It has been quite awhile since we’ve had an open thread on WUWT, so let’s have one. As usual, stay on topic per this blog’s usual discussions, and keep it civil. I’m particularly interested in hearing from readers about topics and issues we may not have covered that would be relevant for future posts.
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Just for fun, a question of scale and some simple algebra.
Our atmosphere masses about 5.15×10^18 kg.
Dry air’s specific heat is 1.005 kJ/kg°K.
We use, in total, a little under 9,000 mtoe (megatons of oil equivalent) of energy every year. That converts to about 3.76×10^17 kJoules/year or 1.0467×10^14 kWhr per year. This number from the IEA for 2012 includes everything from nuclear to dung burning. ALL energy used in the world in 2012.
If we could release as heat, with 100% efficiency, every single erg of that into the atmosphere all at once… how much would air temperature increase? The energy transfer equation should get us in the ballpark:
Q = m cp Δt
where
Q = quantity of energy transferred (kJ)
m = mass of substance (kg)
cp = specific heat of the substance (kJ/kg°C, kJ/kg°K)
Δt = temperature difference (rise or fall) in the substance (°C, °K)
Rearranging for temperature change:
Q / m * cp = Δt
Introduce magnitudes:
3.76×10^17 / (5.15×10^18 * 1.005) = Δt
3.76×10^17 / 5.17575×10^18 = Δt
0.0726 = Δt °C,°K
Rounding to just an idiotic 1/100th of a degree that’s 0.07°C or 0.13°F temperature increase if we dumped our entire energy usage for a year into the atmosphere all at once! How on Earth is one of the byproducts of that supposed to do the damage the CAGW folks insist it does? How long is that 0.07°C gonna be there before it’s lost to space?
But if it went into the oceans, the oceans would warm by 0.00007 C.
@Werner, OOOHHHH NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Then you could swim around in the Arctic without that pesky wetsuit to keep you warm.
Just wondering about the double standards of the AGW lot. I mean…do they drink soda pop with CO2 in it to give the fizz ? Is that OK to bring CO2 out of the ground for their pleasure but not OK to bring CO2 out from coal or wood to provide warmth for those that need it? I wonder just how much CO2 Coca Cola and the others release into the atmosphere. Surely the Greens should not be drinking this stuff.
Beer also has CO2 providing the fizz but that’s not from the ground…it’s from bacteria so I’ll keep on drinking that I think!
Anyone got any thoughts on this as another weapon to use against the AGW lot? Has there ever been any research on just how much CO2 is involved…would it be one power station or 10 or x million cars?
Most CO2 for soda and the like is from power plant extraction — from burning coal. The “fizz” is beer is created by yeast, not bacteria, and is simply being recycled from the atmosphere. Plants that produce grain extract CO2 from the atmosphere, combine it with water to produce sugars. Yeasts metabolize the sugars anaerobically to form CO2 and alcohol. The alcohol that you drink is metabolized back to CO2, after first producing acetaldehyde, a poison similar to formaldehyde, that produces the hangover you experience from drinking too much alcohol.
There you go, that is the explanation why warmists hate CO2, hangovers from drinking all that champagne in Lima, Kyoto and Copenhagen!
It’s worse than we thought…OMG, the CO2 comes from coal!
I know that in South Australia much of their CO2 comes from boreholes. I wonder if the soda manufacturers there plan to offset their CO2 footprint by sequestering CO2 back into the ground???
Thanks for the correction about yeast. Good to hear that I can drink more beer without feeling guilty or wrecking poor old Gaia.
[Here are] two quotes that characterize the state of climate [science] and Global Warming/Climate Change:
“In a world increasingly devoid of moral authority, the supposed impartiality of science provides a seemingly objective source of authority. That authority is a major threat to the environmental movement.”
Iain Murray , “The Really Inconvenient Truth” P. 51-52.
–
“When the later generations learn about climate science, they will classify the beginning of the twenty-first century as an embarrassing chapter in the history of science. They will wonder about our time and use it as a warning of the core values and criteria of science were allowed little by little to be forgotten, as the actual research topic of climate change turned into a political and social playground”
Atte Korhola, Professor of Environmental Change, University of Helsinki.
[dupe posting removed. .mod]
Very useful in my ongoing battles against elementary school faculty who believe they are gifted with an innate ability to evaluate all things economic, social, and scientific. Thanks for these
I saw The World’s Weirdest Weather on UK Channel 4 tonight at 8pm GMT.
It was surprisingly good.
Lots of interesting weather and some basic meteorology to go with it.
If you like weird weather without the AGW hype then look it up.
Hansen could have been correct not recently, but in the 1970’s when he warned of the onset of the Holocene Glacial.
Now, in view that Alaska and Siberia are at their normal (or may be a bit warmer) temperatures, but most of the Northern America is engrossed in the ‘catastrophic anthropogenic snowfalls’, this image of the last glacial (Cambridge university) looks a bit ominous
http://www.qpg.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/englishchannelformation/1453389260_3dcecb561c.jpg
New Ice Age may well start not in the Arctic but at the Great lakes, Laurentide ice sheet was up to 3000m thick, but most if not whole of Siberia and Alaska (even today mostly under permafrost) was then ice sheet free.
Suggest: the USA should be stockpiling all the (currently low-priced) oil they can get hold of.
So why the difference between Asia and N America?
Is it because Europe dries out the air before it becomes snow or hail?
And N America has the moisture from the Pacific directly; thus causing an increasing albedo as the land turns white?
That ignores the Rockies.
So why would this have happened?
My hypothesis:
Milankovic cycles –driving tectonics in the far north Atlantic (Earth’s orbital stress)
N. A. tectonics – shuts down down-welling north of Iceland, increasing rate of down-welling south west of Greenland, turning semi-permanent Icelandic Low into a permanent atmospheric pressure system, fixing jet stream to a ‘stationary’ meridional flow position for thousands of years.
Most of evaporation from warm Pacific is deposited mostly in the N. America and the rest in N. Europe as snow, leaving only dry cold winds sweeping Siberia and parts of Alaska.
Once tectonics kicks in (at start of M cyccle), de-icing starts, not as rapidly as assumed, it took 8ka to get rid of the large Laurentide ice bulge.
Arctic’s bathimetry shows clear remnants of at least five periods of excessive magma flows (with 20 or more in total possible, mostly eroded) spaced out by relatively ‘no eruptions’ periods.
For millions of years before Iceland ‘popped-up’ in the N, Atlantic, there were no ice ages.
Stockpiled oil? That’s called coal.
I throw this one up occasionally but have never managed to spark much of a discussion.
I have a theory that the cost of anything in dollars is usually a pretty good estimate of the energy that has gone into producing it.
Gold is expensive because it requires a lot of energy intensive discovery and processing.
Having worked in agriculture it is clear to me that Food = Diesel.
A wind mill requires a lot of mined materials and a lot of hi-tech fabrication.
Some people have no problem with subsidizing renewables but for me this is just an admission of failure. An admission that they absorb more energy than they produce.’
Any thoughts?
and they do not last very long, see here
@ur momisugly Vuk, Those windmill farms are frightening. I had no Idea they were that large and the land areas they take up! Some of those are shocking. Where are those and why don’t we see any of these pictures in the press and what about the funding that must have gone into them and are they contributing anything? ( Oh btw vuk I am from Dutch descent, those mills are still working and were never meant to provide electricity and should not be in the same category, water pumps/grinding grain etc not much electricity a few hundred years ago)
It sounds right for bulk materials.
But not for commodities that have a significant non-material input. The extra paid for ideas isn’t included, for example.
Not much energy was spent making Faberge Eggs but they aren’t available by the dozen for a dollar.
Movies, legal expertise and sports stars also break the rule.
It seems to me that production of bulk commodities is simplified down to energy costs – they can’t be removed. That is an astute observation.
But not everything is a bulk commodity.
“Not much energy was spent making Faberge Eggs but they aren’t available by the dozen for a dollar.
Movies, legal expertise and sports stars also break the rule.”
This is where I think it gets interesting.
All of those things HAVE absorbed a lot of energy. The energy is not left residing in the egg or the movie but it has been expended in the production.
For example to produce a Faberge Egg you need to support a few craftsmen for a few years and that takes energy.
Same with the vast hordes of people and resources needed to make a movie.
I guess my position is that energy is the one thing expended during the construction of something whilst all matter is conserved and just moved around a bit.
So I still think that money spent = energy expended.
LewSkannen
Check also.
The amount of oil that any single weight of gold will buy remains almost the same since both began trading in the 1860-19890’s.
I’m from a farming family, and Food = Diesel isn’t that far off. This year our production costs will be the lowest since Katrina. But the drought in California, as well as some nonsensical politics there, will continue to keep the price of fruits and vegetables elevated, However, if that high pressure ridge breaks down in the next 3 months we might see unprecedented drops in food along with moderated home energy and gasoline costs, which, if I may get in a political side-swipe to any enviro-nuts who are trolling, benefit lower income persons the most.
As regards agriculture, I think it’s a good deal more complicated.
In a good year where your 1,000 acres produce twice as much as a bad year for the same tractor time, the selling price can be just about anything. Probably all your neighbours had a really good year, too. Not good for prices. Etc.
In some areas that are susceptible to mid and long-range drought that might be true, as in California right now. In Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio the rain is sufficiently reliable that it’s not a lot more complicated. The drought of two years ago, that hit Nebraska and Iowa was the odd-year-out. For the most part the variance in the long-term production price for the grain crops that are grown in the Midwest, specifically corn and soybeans, vary more with the cost of diesel than with any other factor. Even with variance in weather we sit in a pretty tight range of corn yields. That’s not an isolated 40 acre plot, that’s on 3 sections of land. My wife is from Northern Iowa, where her family operates 35 sections, (yes, that’s right, 35 sections, she’s the only women in the world that wealthy who knows how to splice a hydraulic hose, what’s not to love). Their corn yields are pretty tight over the last 30 years, with 4 years being exceptionally low. I can’t even give you an accepted metric on variance since it doesn’t fit any theoretical probability distribution known to man, and I do have a PhD in Information Theory, so this isn’t foreign territory.
When we look at planning we look at diesel futures more than anything, since long-range weather forecasts are “crap” and we hedge that against short-term weather as we see it for 30 days out from planting,and that might change our entire amount of, as you call it, “tractor time.” The options we have for dealing with weather impact are huge these days. If we believe that rain will be sparse we can go with extremely low-til methods, concede about 15 to 20 bushels per acre, and conserve as much existing ground moisture as possible. If we are looking at normal weather, (if there is such a thing), we can stir it up a bit more, and shoot for that elusive goal of 250 bu acre of corn.
There is some bright news about green schemes and shady politicians.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/17/chris-horner-uncovering-john-kitzhabers-environmen/
Peeking behind the ‘green’ curtain
Uncovering the Kitzhaber connections
http://www.wsj.com/articles/holman-jenkins-oregon-is-greener-than-thou-1424218950#livefyre-comment
Oregon Is Greener Than Thou
Environmentalist self-righteousness is so unaware of itself as to be entertaining.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398648/kitzhaber-and-greedy-greens-john-fund
Kitzhaber and the Greedy Greens
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398648/kitzhaber-and-greedy-greens-john-fund
Kitzhaber – yeah sad that, but greed and corruption and bribery in politics – I’m shocked.
Spent several years – late 70s early 80’s – doing PhD in Eugene (yeah, I’m a Duck), but really chasing trout in the McKenzie and steelhead anywhere I could.
The people who’d come out of the hills for Sat Market were beyond Ken Keysey (sp? I’m a reformed English major with a spelling problem).
They’re no longer in the hills, they’re living in tarp tents by the railroad tracks and next to Hwy 99 (West 7th near Chambers).
They call them “rest stops”. Whatever they they were doing in the late 70’s has caught up to them and they are very tired…. (the slogan is “it should not be illegal to sleep”)
Remember how Springfield was the ugly sister …she’s still ugly but now she has standards … she’s picky about who/how she lets sleep on her streets. Here on the west side of the river we let anybody sleep with us.
The Kitzhaber-Tom Steyer story is important. It is now becoming obvious that “Big Green” bought and paid for a politician. When people ask “why would the climate activists make this up?”, talk to them about the Kitzhaber scandal and the green corruption.
Does anyone know of any underground long term temperature records? Well water, cave or any other temperature measurements with little variability that would provide a very accurate up or down temperature trend.
Doug L
Doug. Following is copied from a pipeline burial instruction page. The paragraphs included below pertain to ground temperature at various depths.
Bottom line? Go down just a few meters and the ground temperature is constant. Go underground (in a cave for example) even with a permanent opening more than 10 meters back (as long as no wind blows through the cave from end-to-end) and it stabilizes at 50 F.
http://wiki.iploca.com/display/rtswiki/Appendix+6.2+-+Pipeline+Trench+Design
Yes the temperature is constant which is why it would be the perfect place for temperature measurements. Its like taking the earths temperature. If there was a thermometer deep in a sealed cave with one daily reading for the past 100 years that would be about as accurate a reading as we could get to see if the earth was warming or cooling.
Temperatures in wine cellars would also work very well. Caves or wine cellars at various altitudes would be interesting too. Air pressure would be smoothed in a cave and not subject to weather variability but altitude would still provide large differences
Doug
Here are the official global borehole temperature records
They show a steady increase in temperatures for some 500 years
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/borehole/core.html
Tonyb
Tonyb? Who did that study? Did Mann have anything to do with it? If he did I’ll just consider it junk science. They have an exact temperature at various depths from the 1960’s. Go back and measure them today and see if there is any change. I like to keep things simple if I can instead of reconstructing data that might not be accurate.
doug
no, not mann. He showed temperatures declining for 500 years before the sudden upsurge from 1900. This study reflects the reality that can be seen in such measures as CET in as much the temperature has been rising for some 350 years or so, well before co2 could have ha an impact.
I have been in correspondence with the author in the past and it is a bona fide study although, as with all these things, whether a temperature signal of accuracy can be extracted from a borehole is a matter of conjecture.
tonyb
I’m relatively new to this debate and am looking for a good explanation for or refutation of the idea of CO2 saturation. – Thanks.
Well, no-one denies that the effect of additional CO2 decreases exponentially as CO2 increases.
It’s Beer-Lambert’s Law; consider a window with light passing through but it’s had paint flicked at it. Each extra flick of paint will bock more light if it lands on glass but won’t do anything if it lands on paint that’s already there. Each flick of the brush has less and less impact.
Each extra CO2 molecule is less and less likely to be important.
So are we there yet?
That depends on how insignificant extra CO2 must be before it is swamped by noise. Is the CO2 effect swamped by other effects. No-one worries about the tallest sunflower blocking the view next to a range of new skyscrapers.
And the other effects? Well, who can tell all the things that affect the climate?
But (my opinion) we can tell that CO2 does not dominate the other effects, and so we can say it is sort of saturated – because of the pause relative to the climate models.
cbsjr42,
According to radiative physics, CO2 has its greatest effect within about the first 20 ppm. The effect is logaritmic, as you can see here:
So at our current ≈400 ppm, adding more CO2 has no measurable effect. The usual analogy is painting over a window: the first coat of paint has a great effect, but subsequent coats have less and less of an effect.
You can see from the chart above that if CO2 was increased by even 20% – 30%, the rise in temperature would still be too small to measure.
Thus, the atmospheric window for CO2 is saturated. Adding a lot more CO2 to current concentrations will have a negligible effect.
Another consideration: CO2 is completely harmless. There has never been any global harm from the rise in CO2. And CO2 is very beneficial to the biosphere, which is starved of it:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SoxiDu0taDI/AAAAAAAABFI/Z2yuZCWtzvc/s1600/Geocarb%2BIII-Mine-03.jpg
More CO2 is better. There has never been any downside identified with adding more of that beneficial trace gas.
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta, describe the discovery of a number of large wood fragments from the Panda Kimberlite Pipe, a volcanic intrusion which forms part of the Ekati diamond mining concession worked by BHP Billiton in Canada’s Great Slave Province, which has been calculated to be about 53.3 million years old (Early Eocene). The Panda Kimberlite Pipe forms part of the Lac de Gras Field, which contains about 150 such pipes, emplaced between 45 and 78 million years ago. The Panda Pipe is a simple 200 m diameter cylinder, apparently produced by a single eruption.
Wolfe et al. provide a detailed description of a single piece of wood, a large wood fragment which had fallen into the lava and been mummified. The wood is excellently preserved, with only the outermost millimetre having been fusinized (burned), suggesting an absence of free oxygen when it was entombed. The preserved structure of the wood allows the specimen to be assigned to a tree of the genus Metasequoia, a form of Giant Redwood now restricted to central China, but known to have been common in Alaska during the late Palaeocene and Early Eocene, and therefore not a great surprise in Slave Province.
Metasequoia requires a high level of humidity to survive, with a minimum of around 1000 mm of rainfall per year. The area where the fossil was recovered has around 280 mm of rainfall per year, suggesting that the climate was much wetter during the Early Eocene (it is possible that this 53 million year old specimen comes from a tree of the same species as the modern Chinese trees, since these are exceptionally long lived organisms). Since the tree was living close to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (about 55.5 million years ago), when the climate is predicted to have been substantially warmer and wetter in this region, this confirms the climatic predictions. Isotopic data obtained from both the cellulose of the wood and an amber (tree resin) inclusion within the fossil suggests that temperatures would have been around 7-12˚C warmer than at present while the tree was living, again tending to confirm the climatic predictions.
http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/preserved-wood-from-early-eocene.html
Climate Change Destroyed Ancient Human Civilizations
Cooler climates have been associated with the deterioration/destruction of human civilizations, and are much more associated with earlier deaths in modern times than is global warming.
—-
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS0016793213080227
Deep solar activity minima, sharp climate changes, and their impact on ancient civilizations
It is shown that, over the past ∼10000 years (the Holocene), deep Maunder type solar minima have been accompanied by sharp climate changes. These minima occurred every 2300–2400 years. It has been established experimentally that, at ca 4.0 ka BP, there occurred a global change in the structure of atmospheric circulation, which coincided in time with the discharge of glacial masses from Greenland to North Atlantic and a solar activity minimum. The climate changes that took place at ca 4.0 ka BP [4,000 years before present] and the deep solar activity minimum that occurred at ca 2.5 ka BP [2,500 years before present] affected the development of human society, leading to the degradation and destruction of a number of ancient civilizations.
—-
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618211006707
The Tavoliere salt-marsh appears to have contracted during the arid/warm phases associated to maxima of solar activity and to have expanded during the wet/cold phases of solar minima. This coastal area, characterized by a very flat topography and arid climate, appears to have been very sensitive to even minor hydrological and climate changes. Changes of solar activity, determining extensive environmental transformations, were also possibly responsible for the abandonment of the human coastal settlements of one of the most important Neolithic archaeological districts of Italy.
—-
http://www.academia.edu/1411970/The_Influence_of_Climatic_Change_on_the_Late_Bronze_Age_Collapse_and_the_Greek_Dark_Ages
Mediterranean Sea surface temperatures cooled rapidly during the Late Bronze Age, limiting freshwater flux into the atmosphere and thus reducing precipitation over land. These climatic changes could have affected Palatial centers that were dependent upon high levels of agricultural productivity. Declines in agricultural production would have made higher-density populations in Palatial centers unsustainable. The Greek Dark Ages that followed occurred during prolonged arid conditions that lasted until the Roman Warm Period.
—-
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01498.x/abstract
The projected increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration ([CO2]) is expected to increase rice yield, but little is known of the effects of [CO2] at low temperature, which is the major constraint to growing rice in cool climates. The results suggest that yield gain due to elevated [CO2] can be reduced by low temperature.
—-
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935114003661
Seasonal patterns in mortality have been recognised for decades, with a marked excess of deaths in winter, yet our understanding of the causes of this phenomenon is not yet complete. Research has shown that low and high temperatures are associated with increased mortality independently of season; however, the impact of unseasonal weather on mortality has been less studied. In this study, we aimed to determine if unseasonal patterns in weather were associated with unseasonal patterns in mortality. We obtained daily temperature, humidity and mortality data from 1988 to 2009 for five major Australian cities with a range of climates. We split the seasonal patterns in temperature, humidity and mortality into their stationary and non-stationary parts. A stationary seasonal pattern is consistent from year-to-year, and a non-stationary pattern varies from year-to-year. We used Poisson regression to investigate associations between unseasonal weather and an unusual number of deaths. We found that deaths rates in Australia were 20–30% higher in winter than summer. The seasonal pattern of mortality was non-stationary, with much larger peaks in some winters. Winters that were colder or drier than a typical winter had significantly increased death risks in most cities. Conversely summers that were warmer or more humid than average showed no increase in death risks. Better understanding the occurrence and cause of seasonal variations in mortality will help with disease prevention and save lives.
—-
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/3/702
In the middle-to-late Holocene [~4,000 years ago], Earth’s monsoonal regions experienced catastrophic precipitation decreases that produced green to desert state shifts. Resulting hydrologic regime change negatively impacted water availability and Neolithic cultures. Whereas mid-Holocene drying is commonly attributed to slow insolation reduction and subsequent nonlinear vegetation–atmosphere feedbacks that produce threshold conditions, evidence of trigger events initiating state switching has remained elusive. Here we document a threshold event ca. 4,200 years ago in the Hunshandake Sandy Lands of Inner Mongolia, northern China, associated with groundwater capture by the Xilamulun River. This process initiated a sudden and irreversible region-wide hydrologic event that exacerbated the desertification of the Hunshandake, resulting in post-Humid Period mass migration of northern China’s Neolithic cultures. The Hunshandake remains arid and is unlikely, even with massive rehabilitation efforts, to revert back to green conditions.
—-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/11382808/Winter-death-toll-to-exceed-40000.html
The cold weather death toll this winter is expected to top 40,000, the highest number for 15 years. From the beginning of December until January 16, there were 8,800 more deaths than average of 25,000, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The rate soared by 33 per cent in the week up until January 16, when there were almost 15,000 deaths, as the bitter cold snap took hold. An additional 3,000 deaths are expected this week as temperatures plunge to their coldest of the winter so far.
—-
I would love to hear from WUWT readers what their primary reasons are why they are catastrophic anthropogenic climate change skeptics.
I would also appreciate hearing comments from those who DO subscribe to the notion of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
I’ll share my response later; I’m going surfing 🙂
My personal journey. I was a life long Lefty/Greenie (CND, Greenpeace, save the Whales, etc) but was challenged on FB during the last Australian election by a skeptic over Global Warming. I had the usual arguments but this guy just had a lot more detailed rebuttals at hand. So I decided to read up on the science so I could counter such a person in the future. As I was in the middle of reading a few climate and physics books from the Library I saw a clip from ABC TV of the program Q&A where David Suzuki was challenged by a low paid climate scientist in the audience who was having doubts due to the pause. This then gave me more doubts. I say more because the books I was reading from the Library were not making any logical sense.
The final straw was looking at the planet Venus. The ‘runaway greenhouse effect’ on that planet was the original information about the theory that I had been introduced to as a school kid in the 80’s. Looking at the mass of the atmosphere in comparison to Earth and the pressure at the surface I realised the ideal gas laws explained things much better than IR radiation. Checking out temperatures at 1BAR (pressure on earth at sea level) on Venus above its surface and finding it to be similar to Earth, sealed it for me. I then found that Jupiter’s temperature rises to that of Earth when one decends to where it’s atmospheric pressure is 20BAR.
I have since then found glaring mistakes in the greenhouse theory, which anger me as I cannot believe these mistakes are not deliberate attempts at deception. Consider when you read or hear the claim that some trace gas is 10,000 times more potent a Greenhouse gas than CO2. This was one of the things that had me scratching my head when reading books from the Library. My gut reaction was: if CO2 is absorbing 1/10,000th of the IR radiation than this other gas, how can it be absorbing enough to do anything to temperature? When I heard the official answer, which was that the super GH gasses get this rating because they remain in the atmosphere longer I completely lost it! What a con. What a slight of hand. What a cheap magic trick, deliberately designed to deceive! If molecule (a) remains in the atmosphere for 10,000 years and molecule (b) remains for just 1 year then the claim is correct, but what the claim fails to say is that molecule (b) is constantly replaced every year by an identical molecule (c), (d), (e), etc. so the RATIO of the different molecules in relation to each other always remains the same. This angers me so much! I could go on. I do go on whenever I meet a climatologist on a Green FB page who dares to try and peddle their pseudo science at me.
I am like an ex smoker now who is ten times worse than someone who never smoked for berating people who still smoke. I am on a crusade against people who have taken my natural good natured care for the environment and tried to use it against me to further their dishonest careers or subversive political agendas.
Checking out temperatures at 1BAR (pressure on earth at sea level) on Venus above its surface and finding it to be similar to Earth,
BINGO! I did the same research.
Wicked … I’m impressed! Normally, I’m so underwhelmed with my 30-something countrymen who just seem to lack rational thought skills. My wife’s an academic and she fears for the future of advanced education with the dumbos she is faced with. Mazel !
Welcome to the real world wicked wench, you are indeed very welcome, brainwashing of the less intelligent however remains a problem.
I knew that CO2 levels were rising, but I also knew that historical accounts and records showed it had been warmer previous to today. Therefore, although tempted by the one fact the Warmistas had, the con job failed because I had other knowledge that they did not address.
Yes the Medievil warm period was another thing that totally changed things for me. When putting the archeological record of Greenland (raising cattle where it is now too cold to) against tree ring proxies, it really is a no contest. And let’s face it if the “unprecedented, catastrophic” part of the theory is false then the “man made” bit becomes irrelevant!
1. CO2 is logarithmic
2. If sensitivity were high, increases of the last few decades would result in temperature changes easily distinguishable from natural variation, but;
3. Temperature changes of the last few decades are NOT distinguishable from natural variation, implying that;
4. Sensitivity is low.
This entire debate should have ended with “CO2 is logarithmic”. That basic fact is all one needs to understand to dismiss the alarmism out of hand. Which is why the CAGW literature, including that of the IPCC, spends so much time yammering on about tree ring records and storm frequency and species migration while avoiding any in depth discussion of the most basic of physics.
We’re at 400 ppm now, going up by 2 ppm per year. It will take another 200 years to double current levels of CO2. Sensitivity would have to be MASSIVELY HIGH to be dangerous over those time frames. The fact that we can barely (if at all) distinguish temperature rise from natural variation demonstrates that sensitivity IS NOT high, and not anywhere near the levels required for concern. Bring this up with an alarmist and they resort to tree rings, sea level rise, storm frequency, drought, flooding, ice melting, ANYTHING but the discussion of the physics itself. And when one examines all those claims, they turn out to be BS for the most part as well.
I think that is a great question – even though I do like your cartoons, too.
My story is complicated. I have engineering background and I’ve not found a single engineer who is not skeptical. Plus, I live in Vermont – ’nuff said?????
CO2
Plant food!
Said plants feed my food!
There is a recent thread entirely dedicated to that question at Judith Curry’s blog.
And there was a thread devoted to that here on WUWT back in 2013.
Here is a comment I made that summarised my survey of that thread,
“catastrophic anthropogenic climate change skeptic”
Started off with:
1. Arrival of self-styled “climate scientists” selling Arrhenius bunk, everything is to do with conduction alone, no apparent knowledge of Maxwell, Carnot, Clausius, gas laws, thermodynamics, Co2 being logarithmic etc.
2. Climate modelling: based on “its CO2 wot done it ’cause we can’t think of any other reason”. Same absurd error as eating ice cream causes drowning. Flat earth not rotating obloid sphere. Triginometry that has allowed humans to sail round the world for centuries is too hard to incorporate in computer code.
Finally: 3. AGW/CACC-ers getting everything wrong. Not just some things wrong. Extraordinary achievement in a way ….
Hi everyone. First of all, thank you very much for the numerous kind compliments about my cartoons. One of the great delights of being human is laughter. Another is making others laugh. (And people laugh at me all the time.)
Okay down to business. I asked: what are the primary reasons for your catastrophic anthropogenic climate change skepticism? (Or subscription, as the case may be.)
Thank you to those who responded. Please note that JamesS took the time to provide a very thoughtful answer a bit farther down the thread.
JamesS’s post resonates with me in that he describes not one reason for his skepticism, but rather a whole bunch of flashing red lights:
— the vastness of geological time vs the ludicrously short time frame of, say, the Hockey Stick;
— the incredibly large natural fluctuations over geological time vs the microscopic contemporary changes being fretted over;
— the transubstantiation of mathematical model output into “data”;
— statistical techniques that waterboard “data” into confessing about the crimes of man;
— “scientists” who refuse to submit their work to falsification;
— the unsettling emergence of the oxymoronic concept of “settled science”;
— journal bullies.
I will add a few more:
— WTF do “average temperatures” and “global temperatures” mean in a non-equilibrium system?;
— looking at signal-to-noise ratios that are so low that one would need a hotline to Heaven to glean any information;
— assuming that all of the feedback mechanisms have been identified;
— assuming the leads and lags are all figured out;
— modeling coupled, highly nonlinear dynamical systems and then pretending these can be used to forecast far into the future with precision;
— worse, claiming that everyone on earth has to submit to these “forecasts” and pay tribute in the form of money, loss of liberty, loss of property, loss of health and well-being, loss of national sovereignty, loss of science and logic, and on and on;
— the Orwellian abuse of language used to get people to submit: climate change; climate denial; carbon footprint; carbon tax; carbon sequestration; carbon geoengineering … and now they go beyond vilifying carbon dioxide — they vilify carbon itself (goodbye organic chemistry);
— the blatant lies and deceptive tactics used at every level, from data mutilation to media magnification;
— the EF5 tornado of logical fallacies deployed: argumentum ad hominem; argumentum ad populum; argumentum ad verecundiam; argumentum ad baculum; post hoc ergo propter hoc; onus probandi; … never mind, just insert the entire list of fallacies accumulated by humanity over all of time;
— thesis, antithesis, synthesize … (create a problem, pose a solution, shove it up their …)
— the blatantly anti-capitalistic and anti-nation-state biases of the entire enterprise;
— pretending that the UN’s and IPCC’s output is “science” when it is clearly political science;
— the ludicrous attribution of EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS EVERYWHERE to “climate change” (just follow Google News > Climate Change (or Global Warming) for a couple of days and you’ll see what I mean);
— the endless ad hoc nature of cAGW (more duct tape and baling wire please);
— the inherent lack of falsifiability of very long range forecasts;
— the imperviousness to falsifiability in the shorter term … “the models are right; the climate is wrong”;
— even the proxies have proxies;
— why does every commercial greenhouse around the globe increase CO2 levels by 4x? Hmmm?
Good Lord, I could go on and on. (I know I’m going to press “Post Comment” and immediately wish I had added a zillion more.)
And yet, someone like DavidMHoffer get right to the point: CO2 is logarithmic. Done. Time for a beer.
And therein lies the key JamesS was getting at, and that I have tried to amplify: so much about the climate hysteria “just doesn’t feel like science.” And that is because most of it isn’t about science; it is about political science. And in political science the end — total control — justifies the means — lying like there is no tomorrow.
all right then, how was the surf?
I heard about it in the mid 80s in school and had learnt enough to know that there was very little CO2 in the air and that it was a much poorer absorber of IR than water. The first thing I thought was it sounded like propaganda to make nuclear look less polluting.
I had an argument in about 1990 with a leftie (cute girl) when I said that governments didn’t drag their feet on the ozone hole because the science was more robust. She insisted that AGW and the ozone hole were the same thing. Instead of saying “Yes, you’re right and now you want to sleep with me” I argued with her (still regret it). The price of being a denier, I guess.
I didn’t really care anymore until the arguments and name calling started getting nasty. Then the climategate emails and came out and the alarmism got so ridiculous that I decided to look into it more. The first thing that sealed it for me was how much it had warmed from 1920 to 1940, with a pause in more recent times. Then there was a quick calculation of how much fossil fuel would we need to burn to neutralise the oceans (Oh you mean drop the pH by 0.1 when you say it makes the ocean acidic! )
Since I had upset the wrong people already, I became more interested with the intention to disrupt the propaganda (to be the pigeon on the chess board). My head was already in the lions mouth so I thought that I might as well shove it down a bit further and get the bastard to choke.
Here’s a WUWT thread devoted to such testimonies.
(I think there was an earlier thread on the same topic.)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/25/my-personal-path-to-catastrophic-agw-skepticism/
Here are a couple of Climate Etc. threads:
http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/12/the-denizens-of-climate-etc/
http://judithcurry.com/2015/02/15/denizens-ii/
When they said “it’s the consensus” without solid supporting evidence. For example a plot of temperature versus CO2 showing correlation. They never show this because there isn’t one.
Been lurking for sometime and this is my maiden post so be gentle with me….
I’m just your ordinary bloke on the street but my Dad always taught me to never believe anything off the bat and question everything so I have been a skeptic since the beginning of all this.
My first point is one that really irks me… its politics… so often I see the wariest lab led as ‘lefties’ or ‘marxists’ etc… well I consider myself a socialist but I am no warmist… could people be careful.. while some (most) warmists may be ‘left of centre’ not all lefties are warmists (causation correlation fallacy?)
Secondly.. I have seen the hockey stick and that image won’t seem to go away, and in it we can see the warming of the late 20th century, now consider the CO2 record… the earths population has near doubled from 1940 ish and industrialisation has skyrocketed.. in recent times especially in china and india.. I would have expected to see an increase in the rate of CO2 rise mirroring the temp rise but i don’t see it… rate of CO2 rise appears fairly constant… I would also expect to see blips that reflect increase or decrease in rate according to economic activity worldwide… a slow down as a result of economic decline in 2008 for example.. even if there were some sort of lag in the system. If the warmists could spot that and say LOOK ITS HUMAN CAUSED… then it might have some credibility … tell me am i missing something??
Sly
I will take your words at their face value. Your questions are welcome here.
Well, from 1650 to 1850,
CO2 was steady, and temperatures rose over 20-30 year periods.
CO2 was steady, and global average temperatures were steady for many periods of 10-15 years.
CO2 was steady, and global average temperatures declined over periods of 15-30 years.
CO2 was steady, and overall, global average temperatures increased.
From 1850 to 1935, CO2 rose a little bit.
CO2 rose a little bit, and global average temperatures declined over periods of 15-20 years.
CO2 rose a little bit, and global average temperatures were steady over periods of 10-15 years.
CO2 rose a little bit, and global average temperatures rose a little bit over periods of 15-25 years.
from 1935 through 2015, CO2 rose considerably (more than 30%).
CO2 rose a lot, and global average temperatures declined over periods of 15-20 years.
CO2 rose a lot, and global average temperatures were steady over periods of 10-15 years.
CO2 rose a lot, and global average temperatures rose a little bit over periods of 15-25 years.
No, CO2 is not responsible for measurable changes in global average temperatures.
Misguided efforts to “restrict CO2 emissions” and order that we “stop climate change” will fail, but as they fail, they will kill millions dying in needless energy shortages and deliberately excessive high prices due to Big Government, Big Finance (30 trillion in carbon futures alone!) , and Big Science at Big Government Institutions.
I wasn’t in any way trying to suggest CO2 was responsible.. my point was that if ‘they’ could link CO2’s rise to human activity then that would strengthen their claim. The fact that industrial activity does NOT seem to have an effect on the RATE of change in the the rise of CO2 would suggest to me that the CO2 rise is not entirely human caused
Fear not, there are left wing people in this world who by simply adhering to the scientific method, see no evidence of catastrophic AWG.
For starters, the hockey stick is perhaps the most thoroughly debunked piece of work in the history of science. It is based upon very poor tree ring data and worse statistical methods. The image should indeed go away. Visit ClimateAudit, or read “The Hockey Stick Illusion”
Here’s how it all breaks down to me:
Have we seen global warming? Yes, a few degrees in the last century..
Did man cause it? The physics behind the ability of CO2 to trap heat is well established, as is the increase in atmospheric CO2. So yes we, probably caused some of it. Very hard to quantify what percentage.
Is it a concern? The amount of actual warming measured is quite minor, and is far below what the models and organizations such as the IPCC have predicted. Their models incorporate feedback mechanisms which are poorly supported by both theory and data,
Furthermore, it has not been established whatsoever what the optimal temperature is. There are both benefits and drawbacks to warming. Attempts to tie warming to increased storms, floods droughts etc. do not hold up to statistical analysis.
To me the greatest threat of the entire global warming fiasco is that it results in misdirection of priorities. It distracts money and resources from genuine environmental concerns. We always need to balance environment restrictions verses economic progress, and CO2 is the least of our actual concerns.
Thank you for recognising that politics does not necessarily determine your position on AGW… I know i said i am your average bloke on the street but maybe I sold myself short.. I am a teacher and have in that respect a basic mathematical and scientific background and so understand the basics and principles..
I 100% agree with your last statement (and all the others btw) and have been following the debate for some time (especially many of the videos of Dr linden and others, so I know well most of the arguments.
What hit me recently though was the lack of any variability in the rate of CO2 rise or are the timescales and levels too small to detect?
Sly, it is very brave to come here and point out that left-wing people can read graphs and so be sceptical of the hypothesis that rising atmospheric CO2 drives newsworthy global warming.
The stripes on my back from those who should be my allies in seeking good science, just because I am a socialist… sigh.
Thank you for speaking so perceptively and thank you for being so open.
“Secondly.. I have seen the hockey stick and that image won’t seem to go away, and in it we can see the warming of the late 20th century,”
Interesting statement, you also state “Been lurking for sometime” and you appear to know nothing about DR. Mann’s shenanigans in it creation.
“I would also expect to see blips that reflect increase or decrease in rate according to economic activity worldwide” Why? the Level of CO2 produced by human activity is so small that the slight down turn in economic activity would be hidden by any natural noise
Hmm your handle is Sly
well as mike the morlock all I can say is Eat your greens.
fer crin out loud…. I said “the hockey stick image won’t go away” doesn’t mean i believe it or that I don’t know about Mann et als corruption of the data and the scientific method… but you still see it in the mdm is what i meant!
I think you’ll find that the earth’s human population is about three times that of 1940.
thnx for that … so I would expect the rate of CO2 rise to accelerate and it doesn’t seem to???
Do you really believe that Russian temperature records from, say, 1917-1950 are reliable?
Do you honestly believe that Chinese temperature records from, say, 1913-1980 are reliable?
Do you seriously believe that Sub-Saharan African temperatures from, say 1850-1975 are accurate?
Do you really believe that oceanic temperatures from, say 1800-1970 are accurate? (as we know, the oceans cover 70% of the earth’s surface).
I don’t.
How could they be reliable/accurate unless they bolster the current political meme.
They have a scary story to tell, that only they can solve, and data be damned they aren’t gonna miss out on the opportunities presented.
A few years ago I read a paper where the author calculated and graphed absorption of surface-emitted infrared by the atmosphere at current CO2 concentrations. Absorption occurs in several bands. The calculation showed 100% absorption in each band! To me this means that any additional CO2 would not increase infrared absorption.
A search online showed that climate researchers acknowledge this effect. See http:www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm
The response at this webpage is that radiative losses of infrared from the upper atmosphere are decreased because the warmer atmosphere is thicker. This is shown in a cartoon of Australia.
Here is the key statement, “By adding greenhouse gases, we force the radiation to space to come from higher colder air, reducing the flow of radiation to space.”
This argument is circular because it assumes that CO2 has caused heating that thickens the atmosphere. They also assume, without any evidence, that the atmosphere thickens where it has warmed. Further, they also assume, without evidence, that radiative losses to space would be reduced by a thicker atmosphere. My memory of gas laws tells me that with heating the number of molecules doing the absorption doesn’t decrease, only the distance between them.
With more CO2, radiation to space is forced to come from higher colder air, not because the atmosphere is hotter, but simply because there is more CO2.
The Effective Radiating Level (ERL) is thus raised to a higher altitude. The temperature at the level now has to increase until it emits as much radiation as before (to maintain the Radiation Balance – ‘energy out’ must equal’ energy in’ ).
Because of the Lapse Rate, the rate at which various layers of the atmosphere warm with decreasing altitude, the surface temperature ends up higher.
Just saw a National Geographic special on the newstand. It’s all about the “War on Science.” Guess which was the top story. You got it, “Global Warming is a hoax,” or some-such. Next was something about Darwin, the third was that the Moon landings were a hoax. I stopped at that.
To criticize the feeble case of AGW is now formalized anti-science, up there with the notion of faking a landing on the moon.
Adios NG.
I believe this is the article you are referring to:
Why Do Reasonable People Doubt Science?
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text
It’s awesome! It’s like a neutron star of logical fallacies. I was so disturbed by its insanity that I actually stayed up late the other night writing an article to dismantle them all, but I gave up because the internet is not big enough.
About six months ago the head of NPR resigned to become the head of National Geographic, because he felt he could make more of a difference there. This is likely his doing.
It’s not about huggin’ trees…It’s about buying your right to feeling smug about not having to feel “carbon guilt”, and about supreme hypocrisy:
You ‘hit the nail on the head’ on that one!
so why aren’t they pushing to ban NASCAR? You’re right, of course.
From the Australian Newspaper. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/queenslands-cycles-of-havoc/story-e6frg6z6-1225998344719
Despite claims to the contrary, climate scientists say it is not possible say with any confidence whether there is a climate change signal in a single extreme event or even an extreme season.
“It is difficult to make a strong case that we are seeing a change in tropical cyclones,” Bureau of Meteorology climate specialist David Jones says.
“There is a strong physical basis for expecting cyclones to become stronger but it is challenging to see a particular trend in the data,” Jones says.
Most of the cyclone data used by climate scientists only dates back to the 1980s.
Prior to 1960 it was only really possible to measure cyclones opportunistically if they happened to pass over a boat or weather station.
From the late 70s to 80s the quality of data improved dramatically with the availability of very good satellite images.
It makes a mockery of claims in other Australian papers that the two Cat 5 cyclones (that only made landfall at best a Cat3) are becoming more frequent. We can never know that the severe cyclones that took up 100 lives in a year in 1918 were not Cat 5 while still out to sea.
Happy to oblige, Max. My degree is in geology, and while I was never what one would call an active scientist (only worked in the field for less than a year out of college), I certainly received a good education in the field. Even as an undergrad, all my instructors were PhDs — I think I had only one geology class that wasn’t taught by a doctorate, and that was my Geophysics course, taught by an MS working on his PhD. I received a good grounding in the scientific method, and of course learned the long history of the Earth in geologic terms — meaning that time spans of less than a million years were hardly worth noticing.
I learned that the Earth had gone from widespread glaciation to being practically ice-free several times over its hundreds of millions of years, and never once did it “run away” in any particular direction. Rather, the Earth’s climate was like a pendulum, swinging between two rather extreme, yet limited extants.
When the climate alarmism began, I was more or less on board because it seemed that the global temperature was indeed rising more rapidly than in the recent past, and it didn’t seem impossible that human activity might be behind it. My break with this train of thought came when Dr. Philip Jones of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) refused a request to see the data he had used in a particular study, telling the requestor something along the lines of, “Why should I show it to you when you’ll just try to find something wrong with it?”
That is not the answer a scientist would give. A scientist who was sure of his research would say, “Here it is! Look at it and see how well it proves my conclusions.” That made me wonder what was going on in climate science.
The more I looked into climate science, the less it seemed like “science.” The output of highly questionable computer models was considered “data,” and used as input to other computer models. Highly questionable statistical methods were used, to the point where professional statisticians wondered where these methods had any relationship to reality. Actual data sets of temperature readings were adjusted, and adjusted some more, and then the original data was lost. A database consultant trying to make sense of the weather station data despaired of making any sense of it.
It’s not so much that there was any one thing, but that there were so many little things that added up to bad science. In geology, the arguments regarding the origins of the Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington and the continental drift hypothesis (aka Plate Tectonics) were debated for over forty years in each case, yet neither side declared “the science is settled” and actively attempted to prevent the other side from presenting its arguments. In contrast, many of the climate alarmist team have proposed boycotting journals that publish “skeptical” papers, and even in getting editors fired for doing so. These are not the actions of scientists.
So that’s my history. I hope it helps you understand the skeptic side a bit better.
Once upon a time there was a universal scientific consensus about the health risks from eating saturated fat. Oops, we prematurely killed millions of people and now have an obesity epidemic.
Climate change is history trying to repeat itself. We reforested most of the Northern Hemisphere since the 1850’s, Trees grow and then drop limbs, get struck by lightning, fall in the wind, die of cancer and infection, drop leaves and they eventually give back all their carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. The live ones even have to respire. That’s where your carbon dioxide increase is coming from, not coal. We went from almost no trees to billions in 150 years over the entire Northern Hemisphere. A massive change no one is paying attention too because the alarmists are claiming deforestation.
Are there any comparative studies that demonstrate your claim that reforestation has increased atmospheric CO2 more than fossil-fuel burning? Obviously there are many ancillary questions involved, esp. residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere, speed of the various cycles, etc. I’m not challenging your statement; just have not seen that claim before, and would like to pursue it further.
/Mr Lynn
Hi JamesS,
Thanks for your response. I myself responded to the question, and include your response in my discussion up at my original post 🙂
I’m not sure if the WeatherBELL global temperature anomaly estimates based on “4-times daily climatological 2-meter temperature from the NCEP CFSR reanalysis” have been presented or discussed here at WUWT before but I find the approach to be very interesting. I suspect it is much more accurate than using the very sparse and dubiously “homogenized” GHCN data as presented by NCDC, GISS, and HadCRUT. Below is a stitched copy of the three WeatherBELL daily global temperature anomaly trend graphs covering the period 1979-2014.
http://icons.wunderground.com/data/wximagenew/o/oz4caster/10-awesome.gif
As far as I know, the NCEP CFSR reanalysis is largely the same data that is used to initialize the US global weather model four times each day. It is based on tens of thousands of measurements for each model run initialization and has much better spatial coverage than the GHCN. The GHCN has decreased greatly in number of stations in recent years and has little or no coverage over much of the globe. The WeatherBELL analysis shows a general downward trend in global temperature anomalies since about 2007. It also shows that 2014 was above the 1981-2010 reference period, but was no where near the warmest year during the period. The warmest years were 2002 through 2007 based on their analysis. The graphs can be seen in more detail along with much more interesting global temperature anomaly data here:
http://models.weatherbell.com/temperature.php
I am not a qualified scientist, but I have a query relating to sea water density variation with temperature.
I understand from schoolboy physics that that fresh water has it’s maximum density at +4.0 deg. C., and I believe that sea water, though not exactly the same, has a similar temperature at max. density. Can someone confirm this for me?
Then, assuming the +4 deg. C. temperature is correct, it follows that the sea water of max.. density sinks to the deep ocean floors and remains there at that stable and constant temperature. A stratified base layer of max. density sea water at +4.0 deg. c. I have read that there are a number of observations confirming this?
However above that base layer are further stratified layers at lower densities. Some of this water will be at temperatures above the + 4.0 deg. C., but a proportion will be below the 4.0 deg. C. I suggest nearly all the water below the arctic icecap and much of the water below arctic and antarctic ice shelves will be between
freezing point (just under the ice) and +4.0 deg. C. on the ocean floor.
Now consider the effect of warming the water. The water with temperatures above 4.0 deg. C. will expand as it warms causing sea levels to rise. However the water below +4.0 deg. C. will shrink or contract to it’s max. density at 4.0 deg. C. Thus in my opinion the cold waters below ice shelves and under the arctic icecap act as a buffer against sea level rise. As their temperatures rise from freezing to +4.0 they shrink and reduce the net sea level rise. Is this a significant consideration when calculating sea level rise?
Paul Watkinson.
Interesting idea. The main issue is that the alarmism of sea level rise is not based on water warming but on land ice melting and running into the oceans.
As for the highest density at 4 C, that only applies to fresh water. Ocean water with all of its salt is densest at its freezing mark of -1.94 C. See:
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Water/density.html&edu=high
BUT………once the ice crystals actually form their lattice structure, most of the salt is forced out, except for that salt caught between ice particles, resulting in less density. Otherwise, sea Ice would sink to the bottom. The expelled salt accumulates beneath the sea ice, increasing the density of that water, which now sinks toward the bottom,
Werner, thank you for the links, but they contain a contradiction. Whilst they confirm your temperature of -1.94 C. as the figure for max. density of ocean water, they also state that the temperature of deep ocean water is + 3.0 C. Can you explain why the warmer, less dense ocean water at the bottom is not replaced by the colder and higher density ocean water at -1.94 C.? I know that salinity varies but changes in salinity make relatively minor differences to ocean water density compared to changes in temperature no? Also
fresh water ice forms at the surface where the less dense water at 0.0C stratifies above the denser 4.0 C. water. However if ocean water gets denser as it cools it would sink steadily to the bottom max. density layer before freezing. Sea ice would therefor form at the bottom! I do not believe this phenomenon has been observed?
Salinity changes significantly. You are looking at temperatures and densities for lab water, not the deeper, colder more saline water flowing in some areas underneath, then the colder, less dense but less saline mix near it.
The oceans flex and move in response to these changes you just described. It is not exactly predictable (takes a few years in sonar plotting sound ray traces bending underwater to know!) but the general idea is NOT intuitive and “lab practice” simple.
For example. Take an intuitive, simple case of hot water flowing north, being bent by surface winds and the Coriolis Effect. Now, from that, predict the path of the Gulf Stream and the Japanese Current in detail.
Paul Watkinson;
Sea ice would therefor form at the bottom!
Since cooling happens much faster at the top than at the bottom, that isn’t what happens. The cold denser water sinks, forcing warmer water up from the bottom. When it gets to the top, it cools and sinks. The process continues until the water is at freezing point top to bottom. Then the top, cooling fastest, forms ice.
In deeper water you get things like haloclines and thermoclines that make this not strictly true, but you get the basic idea.
Don Perry, RACook and davidmhoffer thank you for your guidance. If ocean water has maximum density at it’s freezing point then my idea of a buffering volume of <4.0 C. water under the sea ice has no merit. Please forgive my lack of knowledge.
It’s complicated under there, but the mixed layer right at the not-really-perfect layer of expanding ice crystals + freezing fresh water + trapped salt water + heavier and denser saltier water under a final (topmost) layer at the bottom of the ice is not simple. Please — Always ask!
The heat is being removed from the surface on top of the ice by the very cold air and the radiant losses to the even colder upper air. The heat comes from the “hotter” less dense less saltier ocean water a few meters under the ice.
Three out five great lakes are now covered in ice. This is a good site to watch the progress. The forecast is very cold for another five or six days. It will be interesting to see if a record is set for either/both total Great Lakes ice cover and ice cover for this period of the year.
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/ice/#currentConditions
http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/glsea/cur/glsea_cur.png
It looks like the Antarctic may have hit its Sea Ice Extent Minimum on February 21st.
https://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/sea-ice-extent-day-51-antarctica-may-have-hit-minimum-and-started-back-up/
If it has reached its minimum, it would be ranked the 4th largest Antarctic Ice Extent Minimum since 1978..
Since this doesn’t fit with the CAGW narrative, I doubt this will get any news coverage….
Oh, wait… I forgot.. The record sized Antarctic Ice Extents are caused by lower ocean salinity levels from all the melting Antarctic land ice that’s not happening. Sorry, my bad…
BTW, I’ve yet to see ANY comprehensive in situ salinity data (not model projections) showing a significant drop of ocean salinity of waters surrounding Antarctica. Are there any peer-reviewed papers on this?
The alternative explanation for record sea ice (starting in about 2012) in the Antarctic all months of the year and recovery of sea ice in the Arctic is cooling of high latitude regions due to increased cloud cover caused by the sudden slowdown in the solar magnetic cycle. The solar magnetic cycle is cooling is somewhat mitigated by low latitude coronal holes on the sun which create solar wind bursts that remove cloud forming ions. The coronal holes on the sun are stripping off the residue magnetic flux from old sunspots.
The magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots has been decaying linearly. The magnetic flux tubes that create sunspots are believed to be formed at the solar tachocline, which is the name for the narrow region of the sun that separates the radiative zone and solar convection zone. As the magnetic field strength of the flux tubes that are release at the tachocline declines, the turbulent forces in the convection zone tear the flux tubes apart, so what forms on the surface of the sun is many tiny sunspots rather than a group of large sunspots.
The counting mechanism for sunspots does not differentiate between pores and large sunspots which explains why there is a late peak in sunspot number.
Interesting the solar large scale magnetic field is extraordinarily low now which is a result of there being less and less magnetic flux on the surface of the sun.
The solar large scale magnetic field strength is a predictor for the strength of the next solar magnetic cycle. It appears we are going to have an opportunity to observe a very special solar once in 6000 to 8000 year solar magnetic cycle.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.2.19.2015.gif
http://www.solen.info/solar/polarfields/polar.html
You can see another wave in the upper stratosphere. The temperature in the stratosphere from January 2015 is unusually high compared to previous years. It increased in December after a strong wave of GCR.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_WAVE1_MEAN_OND_NH_2014.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_OND_NH_2014.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_WAVE1_MEAN_JFM_NH_2015.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_JFM_NH_2015.gif
SAMURAI
It might be at its minimum, and has begun the recover. The Cryosphere data is a little behind. Today, for example, is the 22nd of February, but their graph and download is only up for the Feb 19th. But! It has certainly reached a long “flat spot” and I think it is likely to begin growing again.
No. I have never found any salinity data establishing any of the claims. there are old salinity info from two-three locations around the Antarctic from several years back, but that is it.
We deniers ride the backs of devils to evil convocations and orgies deep in the woods where we swear our souls to Diablo and drink crude oil.
A hundred thousand people eventually confessed to this (less the oil) and were burned or hanged.
The post modern inquisition has begun.
We deniers ride the backs of devils to evil convocations and orgies deep in the woods where we swear our souls to Diablo and drink crude oil.
I guess my invitation to that party got lost in the mail….. again.
Simple request here. Would appreciate an updated sat. picture of the frozen precip from the current storm overlaid from the last one. Just for funzies.
“I am not a climate scientist. But I can claim to be a specialist in ideologues who claim to be privileged epistemologically and thus entitled to disdain anyone who dares to reject their alleged truth.”
That’s a quote from an intriguing article in American Interest, I read yesterday, by a well-known sociologist/theologian named Peter Berger whose works I was familiar with from my grad studies in philosophy.
It’s called “Snow,” and so is obliquely about climate change: not the science but the psychology of belief side of it. It deals more directly with failures of religious prophecy and scholarship and how people react when their most cherished beliefs are found to be baseless. In short: some abandon and some irrationally double down. Great read and I learned something about the Bahai faith.
It struck me that famous non-scientists are beginning to appreciate the extent to which “climate change” is a faith, and opining on what we may expect as it becomes discredited.
Thought some of you would appreciate it. http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/02/18/snow/
As I have little technical knowledge, but some familiarity with scientific epistemology (Feynman et al), I seldom post here but do check out WUWT everyday. Thanks Anthony and all you worthies.