Note: two events at AGU13 this morning dovetail in with this essay. The first, a slide from Dr. Judith Lean which says: “There are no operational forecasts of global climate change”.
The second was a tweet by Dr. Gavin Schmidt, attending Lenny Smith’s lecture (which I couldn’t due to needing to file a radio news report from the AGU press room) that said:
Smith: usefulness of climate models for mitigation 'as good as it gets', usefulness for adaptation? Not so much #AGU13
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) December 10, 2013
With those events in mind, this essay from Dr. William Gray (of hurricane forecasting fame) is prescient.
Guest essay by Dr. William M. Gray
My 60-year experience in meteorology has led me to develop a profound disrespect for the philosophy and science behind numerical climate modeling. The simulations that have been directed at determining the influence of a doubling of CO2 on Earth’s temperature have been made with flawed and oversimplified internal physical assumptions. These modeling scenarios have shown a near uniformity in CO2 doubling causing a warming of 2-5oC (4-9oF). There is no physical way, however, that an atmospheric doubling of the very small amount of background CO2 gas would ever be able to bring about such large global temperature increases.
It is no surprise that the global temperature in recent decades has not been rising as the climate models have predicted. Reliable long-range climate modeling is not possible and may never be possible. It is in our nation’s best interest that this mode of prophecy be exposed for its inherent futility. Belief in these climate model predictions has had a profound deleterious influence on our country’s (and foreign) governmental policies on the environment and energy.
The still-strong—but false—belief that skillful long-range climate prediction is possible is thus a dangerous idea. The results of the climate models have helped foster the current political clamor for greatly reducing fossil fuel use even though electricity generation costs from wind and solar are typically three to five times higher than generation from fossil fuels. The excuse for this clamor for renewable energy is to a large extent the strongly expressed views of the five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, which are based on the large (and unrealistic) catastrophic global warming projections from climate models.
The pervasive influence of these IPCC reports (from 1990 to 2013) derives from the near-universal lack of climate knowledge among the general population. Overly biased and sensational media reports have been able to brainwash a high percentage of the public. A very similar lack of sophisticated climate knowledge exists among our top government officials, environmentalists, and most of the world’s prestigious scientists. Holding a high government position or having excelled in a non-climate scientific specialty does not automatically confer a superior understanding of climate.
Lack of climate understanding, however, has not prevented our government leaders and others from using the public’s fear of detrimental climate change as a political or social tool to further some of their other desired goals. Climate modeling output lends an air of authority that is not warranted by the unrealistic model input physics and the overly simplified and inadequate numerical techniques. (Model grids cannot resolve cumulus convective elements, for example.) It is impossible for climate models to predict the globe’s future climate for at least three basic reasons.
One, decadal and century-scale deep-ocean circulation changes (likely related to long time-scale ocean salinity variations), such as the global Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) and Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation (THC), are very difficult to measure and are not yet well-enough understood to be included realistically in the climate models. The last century-and-a-half global warming of ~0.6oC appears to be a result of the general slowdown of the oceans’ MOC over this period. The number of multidecadal up-and-down global mean temperature changes appears also to have been driven by the multidecadal MOC. Models do not yet incorporate this fundamental physical component.
Two, the very large climate modeling overestimates of global warming are primarily a result of the assumed positive water-vapor feedback processes (about 2oC extra global warming with a CO2 doubling in most models). Models assume any upper tropospheric warming also brings about upper tropospheric water-vapor increase as well, because they assume atmospheric relative humidity (RH) remains quasi-constant. But measurements and theoretical considerations of deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convective clouds indicate any increase of CO2 and its associated increase in global rainfall would lead to a reduction of upper tropospheric RH and a consequent enhancement (not curtailment) of Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) to space.
The water-vapor feedback loop, in reality, is weakly negative, not strongly positive as nearly all the model CO2 doubling simulations indicate. The climate models are not able to resolve or correctly parameterize the fundamentally important climate forcing influences of the deep penetrating cumulonimbus (Cb) convection elements. This is a fundamental deficiency.
Three, the CO2 global warming question has so far been treated from a “radiation only” perspective. Disregarding water-vapor feedback changes, it has been assumed a doubling of CO2 will cause a blockage of Outgoing Long-wave Radiation (OLR) of 3.7 Wm-2. To compensate for this blockage without feedback, it has been assumed an enhanced global warming of about 1oC would be required for counterbalance. But global energy budget considerations indicate only about half (0.5oC, not 1oC) of the 3.7 Wm-2 OLR blockage of CO2 should be expected to be expended for temperature compensation. The other half of the compensation for the 3.7 Wm-2 OLR blockage will come from the extra energy that must be utilized for surface evaporation (~1.85 Wm-2) to sustain the needed increase of the global hydrologic cycle by about 2 percent.
Earth experiences a unique climate because of its 70 percent water surface and its continuously functioning hydrologic cycle. The stronger the globe’s hydrologic cycle, the greater the globe’s cooling potential. All the global energy used for surface evaporation and tropospheric condensation warming is lost to space through OLR flux.
Thus, with zero water-vapor feedback we should expect a doubling of CO2 to cause no more than about 0.5oC (not 1oC) of global warming and the rest of the compensation to come from enhanced surface evaporation, atmospheric condensation warming, and enhanced OLR to space. If there is a small negative water-vapor feedback of only -0.1 to -0.3oC (as I believe to be the case), then a doubling of CO2 should be expected to cause a global warming of no more than about 0.2-0.4oC. Such a small temperature change should be of little societal concern during the remainder of this century.
It is the height of foolishness for the United States or any foreign government to base any energy or environmental policy decisions on the results of long-range numerical climate model predictions, or of the recommendations emanating from the biased, politically driven reports of the IPCC.
###
William M. Gray, Ph.D. (gray@atmos.colostate.edu) is professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences.
I’m sure that’s the fat lady I can hear singing, I hope it’s a pop song and not a long classical opera … like ‘Pie Jesu’ in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical opera “Requiem”, which had it’s debut in 1985, sung by Sarah Brightman, who wasn’t fat …
I heard that Gavin S. will assume the “Anointed” God of GISS. His God-ship will carry forth from the failed, multiple adjectives apply, James Hansen.
That makes his ‘twit’ all the more telling … ‘a career’ “as good as it gets” and ‘a life’ “useless.”
Chinese curse, “careful what you wish for … you may get it!”
Klingon toast, “make a wish.”
🙂
I make a living inventing, creating, selling, supporting and applying advanced empirical modeling software. Yes, advanced: for one example consider ensembles of genetically optimized multidimensional non-linear time-based regression models that autonomously adapt and self-maintain through time using performance feedback. That is but one example. Our technology is used on everything from toilet paper wet tear strength to tornado prediction; those things where theoretical physics-based equations are just not possible or practical.
I have not tried to model the climate because I don’t have the data and I’m not sure it properly exists so I don’t spend the time to try to find it.
P.S. Modeling chaotic systems isn’t that hard really, as long as they are simple. In this case, climate, there are vast numbers of feedbacks, phase changes, interactions and estimated data that has been “screwed around with” that makes it difficult.
Excellent article by Dr. Gray. He provides the details in support of his statements in
Gray, W. M., 2012: The physical flaws of the global warming theory and deep ocean circulation changes as the primary climate driver. 7nd Annual Heartland Conference on Climate Change.
available here: http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications.html
Let me get this straight:
In a reciprocating internal combustion engine (something I tend to understand) only about 25-30% of the available heat energy from combustion is utilized. The remainder, through various means, is dissipated to the atmosphere. If one were magically able to make a reciprocating IC engine 100% efficient then the entirety of the heat generated would be converted to mechanical energy and the engine would transmit no heat whatsoever to the atmosphere.
It seems to me Dr. William Gray is saying that at least some portion of an expected atmospheric heat increase from CO2 must essentially be converted into some form of mechanical energy through which to overcome gravity and lift a certain volume and weight of water into the atmosphere. Thus any significant increase in atmospheric temperatures from increased water vapor (the primary greenhouse gas) must, to some degree, be mitigated by the conversion of CO2 trapped heat to the mechanical energy necessary to lift the water, the primary claimed amplifier, in the first place.
Is this what Dr. William Gray is saying? If so, it is the first time, in my 20 years of immersing myself in this issue, that I have read such a sensible thing. Could this be where the ‘hidden heat’ is really hiding? Just asking a question.
You know, your semantic whining about predict -vs- project on just about every thread that uses either word is really becoming tiresome. Dr. Gray has his view, and people understand what he’s talking about. Give it a rest. – Anthony
Hear, hear! Especially on a thread that explicitly begins with a slide stating “There are no operational forecasts of global climate change”, and where Dr. Gray is clearly stating that:
The still-strong—but false—belief that skillful long-range climate prediction is possible is thus a dangerous idea. The results of the climate models have helped foster the current political clamor for greatly reducing fossil fuel use even though electricity generation costs from wind and solar are typically three to five times higher than generation from fossil fuels. The excuse for this clamor for renewable energy is to a large extent the strongly expressed views of the five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, which are based on the large (and unrealistic) catastrophic global warming projections from climate models.
There is absolutely nothing unambiguous or (as you repeatedly put it) fallacious about this statement. It is clear and succinct. In it Dr. Gray clearly uses both prediction and projection in ways that that demonstrate that he is fully aware of their meaning. So when he says “It is impossible for climate models to predict the globe’s future climate for at least three basic reasons.” we can easily understand exactly what he is saying, especially when he proceeds to clearly enumerate those reasons. His statement, the enumerated reasons, and his conclusion are apparent to any reader. It is a contribution to the debate, as one can disagree with his reasons and conceive of ways of applying evidence-based reasoning to verify or falsify them.
Your own statements, in the meantime, do not contain anything useful that pertains to the climate debate. Whether one calls GCM forecasts “predictions”, “projections”, or (as Dr. Gray also refers to them) prophecies is immaterial. What matters is that they have no predictive skill (or “projective” skill, or “prophetic” skill). What also matters, as he rather clearly points out, is that the public, politicians, and scientists alike are all too easily taken in by the sensationalist treatment of CAGW by the press, by a small but determined group of interested parties that reap fame, fortune, and political power from the issue, and by a small cadre of scientists that have transformed global climate into the overarching funding mechanism for environmental science to the enormous benefit of the discipline and those that work in it.
In our last interaction, you ended by accusing me of an ad hominem attack on you because I stated clearly that nobody cares about your attempt to somehow transform the distinction between prediction and projection into something significant, into something somehow relevant to the correctness or reliability of the science. In this you are mistaken. I’ll state it again — nobody cares about your assertion in this arena not because you are stupid or incompetent, not even because you are or are not incorrect in making them, but because they are irrelevant to the actual debate, which is absolutely about the kind of points that Dr. Gray is making above and that you appear to be incapable of making. Climate models are not doubtable because they are projections but people call them predictions — actually they are frequently called projections by climate modellers as an excuse for their failure to even approximately predict. They are doubtable because they (so far) do not work!
And because there are some excellent reasons to believe that they will not work anytime in the near future. I personally am less skeptical than Dr. Gray about their prospects thirty years from now, simply because 30 years ago I was doing my numerical work with a 64KB motherboard 5 MHz IBM PC instead of a 4 GB motherboard 2×3 GHz dual-core laptop over 1000 times faster (which isn’t even my latests/fastest system) and when in the meantime we’ve learned to aggregate piles of similarly fast processors into supercomputers capable of tens of trillions of operations per second. 30 years from now, we may well be able to solve the hydrodynamics problems at a useful granularity. 30 years from now we may have the observational data and theory worked out to where we can solve the right equations in the process, as well. Or maybe not.
In the meantime, however, they are not working, for all the reasons Dr. Gray indicates and more besides. It isn’t that CO_2 couldn’t produce warming of the scale claimed — the computations show that subject to certain assumptions the claim is at least conditionally plausible — it is that so far it simply hasn’t. The GCMs are not working well, at least so far. Whether or not there are reasons that they aren’t working — a string of La Ninas instead of the super El Nino the models seem to “expect”, as Nick Stokes recently suggested — isn’t particularly material. One expects models to fail when there are important reasons for their failure. Dr. Gray has listed three possible reasons in considerable detail. A recent WUWT-reported peer reviewed article strongly supports one of them — the failure of GCMs to correctly treat deep convection in storm clouds. There are still other good reasons to doubt that I sometimes list, such as some very fundamental questions about convergence and granularity that one cannot avoid when one is doing computations at the bleeding edge of available capacity and where e.g. doubling the resolution requires more than an order of magnitude more compute power and/or time to run.
The interesting thing is that at the end of the day, at the end of the AGU meeting, there will no doubt be a fair number of papers and talks presented that address the failure of the GCMs to predict “the pause”, as this is a fairly serious concern for all of the global warming enthusiasts. A lot of people have to be wondering about the solar cycle at this point — we are at or past solar maximum, and there is at least some reason to think that we are about to have a prolonged solar minimum that will rise to an even weaker solar maximum in the next cycle. If “the pause” continues or worse, becomes “the fall” — however slight — a lot of people are going to be scrutinizing the entire scientific industry that has built up around global warming to see if there was anything like the critical process associated with good science at work or if every paper and every voice was toeing some sort of party line.
A good scientist should never apologize for disagreeing, or even apologize for being wrong as long as the errors are honest errors. A good scientist looks hard for their own errors without waiting for others to point them out. Good science isn’t decided by a democratic process — it is an absolute tyranny. Humans get zero votes — nature gets the only vote that matters. So even if 97% of all scientists really do agree that CAGW is our CO_2-doubling destiny (something that is enormously dubious, since it isn’t certain that 97% of all scientists agree with the theory of evolution or that quantum mechanics is a fully consistent theory) — 97% of all scientists can end up being wrong if nature votes the other way.
So please, Terry, cease the pointless debate about prediction vs projection.
Nobody cares.
rgb
Jim Clarke says: at 6:55 pm:
For longer ranch forecasts, pattern recognition becomes the more reliable method.
I know what your were thinking! On “ranch forecasts,” there’s no way a “ch” gets added instead of “ge” unless you are thinking that it’d be good to be at the ranch… your ranch or some ranch somewhere! I know the feeling. Anyway, I really like your comments, especially your 5:39pm one, and this moving paragraph (and you seem to have a lot good knowledge, are you a weather guy or what?):
And @Dale Rainwater Burns, thanks for your comment. Anyway, not that anyone cares, but I was looking now at my “opus comment” from 4:00 pm, and I’m thinking that the third paragraph beginning with “First, take a look at this key 3 1/2 minute video that exposes the false claims of Al Gore on CO2” wasn’t essential, and was expendable to shorten things. And anyway I linked to the “key” video in the next paragraph. See, I’m trying to get a good string of words together to run at various sites, and if anyone wants to repeat what I said or your own version of it, great!
This should be required reading for everyone attending climate lectures at AGU13.
Here’s a quote and conclusions about the timing and extent of the coming cooling from the last post on my blog at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
” The key factor in making CO2 emission control policy is the climate sensitivity to CO2 . By AR5 – WG1 the IPCC is saying: (Section 9.7.3.3)
“The assessed literature suggests that the range of climate sensitivities and transient responses covered by CMIP3/5 cannot be narrowed significantly by constraining the models with observations of the mean climate and variability, consistent with the difficulty of constraining the cloud feedbacks from observations ”
In plain English this means that they have no idea what the climate sensitivity is and that therefore that the politicians have no empirical scientific basis for their economically destructive climate and energy policies.
In summary the projections of the IPCC – Met office models and all the impact studies which derive from them are based on specifically structurally flawed and inherently useless models. They deserve no place in any serious discussion of future climate trends and represent an enormous waste of time and money. As a basis for public policy their forecasts are grossly in error and therefore worse than useless.
2. A Simple Rational Approach to Climate Forecasting based on Common Sense and Quasi Repetitive- Quasi Cyclic Patterns.
How then can we predict the future of a constantly changing climate? A new forecasting paradigm is required .
It is important to note that it in order to make transparent and likely skillful forecasts it is not necessary to understand or quantify the interactions of the large number of interacting and quasi independent physical processes and variables which produce the state of the climate system as a whole as represented by the temperature metric…………………………………………..
I have combined the PDO, ,Millennial cycle and neutron trends to estimate the timing and extent of the coming cooling in both the Northern Hemisphere and Globally.
Here are the conclusions of those posts.
1/22/13 (NH)
1) The millennial peak is sharp – perhaps 18 years +/-. We have now had 16 years since 1997 with no net warming – and so might expect a sharp drop in a year or two – 2014/16 -with a net cooling by 2035 of about 0.35.Within that time frame however there could well be some exceptional years with NH temperatures +/- 0.25 degrees colder than that.
2) The cooling gradient might be fairly steep down to the Oort minimum equivalent which would occur about 2100. (about 1100 on Fig 5) ( Fig 3 here) with a total cooling in 2100 from the present estimated at about 1.2 +/-
3) From 2100 on through the Wolf and Sporer minima equivalents with intervening highs to the Maunder Minimum equivalent which could occur from about 2600 – 2700 a further net cooling of about 0.7 degrees could occur for a total drop of 1.9 +/- degrees
4)The time frame for the significant cooling in 2014 – 16 is strengthened by recent developments already seen in solar activity. With a time lag of about 12 years between the solar driver proxy and climate we should see the effects of the sharp drop in the Ap Index which took place in 2004/5 in 2016-17.
4/02/13 ( Global)
1 Significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
2 Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
3 Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
4 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 – 0.15
5 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 – 0.5
6 General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
7 By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
8 The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and help maintain crop yields .
9 Warning !! There are some signs in the Livingston and Penn Solar data that a sudden drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures could be imminent – with a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.
How confident should one be in these above predictions? The pattern method doesn’t lend itself easily to statistical measures. However statistical calculations only provide an apparent rigor for the uninitiated and in relation to the IPCC climate models are entirely misleading because they make no allowance for the structural uncertainties in the model set up.This is where scientific judgment comes in – some people are better at pattern recognition and meaningful correlation than others. A past record of successful forecasting such as indicated above is a useful but not infallible measure. In this case I am reasonably sure – say 65/35 for about 20 years ahead. Beyond that certainty drops rapidly. I am sure, however, that it will prove closer to reality than anything put out by the IPCC, Met Office or the NASA group. In any case this is a Bayesian type forecast- in that it can easily be amended on an ongoing basis as the Temperature and Solar data accumulate. If there is not a 0.15 – 0.20. drop in Global SSTs by 2018 -20 I would need to re-evaluate
Bravo! Dr. Gray.
The only consideration I would like to see addressed is how long do you suppose the Holocene has left to last?
From what I can tell from the literature we are very close to an eccentricity minima (a 400kyr variety). And the Holocene is (as of 2013) 11,716 years old (based on varve-counting from the end of the Younger-Dryas cold interval to present), A few centuries and change older than half the current precession cycle (23,000/2=11,500 years). Only MIS-11 has lasted longer than half a precession cycle for at least the past 38 such full-precession cycles (using 21.7kyrs as the average), taking us back to near the mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT), or eight major glacials/interglacials from present.
MIS-11 was as MIS-19 was, at a 400kyr eccentricity minima, as MIS-1 now is. MIS-11 (~400kya) went long, MIS-19 (~800kya) did not. So, at best 50:50 chance of “going long”, absent any other effects, such as perhaps AGW, at the possible end of MIS-1, the present interglacial.
In your opinion, how long do you suppose the Holocene will last with or without AGW/GHGs?
Very well appreciated post, Dr. Gray.
William
There is no such thing as *a* singular CO2 sensitivity in climate. It would be, at a minimum, a complex temperature trajectory based on an n-dimensional volume of interacting self-feeding-back inputs as “CO2 concentration” is varied in the model(s). That is, as you varied CO2 all the other inputs to the model(s) would start to change and Temperature probably would form an unknown contorted trajectory which would not be valid as the myriad “Butterfly Effects” throw Temperature off to such a degree as to be useless. “CO2 sensitivity” is a time-based non-linear Gordian hyper-volume. However, grant money projections/predictions/forecasts/estimates may be easy to compute as long as the “CO2 Sensitivity” was a positive number 🙂
davidmhoffer says: “…Now, stack thousands of those jars on top of each other in a tower 14 kilometers high. You’ll need a stack of 140 million jars. Now try drawing a line from bottom to top without hitting a red grain. You can’t. In fact, not only that, you can’t even do it without hitting thousands of red grains. I’m a confirmed skeptic, but radiative physics is a bit more complex than simply drawing conclusions from concentration ratios.”
Now do the same thing for the thermosphere. See if you can get a photon through it without hitting anything.
KevinK;
For your information there is a whole field of engineering known as “optical engineering” which applies all of the theories of “radiative physics” to solve real problems. AND NONE of my textbooks (going back 5 decades) acknowledge anything as silly as the “Greenhouse Effect”.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well that’s pretty interesting since I have the exact same text books from which I learned a considerable amount about how the greenhouse effect works. Just because they are engineering text books focused on a very narrow set of use cases that have nothing to do with climate and atmospheric effects and hence never mention the greenhouse effect doesn’t change the fact that they are describing the exact same processes in a different context.
Your rant amounts to no more than argument from authority. You make vague references to vague text books, represent what they say completely out of context, and proclaim the conclusions without one single sentence about how any of it actually works. Not one.
I would not have chosen rgb’s wording about squashing the idea. I took it as a misunderstanding that could be easily addressed. When one is just beginning to understand this topic, it is a common mistake. But Aussibear explained why he thought his view was correct, and I endeavoured to take him to the next step. The two of us were discussing science, rgb jumped in and supported my explanation. If you have something to add to the discussion by why of additional explanation or criticism, by all means. But shouting that you have 5 decade old text books on optics and claiming that what is in them is relevant is just argument from authority that adds nothing to the knowledge of anyone in the debate from either side.
Eric Simpson — Excellent, well-written (clear, accurate, and concise), comment at 4pm, today (would be a good post in its own right). Great primer — we need a section of WUWT dedicated to teaching the basics (Gee Jam has composed something along those lines, too, I think).
**********************************
Hi, Tom J at 8:01pm (super cool that you are a motorhead (some of the brightest geniuses who ever lived were or are), btw!) —
Well, until a scientist takes the time to answer you (and I sure hope one does!), here’s mine fwiw:
No.
Given the following assertions by Dr. Gray:
1. “The water-vapor feedback loop, in reality, is … negative, … .”
2. “Earth experiences a unique climate because of its 70 percent water surface and its continuously functioning hydrologic cycle. The stronger the globe’s hydrologic cycle, the greater the globe’s cooling potential.”
3.”… {assuming ad argumentum} zero water-vapor feedback we should expect a doubling of CO2 to cause no more than about 0.5oC … warming … compensation … from enhanced surface evaporation, atmospheric condensation warming, and enhanced OLR to space. … .”
I think the second half of item 3. above is what may have caused the confusion. I believe Gray meant that, even if water-vapor did not negate potential warming, other negating forces, e.g., enhanced evaporation, etc…. would prevent catastrophic warming.
Bottom line: The earth’s internal combustion engine (a.k.a. “global climate”) has the bestest, most super-deluxe, water-cooling system (i. e., the radiator) — (along with a great air-intake cooling unit (with super-fancy hood bling to go with it, too!)) — IN THE….. well…. heh, IN THE WORLD!!!
#(:))
******************************
Okay. Now, HOPEFULLY, a scientist will be so disgusted by my attempt to answer you that you will get a quality answer! And, thereby, I will have done you a worthwhile service by my poor attempt. Thus, I make it even while knowing it is likely laughable.
Best wishes getting your question really answered,
Janice
Dr. Gray absolutely nailed it.
jorgekafkazar says:
December 10, 2013 at 8:59 pm
Now do the same thing for the thermosphere. See if you can get a photon through it without hitting anything.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ah, but you can. You only need choose photons in the right frequencies. Else we wouldn’t be able to see the outlines of continents and the shape of major cloud systems from space. We’d see only a fuzzy glowing ball instead.
For Kevin K and davidmhoffer:
While you may have a dispute about the existence of the “greenhouse effect,” per se, I doubt it. It appears to me that there has simply been a slight miscommunication.
Given:
1.”Please explain again how a gas present in minuscule amounts in the atmosphere with a thermal capacity nearly equal to nothing is “forcing” … .” (Kevin K at 7:01pm today)
2. “I’m a confirmed skeptic… .” (davidmhoffer at 5:52pm today)
I think it is clear that you both agree that, so far, there is no evidence that CO2 is a significant driver of changes in the climate of the planet.
Queries to Promote Understanding:
Kevin K — Do you agree that there is a greenhouse effect at all (with H2O being the driving gas?)?
davidmhoffer — Do you (just for clarification — I’m pretty sure I know the answer) agree that CO2 is not a significant driver of the “greenhouse effect?”
Shake hands, guys?
Hoping that my attempt at a little mediation is more helpful than annoying,
Janice
davidmhoffer;
Ah, but you can. You only need choose photons in the right frequencies.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Just realized how that might confuse someone trying to understand the discussion with Aussiebear. I’d extend the analogy a bit. Take that stack of 14 million jar. Now instead of just lines, let’s use all the crayons and make lotsa different colors. To illustrate, if we’re using a red crayon, every time the line hits a red grain of rice, we have to stop, and start a new line in a random direction, and keep doing that as many times as it takes to get to the top and escape. But if we use a yellow crayon, we’re allowed to go right though the red grains as if they were invisible.
Now lets add a sprinkling of still more different colors of rice grains to represent everything from dust to ice crystals to ozone and so on. Each crayon color goes right through certain colors of rice grains, but stops dead when hitting others. Complicated? Hey! I’m simplifying it!
Now through in a new color of rice just for water vapour. But you have to put in 400 grains of water vapour rice in the first million jars, and 300 in the next million and maybe 100 in the million after that. Then you have to figure out how to draw the lines that have to stop and change direction for both water vapour AND CO2. Now the drawing is completely skewed because at the bottom, you can hardly draw any length at all before hitting a water molecule and there are so many of them that the 4 CO2 molecules don’t much matter to how you draw the red lines. But when you get up to say jar level 20 million, there are so few water molecules that ONLY the CO2 grains make a difference to how you draw the red lines. But there’s still another 120 million jars to get through, so the line will change directions many many times before escaping.
Dear davidmhoffer,
I was hoping you didn’t miss my attempt “talk” to you last evening. Perhaps, you were just too disgusted to even acknowledge my remarks. In case you missed it, it was here (Dec. 9, 11:07pm on that thread if I mis-copied the link): http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/09/coldest-ever-temperature-recorded-on-earth-found-in-antarctica/#comment-1496526
With admiration for your integrity and your immense learning,
Janice
Janice Moore;
davidmhoffer — Do you (just for clarification — I’m pretty sure I know the answer) agree that CO2 is not a significant driver of the “greenhouse effect?”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No, I believe that CO2 absolutely IS a significant driver of the greenhouse effect. However, I also understand that CO2 is logarithmic, and that cooling response of the planet via Stefan-Boltzmann law is exponential. These two factors alone destroy the CAGW meme, which is why climate scientists want to scream about tree ring studies and things being unprecedented rather than discussing rudimentary physics.
Thanks Janice!!
One thing I found out that I don’t think a lot of people know is some CO2 related dynamics of the post-Cambrian climate by reading Larry Bell’s excellent article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/05/03/breaking-news-the-climate-actually-changes/
It’s definitely worth reading, and an easy read on top of that. Another short excerpt: “About 438 million years ago, atmospheric CO2 dropped from 4,500 ppm to 3,000 ppm, yet according to fossil records, world temperatures shot rapidly back up to an average 72 degrees. So regardless of whether CO2 levels were 7,000 ppm or 3,000 ppm, temperatures rose and fell independently.”
Forecasting is just guessing with computers.
The slide at the top says it all: error effects saturate weather forecasting models when run out to the 10-14 day mark. The same thing happens with climate models that get the clouds and the water vapor wrong.
Janice Moore;
I was hoping you didn’t miss my attempt “talk” to you last evening.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sorry, forgot to respond. Tx appreciated. Even I don’t visit my blog anymore though 😉
You’ve no idea how much work keeping one going actually is until you try and do it. How Anth_ny keeps up is quite beyond me.
Bob Weber says:
December 10, 2013 at 4:42 pm
“Dr. Gray’s conclusion ought…”
…
…
Then at the end, a cheap shoot is thrown for some odd reason,
“You might learn something, unless your name is Willis….”
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Since when has it been a good thing to kick a man while he is down with a serious heart condition?
Janice Moore
December 10, 2013 at 9:17 pm
Hi Janice. Thanks for the info. Yep, I definitely am a motorhead. And, according to my niece, the one time I shaved my beard I looked like a chipmunk; “Hey Uncle Tom, you like a chipmunk.” So, if you can imagine what a combination of a motorhead and a chipmunk looks like you’ll be able to spot me in a crowd.
Whoops, I almost forgot, I grew the beard back.
Thanks again for the info. It’s my bedtime here in Chicago so I’ll double check it in the morning when I’m fresh. Best wishes.