, biofuel edicts, and all the other nonsensical CO2 regulations in the U.S. that all currently strangling our economy).
*********************************************************
For persuasive purposes, it might be helpful to include in the chart a column labeled:
“Percent of Global CO2” (e.g., the U.S. % would be .177 times the Total Human CO2, which is some COMPLETELY NEGLIGIBLE number like .005).
Along with a footnote in bold: NON-human (i.e. natural) CO2: 97% or use 96% or 98%, if you prefer.
Steve, you write “it means nothing to the eco fascists ”
I agree. But it OUGHT to mean something to the learned scientific societies. Surely, the Royal Society cannot be considered to be an “eco fascist”. I know this body has, in the past, been an advocate on a scientific issue where they got it wrong; e.g. the question of the design of lightning conductors. But surely, the RS will continue to exist in the future, and will overcome it’s current lack of scientific integrity. And the same goes for the APS as well, and all the rest.
AGW is the worst scientific/economic concept in the history of mankind. I will qualify that with the following observations:
1) Clean cars. Electric cars are only cleaner than petrol cars if their batteries have been charged using electricity from renewables. If the electricity has come from coal or gas fired power stations they are not as efficient as petrol/diesel vehicles.
2) Wind power. These windmills only work when the wind is between two speeds, they each need 800 tons of concrete to stop them blowing over. The windiest places are miles from anywhere so roads need to be built to allow their construction and maintenance. The offshore ones are even worse, I hate the term but their “carbon footprint” is very high and they will have to be working for many years to offset the CO2 produced in their manufacture and maintenance.
3) I accept that during the nineties and noughties our winters in the UK were a lot milder, they haven’t been since 2009. AGW does not stall, there is no mechanism by which for 16 years global temperatures can fall despite the fact that CO2 levels are rising, if, Co2 is the main influence on the climate.
4) I will ask the question again since no-one on this forum has ever answered it before.
How can a gas whose concentration in the atmosphere rises from 0.038% to 0.04% cause a significant rise in temperature?
5) Economically the Western world is in a very bad way. We need cheap plentiful energy to keep prices down and living standards high. I do not wish to sacrifice our living standards for a “theoretical” temperature saving of a few thousandths of a degree!
If people are concerned about CO2, why don’t we plant more trees and stop the destruction of the rainforests of the world? A lot cheaper, more aesthetic and more eco friendly than windmills and solar panels.
Somehow we have got to get the polar bears and the penguins sharing veggie burgers under a shade tree so the smart college kids will jump on board.
Those in Asia just laugh and laugh at the West’s goofy/green energy policies and carry on doing their own thing. This table should make it clear, even to the most rabid ecoloon, that economic reality and having a smug green feeling are mutually exclusive.
There is nothing we could do in the West – even if alarmist ‘science’ was correct – to solve the non-problem of the perfectly natural phenomenon of climate change.
So in the West, we cripple our economies to achieve almost no influence over a non-problem. You just could not make up the logic behind our current energy policies..
JFD says:
“I agree that carbon dioxide is not the root cause of the observed global warming from 1980 to 1996.”
===============================================
Not the ‘root cause’? There is no scientific evidence that CO2 is any cause of global warming.
Of course it is possible that CO2 causes some minuscule warming. However, there is no verifiable and testable supporting evidence that this is so. There are empirical observations showing that CO2 levels are a direct response to changing temperatures. But there are NO such measurements showing that rising CO2 is the cause of rising global temperatures. None.
Within the Scientific Method, the only conclusion to be reached is that CO2 does not matter regarding global temperatures. If that is wrong, anyone is free to post their empirical observations right here, showing that ∆CO2 in fact causes ∆T.
This challenge has been on offer for months. But so far — no takers.
@Andrew Harding
How can a gas whose concentration in the atmosphere rises from 0.038% to 0.04% cause a significant rise in temperature?
The amount of heat radiation that leaves the planet every hour is easily measured by satellites. This heat radiation is also called “longwave” radiation. (infra red)
If the amount of heat leaving the planet is less than the amount that enters the atmosphere by the sun then the temperature goes up.
so, any change in the ability of the earth to lose heat will cause the planet to heat up until the balance between the sun’s energy coming in is equal to the amount of heat energy going out.
In other words, the CO2 doesn’t “heat” the planet, the sun does, the CO2 makes it harder for the sun’s heat energy to leave the planet until the temperature goes up and more infra-red energy gets emitted by the planet.
“As the temperature increasing effect of atmospheric CO2 is known to diminish logarithmically with increasing concentration…”
Is the same true of the temperature decreasing effect of CO2?
Worth looking at the latest green madness of the UK government – a forced 27% reduction of electricity usage by 2020 was slipped in as a late amendment to the Energy Bill agreed by UK parliament last week.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/10107478/MPs-want-to-turn-your-lights-off.-A-shame-no-one-told-you.html
At this rate it won;t be long before we will have to say to all our friends in the US – can you please stop charity giving to other third world nations – with this policy, we’ll be in that category in 7 years and will need all the warm jumpers you can send.
Didn’t we learn last week that CO2 rise wasn’t anthropogenic anyways? It’s so hard to keep up with the fast pace of e-research.
Janice Moore says:
June 8, 2013 at 11:06 am
NON-human (i.e. natural) CO2: 97% or use 96% or 98%, if you prefer.
That is not better than the 97% from Cook & Co. You forget the other side of the balance: the sinks are 98.5% or 98% or 99%, the difference is what doesn’t increase in the atmosphere.
Consider also the Records for Hot & Cold Temps…
Even most skeptics tend to agree that it’s indisputable “established science” that CO2 has a direct warming effect of maybe 1°C per doubling. It’s the feedbacks that are debatable, and indeed considering recent data (non-warming!) if we are going to concede that CO2 has a noteworthy direct GHE, then certainly we can confidently say that in light of the non-warming the feedbacks must be negative. In other words, the feedbacks (as water vapor or?) mitigates the warming, and perhaps nullifies it altogether.
Most would also agree that starting in the 20th century we have seen a sustained rise in CO2 levels, accelerated in recent decades. Another strike against the GHE as postulated by the warmists is not just that temps have stalled recently, but this, take my comment just now in jonava’s unthreaded post:
Steven Goddard reported yesterday that it was -104°F (-75°c) in Antarctica: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/feels-like-146f/
But with the wind chill it felt like -146°f (-99°c). So you could say that it felt like the world record for cold was being broken, as that record is -129°f (-89°c) set in1983. I tend to like to follow Goddard’s reporting of these Antarctic temperatures, rooting for the world record cold, which may be a long shot, but consider that it’s already -104°f and it’s not even officially winter. The world record for cold may be broken this season. Keep an eye on it!
And it’s of more significance than just a spectator’s curiosity.
Because the world record for hot was set way back a century ago in 1913: 134°f (56.7°c) in Death Valley, California. If we had actually been in a century of runaway warming as the warmist’s manipulated urban-biased ground data suggests, it stands to reason that the world record hot temperature should have been broken many times over, but no. And now, the cold record is from 1983. Cold is winning, and further, I understand that in U.S. states and across the globe, the strong tendency is for records for cold temperatures to be set in later years than hot temp records. This is clearly inconsistent with the suspicious data, or should I say “data.”
It is plain stupid to “decarbonize” and further ruin the economy.
saying that there has been no warming since 1998 is a classic case of selection bias. The sea surface temperature was higher at that year than in recorded history. it is basically the equivalent of a lie. So whenever anybody tells you that there has been “no warming for 16 years” they are basically lying to you. If you measure it from 14 years or from 18 years you get significant warming (or if you measure it from 20 years) Just because you pick a start date that was the strongest el nino on record doesn’t make global warming not happening.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 12:18 pm
“saying that there has been no warming since 1998 is a classic case of selection bias. The sea surface temperature was higher at that year than in recorded history. it is basically the equivalent of a lie. So whenever anybody tells you that there has been “no warming for 16 years” they are basically lying to you.”
You’re deluded. The special thing about the interval from 1998 to now is the now.
Jai Mitchell, if a warmist tells me that it has warmed from 1979 to now, is he lying?
You’re a relativist moron.
I would like to see that table again, this time showing how many days delay in the arrival of the increase in temperature the reduction in co2 would cause. So taking a guess, the UK could cut it’s co2 production, meeting all it’s co2 targets and it’s prize for achieving this near total destruction of it’s economy would be to delay the increase in temperatures or co2 by 1 or 2 days by the year 2100.
I don’t know how to calculate those figures, but Lord Monckton has done so in the past.
Everyone seems to think that CO2 will go on rising because we drive cars. CO2 is rising because the sea is still warming after emerging from the Little Ice Age (see Henry’s Gas Laws). If this cold weather continues (see failing Solar Cycle 24) the sea will eventually cool, and CO2 levels will drop. What worries me is that if CO2 had gone down as much as it has gone up in the past 100 years, from 280 ppm down to 180 ppm, then plants would no longer grow, and that would indeed be the end of us too. No one else seems to worry about this.
Do nothing? We should be investigating whether the failure of Solar Cycle 24 will bring about a Maunder Minimum cooling, and if it is, we need to build coal fired power stations and fracking for shale gas as fast as we can go. Some hope.
Ryan says:
June 8, 2013 at 11:56 am
“Didn’t we learn last week that CO2 rise wasn’t anthropogenic anyways? It’s so hard to keep up with the fast pace of e-research.”
Some day you should accustom yourself with the concept of links. Because I do not have the faintest clue what you’re talking about. And why do you use the pluralis majestatis?
Anthony. The update is truncated and does not give the full picture. Finger trouble?
REPLY: Your complaint need to be specific. Can’t find anything wrong – Anthony
“As the temperature increasing effect of atmospheric CO2 is known to diminish logarithmically with increasing concentration”
Actually you should say its ” increasing effect” dimishes exponetially or its effect increases logrithmically. In fact either way of saying it would be untrue since no one has yet demonstarted ANY effect on temperature.
Taking into account that there is a roughly exponential growth in CO2 and log(exp(x))=x , it would be simpler to say current growth has a linear effect… on radiaiton , not temperature.
It does have an effect on the basic radiative “forcing” , assuming that means it has an linearly proportional effect on the ensuing equilbrium temperature is one of the biggest lies of our time:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=278
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=286
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=285
If climate can correct volcanic masking producing a 20% reduction in incoming radiation, it does not give a damn about CO2 “forcing”.
It’s not about co2 and global temperature – it’s about shutting down the fossil fuel industry.
@Dirkh
The funny thing is that, yes there is warming if you plot from 1979 to now, but 98% of the heat did not go into the atmosphere, it went into the oceans. It takes a LOT more heat to warm up water than air. When anybody says, “there has been no warming” they are only talking about air temperatures, not air and ocean temperatures. If you take the entire planet earth into consideration, not just the air, you will find out that there has been a whole lot of warming over these last 50 years.
dbstealey – Root cause is a legal term regarding failures with severe consequences that can be reasonably identified and reasonable corrective actions can be taken to reasonably prevent the failure from occurring again. In the case of carbon dioxide, Hansen and Company claim there is a tipping point that will result in the end of life as we know it. That meets the “severe consequences” requirement. We have had no global warming for 17 years, yet the fact that carbon dioxide continued increasing at the same rate has made no impact on the US administration, the EU administration nor the UN administration. They keep on believing that the severe consequences call for drastic corrective actions, dodging the requirement for reasonableness in identifying the root cause.
Obama has global warming on his short list for his second term. At some point this issue has to be brought before the legal courts. Jumping up and down doesn’t work in the courtroom. Using root cause allows one to demonstrate that natural cycles are more reasonable as being the root cause of the observed global warming from 1980 to 1996 rather than carbon dioxide. This stance allows the burden to be shifted from the plaintiffs (The Dirty Dozen) to the defendants (Hansen & Company) to prove that carbon dioxide is a more reasonable root cause than natural cycles. The goal is to win the war in court. I don’t think it can be won any other way. Hansen and Mann et al are not reasonable people.
REPLY: Your complaint need to be specific. Can’t find anything wrong – Anthony
My bad – misread the start of the paper. Apologies, KRL
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 2:08 pm
“The funny thing is that, yes there is warming if you plot from 1979 to now, but 98% of the heat did not go into the atmosphere, it went into the oceans.”
Didn’t you say that anyone who says it’s been warming or cooling since 19XX is a liar? May I call you a liar now?
Dirh,
I did not say that, I said if you picked that one year, the one with the highest recorded el nino event in history as your start date then you are picking selectivity bias. Especially when you find out that there has been warming in nearly every other time period. AND that the ocean temperatures have cooled since then but the northern hemisphere land temperatures have warmed so that 9 out of the 10 hottest years since 1880 have all occurred within the last decade.
and last year, remember when Iowa corn yields dropped by 50%? that year the average temperature went up only 1.4 F above the long-term average. Imagine what 4F is going to feel like. . .
Meanwhile, if you exclude the effect of El Chichon and Pinatubo, the latest RSS temperature is at or below the 1981-2010 average.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/06/08/rss-close-to-30-year-average/
Hear, hear! This bears repeating and with emphasis:
It’s not about CO2 and global temperature – it’s about shutting down the fossil fuel industry. [Jimbo]
Jai Mitchell
and last year, remember when Iowa corn yields dropped by 50%? that year the average temperature went up only 1.4 F above the long-term average. Imagine what 4F is going to feel like. . .
Are you suggesting that it was hotter in Iowa last summer than in the 1930’s? In 1936, the average maximum temperature in July was about 6C higher, according to the State Climatological Reports.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/iowa-much-hotter-in-1936/
jai Mitchell – Go to the Reference Pages, click and scroll down to Ocean, click and scroll down to Ocean Page. Study the very first chart which demonstrates that the surface temperature has flattened and declined since about 2002. Please explain how heat entered the ocean without raising the surface temperature. Also please explain how the surface temperature decreased if heat was entering. Also please explain what physical mechanism happened in 1997 to allow heat to start entering the ocean without warming the atmosphere and continue to current day. Please be sure to include carbon dioxide in your explanations.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 2:29 pm
“I did not say that, I said if you picked that one year, the one with the highest recorded el nino event in history as your start date then you are picking selectivity bias.”
Why are you people not paying attention to your own guru? Rajendra K. Pachauri says it hasn’t warmed for 17 years. I leave it to you to find out what number you arrive at when you subtract 17 from 2013.
” … Please explain how heat entered the ocean without raising the surface temperature. Also please explain how the surface temperature decreased if heat was entering. Also please explain what physical mechanism happened in 1997 to allow heat to start entering the ocean without warming the atmosphere and continue to current day. Please be sure to include carbon dioxide in your explanations.”
Hmmmmm. Would waving my hands and saying “then some magic happened” satisfy you by any chance?
@ Jai Mitchell re: “…that one year.. .” [2:29PM today]
Didn’t the sun begin to do something interesting that year, too?
Mark Stoval! So, you made it safely to Daytona! Hurrah!
(next time, call your mother and let her know you got there okay!) #[:)] (re: the recent Hurricane thread)
@Janice,
solar cycles are too small on the 11-year cycle to create any real difference if that is what you mean. funny thing is that the sun actually cooled after 2002 but the earth stayed warm.
@JFD and markstoval
yeah, its called mixing. The deep ocean is near freezing even at the equator. remember how water expands when it gets warm? well cold water is denser and sinks. if you have an increase in tradewinds then the surface cools due to mixing. Same thing when a hurricane moves over the gulf of mexico, the surface water gets cold because of deep water mixing caused by winds.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 12:18 pm
“saying that there has been no warming since 1998 is a classic case of selection bias. The sea surface temperature was higher at that year than in recorded history. it is basically the equivalent of a lie. So whenever anybody tells you that there has been “no warming for 16 years” they are basically lying to you.”
There is no period in the last 17 years until now that any temperature rise would begin to approach the rise predicted by the IPCC. The last 10 years is flat also. If you start from the 1999 La Nina you get a slight rise but that is just as bad as picking the 1998 El Nino but in the opposite direction.
Janice,
Yes, I made it there and back to Orlando. When I got on I-4 that morning and saw the interstate was blocked on the other side by emergency vehicles and there were cars upside down that I could see. What a mess. Then there were 3 more wrecks I saw before I got out of Orange Country.
It was a wild trip up and back I tell you.
Mark,
Glad to hear that you made it through. (I just thanked God for saying, “Yes.”) #[:)]
Re: the magical CO2 gas words….. here is Jai in a command performance just-for-you (he’s the one with the magical wand):
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Disney+Cinderella+bibbity+bobbity+boo&view=detail&mid=565004AC3C855590F72B565004AC3C855590F72B&first=0&FORM=NVPFVR
@scott scarborough
That is right, and that is why you have to take the total temperature record and compare it though the total period of time. when you do so, and honestly try to compensate for things like PDO and el ninos and volcanic eruptions you get the real temperature record.
the weird thing to me is that, if you check the effect of the sun on the northern hemisphere over the last several hundred thousand years you get why the ice ages happen. except this time, the temperature (and co2) stayed high for longer) if you compare now with the last 4 times that glaciers melted in earth’s history, we should already be well on our way to deep ice in north America. That is what happened at this time the last 4 cycles. Instead we are having temperatures GOING UP! Which is way different than the last 4 cycles (over the last 650,000 years or so.
One more time, jai, we do not have temperatures “GOING UP”.
And no, “extra” heat is not magically transferring “into the deep oceans”.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 11:42 am
The amount of heat radiation that leaves the planet every hour is easily measured by satellites.
No, it is not. The error term is an order of magnitude larger than the signal.
Gature Geoscience
PROGRESS ARTICLE
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 23 SEPTEMBER 2012
DOI: 10.1038/NGEO1580
An update on Earth’s energy balance in light of the latest global observations
Graeme L. Stephens, Juilin Li, Martin Wild, Carol Anne Clayson, Norman Loeb, Seiji Kato, Tristan L’Ecuyer, Paul W. Stackhouse Jr, Matthew Lebsock and Timothy Andrews
“The combined uncertainty on the net TOA flux determined from CERES is ±4 W/m² (95% confidence) due largely to instrument calibration errors.”
No, we do not need to just do nothing – as soon as possible we should pursue a de-Nazification process to remove all the CRL (criminal reactionary leftist) types from the educational system, the professions and government – just as was done in Germany after WWII. And then take their assets to pay for restoring landscapes despoiled by wind turbines and solar arrays – and to pay the fines for killing endangered California condors and whooping cranes – and to reimburse utility customers and automobile owners for the needless excess of costs they caused.
Is this violating these people’s right to free speech? No, because the right of free speech does not extend to conspiring to violate other people’s rights, as these people have been doing. And we have, as a people, the right to insist that our children not be indoctrinated with destructive fantasies – or abused by scaremongers.
Is this harsh? If so, so be it – they have it coming.
@Janice Moore
Not sure what y’all believe but if you are going to use but the analogy then the most appropriate person to use it on would be Senator James Inofe who fameously said that global warming wasn’t happening because God wouldn’t let it happen (waving his magic wand).
@Berényi Péter
I am not talking about TOA I am talking about total outgoing radiation which is almost identical to the incoming radiation which is about 1,366 Watts per meter squared. If the ability of the earth to cool itself is reduced by only .0025 (1/4 of 1 percent) the earth would warm until balance was restored.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:04 pm
solar cycles are too small on the 11-year cycle to create any real difference if that is what you mean. funny thing is that the sun actually cooled after 2002 but the earth stayed warm.
Solar cycles give a difference of a few tenths of a degr.C over a complete cycle in the tropic oceans, thus in less than 5 years up and in a similar time span down. Mostly by changing cloudiness, which shifts with the jet stream position, which is directly related to UV light changes in the solar cycle (+/- 10% change over a cycle).
Climate models only take into account the small change in direct incoming solar energy over the cycle, not any fortifying effect of that difference. But do you really think that the influence of 1 W/m2 in solar (UV – ozone – stratosphere and light – oceans) has the same effect as 1 W/m2 of IR from CO2?
if you have an increase in tradewinds then the surface cools due to mixing
Any reference that the tradewinds increased since 2002? Even if that is true, that is heat in the deeper ocean layers that will never come back in the foreseeable future, as these layers are (much) colder than the surface layers and the average air temperature.
JFD says:
June 8, 2013 at 2:09 pm,
JFD, interesting comments. You may be right. I am not a legal scholar.
This is a science site, not a legal forum. My reply was intended to answer the scientific question, in which you seemed to be saying that CO2 is a ‘root cause’ of global warming.
Scientifically, there is no evidence or empirical [real world] observation showing that CO2 causes global warming. That is a conjecture, such as: “There is a black cat under my bed.”
With no evidence of any cat, the next step is to turn on the light, and look under the bed. If no cat is found, then the conjecture is deconstructed. It is not completely falsified, but it is in a very tenuous situation: without evidence, it is a very weak conjecture.
The lights have now been turned on, but no cat has been found: scientists cannot find any testable, empirical evidence showing that rising CO2 causes global warming.
I am only a simple retired engineer, not a lawyer. You may be right in how this situation is handled legally; I don’t know. What I do know is that there are no verifiable, testable scientific measurements showing that CO2 is the cause of any global warming.
Therefore, if the putative effect of CO2 is too small to measure, then the CO2=AGW conjecture should be disregarded — lawyers or no lawyers.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:53 pm
“Not sure what y’all believe but if you are going to use but the analogy then the most appropriate person to use it on would be Senator James Inofe who fameously said that global warming wasn’t happening because God wouldn’t let it happen (waving his magic wand).”
Why are you people not giving links for the preposterous claims you make. Because it’s too complicated to forge a video? Giive me an effing break.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:53 pm
I am not talking about TOA I am talking about total outgoing radiation which is almost identical to the incoming radiation which is about 1,366 Watts per meter squared. If the ability of the earth to cool itself is reduced by only .0025 (1/4 of 1 percent) the earth would warm until balance was restored.
The point was that satellites can’t measure the influence of the current increase in CO2 on the radiation balance.
If the earth’s reacts on any such warming by increasing its cloudiness with 1%, that will have more cooling effect than a doubling of CO2 has as warming effect. We live on a water planet which keeps temperatures most of the time within reasonable borders…
@ferdinand meeus Englebeen
That kind of reasoning is more faith based than that of James Inhofe. Gaia won’t protect us from AGW. The arctic ice is collapsing this year (or close to it) and this is already messing up our weather.
The IPCC and Hansen used air temperature as their goalposts. They can’t object now to our holding them to their claim.
They didn’t factor in any of the special pleading in the Foster/Rahmstorf paper, either, so it’s moving the goalposts to try to do that now, after the fact. It’s special pleading, practically.
Dirkh
@ jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:27 pm
the weird thing to me is that, if you check the effect of the sun on the northern hemisphere over the last several hundred thousand years you get why the ice ages happen. except this time, the temperature (and co2) stayed high for longer) if you compare now with the last 4 times that glaciers melted in earth’s history, we should already be well on our way to deep ice in north America. That is what happened at this time the last 4 cycles. Instead we are having temperatures GOING UP! Which is way different than the last 4 cycles (over the last 650,000 years or so.
———————————————-
Wrong again. Each of the previous four interglacials was warmer than the Holocene & at least two of them lasted longer than it has so far. The Holocene Climatic Optimum, c 8000 to 5000 years ago, never got as hot as the Eemian or preceding interglacials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
The trend of the past 3000 years has been toward lower peak temperatures during warm cycles. As shown by global proxy data such as Greenland Ice Sheet cores, the Minoan Warm Period was hotter than the Roman, which was sultrier than the Medieval, which was balmier the current Modern WP. The Little Ice Age was also cooler than the Dark Ages Cold Period.
Should the Modern Warm Period ever produce a hot spell of say 50 years toastier than the warmest part of the Medieval WP, then you might have a measure of the human effect on climate, although that would be a contentious to dubious argument to make. To date however, that hasn’t happened.
@ferdinand meeus Englebeen
yeah, this is a pretty good article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/17/the-trade-winds-drive-the-enso/
trade winds are caused by tropical evaporation.
But jai: I’m not so sure this quote (your video) is a valid argument (against or for) CAGW: He only promised us that He would not end the world by flood after Noah was saved. Didn’t say anything about fire (warmth) —- though “no flooding” may (or may not) technically eliminate the 20 meter Hansen-flood that NASA administrator seems to so religiously believe in
You have got to trust in something, and eventually, Yes, the earth will be destroyed by fire when the sun turns into a red giant. Just as those illiterate shepherds were told some 4000 years ago..
“CO2 makes it harder for the sun’s heat energy to leave the planet … .” [Jai @ 11:42 AM today]
Prove it.
@RACookPE1978
I am just saying that, if your fundamental basis for not believing in climate change is that you believe God won’t let it happen, well you may just be believing in fairy tales. . .There are plenty of scriptures that state we will collectively experience weeping and gnashing of teeth for denying God’s laws. If there is any law that is true it is the fact that CO2 molecules store energy. That’s called “physics”.
@markstoval
“Would waving my hands and saying “then some magic happened” satisfy you by any chance?”
It would satisfy me. That’s how I explain everything.
Never convinces my wife, though.
@ Janice Moore
Janice,
Here, this shows what kind of heat energy is absorbed by CO2
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/daly_spectra.gif
Janice,
this one also explains it very well
http://spaceguard.rm.iasf.cnr.it/NScience/neo/dictionary/emission.htm
Vern Cornell says: @ June 8, 2013 at 10:55 am
The best place to find the benefits of increased atmospheric CO2 is CO2Science.org Here one finds that crops are growing faster than 70 year ago, thus helping feed seven billion people
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Not only that but we harvest more per acre with a heck of a lot less labor thanks to CO2 and oil.
1830 – 100 bushels of wheat from 5 acres 250-300 labor-hours required
1850 – 100 bushels of corn from 2-1/2 acres 75-90 labor-hours required
1890 – 100 bushels of corn from 2-1/2 acres.
(1900-1909 – Average annual consumption of commercial fertilizer: 3,738,300)
1930 – 100 bushels of corn from 2-1/2 acres.
1930 – 100 bushels of wheat from 5 acres.
1945 – 100 bushels of corn from 2 acres.
1955 – 100 bushels of wheat from 4 acres.
1965 – 100 bushels of wheat from 3 1/3 acres.
1975 – 100 bushels of wheat from 3 acres.
1975 – 100 bushels of corn from 1-1/8 acres.
1987 – 100 bushels of wheat from 3 acres. 3 labor-hours required
1987 – 100 bushels of corn from 1-1/8 acres. 2-3/4 labor-hours required
SOURCE
Without oil/energy we are back to the 1800’s or worse. Especially since they want to reduce our CO2 emissions to ~ 80% of current.
The average energy consumption for the USA is 335.9 million BTUs per person.
http://www.nuicc.info/?page_id=1467
In 1949, U.S. energy use per person stood at 215 million Btu.
http://epb.lbl.gov/
The U.S. in 1800 had a per-capita energy consumption of about 90 million Btu.
http://www.bu.edu/pardee/files/2010/11/12-PP-Nov2010.pdf
If the USA reduces its energy consumption/CO2 emissions by 80% it equals 45.18 million Btu. per person which is HALF that used per person in 1800!
The Greenies are absolutely nuts if they think they can power a decent civilization with wind and solar. The only possible way to keep a decent level of civilization and the current world population would be an all out switch to thorium nuclear for use not only in generating electricity but also for transportation.
Thorium Lasers: The Thoroughly Plausible Idea for Nuclear Cars
Would Thorium Powered Ships be better for the Navy?
So, jai, let us look at some “simple physics”, shall we.
Does water expand, or contract, as it is heated?
When water absorbs thermal energy, does its temperature go up, or go down, or do neither?
What does steam do if it absorbs more thermal energy? Get hotter, or increase in pressure?
If I pressurize water, do its molecules move faster, or move slower?
If I depressurize water, do its molecules move faster, or slower?
If the atmosphere changes temperature when CO2 increases, does it change temperature when CO2 is steady?
If CO2 is steady over a 200 to 500 year period, does the atmosphere (globally) increase, decrease, or remain the same?
If CO2 increases over a 15-20 year period, does the atmosphere (globally) increase, decrease, or remain the same?
If CO2 increases 20% over a thirty year period, how much does measured global temperature increase?
@ jai mitchel at 410pm …the arctic ice is collapsing this year…sea ice page says No It ISN”t
jai Mitchell – So this ocean mixing from the winds just happened to start and has continued to blow the same direction and speed for 17 years. Is that your explanation for the halt in global warming?
@sweet old bob
we shall see, remember this conversation. When the ice is gone the weather will change for good.
Wow. Just…. wow.
Oh, I forgot some more “simple physics” questions. Sorry about that.
When the Arctic Ocean loses 2 million square kilometers of sea ice in mid-September, does the newly exposed ocean water get hotter, or get colder?
When the Antarctic Ocean gains 1 million square kilometers of sea ice in mid-September, does the newly exposed ocean water get hotter, or get colder?
If all of the Arctic sea ice were lost in mid-September, what happens to the Arctic sea ice in October?
if global temperatures have been constant for 16 years, why is there less Arctic sea ice now?
If global temperatures have been constant for 16 years, why is there more Antarctic sea ice now?
jai Mitchell – May I recommend that you add Introduction to Geology to your course curricula? You will thoroughly enjoy it and find it that it will increase enjoyment all of your life as you drive down the road in many places, for example through road cuts in the northeast. The breaks/cracks in the rocks are when the seas transgressed and regressed. The earth’s climate is variable. It gets hot and it cools off. Ice forms and ice melts.
You might want to study the Carboniferous on your own this summer.
Sweet Old Bob says:
June 8, 2013 at 5:00 pm
now, now. Let us be accurate for our guest. 8<)
The 2013 Arctic sea ice through the entire spring and early summer (after a very low year in 2012) is only at a 12-13 year all-time high right now….. Arctic sea ice extents are not quite yet at the level of the mid-1990's – when temperatures were the same as they are right now. (Within 0.2 degree C) …
Alaskan, north European, Siberian, and Bering Strait temperatures this winter – as they were after the 2007 very low sea ice extents! – were also very, very cold…… record-breaking late river ice breakups, low temperatures, reduced growing seasons, more snow, more ice later in the year as far south as Spain and France, more rain and fog in the UK, ….
Sort of makes you wish that vaunted Arctic amplification effect on sea ice and regional temperatures actually worked, doesn't it?
@RACook
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=0&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=5
Northern Hemisphere snow cover anomalies
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 11:42 am
@Andrew Harding
How can a gas whose concentration in the atmosphere rises from 0.038% to 0.04% cause a significant rise in temperature?
The amount of heat radiation that leaves the planet every hour is easily measured by satellites. This heat radiation is also called “longwave” radiation. (infra red)
If the amount of heat leaving the planet is less than the amount that enters the atmosphere by the sun then the temperature goes up.
so, any change in the ability of the earth to lose heat will cause the planet to heat up until the balance between the sun’s energy coming in is equal to the amount of heat energy going out.
In other words, the CO2 doesn’t “heat” the planet, the sun does, the CO2 makes it harder for the sun’s heat energy to leave the planet until the temperature goes up and more infra-red energy gets emitted by the planet.
Jai thank you for your reply, I understand the science, but my question still remains unanswered! We are talking about an increase in CO2 of 0.002%! Logic tells me that there is no way that this will cause the world to warm! Please discuss if you think otherwise!
@AndrewHarding
it turns out that, for specific wavelengths of infrared radiation, CO2 absorbs the energy very, very effectively.
This was the work of a non-climate physicist who wanted to show the science behind co2 absorption.
you “logic” makes sense except that you can’t say that an increase of .002% of (something) will have no effect. without determining what the actual ability for that something to affect the environment is.
http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=4597
For jai:
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/rni/lowres/rnin71l.jpg
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/rro/lowres/rron256l.jpg
I’m sorry, in what dictionary is the word “ice” a synonym for the word “snow”? You said the Arctic ice is collapsing. Your link discusses Northern Hemisphere snow cover. Next time try to move away from the line of fire rather than actually trying to catch a bullet. In sabre fencing we call this “parrying with your head”.
@D.J. Hawkins
I was responding to RACook he was talking about temperatures, and snow cover.
@ RACook
this one is better, its a map of may snow cover anomalies, see how Siberia is nearly snow free in may?
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_vis.php?ui_year=2013&ui_month=5&ui_set=2
Jai
Next time your scrolling on one of your warmest sites and you notice the skeptics are getting blocked remember this day. I for one admire your resolve. You’ve bought into it 100% that is obvious. Fight the good fight. In the back of your mind remember which side is not afraid to debate which side is the side of mature adults.
Jai
I guess as long as we have deep oceans we have nothing to fear.
@ Shano,
I really do appreciate your comments, I was surprised that my comments were allowed. I think the mod may have been off duty 😉
its too bad people resort to name calling though. . .
Why does it surprise anyone that the models are wrong, when they are not based on valid physics?
(1) The Second Law of Thermodynamics must apply to a “system” in the strict sense of the word as used by physicists.
(2) If a system has anything more than a single component, then all components must form an interdependent set. (See Wikipedia “system”)
(3) Radiation from a small cool region in the atmosphere to a warmer region of the surface is a complete system, and any reverse flow of energy, (which could happen much later and be by non-radiative processes or radiative ones, or a mixture) is not an interdependent component. You cannot consider the two components as belonging to the one system.
(4) Hence the Second Law applies to the radiation from cold to hot, and so it cannot transfer any thermal energy.
(5) Now the IPCC authors claim that the Sun could only heat the Earth’s surface to about 255K, and so they looked for a reason which would explain the extra 33 degrees.
(6) But they completely overlooked the fact that gravity causes a temperature gradient to evolve spontaneously at the molecular level, quite independently of any upward convection or prior warming of the surface or cooling near the tropopause.
(7) Because they overlooked the gravity effect (which is virtually a direct corollary of the Second Law of Thermodynamics) they made the biggest mistake that “science” has ever seen, and they assumed back radiation could violate the Second Law.
@ jai mitchell
Re: June 8, 2013 at 4:31 pm
You said: If there is any law that is true it is the fact that CO2 molecules store energy. That’s called “physics”.
They don’t store energy, they re-emit. Which is actually the point of concern.
I’m not going for a cheap ‘gotcha’; I assume you misspoke, and I agree with the point you were making, that in fact these gasses do contribute to keeping things warmer than they otherwise would be. Most sceptics also agree with that point.
Anthony Watts, Roy Spencer and Jo Nova all have articles to that effect on their blogs.
For us, one of the major points at issue is that we not persuaded that the ‘multiplier effects’ of most models are physically well-founded. Individuals on your ‘side’ who repeatedly assert “But you don’t understand, CO2 makes things warmer” are missing our point and not listening in the debate. Why should anyone take them seriously?
Bjorn Lomborg reports “The median impact estimate of a tonne of CO2 according to 391 peer-reviewed studies is $5.00”. People who argue for bigger financial disincentives than that are creating a bigger disaster than they are avoiding. Keep in mind that all those figures are from before the high-end climate sensitivity figures were aceepted as being fanciful.
Just as you allude to above, in 2,000 years if we don’t have AGW we can expect an ice age. Even if we accept we’ll have a heat wave from AGW instead, I unhesitatingly assert my preference for warmth. Avoiding AGW is a bigger disaster than accepting it.
I hope you’ll agree with me that some of the people on ‘your side’ have been too extreme in their forecasts. There was no 4 billion people dead from AGW by 2010 AD. There was no 100 million climate refugees by 2012. The icecaps did not melt by 2012. The IPCC now accepts it is not possible for the earlier high-end climate sensitivity figures to be correct. I hope you’ll further agree that it’s still possible for the revised high-end forecasts to be wrong. This is necessarily true by the definition of ‘uncertainty’, but I consider it probable: a major point in evidence is the failure of models as expounded very clearly in the article http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/06/climate-modeling-epic-fail-spencer-the-day-of-reckoning-has-arrived/ Do take a moment to read it if you haven’t already.
The trillions of dollars the world has wasted reducing CO@ emissions growth fro 46.9 % to 46.6 percent over the Kyoto era could instead have provided everybody with clean drinking water, abolished hunger, and the abolition of several diseases throughout the world. Fighting CO2 was a bad choice.
Even from a CO2 fighting viewpoint it was a bad choice. Population growth drops below replacement levels as wealth increases. Cutting per capita CO2 emissions by a third is a net loss if the population doubles.
I pay $1,599.00 per tonne for gasoline to fill my car. I wouldn’t pay that amount if I weren’t getting more value than that for my purchase. Voters will not, in the long term, permit politicians to deprive them of $1,600 worth of value to avoid $5.00 of harm. And in the third world, that difference is not just measured in cash, it’s measured in life and death.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 6:32 pm
@ RACook
this one is better, its a map of may snow cover anomalies, see how Siberia is nearly snow free in may?
Really? Only the darkest pixels, which indicate an anomaly from the 1979-2000 baseline of 75-100%, suggest areas that could be snow free, but not necessarily. By my, admittedly eyeball estimate, there seem to be nearly as many positive anomaly pixels as those which might be snow free. If you add in the Canadian areas the ratio of positive to possibly zero gets worse, or better, depending upon how you look at it.
Siberia does look fairly negative in your May’13 map, but the nice thing about the link you provided is that you can scroll back through the monthly maps
April ’13
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_vis.php?ui_year=2013&ui_month=4&ui_set=2
Oct ’12
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_vis.php?ui_year=2012&ui_month=10&ui_set=2
Between those Siberia seems to show a whole lot of normal.
What does all this mean? Beats the sh*t outta me! It might be nice to see what these maps look like with an 1989-2010 baseline, but in the end I wouldn’t recommend betting your life on any of it, because from my observation, even the best of modern “climate science” is barely worth the pixels it’s printed on. Remember to breathe and try not to get too excited.
“If there is any law that is true it is the fact that CO2 molecules store energy.” (Jai)
Jai, You may just have stated it wrong, but CO2 doesn’t “store” energy, it captures some energy very temporarily. The mean time between collisions of CO2 and other molecules is thousands of times less than the mean time between absorption and re-emission. This means that almost all the energy absorbed by CO2 is thermalized. This means there’s a “fight” so to speak between CO2 and H2O for the thermal energy of any give parcel of air and generally Water wins. This is because it emits energy over a much larger frequency range than CO2. so much more of it’s radiation escapes directly to space. But of course where CO2 is relatively enhanced (above the clouds), it will perhaps be responsible for more of the emissions to space.
Nope, jai, the mods read every message.
But, you see, you show one diagram of Siberia snow areas to try to dissuade one from understanding the facts – a graphic image quickly corrected and expanded upon by another WUWT reader! – but you missed the larger picture:
The global temperatures for the past 16 years (on average of all trends) and the specific monthly temperatures since 1982 show no warming despite a 19% increase in CO2.
CO2 has been steady, and temperatures have increased, been steady, and decreased.
CO2 has risen, and temperatures have increased, been steady, and decreased.
You’ve failed to answer my “simple physics” questions, so I question your understanding of science.
Are you simply repeating what you’ve been told, or do you understand the topics of science, heat transfer, the physical chemistry (ice – water – vapor -steam – superheated steam – condensation) and fluid flow, thermodynamics, math through Bessel functions and integral calculus and differential equations and their solutions 9numerically and their digital equivalents)? Do you understand what you are saying, or can you calculate real world equations on your own? What is your degree and what do you understand of the world you are trying to destroy through propaganda?
@ Gail Combs
Wheee! Toothpaste power!
http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/toothpaste.htm
@RACookPE1978
“The global temperatures for the past 16 years (on average of all trends) and the specific monthly temperatures since 1982 show no warming despite a 19% increase in CO2.
CO2 has been steady, and temperatures have increased, been steady, and decreased.
CO2 has risen, and temperatures have increased, been steady, and decreased.”
You don’t need a lot of high-powered maths and science to understand the implications of that.
Just Another Day in Climate Court
(bench trial of P– r-nc-i–pi – a v. WUWT, day 4,555, Plaintiff’s 643rd Motion for Summary Judgment)
Judge: Ahem. Mr. Jai. Please answer only questions you are asked. If you do not know the answer, just say, “I — don’t — know.” Will the court reporter please read back the last question:
Court Rptr: Given your assertion: ‘CO2 makes it harder for the sun’s heat energy to leave the planet … .’ [Jai @ 11:42 AM today] Prove it.”
Jai: (spluttering in disgusted amazement) But, but, I just DID answer that question. I showed you a little bit of data from “near Guam” and I quoted Planck’s, and Stefan-Boltzmann’s and Wein’s Laws about Black Bodies. THAT’S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!
Judge: And that’s all you have to say?
Jai: Simple physics.
Judge: Ooo, boy. Okay, Jai, you may step down. Thank you. … Mr. Jai? You may STEP DOWN. Before we adjourn for lunch, has anyone seen Mr. Ed Hoskins? We seem to have a missing party, here.
Bailiff: Your honor, I tried contacting Hoskins, found his name on the P–r-n-c-p- ia website. No answer yet.
Judge: (frown) Files a Complaint and can’t be bothered to show up?
Jai: (from the back of the courtroom in a wee voice) He, uh, Hoskins, I mean, he sent me.
Judge: Aw, heck, who needs to come back after lunch. I am going to deny the Plaintiff’s motion. What’s the point in arguing further? And I will tell you, young man, [stern glare], if you or your P–r – i–n– ci – pia group waste this court’s time in this manner again, I will grant the Defendants’ motion for fees and terms, for this is CLEARLY A FRIVOLOUS COMPLAINT. (Pounds gavel a little more enthusiastically than usual.) Case dismissed, court stands adjourned until 1:30. [stands, and walks out]
JM meets a miserable, tired, hungry, Jai on the courthouse front steps: [jovially] Hey, Mr. Jai, why the long face?
Jai: (Sigh) I am JUST SO SICK AND TIRED OF ED HOSKINS SENDING ME TO DO ALL HIS DIRTY WORK. And he hasn’t even paid me from the last time.
JM: Why don’t you just quit?
Jai: Because I need the work!
JM: Well, come one, young man. Lunch is on me.
Jai: (miserably) No, (leans down and picks up sign laying on top step) I don’t get a lunch break. Now, I have to do THIS. [scowl] (starts marching slowly back and forth in front of courthouse with sign reading: “Save the Pink Unicorns!” (mutters under breath, “curse that Hoskins”))
*************************
@ Phil in California — great cartoons — thanks for the laugh. #[:)]
“When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” – Viscount Falkland
@Janice Moore
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/co2.pdf
Technical Report
JSR-78-07
The Long Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate
April 1979
JASON
JASON Defense Advisory Panel Reports
JASON is an independent scientific advisory group that provides consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology. It was established in 1960.
JASON typically performs most of its work during an annual summer study, and has conducted studies under contract to the Department of Defense (frequently DARPA and the U.S. Navy), the Department of Energy, the U.S. Intelligence Community, and the FBI. Approximately half of the resulting JASON reports are unclassified.
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/
other unclassified JASON reports:
•Clouds and Radiation: A Primer, JSR-90-307, February 1993
This paper addresses a previously unknown complex interdisciplinary process providing a feedback loop which may have major impact on the effect on global climate of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.•Advanced Over-the-Horizon Radar, JSR-90-105, February 1993
The task of the study was to evaluate DARPA’s plans and roles for a proposed experimental test bed facility, which would be a precursor to an eventual operational AOTH system.•Structural Acoustics: A General Form of Reciprocity Principles in Acoustics, JSR-92-193, January 1993
A generalized Reciprocity Principle for Acoustics is obtained. By specialization, various principles which appear in the literature are obtained.•Verification of Dismantlement of Nuclear Warheads and Controls on Nuclear Materials, JSR-92-331, January 1993
This study addresses the question of verification of future agreements with respect to dismantlement and destruction of nuclear warheads, bans on the production of additional quantities of plutonium (Pu) and highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear weapons and agreements on the end-use or ultimate disposal of special nuclear materials (SNM).•Self-Focusing Instabilities Induced by Over-The-Horizon (OTH) Radars, JSR-90-107, December 1992
•Drag Reduction by Polymer Additives, JSR-89-720, October 1992
The 1989 JASON Summer Study on Drag Reduction focused on the physics which underlies methods utilizing polymer studies.•Acoustic Warfare: Bubble Clouds, JSR-91-113, October 1992
In this report, we survey the basic ingredients that go into the bubble cloud hypothesis for the enhanced acoustic backscatter seen at high enough frequency and wind speed.•JASON Global Grid Study, JSR-92-100, July 1992 (5 MB)
An assessment of the emerging global communications grid.
I am pretty sure I have had to ban “Jai Mitchell” from my FB where I discuss climate change at other pages. Seems he is a SkS type.
Jai Mitchell said
“the weird thing to me is that, if you check the effect of the sun on the northern hemisphere over the last several hundred thousand years you get why the ice ages happen. except this time, the temperature (and co2) stayed high for longer) if you compare now with the last 4 times that glaciers melted in earth’s history, we should already be well on our way to deep ice in north America. That is what happened at this time the last 4 cycles. Instead we are having temperatures GOING UP! Which is way different than the last 4 cycles (over the last 650,000 years or so..”
The glaciers melt and advance a relatively small amount every five hundred years or so but that is as distinct to a major Ice age. We are currently in one of those retreats after the relatively small advances of the LIA.. Can you clarify where you got your information from?
tonyb
“jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 4:31 pm
If there is any law that is true it is the fact that CO2 molecules store energy. That’s called “physics”.”
Yes, I a now sure I have “debated” with Jai before and gave up when s/he, repeatedly, made similar comments. It’s a clear indication, to me at least, that s/he has no concept nor understanding of physics at the basic level and likely obtains “science” from sites like SkS.
A poster to be avoided IMO.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 7:54 pm
@ Shano,
I really do appreciate your comments, I was surprised that my comments were allowed. I think the mod may have been off duty 😉
++++++++++++++++
Jai: I’ve been reading your posts. And I can attest, –no the mods are not off duty. Sarcastic or not, WUWT is an open science forum with freedom of thought. You’ve learned to live with only seeing your side of the argument –your world is not the world I want to live in. It helps craft people who believe in other people’s opinions. Your world is in fact dominated by a new norm –and it’s dangerous.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 4:10 pm
That kind of reasoning is more faith based than that of James Inhofe. Gaia won’t protect us from AGW. The arctic ice is collapsing this year (or close to it) and this is already messing up our weather.
Nothing to do with faith, but by reading the two sides of the debate, which you obviously didn’t.
The models do take into account only the changes in direct energy of the sun, not the differences in feedbacks between sunlight (UV, visible, IR) and CO2 IR absorption/re-emission, mainly in the stratosphere and sea surface. Even Peter Stott e.a. show that solar influences are underestimated and that is within the constraints of the HadCM3 model:
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf
Further, Arctic sea ice now is near the average of the past 10 years, but Antarctic sea ice is at record surface area. See the sea reference pages on top here. Which is strange, as the main “cooling” by human aerosols is in the NH, where 90% of all human emissions of SO2 are. But the NH oceans warm faster than the SH oceans, all depths included.
And after the fact explanations don’t hold water: our current weather in West Europe shows the same variability as in previous decades with full ice cover. Only a few years ago, the same researchers declared that our children wouldn’t know what snow was. Now with sea ice on average compared to the full period, the cold spring is caused by the reduced sea ice. And we are supposed to believe that?
Trade winds drives ENSO, but that is not what happened in the past years since 2002. The trade winds increased such that despite the different ENSO periods, far more heat is moved into the deeper ocean layers (as far as that is measurable). There is no increase in surface heat content 0-700 m. The heat increase is now in the 700-1000 m layer, according to the ARGO floats. Thus at least there is no increase in incoming heat (based on the 0-2000 m data), while CO2 levels increased with top speed over the same period.
Have to say I do not understand this paper at all. The logarithmic effect is surely that every doubling of CO2 ppm has the same heating effect: around 1 degree C?
If we go from 400ppm to 800ppm, that will impart a further forcing which other things being equal, ie without taking account of feedbacks if any, whether positive or negative, is adequate to raise the global temperature by about 1C. If we want to deliver a forcing of the same efficacy again, we would have to take atmospheric ppm to 1600. None of that may be particularly likely, and one has to agree that raising ppm from the present level of 400 to 500 will have only a very small forcing, but this is the story isn’t it? If we raise it from 300 pre-industrial to 600, we’d get around 1C. So maybe by raising it from 300 to 500 we get something like 0.7C. Not a disaster (absent feedback) but not nothing either.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:53 pm
If the ability of the earth to cool itself is reduced by only .0025 (1/4 of 1 percent) the earth would warm until balance was restored.
———————————————————————————-
You lost me there, Jai. How is the balance going to be restored? If balance isn’t restored are we all DOOMED? What happened to the balance of the Earth in the first place or are you talking about the earth in your garden?
Or is that your attempt at haiku?
Jai, thank you for reply. I have read the link to Clive Best and from what I can gather he is saying that doubling of CO2 will cause an increase in global temperature of 1 Celsius. Michael Mann said that increasing it from 300ppm to 400ppm would have exactly the same effect. I therefore still consider my question unanswered. Given that the science appears to be far from settled, this begs the further question: Is it really worth destroying the world economy to prevent a possible rise in the temperature of the Earth?
I don’t think it is, the science behind AGW is dubious to say the least, as the two estimates of temperature change above demonstrate. The predicted temperature rise has not happened, which says it all, the goalposts are constantly being moved. If, as we were led to believe, 15-20 years ago, we would not now be seeing snow in the UK, we would have climate refugees heading North from the Mediterranean countries and Africa would be uninhabitable. None of those things has happened. The most preposterous claim was that Earth would end up like the planet Venus as CO2 levels rose out of control. To confirm all of this rubbish, the “scientists” then insult people like me by calling us “deniers”, making me 100% certain it is a scam.
climatereason [TonyB] asks Jai Mitchell:
“Can you clarify where you got your information from?”
I would also like an answer to that question.
If the answer is SkS, JM should be aware that SkS is a propaganda blog, not a science site. There is a big difference, and it is the reason that SkS has no credibility.
Eric Simpson says:
June 8, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Consider also the Records for Hot & Cold Temps…
Even most skeptics tend to agree that it’s indisputable “established science” that CO2 has a direct warming effect of maybe 1°C per doubling.
Eric, even this “established science” is subject to discussion and has been revised down.
The 1°C per doubling is a calculation based on measurements combined with models and is far away to be established science yet:
http://claesjohnson.blogspot.se/search/label/OLR
“The scientific evidence behind CO2 alarmism consists of OLR spectra produced by a combination of modeling and measurement (Modtran/Hitran/IRIS) predicting a radiative forcing of 3.7 W/m2 by doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 from a preindustrial level of 300 ppm to 600 ppm (with 390 ppm the present level) with an estimated warming effect of 1 C.”
“We see that the effect comes from a simple model of line broadening of the weak spectral real lines on the shoulders of the CO2 spectrum around the main resonance at 667. The model is simplistic and the effect is so small that it cannot be measured, and so from scientific point of view it can only be viewed as a speculation which could as well be half or twice as big, thus without much substance. ”
Also there have been major revision of the proposed 3.7 W/m2 forcing by doubling of CO2 based on later observations and other models…
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/major-30-reduction-in-modelers-estimates-of-climate-sensitivity-skeptics-were-right/
“For the number-junkies, one number that has been used ad lib as gospel for years appears to have changed. The hallowed forcing due to a doubling of CO2 was 3.7Wm^-2 is being lowered to 3.44Wm-2.”
This would bring down a little the supposed warming due to doubling of CO2 to 0.9°C.
You still miss the basic error in the green policies of reducing our CO2 output. Our input is 3-4% of the TOTAL annual CO2 budget the rest being NATURAL. Altering our minute bit would make zero difference even if CO2 was a climate driver.
There is no empirical data showing that CO2 drives climate only model output which, given that models assume CO2 drives climate, is not scientific proof.
Janice Moore says:
June 8, 2013 at 11:06 am
I agree wholeheartedly with your premise of NOT taxing or limiting CO2 (and would go further and say we ought to repeal E.P.A. auto-emissions restrictions, biofuel edicts, and all the other nonsensical CO2 regulations in the U.S. that all currently strangling our economy).
*********************************************************
For persuasive purposes, it might be helpful to include in the chart a column labeled:
“Percent of Global CO2″ (e.g., the U.S. % would be .177 times the Total Human CO2, which is some COMPLETELY NEGLIGIBLE number like .005).
Along with a footnote in bold: NON-human (i.e. natural) CO2: 97% or use 96% or 98%, if you prefer.
======
Isn’t the answer here then to tax the non-human producers of carbon dioxide?
Let them tax the volcanoes and ocean.
Or at least pro rata.
@ jai mitchell
Apropos of the mods – don’t be in a hurry to assume that a delay is censorship. My own ‘party line’ comment above was delayed by a couple of hours. Presumably because of the link I inserted.
Anthony aims to keep debate open to all, regardless of their viewpoint. He takes steps to avoid commercial spam, to ban comments that breach the site’s policy on civility in debate, and to ban the view of the ‘sky-dragons’. Those last are banned only after having been given the opportunity to state their case repeatedly and in depth.
I have seen activist Greens complain that Anthony/the moderators are unfair in their enforcement of site policy. I don’t believe that complaint is valid. The specific complaint was that their banned comment was nowhere near as rude as a sceptic’s comment that was allowed through. Partisans will always see the umpire as one-eyed against their own team. The comment was nevertheless against site policy on civility, and they were therefore aware ahead of time of the rule that it would not be published.
I have commented twice on Tamino’s “Open Mind” site http://tamino.wordpress.com/ . It’s well worth visiting. He has much to say that is true and useful. Yet my comments have not been published, though they were civil in tone. Nor have the opinions of other sceptics.
That he doesn’t see that as intellectual dishonesty is sad. Even if he and his readers are absolutely correct in every detail, they can never know that to be the case. Even if they have considered every argument against their viewpoint, they still can’t know they are right, because the censorship means they cannot know they have considered all the arguments against their view. And, in fact, I don’t believe they have considered all of them. I don’t think they’ve heard all of them.
I respect Anthony’s comment policy. The downside of it of course is that anyone is free to comment, the hasty, the ignorant, the foolish, the wrong and the ridiculous are all free to do so. I don’t exclude myself from that group, by the way, I’ve been all of those things in my time. But to overgeneralise from this to everyone on the site being any of those things, or the site itself being any of those things, would be to make a grave mistake.
Mario Lento says:
June 9, 2013 at 12:15 am
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 7:54 pm
@ Shano,
I really do appreciate your comments, I was surprised that my comments were allowed. I think the mod may have been off duty 😉
++++++++++++++++
Jai: I’ve been reading your posts. And I can attest, –no the mods are not off duty. Sarcastic or not, WUWT is an open science forum with freedom of thought. You’ve learned to live with only seeing your side of the argument –your world is not the world I want to live in. It helps craft people who believe in other people’s opinions. Your world is in fact dominated by a new norm –and it’s dangerous.
jai, I couldn’t more agree with Mario.
@dbstealy and Tonyb
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/images/data2-dome-fuji-lg.gif
I look at the point where the solar insolation is where it is at today compared with the last 4 interglacials, in previous cycles the temperature started to decline a couple thousand years before the sun’s energy got to the level that it is today on the solar (milankovitch)
@ferdinand meeus englebeen
Funny, I thought that western Europe has had significant variability in weather from the norms over the last several years. oh yes, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/03/29/cold-march-sets-records-across-europe/ and at the same time http://coloradobob1.newsvine.com/_news/2013/06/03/18731162-sudden-heat-wave-shocked-karasjokm-norway This is consistent with the variability of the jet stream that has been observed by Rutgers university professor Jennifer Francis has a good video presentation on the jet stream dynamics.
@goldminor
infrared radiation goes up with temperature. If some insulation is put on the earth then the temperature goes up until it reaches equilibrium again.
@Andrew Harding
water vapor and the rapidly melting arctic sea ice are both causing warming, together, more than co2 does. So 1 degree of co2 warming is really 2.4 degrees with those factors included. The arctic ice is collapsing rapidly. The new satellite data has confirmed that the annual volume of the arctic ice has gone down by over 80% since 1983 (at September minimum)
——————
sorry if I missed some, a lot of responses, trying to follow up with everybody.
one thing that needs to be said, all of the models up to this year expected the arctic sea ice to last to about 2080 or so. the fact that, during the summer, the arctic receives more of the sun’s energy than the tropics (because it is 24/7 sunshine!) makes the loss of ice cause an absorption of sun’s energy by the earth much more effective (albedo). so the models that didn’t have a strong loss of sea ice so soon will significantly underestimate the sensitivity of doubling CO2.
Gail Combs says:
June 8, 2013 at 4:53 pm
The Greenies are absolutely nuts if they think they can power a decent civilization with wind and solar. The only possible way to keep a decent level of civilization and the current world population would be an all out switch to thorium nuclear for use not only in generating electricity but also for transportation.
You’re absolutely right Gail. The only thing that makes sense is to focus on thorium for energy production, use coal and oil for transportation and chemistry in the intermediate phase. The CO2 increase is benefiting at the moment, and will stay so for at least about a century or more, however it is almost pity to burn the good coal like this when it can be turned to liquid.
Wind, solar & biofuels are terrible wasteful fantasies that do harm and put us back for decades.
***
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Any reference that the tradewinds increased since 2002? Even if that is true, that is heat in the deeper ocean layers that will never come back in the foreseeable future, as these layers are (much) colder than the surface layers and the average air temperature.
***
Exactly. Until & unless the avg deep-water reaches the avg global temp, “heat” transferred there is diffused & partially dissipated even if eventually “returned”. The cold, deep water is a memory of colder times and/or sequestered, downwelling near-freezing water.
Not to say deep-water warming would have no effect, just that its effect would be greatly diffused.
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 7:55 am
one thing that needs to be said, all of the models up to this year expected the arctic sea ice to last to about 2080 or so. the fact that, during the summer, the arctic receives more of the sun’s energy than the tropics (because it is 24/7 sunshine!) makes the loss of ice cause an absorption of sun’s energy by the earth much more effective (albedo). so the models that didn’t have a strong loss of sea ice so soon will significantly underestimate the sensitivity of doubling CO2.
First, to put things into perspective the albedo that you talk about is a minor part in the energy budget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Breakdown_of_the_incoming_solar_energy.svg
reflected by the earth surface: 7 PW out of 174 PW incoming solar energy
the greatest part of the albedo are clouds:35 PW.
Secondly, if we talk about ice albedo in general the total ice anomaly is positive, about half a million quadrat kilometers more covered with ice. Remember we talk global budget not only North Hemisphere.
Third, the max insulation is this month in the north. Now is the ice reflecting the incoming solar radiation, the incidence of the rays is between 22° and 32° in June, will go down to 0° to 10° in September. The sun may be shining 24 hours in the North but the rays have an incidence value of tropics value, multiplied with sin() of the incidence angle + they have a longer way through the atmosphere.
Fourth:
Water reflectivity increases highly with the incidence angle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Water_reflectivity.jpg
Therefore more ice free ocean at the North Pole in September is actually a negative feedback cooling the ocean. The ocean lose more heat not receives more.
Lars P
thanks for your reply.
While the water angle reflectivity is higher than direct it is still much less than ice. do you agree?
The amount of solar insolation at the arctic is measured directly, by equipment in the arctic. so the incident angle and the atmosphere absorption is already taken into account.
The “minor” part of the energy budget is actually about 25 watts per meter squared for the arctic region during the summer. It is exactly the reduction in arctic ice cover last year that led to the extremely strange winter and spring (and now summer) weather that we are experiencing.
——
what is your data for total global ice/snow cover increasing? I highly doubt that it is correct and can’t find anything to support it?
jai Mitchell said
@dbstealy and Tonyb
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/images/data2-dome-fuji-lg.gif
“I look at the point where the solar insolation is where it is at today compared with the last 4 interglacials, in previous cycles the temperature started to decline a couple thousand years before the sun’s energy got to the level that it is today on the solar (milankovitch”
—– ——-
It doesn’t work quite like that. Major ice ages are different to inter glacials whereby there can still be retreats AND advances . Here is a graph I had created that shows actual physical observations of glaciers in the last 500 years or so. It shows the last warm decades of the MWP, a decline to the LIA, a slight recovery, another decline then the current retreat.
http://climatereason.com/Graphs/Graph01.png
I
have graphed it back 3000 years and there are many similar advances and retreats. The term ‘Little ice Age” created by Matthes actually refers to the cooling period of the last 4000 years of the Holocene, not just what we think of the LIA in the 1600’s primarily, when there was considerable advance of glaciers
tonyb
Gail Combs says:
June 8, 2013 at 4:53 pm
While I agree with the first sentence, I strongly disagree with the second.
Lessee now: We’ve got plenty of coal – hundreds of years worth by some estimates – and we’ve been arguing here for years that CO2 isn’t really driving Earth’s climate, and we know how to remove most of the real pollutants from the coal we burn here in the West… so what on Earth would be the possible reason for abandoning a cheap fuel that we have in great abundance, and instead casting our fate with a technology that just may work real soon now, if ever?
There are two poorly quantified variables in the IPCC climate models:
Clouds – the factors influencing their formation, density, longevity..
Total energy in the global system – how it may affect atmospheric movements
An interesting article on clouds:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/05/01/science/earth/0501-clouds.html?_r=0
Average global cloud cover is 60%.
More low level cloud means less heat arriving at the surface = cooling.
According my own back of envelope calculation a variation of average low level cloud cover from 60% to 57% or a similar variation in density could account for all warming since 1800 if it were to be theoretically considered as the single factor.
But let’s accept that increased CO2 by the greenhouse effect causes increased heat to be trapped in the atmosphere: What is heat? Heat in the air is kinetic energy – the molecules bounce around faster. An analogy: When you begin to heat a pan of water, the water molecules begin to jig around faster; eventually those near the surface are fast enough to escape and water vapour visibly rises out of the water. Equally, if you allow natural evaporation, molecules escape by chance, and the water loses latent heat.
So: two basic facts:
1 Warmer air can contain a higher percentage of water vapour than cool air.
2 Temperature is simply a measure of molecular kinetic energy. If temperature increases, the system becomes more energetic or more dynamic – the terms are interchangeable.
What effect does a more energetic system have on low and high level cloud formation?
Answer: No climatologist can predict with any level of certainty. . They can only postulate various scenarios. There is no firm experimental basis on which to form predictions.
One hypothesis: An increased rate of evaporation from the warmer oceans. More water vapour in the air. A more dynamic system, a more unpredictable weather system. Faster convection currents in the air. More rapid cooling of water-packed low level air as it rises , and hence faster and denser low level cloud formation. Less water vapour reaches the upper atmosphere, less high level clouds form.
More or denser low clouds = natural cooling of the earth surface and oceans. Less high level clouds = less greenhouse effect. This is a natural negative feedback which would act to counteract warming.
Its a hypothesis. I have no idea if its a good one. But it seems to be as good as any other in the absence of knowledge of the mechanics of cloud formation in an increasingly energetic system. That is one of the biggest gaps in climatology knowledge.
2013 has certainly given the coldest spring in Europe for 50 years, prolonged low level cloud cover, rain, – and one of the best snowfall seasons ever.
Moving on to energy: a warmer system is a more energetic system. “Stirring up” a complex system is a notoriously hard mathematical modelling exercise – in many case impossible to model. More energy = more unpredictable results.
To summarise: The only IPCC prediction that I would accept with certainty is that there is some greenhouse warming due to manmade CO2, that this means a more energetic system, and therefore more weather extremes are likely (floods, droughts, windstorms). IPCC Models
can predict simple warming on a reasonably scientific basis. However, the long term side effects of more energy inputted into a dynamic global weather system are probably impossible to predict. Climate change could be much worse or could be much less than predicted. I doubt that anyone really knows.
climatereason says:
“The term ‘Little ice Age” created by Matthes actually refers to the cooling period of the last 4000 years of the Holocene…”
Yes, the term ‘Little Ice Age’ is generic. The unusual cooling during the 1600’s and afterward was the very cold Maunder Minimum [referring to sunspot numbers]. That was followed by the cold Dalton Minimum in the 1800’s.
Currently, we are in what I like to refer to as the ‘Goldilocks Optimum’: not too hot, not too cold, but ju-u-u-ust right.
All the nonsense about runaway global warming has been thoroughly debunked by comparing the current climate with past climate parameters — which have been much more severe, both in warming and cooling episodes. The Null Hypothesis has never been falsified.
The climate alarmists’ wild-eyed predictions have not come to pass. In any other scientific field, such a badly mauled conjecture would have caused scientists to admit that the conjecture has been falsified.
But not in climatology, which is kept afloat only by the enormous sums shoveled into the pockets of alarmist scientists and their institutions. Anywhere else, that would be called ‘propaganda’.
Lancelot says:
June 9, 2013 at 10:40 am
No, I think you’ve got that backwards. During the LIA, it got cooler, and there were more storms, especially early summer hail storms that smashed the crops. Human civilization has thrived during periods of warmth, but humans don’t do that well when their crops are smashed in the fields before harvest.
Lancelot says:
June 9, 2013 at 10:40 am
The only IPCC prediction that I would accept with certainty is that there is some greenhouse warming due to manmade CO2, that this means a more energetic system, and therefore more weather extremes are likely (floods, droughts, windstorms).
++++++++++++++++
Lancelot: Don’t be naive. It is known that the delta t between the tropics and poles causes weather extremes. As the average world temperature declines, it gets more cold in the norther hemisphere there is a larger gradient of temperatures between the tropics and poles. Observations clearly back up this notion. So please admit that you now understand this and retract your statement.
Mario
That interglacial chart really says it all. Looking at the 4 interglacial,s, the first thought that comes to mind is each one has it’s own characteristics. The current interglacial stands out with the extended warming after the peak. Is this partly because we have better resolution of that period versus longer periods? Either way one would have to say that we are fortunate to have this extended warming. I notice that this last peak is the lowest peak of the 4 peaks. Could this in part be why there is an extended warm cycle?
@ Jai M. at 9:07 am . Re ice : Please see the sea ice page on this site. Scroll down to IMS total ice. [ Another excelent resource provided at this site] Sure looks to me like total ice is increasing for the time of the season. Have a nice day.
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 9:07 am
“The “minor” part of the energy budget is actually about 25 watts per meter squared for the arctic region during the summer. It is exactly the reduction in arctic ice cover last year that led to the extremely strange winter and spring (and now summer) weather that we are experiencing.”
Of course everything that happens is due to the increase in CO2. Why it behaved differently to 2007? It is getting cold because it is getting warmer, yes that is logical…
On one side you can believe the cold is the new warm story and try to figure out why it was not the same in 2007 or you can try to question if there may be other reasons for the weather getting colder.
You seem to be full on the “climate weirding” story, but the story does not stand, as said global ice is above average. With this your energy budget is crap.
Sweet Old Bob gave you one direction to search for it above, WUWT reference pages contain a lot of good information, but you can search for it elsewhere.
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 9:07 am
Lars P
While the water angle reflectivity is higher than direct it is still much less than ice. do you agree?
I am not sure I agree, I would be happier to do so with having the respective data, however I found ice reflectivity between 30 and 40 however but not dependent on the angle. That would be equal with water’s at 10 to 15°. Maybe you have such?
Ice covered with snow would be a different story.
@Larry Plume P
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/processes/albedo.html
yes, the water absorption rate is much much much higher. even at low angles. they are not even close.
you have to realize that we aren’t talking about visible light. That is only a small amount of the energy coming in.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 2:08 pm
@Dirkh
The funny thing is that, yes there is warming if you plot from 1979 to now, but 98% of the heat did not go into the atmosphere, it went into the oceans. It takes a LOT more heat to warm up water than air.
However the measured warming of the oceans is far away from the modelled value. The discrepancy is huge, invalidating the models, look at the ARGO data and the modelled data for the same period.
Btw, another scare is not materialising El Nino is not becoming a steady state:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/2009-consensus-el-nino-to-become-permanent-and-california-to-slide-into-the-sea/
@sweet bob, LarsP
I found the chart here: it definitely shows a decreasing total ice area. by about 30% in the last 6 years during the minimum in September.
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/images/ims_data.pdf
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 1:24 pm
Jai that link talks about teaching basic albedo lessons and typical ocean albedo at high incidence rate, so it is not helpful in the conversation we have at low incident rates – it does not address my question.
I know we are talking of all incoming energy, which in particular do you have in mind?
That is only a small amount of the energy coming in.
Visible light is about 50% of incoming solar energy, that is not such small amount.
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 1:29 pm
@sweet bob, LarsP
I found the chart here: it definitely shows a decreasing total ice area. by about 30% in the last 6 years during the minimum in September.
Jai, that is only the Northern Hemisphere again. The globe has 2 poles…
Currently the Northern Hemisphere has the anomaly of: -639 thousands sq km
and the Southern Hemisphere + 996 thousands sq km:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
the Global anomaly is thus at +357 thousands sq km
lars P
you are comparing apples to oranges. those aren’t southern hemisphere values, they are southern hemisphere sea ice values.
are those seasonal maximum values?
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 9:07 am
Lars P
thanks for your reply.
While the water angle reflectivity is higher than direct it is still much less than ice. do you agree?
I can’t speak for Lars, but as for me, I’d have to say no.
! used to have some better links on this topic, but they got flushed during some computer problems I had some time ago. so I’m going to rely on the not so reliable Wikipedia for most of this. Their Albedo article doesn’t seem to be to egregious.
Sample albedos
Surface Typical
albedo
Fresh asphalt 0.04[2]
Worn asphalt 0.12[2]
Conifer forest
(Summer) 0.08,[3] 0.09 to 0.15[4]
Deciduous trees 0.15 to 0.18[4]
Bare soil 0.17[5]
Green grass 0.25[5]
Desert sand 0.40[6]
New concrete 0.55[5]
Ocean ice 0.5–0.7[5]
Fresh snow 0.80–0.90[5]
“Water [edit]
Water reflects light very differently from typical terrestrial materials. The reflectivity of a water surface is calculated using the Fresnel equations (see graph).” This is the graph Lars linked in his comment above.
“At the scale of the wavelength of light even wavy water is always smooth so the light is reflected in a locally specular manner (not diffusely). The glint of light off water is a commonplace effect of this. At small angles of incident light, waviness results in reduced reflectivity because of the steepness of the reflectivity-vs.-incident-angle curve and a locally increased average incident angle.[24]”
[24] is this work
http://vih.freeshell.org/pp/01-ONW-St.Petersburg/Fresnel.pdf
SPECTRAL APPROACH TO CALCULATE SPECULAR REFLECTION
OF LIGHT FROM WAVY WATER SURFACE
It certainly indicates that waves tend to mitigate the increase in reflectivity that occurs with a flat water surface as solar angles decline toward values seen as the equinox and sea ice minimum approach, but even with that mitigation, the water albedo still looks to about a wash with the 50-70% values given for sea ice
“The amount of solar insolation at the arctic is measured directly, by equipment in the arctic. so the incident angle and the atmosphere absorption is already taken into account.”
Do you have a link for that? The only work in this area that I have found is rather weak model simulations from old satellite data along the lines of this
http://www.eumetsat.int/home/main/abouteumetsat/publications/conferenceandworkshopproceedings/2006/groups/cps/documents/document/pdf_conf_p48_s2c_01_smith_v.pdf
“It is exactly the reduction in arctic ice cover last year that led to the extremely strange winter and spring (and now summer) weather that we are experiencing.”
And you “know” this exactly how? I realize this is the current meme, but I would have more confidence in it if someone had actually predicted it 10-20 years ago, instead of trying to draw ex post facto correlations to jetstream changes that had already occurred. Maybe I just missed those predictions and you can help me out. I like to learn at least one new thing every day.
The shares of solar energy are frequently given as 3% UV, 44% visible, 53% IR, but the actual fractions depend of course on altitude & latitude. More UV hits the upper atmosphere than the surface, for instance.
Also, interestingly to me but apparently not to The Team, the UV component fluctuates significantly, without a big change in TSI. Solar irradiance varies over the solar cycle by a factor of two at 120 nm, with 10% at 200 nm & with 5% at 250 nm, but less than one percent at wavelengths longer than 300 nm. The differential at longer wavelengths is far less than variations caused by cloud-cover & ozone, but IMO it’s possible, even probable, that the range of UV flux affects climate.
http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/fys/FYS3610/h04/undervisningsmateriale/Moan7.pdf
IMO variations in solar irradiance & magnetism, plus their affects on the atmosphere & oceans, have been ignored or down-played without warrant by The Team, although Dr. Trenberth seems to have discovered a new-found fascination for the briny deep. It seems to me that the sun is more powerful than the One True Gas, the effect of which looks trivial.
Dr. Svaalgard may be along to accuse me of being not only wrong, but an enemy of humanity & threat to the Republic, but I’d appreciate his comments.
dbstealey says in part on June 8, 2013 at 11:40 am:
“Of course it is possible that CO2 causes some minuscule warming. However, there is no verifiable and testable supporting evidence that this is so. There are empirical observations showing that CO2 levels are a direct response to changing temperatures.”
Modern atmospheric CO2 increase is not caused by nature adding CO2 to the atmosphere. On the contrary, atmospheric CO2 is rising despite nature accomplishing net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/global-carbon-budget-2010
I would prefer to argue on basis of effect of the increase of CO2. For example, about 40% of the waming in the steeply-warming1973 to 2005 period was from a periodic natural cycle that shows up well in HadCRUT3.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
About 20% of the manmade-greenhouse-gas-caused warming from the 1950’s to 2005 was from manmade or man-released greenhouse gases other than CO2, and human contribution of those to the atmosphere was largely stalled in the 1990’s.
At this rate, increase of CO2 appears to me to have about 40-50% of the effect claimed by those who claim it is a big problem.
Donald L. Klipstein says:
June 9, 2013 at 3:30 pm
“At this rate, increase of CO2 appears to me to have about 40-50% of the effect claimed by those who claim it is a big problem.”
++++++++++
Well let’s see, it used to be argued that most “90 to 95%” of 20th century warming was caused by CO2. They are not dialing back to 40 to 50%. Next it will be we don’t know… but likely most of the warming was natural. Just saying something does not making it true. Show us how you came up with this figure and how it’s proof that CO2 caused 40 to 50% of the warming. And show us how, CO2 also caused 40 to 50% of the NO WARMING over in the 21st century.
Donald Klipstein,
My apologies if I did not make myself clear. My point was that there is solid empirical evidence showing that the rise in CO2 is due to warming. But there is no comparable evidence or observations showing that CO2 is the cause of any global warming. From real world observations it is obvious that CO2 does not have that effect.
Rather than CO2 having “40-50%” of the warming effect, there is actually no empirical, testable scientific evidence showing that CO2 has any measurable effect. If that is wrong, please post any such testable evidence you might have. Because I have not been able to find any.
@Dave wendt
said, “At the scale of the wavelength of light even wavy water is always smooth ”
-yes, smooth, but not flat so any ripple in the surface creates direct incidence angles
water vs. ice albedo, Here is Judith curry’s paper on the subject. the water abledo is about 45% of the ice albedo.
http://lightning.sbs.ohio-state.edu/geo622/paper_ice_Curry1995.pdf
the extremes were predicted after last year’s ice melt.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/14/arctic-sea-ice-harsh-winter-europe
Jai, please come back to WUWT, it has been a pleasure to debate AGW with you! Please though, can we have the same invitation on the Websites that promote AGW. Somehow I doubt it, which is the difference between our two “camps”. I will discuss AGW with you, because you do not dismiss me as a “Denier”, which is more than can be said for other websites. The Websites that do not post anti AGW comments are frightened that we may be right and try to stifle any debate.
Is that reason enough to rethink your thoughts on the bigotry of Climate Change?
I look forward to debates with you in the future!
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 4:19 pm
@Dave wendt
said, “At the scale of the wavelength of light even wavy water is always smooth ”
-yes, smooth, but not flat so any ripple in the surface creates direct incidence angles
It might have helped if you had ventured past the opening sentence. The whole point of the piece was to attempt to derive a method to estimate the wave effect on a water surface’s reflectance.
“Using this method we can produce a real-time movies of the wavy sea surface and light reflected from a water body 1 with wavy surface.2″…
“To generate random numbers we used Mersenne Twister random number generator 5-8 capable to produce evenly distributed random numbers in a cube of 626 dimensions. So each value of Fresnel reflection coefficient for any value of wind speed and zenith angle represents an average value of 800 billion individual computations.”…
I can’t C&P the graphs, but I would suggest you look at their fig 2 . Example of ray-tracing Fresnel reflection coefficient from a rough water surface at wind speed equal to 4 m/s plotted against Fresnel reflection coefficient of flat water.
It does show a definite effect from the presence of waves as the angles of incidence approach near equinox values, but the reduction is only to about 60-70% of flatwater values, which at those angles are approaching 90%.
“water vs. ice albedo, Here is Judith curry’s paper on the subject. the water abledo is about 45% of the ice albedo.”
Dr. Curry’s paper was interesting. It includes some nice modelling work on snow melt, melt pools, and ice breakup, but I saw nothing that suggested they recognized or factored in the variable reflectance issues we were discussing. That doesn’t seem to be a problem for you, but for me it still is.
“the extremes were predicted after last year’s ice melt.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/14/arctic-sea-ice-harsh-winter-europe”
As I said I don’t find ex post facto correlations that convincing. Last Sept was several years too late from the point where the jetstream started to go walkabout. I have seen several presentations which attempted to describe a mechanism by which the declining ice could move the jetstream. Some even seemed, at first glance, to be somewhat reasonable, but only at first glance.
I suppose there is little chance that either of us will move the other off our personal dimes on any of this, but I would add my own welcome to those offered by others here. The quality of opposition has gotten fairly weak around here and we were in danger of becoming like RC and just sitting around congratulating ourselves about how smart we all are.
As my Granddad always said “You can’t sharpen your knife on a stick of butter.”
Lars P. says:
June 9, 2013 at 8:11 am
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 7:55 am
First, to put things into perspective the albedo that you talk about is a minor part in the energy budget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Breakdown_of_the_incoming_solar_energy.svg
reflected by the earth surface: 7 PW out of 174 PW incoming solar energy
the greatest part of the albedo are clouds:35 PW.
The AGW Greenhouse Effect energy budget (KT97 and ilk) claims “shortwave in longwave out” – it claims no longwave infrared heat direct from the millions of degrees hot burning Star which is our Sun is included in these figures, which is mainly visible light, and the two shortwaves either side, near infrared making up 1% of that total.
However, in real world physics the actual percent of infrared is around 53, the visible less than half, but that’s not the only problem.
The AGW Greenhouse Effect is built on fake fisics, real world physics manipulated by sleights of hand to promote the AGW concept which claims that “greenhouse gases backradiate heat, longwave infrared, from the upwelling heat of the Earth”. This is a complicated scam full of magicians’ tricks altering real world physics.
To this end they have eliminated the direct longwave infrared heat from the Sun so they can use all real world measurements of downwelling longwave infrared to pretend this comes from “backradiation from the atmosphere by greenhouse gases”.
They have done this by firstly making the claim that no direct longwave infrared heat reaches the Earth’s surface and secondly by giving the properties of longwave infrared, which is heat, to visible light, claiming it is visible light, shortwaves, which heat the Earth.
There are two versions of why there is no direct longwave infrared heat from the Sun in their GHE energy budget (KT97 and ilk.
The first is that “there is an invisible barrier like the glass of a greenhouse preventing the longwave infrared from the Sun at top of atmosphere (TOA), and the second “that the Sun produces insignificant amounts of longwave infrared”.
Neither version proponents see any absurdity in this claim because they have been brainwashed into believing the heat we feel from the Sun is from visible light, the AGWScienceFiction meme “shortwave in longwave out”.
Visible light is as is shortwave infrared, not a thermal energy, we cannot feel it as heat.
The second version has taken the “planckian curve” and estimated the temperature of the Sun from the thin 300 mile wide atmosphere of visible light around the Sun, and come up with 6,000°C.
So those educated by this fake fisics don’t miss the real heat from the millions of degrees hot Star which is our Sun which is transferred by the electromagnetic wavelenths of heat, longwave infrared.
This is an enormous science fraud introduced into the education system so the general population wouldn’t see the tricks they use in their “backradiation from greenhouse gas warming”.
The figures of “reflection” for example on that wiki cartoon from which you are working cannot be relevant to heating the Earth, because that is visible light reflecting off clouds and visible light from the Sun can’t heat matter of land and water.
Mario Lento says:
June 9, 2013 at 11:33 am
Lancelot: Don’t be naive. It is known that the delta t between the tropics and poles causes weather extremes. As the average world temperature declines, it gets more cold in the norther hemisphere there is a larger gradient of temperatures between the tropics and poles. Observations clearly back up this notion. So please admit that you now understand this and retract your statement.
Mario, which observations are those?
Dave,
I found this, it shows the different albedos with incidence angles and scenarios (ice, water, clouds with ice clouds with water. . .etc)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/TOAalbedo.jpg
dave,
you know the thing is, if you fundamentally disbelieve the basic science and sign onto conspiracy theories about scientific budgets, it would be impossible to “prove” to you that the earth travels around the sun.
That being said, the article stated that the scientist predicted a colder winter based on the 2007 experience with lower ice cover, causing a warming of the arctic and a weird jet stream.
if you want to see a weird jet stream, check this out. . .this might be the weirdest cut-off low ever seen, happening now on the west coast of the U.S.
@Jai; “weirdest cut-off low ever seen’…..
Taint so. You must not watch the west coast satellite gif much. I do.
Looks fine today.
You are talking about weather – not climate.
Having the courage to do nothing may actually be an example of “do no harm.”
I am not even speaking in the economic sense. I am speaking in the sense of maintaining a guard band between where we are, and, the cliff of disaster known as 200ppm and below.
jai mitchell says:
June 10, 2013 at 7:54 am
Dave,
I found this, it shows the different albedos with incidence angles and scenarios (ice, water, clouds with ice clouds with water. . .etc)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/TOAalbedo.jpg
Jai, in the town I live in their is a sizeable lake, at least in relation to the size of the city. To get to my house from the center of town you must travel on a road that bisects the lake. As I was returning home last night close to sundown there were several people who had pulled over near the middle of the lake to take photographs of the developing sunset. What made the sunset a compelling photo opportunity was that it was that rarest of rare occasions, an almost perfectly windless moment. What they were trying to capture with their cameras the perfectly symmetrical image of the evening sky that was displayed on the very flat surface of the lake. Although this event was rare it was by no means “unprecedented”. It happens every time the conditions repeat themselves. I guess it comes down to, who am going to “believe”, your funky graph from SkS or my lying eyes.
Which brings me to this
jai mitchell says:
June 10, 2013 at 7:59 am
dave,
you know the thing is, if you fundamentally disbelieve the basic science and sign onto conspiracy theories about scientific budgets, it would be impossible to “prove” to you that the earth travels around the sun.
The thing is Jai, fundamentally, science is not meant to create “beliefs” nor is it ever really capable of doing so, when done properly. The best that properly done science can do is to perform experiments to collect, analyze, and present “evidence” that would cause us to suspect that some proposition is true, or at a minimum, more true than competing propositions. The best science, in any field, is always just the Best Available Guess. The best scientists “know” this, and while they may accept for use propositions that pass the pragmatic test of working better than anything else that is available at the moment, they also accept that a Better Guess may come along at any time.
When it comes to “climate science” the “evidence” that is presented which is supposed to cause us to suspect that their proposition is true is generally more “suspect” than the proposition itself. Even the fundamental datasets have been manipulated, adjusted, corrected, averaged, smoothed, edited, trended, detrended, regressed and basically been beaten upon like an ugly reheaded stepchild. Despite all that, it still doesn’t pass the pragmatic test i.e. it doesn’t work!
If you go back through the archives here, and you don’t have go back through more than several weeks worth, you will find numerous posts that demonstrate that. Often those posts are based on works or writings by people who would be considered card carrying members of the “consensus”.
What has sealed the deal for me from the very beginning is that the purveyors of all this climate wisdom have for several decades now, when asked to justify even the slightest aspect of their work, have had the temerity to rise up and declare that they have no need to answer questions because their incredible brilliance has left the matter entirely “settled”. I would challenge you to review the entire history of science to find another instance where even an individual has said something similar, let alone an entire field of enquiry.
Some years ago on PBS their was a program called “The Big Blue Marble” so named because the overwhelmingly dominant and defining characteristic of this planet is Water. This recent post
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/09/more-climate-models-fail-a-chink-in-the-armor-at-science/#more-87897
based on a work published in that bulwark of climate skepticism “Science”, rather strongly suggests that GCMs, which are at the heart of “consensus” climate dogma, have virtually no skill in dealing with…wait for it…that’s right it’s Water
Your comments seem to suggest that, because I am not willing to “believe” consensus climate dogma, i must be a knuckle dragging conspiracy nut. I prefer to think of myself as an epistemological hardcase. You, on the other hand, appear to be an epistemological mattress
back.
If you are, as I suspect. a victim the modern public indoctrination system i will give you this
EPISTEMOLOGY
: the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity
i think you might benefit from exploring it.
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 1:56 pm
lars P
you are comparing apples to oranges.
jai, I am not, please look at the data and pls read the text that I’ve written
those aren’t southern hemisphere values, they are southern hemisphere sea ice values.
are those seasonal maximum values?
That is the Southern Hemisphere anomaly, as I’ve written above: Currently the Northern Hemisphere has the anomaly of: -639 thousands sq km and the Southern Hemisphere + 996 thousands sq km. (That was yesterday, now it changed a bit)
I also explained you where to look for these values: at WUWT reference pages.
If you have trouble finding the link it is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
or you can see it up under the WUWT banner under: “Reference Pages”
The sea-ice-pages have many references , direct from the respective source which you can directly click there. From there I linked you to the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice anomaly
You can see there Global sea ice value and anomaly:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Global, Arctic & Antarctic Sea Ice Area,
Global Sea Ice Cover,
Arctic Graphs, etc
What you posted above at “jai mitchell says: June 9, 2013 at 1:29 pm ” is: Northern Hemisphere Total (Sea and Lake) Ice Extent from the National Ice Center, not global ice.
Please page down there, current Northern Hemisphere Sea ice area and anomaly is a bit lower:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
and further down the Southern Hemisphere total area and anomaly:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
And no, those are not seasonal maximum values, the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice area is now at 10860 thousands sq km, the seasonal maximum values goes further up usually between 15 and 16, last year even over 16 million sq km.
I am a medical scientist now retired. I worked and published on cholera and Vibrio cholerae. I became interested on climate change because it seems that there is some connection between cllimate and outbreacks of epidemic cholera like the last 7th pandemic. Now most if not all raw data on the issue debated refers to the north hemisphere. So there is no Global Warming but only North HW. .How about the southern half?
Lancelot says:
June 10, 2013 at 5:21 am
Mario Lento says:
June 9, 2013 at 11:33 am
Lancelot: Don’t be naive. It is known that the delta t between the tropics and poles causes weather extremes. As the average world temperature declines, it gets more cold in the norther hemisphere there is a larger gradient of temperatures between the tropics and poles. Observations clearly back up this notion. So please admit that you now understand this and retract your statement.
Mario, which observations are those?
++++++++++++++
Seriously: You don’t know that without delta t, storms would not occur? I’ll let you ask around or perhaps talk to a meteorologist. Anyone doubt this?
Lars P
The whole point of our discussion was about Albedo
so why the &*$&% are you talking about summer sea ice in Antarctica? To properly gauge the change in albedo we need to add the summer sea ice anomaly for the northern hemisphere to the winter sea ice anomaly for the southern hemisphere. This tells us what the difference in albedo is for the planet.
jai mitchell says:
“…we need to add the summer sea ice anomaly for the northern hemisphere to the winter sea ice anomaly for the southern hemisphere.”
Best to use named months, since Summer in the NH is Winter in the SH.
====================================================================
A “variable” to include in you’re considerations is that one of the things the Enviros have vilified, aside from CO2, is chlorine disinfection of drinking water. The overly hyped “dangers” of disinfection-by-products, such as trihalomethanes, has led some third world countries (most of which are in the Southern Hemisphere) to eliminate or reduce chlorine disinfection without replacing it with something that would leave a residual in the water that would keep water-born pathogens such as cholera from reinfecting the water.
TYPO! “in you’re considerations” should be “in your considerations”.
dbstealey
add September arctic ice anomaly to March Antarctic ice anomaly (both minimums) since that is when the albedo is interacting with the sun.
jai mitchell says:
June 14, 2013 at 1:24 pm
so why the &*$&% are you talking about summer sea ice in Antarctica? To properly gauge the change in albedo we need to add the summer sea ice anomaly for the northern hemisphere to the winter sea ice anomaly for the southern hemisphere. This tells us what the difference in albedo is for the planet.
1) Winter sea ice in Antarctica was also above average so stop pretending you do not understand or finding other excuses, it is there at the link posted and you can see it in the WUWT reference pages.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
2) Antarctica sea ice goes to lower latitudes then in the north so the albedo effect is stronger.