(Note: this originally published on Dr. Spencer’s blog on April 25th, and I asked if I could reproduce it here. While I know some readers might argue the finer points of some items in the list, I think it is important to keep sight of these. – Anthony)
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
There are some very good arguments for being skeptical of global warming predictions. But the proliferation of bad arguments is becoming almost dizzying.
I understand and appreciate that many of the things we think we know in science end up being wrong. I get that. But some of the alternative explanations I’m seeing border on the ludicrous.
So, here’s my Top 10 list of stupid skeptic arguments. I’m sure there are more, and maybe I missed a couple important ones. Oh well.
My obvious goal here is not to change minds that are already made up, which is impossible (by definition), but to reach 1,000+ (mostly nasty) comments in response to this post. So, help me out here!
1. THERE IS NO GREENHOUSE EFFECT. Despite the fact that downwelling IR from the sky can be measured, and amounts to a level (~300 W/m2) that can be scarcely be ignored; the neglect of which would totally screw up weather forecast model runs if it was not included; and would lead to VERY cold nights if it didn’t exist; and can be easily measured directly with a handheld IR thermometer pointed at the sky (because an IR thermometer measures the IR-induced temperature change of the surface of a thermopile, QED)… Please stop the “no greenhouse effect” stuff. It’s making us skeptics look bad. I’ve blogged on this numerous times…maybe start here.
2. THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT VIOLATES THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. The second law can be stated in several ways, but one way is that the net flow of energy must be from higher temperature to lower temperature. This is not violated by the greenhouse effect. The apparent violation of the 2nd Law seems to be traced to the fact that all bodies emit IR radiation…including cooler bodies toward warmer bodies. But the NET flow of thermal radiation is still from the warmer body to the cooler body. Even if you don’t believe there is 2-way flow, and only 1-way flow…the rate of flow depends upon the temperature of both bodies, and changing the cooler body’s temperature will change the cooling rate (and thus the temperature) of the warmer body. So, yes, a cooler body can make a warm body even warmer still…as evidenced by putting your clothes on.
3. CO2 CANT CAUSE WARMING BECAUSE CO2 EMITS IR AS FAST AS IT ABSORBS. No. When a CO2 molecule absorbs an IR photon, the mean free path within the atmosphere is so short that the molecule gives up its energy to surrounding molecules before it can (on average) emit an IR photon in its temporarily excited state. See more here. Also important is the fact that the rate at which a CO2 molecule absorbs IR is mostly independent of temperature, but the rate at which it emits IR increases strongly with temperature. There is no requirement that a layer of air emits as much IR as it absorbs…in fact, in general, the the rates of IR emission and absorption are pretty far from equal.
4. CO2 COOLS, NOT WARMS, THE ATMOSPHERE. This one is a little more subtle because the net effect of greenhouse gases is to cool the upper atmosphere, and warm the lower atmosphere, compared to if no greenhouse gases were present. Since any IR absorber is also an IR emitter, a CO2 molecule can both cool and warm, because it both absorbs and emits IR photons.
5. ADDING CO2 TO THE ATMOSPHERE HAS NO EFFECT BECAUSE THE CO2 ABSORPTION BANDS ARE ALREADY 100% OPAQUE. First, no they are not, and that’s because of pressure broadening. Second, even if the atmosphere was 100% opaque, it doesn’t matter. Here’s why.
6. LOWER ATMOSPHERIC WARMTH IS DUE TO THE LAPSE RATE/ADIABATIC COMPRESSION. No, the lapse rate describes how the temperature of a parcel of air changes from adiabatic compression/expansion of air as it sinks/rises. So, it can explain how the temperature changes during convective overturning, but not what the absolute temperature is. Explaining absolute air temperature is an energy budget question. You cannot write a physics-based equation to obtain the average temperature at any altitude without using the energy budget. If adiabatic compression explains temperature, why is the atmospheric temperature at 100 mb is nearly the same as the temperature at 1 mb, despite 100x as much atmospheric pressure? More about all this here.
7. WARMING CAUSES CO2 TO RISE, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND The rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 is currently 2 ppm/yr, a rate which is 100 times as fast as any time in the 300,000 year Vostok ice core record. And we know our consumption of fossil fuels is emitting CO2 200 times as fast! So, where is the 100x as fast rise in today’s temperature causing this CO2 rise? C’mon people, think. But not to worry…CO2 is the elixir of life…let’s embrace more of it!
8. THE IPCC MODELS ARE FOR A FLAT EARTH I have no explanation where this little tidbit of misinformation comes from. Climate models address a spherical, rotating, Earth with a day-night (diurnal) cycle in solar illumination and atmospheric Coriolis force (due to both Earth curvature and rotation). Yes, you can do a global average of energy flows and show them in a flat-earth cartoon, like the Kiehl-Trenberth energy budget diagram which is a useful learning tool, but I hope most thinking people can distinguish between a handful of global-average average numbers in a conceptual diagram, and a full-blown 3D global climate model.
9. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE Really?! Is there an average temperature of your bathtub full of water? Or of a room in your house? Now, we might argue over how to do the averaging (Spatial? Mass-weighted?), but you can compute an average, and you can monitor it over time, and see if it changes. The exercise is only futile if your sampling isn’t good enough to realistically monitor changes over time. Just because we don’t know the average surface temperature of the Earth to better than, say 1 deg. C, doesn’t mean we can’t monitor changes in the average over time. We have never known exactly how many people are in the U.S., but we have useful estimates of how the number has increased in the last 50-100 years. Why is “temperature” so important? Because the thermal IR emission in response to temperature is what stabilizes the climate system….the hotter things get, the more energy is lost to outer space.
10. THE EARTH ISN’T A BLACK BODY. Well, duh. No one said it was. In the broadband IR, though, it’s close to a blackbody, with an average emissivity of around 0.95. But whether a climate model uses 0.95 or 1.0 for surface emissivity isn’t going to change the conclusions we make about the sensitivity of the climate system to increasing carbon dioxide.
I’m sure I could come up with a longer list than this, but these were the main issues that came to mind.
So why am I trying to stir up a hornets nest (again)? Because when skeptics embrace “science” that is worse that the IPCC’s science, we hurt our credibility.
NOTE: Because of the large number of negative comments this post will generate, please excuse me if I don’t respond to every one. Or even very many of them. But if I see a new point being made I haven’t addressed before, I’ll be more likely to respond.
“””””…..Kristian says:
May 1, 2014 at 6:57 pm
Bart says, May 1, 2014 at 4:43 pm:
“Yes, the gap is there. However, the weakness in this argument is that it only tells the impedance to IR up to the current atmospheric constitution. What it does not tell us is the incremental sensitivity of IR impedance to increased GHG concentration.”
Bart, read what rgb writes. He seems to think that since there are ‘bites’ in the spectrum, then that means less W/m^2 escapes the earth system. That for a 255K blackbody the spectrum should be complete and that that is what the spectrum from earth would and should look like and that everything less shows the warming from ‘GHGs’.
This spectrum is not about OLR flux to space from the earth. It’s about radiation wavelength spread to space……”””””
Kristian, I believe that what the Nimus 4 observation is saying is that earth’s outgoing radiation is a near black body spectrum, at essentially the ocean surface temperature, shooting straight out to space unhindered, except where the CO2, O3 and H2O in the atmosphere are putting holes, due to GHG LWIR absorption bands.
Remember that what the GHG molecules absorb, and subsequently re-emit, (maybe spectrally different), is emitted ISOTROPICALLY so only about half of it escapes (directly to space), the rest returning to the surface, where it has a variety of processes to deal with.
I don’t understand why one would expect the extraterrestrial outgoing radiation to have other than some mean surface temperature (tropical oceans) temperature signature; unless one firmly believes that the normal atmospheric gases are radiating a substantial thermal (temperature signature) spectrum, which would be lower than surface temperature.
I do believe they do radiate a thermal spectrum; but I’m not crazy enough to call it substantial; those gases are very low density compared to solids and liquids, so they are nowhere near total LWIR absorbers, so must be quite low total emissivities .
“””””…..Konrad says:
May 1, 2014 at 6:03 pm
tjfolkerts says:
May 1, 2014 at 5:26 pm
“80 C corresponds to ~ 880 W/m^2. So you would be right if the ocean were heated 24/7 by midday sun in the tropics. :-)”
———————————-
Only if you incorrectly use blackbody calcs on selective surfaces like climastrologists do 😉
Empirical experiment shows that liquid water heated by solar alone accumulates energy at depth not at the surface where some is immediately re-radiated. Empirical experiment shows that liquid water will reach 80C or beyond in the absence of atmospheric cooling, regardless of DWLWIR……”””””
Konrad, I think you are completely missing the point.
The deep oceans, and your solar ponds are highly transparent to SOLAR SPECTRUM FREQUENCIES so solar energy propagates hundreds of meters into the deep oceans, and any surface warming from the sun is ascribable to near IR from the sun in the 0.7 to 4 microns or so region where only a few percent of solar energy lies.
But at ocean surface temperatures of 300-310 K, the thermal infrared emission spectrum is centered at around 9-10 microns, and at those LWIR frequencies, sea water is highly opaque, and 50 microns will absorb over 99% of such frequencies.
So that means that at ocean surface temperatures, the ocean, and your solar ponds are very high total emissivity near black body radiators. At 3.0 microns, water has its highest absorption coefficient of 8-10,000 cm^-1, so 5 microns absorbs 99% of the energy.
Bart says: May 1, 2014 at 7:05 pm
“Until challenged, I will assume we all agree that the atmosphere would become isothermal…”
OK, I challenge.
Bart: Until challenged, I will assume we all agree that the atmosphere would become isothermal (again, ignoring day/night cycling),
I don’t see why. How do you dispose of both the ground to upper atmosphere gradient and the pair of Equator to poles gradients, under any atmosphere assumptions?
George, My calculation was specifically for the surface of the oceans. Something like a solar pond can indeed get warmer at the bottom (but that requires a salt gradient to suppress convection). There is no way, however, around the requirement that 80 C at the surface requires ~ 880 W/m^2 entering the surface.
The empirical evidence for the actual oceans shows that they do NOT reach 80 C, even with DWLWIR. They get colder with depth.
Dr. Spencer:
(From the conclusion to your Blog Post):
Forgive me for not being among your regular readers. But when you say “we” and “our”, you clearly number yourself among skeptics. Would it be a terrible inconvenience for you to remind (if such is the word) what it is that you remain “skeptical” of? It seems to me this is embraces pretty much the whole enchilada.
Joseph Bastardi says:
May 1, 2014 at 12:55 pm
In the end though, given the magnitude of all the other competing factors around it, what do you estimate c02′s addition to the temp at? If its close to 0, then what are we arguing over.
I agree with Mr. Bastardi. Therefore, Dr. Spencer’s list of his 10 regrets and excuses, right or wrong, is an attempt to put a fig leaf on a member that we should show the alarmists in full vigor.
Exactly what is “pressure broadening”? This begins to sound suspiciously like a lapse rate argument. If it is a more abstract “pressure” like Gavin Schmidt’s diagram here:
http://geosciencebigpicture.com/2014/04/26/everyone-loves-lists-should-we-worry-or-not/co2abs4x/
The bands are nowhere near opaque except almost so at 15. It doesn’t matter if they are opaque or not. Adding more gas between say 13 and 17 microns has no more effect per Beer. Sure, there is residual absorption beyond this range both ways, but I don’t see how this is “broadening”. Those bands were always there absorbing, they are just not saturated. The absorption is significantly diminished in range, and it occurs at a lower intensity.
richardscourtney:
Thanks for keeping the pressure on #7.
The “obviously rising CO2 is caused by humans” claim is much too facile to account for all the observations. At very best, it is incomplete (and therefore a bad statement itself); at worst, it is somewhat misleading. There are important remaining open questions that deserve discussion and a skeptical eye. It is not helpful to assert, as some would recommend, that these issues not be discussed.
Many thoughtful comments from others on #9 as well.
george e. smith says:
May 1, 2014 at 8:24 pm
——————————
Some solar energy does penetrate as far as 200m but very little. When scuba diving you will notice almost all red light is lost at around 10m. Most UV/SW heating of our oceans occurs well above 200m, hence the thermocline.
As my empirical experiments and the work of Texas A&M in 1965 indicate it is heating below the surface that heats our oceans, not SWIR and LWIR heating at the surface.
Empirical experiment shows that for an ocean free to evaporatively cool to the atmosphere, DWLWIR has no effect on the cooling rate. So any claim that DWLWIR is keeping our oceans from freezing is provably false.
The empirical evidence that UV/SW heating below the surface is the primary heating mechanism for the oceans is also available from the diurnal overturning observed above the themocline. If the claims of climastrologists were true and the atmosphere was acting to warm our oceans then little diurnal overturning would occur as surface heating from SWIR/LWIR would almost match the limited sub-surface heating they claim for UV/SW.
davidmhoffer says:
May 1, 2014 at 7:32 pm
” You’ve got convection to consider, and since…”
Doesn’t matter. That only affects the rate at which it becomes isothermal, not whether it does. Eventually, it must.
The atmosphere at the surface interface keeps on picking up heat from the surface. It keeps sending it from there to the upper atmosphere, so it keeps taking up more from the surface. It’s got nowhere else to go since it can’t radiate away. eventually, the heat flows stop when it’s all at the same temperature. See also replies below.
Nick Stokes says:
May 1, 2014 at 8:41 pm
In order to create a lapse rate, you must have a heat sink at the low temperature end. No heat sink (molecules which radiate the heat away), no steady state lapse rate. This is actually a standard assumption in texts when they discuss lapse rate. See also reply to davidmhoffer above, and to Matthew below.
Matthew R Marler says:
May 1, 2014 at 8:59 pm
Heat moves from a region of high temperature to low temperature. Always, in the aggregate. (No, I am not arguing that the GHGs cannot heat the surface because they are cooler – that is not how the GHE works. The Sun is always the heat source, and it’s a helluva lot hotter than the Earth’s surface.)
So, heat will always flow to the upper atmosphere if it is cooler than the ground. But, without radiating elements, it has nowhere to go. Eventually, it must become isothermal from top to bottom. See also other replies above.
george e. smith says:
May 1, 2014 at 7:41 pm
The relevant question for the AGW debate, however, is does the gap increase in area with addition of more CO2? Not does the gap get created by CO2 et al?, but does an incremental increase in CO2 concentration create an incremental increase in the area of the gap in the current atmospheric climate state? I.e., not is the slope of the secant line positive? but is the slope of the tangent line positive?
Is this getting through to anyone out there? A nonlinear function can be strictly positive without the instantaneous slope being positive everywhere. Think, e.g., x/(1 + x^2) for x .gte. zero. The GHE can exist, but it can peter out, or even reverse direction, when a particular concentration has been reached.
Maybe, you have had the same experience with older cars which I have. In the days before electronic ignition and fuel injection, there was always a sweet spot to the accelerator. If you pushed the pedal just so far, you got the maximum acceleration. Push it farther, and you created too rich a fuel mixture, and bogged down. You never actually floored the accelerator – that would only burn more gas for a negative return.
The reductio argument above implies that there is a sweet spot for GHGs in the atmosphere. You reach that point, and you get maximum heating of the surface. Go past that point, and you no longer get a bigger bang for your buck, so to speak. You might even start to get cooling.
Nick Stokes says: May 1, 2014 at 8:41 pm
“In order to create a lapse rate, you must have a heat sink at the low temperature end.”
Not at all. Air motions pump heat downward at a rate which balances transport along the temperature gradient. No nett heat flux.
The DALR is -g/cp. No heat transport parameters there.
tjfolkerts says:
May 1, 2014 at 9:35 pm
——————————-
“My calculation was specifically for the surface of the oceans. Something like a solar pond can indeed get warmer at the bottom (but that requires a salt gradient to suppress convection). There is no way, however, around the requirement that 80 C at the surface requires ~ 880 W/m^2 entering the surface.”
Firstly there are several types of solar pond. The type most applicable to an ocean without atmospheric cooling is not salt gradient but evaporation constrained convecting freshwater storage ponds.
Secondly if you used standard S-B calcs on transparent materials absorbing and accumulating energy at depth you will always get the wrong answer, just like climatologists. Because water is a selective surface not a blackbody or anywhere close, the UV/SW heating is far greater than climastrologists calculated because there is no instantaneous IR re-radiation from intercepted energy at depth. Did your calculations use CFD? I’m guessing not….
“The empirical evidence for the actual oceans shows that they do NOT reach 80 C, even with DWLWIR. They get colder with depth.”
The actual oceans are evaporatively cooled by a radiatively cooled atmosphere. So of course they won’t reach 80C. Remove DWLWIR and atmospheric cooling and they will hit 80C or beyond, just like evaporation constrained convecting solar ponds. And yes, they still will get colder with depth, as SW is almost all absorbed in the first 10’s of meters and this will convect to the surface.
Tim, there truly is no way around it, climastrologists claimed that our oceans would freeze without DWLWIR and evaporative cooling. Empirical experiment proves this false. I can drive all manner of transparent materials prevented from atmospheric cooling that can only cool by IR emission to 80C and beyond just by setting a SW absorption layer below the surface and exposing them to surface standard solar radiation.
Climastrologists stuffed up. They treated the oceans as a near blackbody. You can’t just use IR emissivity to calculate temperature for SW translucent selective coatings exposed to SW. That would be pseudo science. The “-18 for the “surface” in absence of an atmosphere” claim is locked in. It is too late for climastrologists to change it now. There is no escape.
“The rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 is currently 2 ppm/yr, a rate which is 100 times as fast as any time in the 300,000 year Vostok ice core record. And we know our consumption of fossil fuels is emitting CO2 200 times as fast! So, where is the 100x as fast rise in today’s temperature causing this CO2 rise? C’mon people, think.”
Dr. Spencer, it’s you who needs to think. Proving B precedes A precludes “A caused B” (ONLY). It does not require the reverse. Knowing Babe Ruth did not break Alex Rodriquez’ career home run record does not require A-Rod to surpass Ruth’s total.
Apparently, PhD s aren’t required to take Logic 101 anymore?
Bart says:
May 1, 2014 at 11:06 pm
———————————
The funny thing here is that most of the lukewarmers arguing against you seem unaware that Dr. Spencer wrote a post supporting your position in 2009. Go figure….
You are of course correct, radiative subsidence is required for continued vertical circulation in the Hadley, Ferrel and Polar tropospheric convective circulation cells.
Without this circulation the lapse rate would trend toward isothermal and the atmosphere (excepting a near surface layer) would begin to heat.
What Dr. Spencer got wrong in his 2009 post was that –
A. Surface Tav would not be -18C under a non-radiative atmosphere.
B. The temperature of a non-radiative atmosphere would be set by surface Tmax not Tav.
Nick Stokes says:
May 1, 2014 at 11:21 pm
There is nothing to keep the “pump” going. Heat engines require a temperature differential to perform work. Claiming that the heat engine creates the temperature differential which powers it is perpetual motion.
#7 “WARMING CAUSES CO2 TO RISE, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND”
There is strong evidence that warming causes CO2 to rise historically and that CO2 is not a climate driver.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html#CO2Lags
Coherence established between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature
(Nature, Volume 343, Number 6260, pp. 709-714, February 1990)
– Cynthia Kuo et al.
“Temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide are significantly correlated over the past thirty years. Changes in carbon dioxide content lag those in temperature by five months.”
Ice core records of atmospheric CO2 around the last three glacial terminations
(Science, Volume 283, Number 5408, pp. 1712-1714, March 1999)
– Hubertus Fischer et al.
“High-resolution records from Antarctic ice cores show that carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 80 to 100 parts per million by volume 600 ± 400 years after the warming of the last three deglaciations.”
Atmospheric CO2 Concentration from 60 to 20 kyr BP from the Taylor Dome ice core, Antarctica
(Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 27, Number 5, March 2000)
– Andreas Indermuhle et al.
“The lag was calculated for which the correlation coefficient of the CO2 record and the corresponding temperatures values reached a maximum. The simulation yields a lag of (1200 ± 700) yr.”
Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations over the Last Glacial Termination
(Science, Volume 291. Number 5501, January 2001)
– Eric Monnin et al.
“The start of the CO2 increase thus lagged the start of the [temperature] increase by 800 ± 600 years.”
The phase relations among atmospheric CO2 content, temperature and global ice volume over the past 420 ka
(Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 20, Issue 4, pp. 583-589, February 2001)
– Manfred Mudelsee
“Over the full 420 ka of the Vostok record, CO2 variations lag behind atmospheric temperature changes in the Southern Hemisphere by 1.3±1.0 ka”
Timing of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature Changes Across Termination III
(Science, Volume 299, Number 5613, March 2003)
– Nicolas Caillon et al.
“The sequence of events during Termination III suggests that the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 ± 200 years and preceded the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation.”
Southern Hemisphere and Deep-Sea Warming Led Deglacial Atmospheric CO2 Rise and Tropical Warming
(Science, Volume 318, Issue 5849, September 2007)
– Lowell Stott et al.
“Deep sea temperatures warmed by ~2C between 19 and 17 ka B.P. (thousand years before present), leading the rise in atmospheric CO2 and tropical surface ocean warming by ~1000 years.”
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration Across the Mid-Pleistocene Transition
(Science, Volume 324, Number 5934, pp. 1551-1554, June 2009)
– Bärbel Hönisch et al.
“The lack of a gradual decrease in interglacial PCO2 does not support the suggestion that a long-term drawdown of atmospheric CO2 was the main cause of the climate transition”
The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature
(Global and Planetary Change, Volume 100, pp. 51–69, January 2013)
– Ole Humlum et al.
“There exist a clear phase relationship between changes of atmospheric CO2 and the different global temperature records, whether representing sea surface temperature, surface air temperature, or lower troposphere temperature, with changes in the amount of atmospheric CO2 always lagging behind corresponding changes in temperature.”
Bart says: May 1, 2014 at 11:29 pm
“There is nothing to keep the “pump” going. Heat engines require a temperature differential to perform work.”
Yes, you need a heat differential somewhere to create the motions. But you need some source of heat, anyway, to stop the air liquefying. Any planet will have insolation differences which will provide a temperature differential.
So. How did the cat herding initiative work for you? Did everybody agree on the indisputable truths? Do you think that the clueless average Joe finally keeps Secret his Truly Foolish Understanding?
As solar activity affects the climate? In periods of minima of solar ionization in the polar regions is increased several times compared with the ionization at the equator. This must lead to changes in pressure and circulation. Solar activity is still low and so can be a period of many years. Changes are already visible. This winter this will show in the southern hemisphere. The following article explains a lot.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/409/1/012232/pdf/1742-6596_409_1_012232.pdf
richardscourtney says:
May 1, 2014 at 3:29 pm
Dr Spencer’s point 7 is correct but his explanation of it is plain wrong.
Dr. Spencer could have given a better explanation, but is essentially right. Ice cores CO2 indeed is the average of several years, but that highly depends of the accumulation rate. For the high accumulation (coastal) cores the average resolution (smoothing) is only 10 years, increasing to 560 years (Dome C) and 600 years (Vostok) for the inland high altitude cores.
The Law Dome ice cores have an overlap of ~20 years with the direct measurements of the atmosphere at the South Pole:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_sp_co2.jpg
But even the 600-year resolution of the Vostok ice core would be enough to detect the 100+ increase over 160 years, if one-sided or even if part of an 600-year cycle.
There is no reduction to the rate of sequestration as the sequestering ‘sinks’ fill. Clearly, the sinks do not fill.
The fast removal and release of CO2 by vegetation over the seasons is a different process than the one that stores CO2 more permanently in roots, peat, (brwon)coal),… The seasonal influence on vegetation is ~60 GtC in and out, but the more permanent storage is currently only 1 GtC/year with 200 GtC (100 ppmv) excess CO2 in the atmosphere. The year by year variability of the seasonal variation is not more than +/- 1 GtC/year, mainly temperature/drought induced. Thus the fast (seasonal) sinks are saturated, once the leaves have grown in spring.
We are now 100 ppmv above the historical equilibrium. Despite this huge disequilibrium the sink rate, all sinks combined, is only 2 ppmv/year. Thus the more permanent sinks are too slow to accomodate with the human emissions of 4 ppmv/year…
Nick Stokes says:
May 2, 2014 at 12:27 am
You need more than a source of heat. You need a place for it to flow. You need a sink.
Doc Brown had some words on this here.
Matthew Marler and Jimbo
Thanks for your replies but you both missed a word that I was very careful to insert-‘consistency’
‘I’m still not convinced by any of the arguments that, whilst it may be technically possible to come up with a global average (although that seems debatable due to the lack of consistency) it is necessarily meaningful or helpful.’
When temperatures can be retrospectively cooled, stations move, observations are made at different times, different instruments are used, an observing station in a field becomes surrounded by buildings etc etc etc, we are not talking about consistency. This is quite without other external factors such as the amount of sunshine or cloudiness. So I perfectly well understand the argument but remain unconvinced that we measure on a historic like for like basis that gives the average that results sufficient scientific rigour, or that it is useful when the nuances of the regional climates are being lost.
tonyb
“You need a sink.”
Insolation differences provide a sink. We have Hadley Cells. Heat from the tropics is moved to high latitudes and then radiated. This drives lots of motions.
There is another very popular, but also VERY stupid argument frequently brought up against model-based long-term climate projections:
“If we can’t forecast the weather two weeks from now, how can we forecast the climate in 100 years?”
This looks very smart, but just reveals that the proponents of this argument have not understood the difference between weather and climate, or, generally, have no idea about the time scales on which you make observations, theory building, statistical analyses, and simulation (finally).