From the Carnegie Institution and the mind of Ken Caldeira, comes this “back to the future” style impossible to verify prediction (at least impossible now). Of course, in model-world and Hollywood, anything is provable possible.
Climate change: Fast out of the gate, slow to the finish the gate
Washington, D.C.— A great deal of research has focused on the amount of global warming resulting from increased greenhouse gas concentrations. But there has been relatively little study of the pace of the change following these increases. A new study by Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures concludes that about half of the warming occurs within the first 10 years after an instantaneous step increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, but about one-quarter of the warming occurs more than a century after the step increase. Their work is published in Environmental Research Letters.
The study was the result of an unusual collaboration of a climate scientist, Ken Caldeira, who contributed to the recently published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, and Nathan Myhrvold, the founder and CEO of a technology corporation, Intellectual Ventures LLC. It is the third paper on which they have collaborated
The study brings together results from the majority of the world’s leading climate models. Caldeira and Myhrvold analyzed more than 50 climate simulations, which were performed using 20 different climate models for the Climate Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 5 (CMIP5).
They found a fairly high degree of consensus on the general character of the pace of climate change. In response to an instantaneous increase in greenhouse gas emissions, climate change is fast out of the starting gate but then slows down, and takes a long time to approach the finish line.
There is substantial quantitative disagreement among climate models, however. For example, one model reaches 38 percent of the maximum warming in the first decade after a step increase in CO2 concentration, while another model reaches 61 percent of the maximum warming in this time period. Similarly, one model reaches only 60 percent of maximum warming in the first century after the step increase, while another achieves 86 percent of maximum warming during this interval.
There is also substantial uncertainty in the ultimate amount of warming that would result from any given increase in atmospheric CO2 content. The most sensitive model predicts more than twice as much warming as the least-sensitive model.
Uncertainty in the amount of warming combines with uncertainty in the pace of warming. From an instantaneous doubling of atmospheric CO2 content from the pre-industrial base level, some models would project 2°C (3.6°F) of global warming in less than a decade while others would project that it would take more than a century to achieve that much warming.
“While there is substantial uncertainty in both the pace of change and the ultimate amounts of warming following an increase in greenhouse gas concentration,” Caldeira said, “there is little uncertainty in the basic outlook. If we continue increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations with emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas, the Earth will continue to get hotter. If we want the Earth to stop getting hotter, we have to stop building things with smokestacks and tailpipes that emit CO2 into the atmosphere.”
The authors acknowledge the World Climate Research Program’s Working Group on Coupled Modeling, which is responsible for CMIP.
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These people apparently still can’t get past the simple fact that CO2 is a negligible factor in climate change. Whatever math or statistics they used to reach their conclusions about future warming has to be flawed. CO2 historically has gone up AFTER warming, not before as they effectively claim (again!). It’s the same game with models, as opposed to observation and the historical record, both of which prove irrefutably that CO2’s effect on climate is nugatory and so is man’s.
All of their gyrations can’t erase 4,500 years of historical records amply documenting past variations in climate that have absolutely no connection whatever to CO2 in the air, and most notably the net decline in temps in the 80 years since they peaked in the 1930s, during which time CO2 in the air went up 40 percent.
I am sitting here wondering why Anthony posted this “study.” By posting it here, with out a prefacatry caveat, gives the appearance that WUWT endorses this view. This is happening more and more on WUWT. What exactly is Anthony thinking?
=========================================
REPLY: What, you can’t figure it out from the parody lead in and image I produced? Do you “see it now”? -Anthony
Well well. Caldeira and Myrhvold, true believers, come up with some actual science while playing with CMIP5. Unless I misinterpret them, they seem to understand that to start a greenhouse warming a step increase of carbon dioxide is required. I am just assuming that they know it even though they did not get past playing with the rate of warming. But once you know about step increase you should have some scientific curiosity too and ask yourself how many such increases have happened. The answer is none since the beginning of the twentieth century. And then what? If there has been no step increase of CO2 no greenhouse warming can start. We do know of some warmings, however, that did get started during the twentieth century. They include the Arctic warming that began at the turn of the century. Also the early century warming from 1910 to 1940; a putative short warming that supposedly accompanied the PDO phase change in 1976; and the step warming initiated by the super El Nino of 1998 that raised global temperature by a third of a degree in three years and then stopped. That is it for the twentieth century. None of them are carbon dioxide greenhouse warmings. Now Ken, take a note of that and tell this to the IPCC working group that you quit. You never know, some of them just may be educable.
Maybe while they are down there in the deep ocean looking for the missing heat they can keep an eye out for the missing hurricanes. They might be hiding down there too.
“The study was the result of an unusual collaboration of a climate scientist, … and CEO … It is the third paper on which they have collaborated”
Sounds novel. My wife and I will be making an almost unheard of collaboration of spaghetti and tomato sauce tonight. It will be the first dinner on which we’ve collaborated this month. Somebody had to has to edit and promote for these highly intellectual people. They could not pay me enough.
DBStealey,
dbstealey says:
That being the case, explain why there is NO ocean warming.
————————-
If that is the case, then explain why there is SO MUCH WARMING in the OCEANS
The charts above just deconstructed your entire belief system. I know you are incapable of seeing it that way, because your mind is closed. You are a Believer; you don’t need facts.
There is multiple layers of proof of the acceleration of ocean warming due to climate change. In fact, within a 95% confidence interval, there is over 300 zettajoules of warming in the oceans since 1995. Real time SST shows that to be the case, too.
What would it take to make the scales fall from your eyes? A miracle?
=====================================
[PS: Thanx, Lewis F. Powell. <— this is your fault.]
——-
I wanted to show that you are simply sharing biased data that has no scientific value as though it does, simply because it feeds your worldview. There are many real things that need to be addressed in this world to make it a better place. you are not helping.
Sincerely,
Jai
Hey, Gail and Chad W. — so glad to see you post. It’s been awhile. Hope all is well.
*********************
In a nutshell:
As Alan Watt said: Those climate models are so bad …..
(HOW BAD ARE THEY???)
…. they couldn’t tell the difference between fresh butter and a dead crab.
@ur momisugly Kevin M (and your wife): Bon appetite!
(don’t try having a climate model cook your dinner, if it doesn’t kill you, it will taste like junk)
University of Colorado shows that not only is sea level not accelerating — but rather, sea level rise is moderating. It is de-celerating. That is because global warming has stopped.
Thus, the falsified belief that the oceans are collecting heat is as bogus as all the rest of the climate alarmist predictions.
Anyone disagreeing should contact CU directly, and explain to them that their data contradicts the alarmist crowd’s belief system…
jai mitchell says:
October 1, 2013 at 10:23 am
————————————————-
jai,
There is no way for the “missing heat” to enter the oceans, let alone be transported to the unmeasurable depths by thermohaline circulation.
Incident LWIR in the 15 micron band does not heat liquid water nor slow its cooling rate. The simplest empirical experiment shows this.
Yes, incident LWIR can slow the cooling rate of most materials, even if it is emitted from a cooler material. No, this does not work on liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool.
Trenberthian energy budget cartoons do not differentiate between land and ocean. They simply show “surface” responding uniformly to incident LWIR. This is totally and utterly wrong.
How do you heat a plastic tub of water with a hair dryer? You point the hair dryer at the side of the tub, not the surface of the water. Empirical experiments show that the same is true for incident LWIR. Try the experiment I showed earlier on this thread. There is no missing heat in the oceans, and no, the ocean will not “freeze over” without radiative gases in the atmosphere.
@Janice Moore, your comment of October 1, 2013 at 2:53 pm
The original comment was “… Whizzo Butter and a dead crab”. Let’s give proper credit to Monty Python: Whizzo Butter & Dead Crab
Konrad says
water cannot absorb 15 micron radiation
—
Konrad, that is not true
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Absorption_spectrum_of_liquid_water.png
The spectrum peaks for CO2 are at
2.5, 4 and 15 microns
as you can see from the absorption spectrum link below, water absorbs it easily.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Absorption_spectrum_of_liquid_water.png
In addition, CO2 is only 1/3 of the radiative forcing, an additional 1/12 is provided by CH4 and the overwhelming majority is caused by the increase in water vapor in the atmosphere:
https://www-pls.llnl.gov/?url=science_and_technology-earth_sciences-moisture
Increase in Atmospheric Moisture Tied to Human Activities
Observations and climate model results confirm that human-induced warming of the planet is having a pronounced effect on the atmosphere’s total moisture content. Those are the findings of a new study appearing in the Sept. 17 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
All of these components absorb LWIR at spectrums that liquid water easily absorbs.
Surface wind mixing is the origination of the increased energy deposition in the deep ocean, once it is added below 300 feet, it begins to mix through mid ocean currents.
mwhite says:
October 1, 2013 at 10:31 am
” If we continue increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations with emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas, the Earth will continue to get hotter.”
So the world cannot cool down then???
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I believe that last 17 years has already shown this one a dud…. Just sayin.. 🙂
jai mitchell says:
October 1, 2013 at 6:20 pm
“Konrad says
water cannot absorb 15 micron radiation”
—————————————————————————
Jai,
I did most certainly did NOT say “ water cannot absorb 15 micron radiation” and I would strongly urge you to apologise for that mendaciously attributed “quote”.
Liquid water does absorb LWIR typically in the first 10 microns of the skin evaporation layer. This simply helps trip liquid water molecules into vapour state faster that they previously would. As I have proved through empirical experiment, this has no effect on the cooling of water below the skin evaporation layer.
If you wish to challenge my results, then by all means produce your own empirical lab experiment showing that incident LWIR can slow the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool. You can’t.
LWIR can slow the cooling rate of most materials, even if emitted from a cooler material. It just does not work for liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool.
It is time you looked at the reality. Climate scientists simply took the emissivity figures for liquid water to calculate the effect of downwelling LWIR on the oceans. They got it wrong because they never did an empirical experiment to check their hopelessly flawed calculations.
Konrad,
jai mitchell cannot produce any empirical evidence at all showing measurable changes in temperature due to human emissions. Neither can anyone else.
That is not to state conclusively that AGW cannot exist. It is certainly possible. But if it exists, it is such a small forcing that it cannot even be measured. Therefore, AGW should be completely disregarded for any policy decisions.
If something is too small to measure, it is hardly science…
Thank you, Alan Watt, for letting me know my analogy was incorrect. I had no idea what Whizzo butter was, and, wanting to make a comparison between implausible speculation (stinking dead crab) and real world observations (a good thing), I wanted to be sure what represented data was a good thing. Alas, I should not have attempted it. Thanks for the hilarious video. At least my sigh turned into laughter.
And, while I’m at it, in case anyone decides to let me know I spelled it wrong, “bon a—ppe-ti—t.” Spellcheckers are nice, but sometimes, they are a real pain.
Future warming hiding in future oceans. I’m a sci-fi fan, but this is a plunge too far.
Jai, what you say about specific heat capacity is true, but a liquid behaves differently to a solid. The heat energy can only enter the sea at the surface, this will cause the molecules to become more energetic and some will vaporise, removing the heat energy. Since the only way the depths of the ocean can be heated is by convection (water is a very poor conductor of heat), the temperature gradient would have to be a great deal higher than it actually is to warm the ocean depths. In addition, water is very poor at radiating heat energy, so loss of this heat at night through radiation doesn’t happen either. Basically the theory that the atmospheric temperature isn’t as high as predicted is due to warming of the oceans is b******t!
One more thing, if this heat energy had entered the oceans and raised the temperature then there should be more hurricanes and tropical storms of greater intensity, not fewer which is the reality!
Theo Goodwin says:
I really find this sort of thing offensive. All they are doing is playing with models. They should say that. But, No, they claim that they have learned something about CO2 and global warming.
Without anything to demonstrate that the models correspond to the actual behaviour of the planet these models are (expensive) toys. That the models agree with each other dosn’t mean much.
Who writes this stuff? “…heat hiding in the abyss…”
My dictionary says:
abyss |əˈbis|
noun
a deep or seemingly bottomless chasm : a rope led down into the dark abyss | figurative I was stagnating in an abyss of boredom.
• figurative a wide or profound difference between people; a gulf : the abyss between the two nations.
• figurative the regions of hell conceived of as a bottomless pit : Satan’s dark abyss.
• ( the abyss) figurative a catastrophic situation seen as likely to occur : teetering on the edge of the abyss of a total political wipeout.
…that last bullet point sounds about right to me!
CRS, great point. Once you’re in the abyss, there is no coming back.
What a stupid thing to say. Who wrote that junk? Sounds like a member of the Fantasy Science Club, to me.