Guest essay by S. Fred Singer
(originally published on American Thinker reprinted here with permission of the author. I endorse this opinion, though not the personal labels. We can all do with less labeling and name calling but for this piece I’m making an exception as it helps to illustrate the point – Anthony)
Gallia omnia est divisa in partes tres — This phrase from Julius Gaius Caesar about the division of Gaul nicely illustrates the universe of climate scientists — also divided into three parts. On the one side are the “warmistas,” with fixed views about apocalyptic manmade global warming; at the other extreme are the “deniers.” Somewhere in the middle are climate skeptics.
In principle, every true scientist must be a skeptic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBFZEYkzKXc
That’s how we’re trained; we question experiments, we question theories. We try to repeat or derive independently what we read in publications — just to make sure that no mistakes have been made.
In my view, “warmistas” and “deniers” are very similar in some respects — at least their extremists are. They have fixed ideas about climate, its change and its cause. They both ignore “inconvenient truths” and select data and facts that support their preconceived views. Many of them are also quite intolerant and unwilling to discuss or debate these views — and quite willing to think the worst of their opponents.
Of course, these three categories do not have sharp boundaries; there are gradations. For example, many “skeptics” go along with the general conclusion of the “warmistas” but simply claim the human contribution is not as large as indicated by climate models. But at the same time, they join with “deniers” in opposing drastic efforts to mitigate greenhouse (GH) gas emissions.
I am going to resist the temptation to name names. But everyone working in the field knows who is a “warmista”, “skeptic”, or “denier”. The “warmistas”, generally speaking, populate the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and subscribe to its conclusion that most of the temperature increase of the last century is due to carbon-dioxide emissions produced by the use of fossil fuels. At any rate, this is the conclusion of the most recent IPCC report, the fifth in a series. Since I was an Expert Reviewer of IPCC, I’ve had an opportunity to review part of the 5th Assessment Report. AR5 published in 2013 uses essentially the same argument and evidence as AR4 from 2007; so let me discuss this “evidence” in some detail.
IPCC-AR4 uses only the global surface temperature (GST) record (shown in fig. 9.5 on page 648).
It exhibits a rapid rise in 1910-1940, a slight decline in 1940-1975, a sharp ‘jump’ around 1976-77 — and then a steady increase up to 2000 (except for the temperature ‘spike’ of the 1998 Super-El-Nino). No increase is seen after about 2001.
Most everyone seems to agree that this earlier increase (1910-1940) is caused by natural forces whose nature the IPCC does not specify. Clearly, the decline of 1940-1975 does not fit the picture of an increasing level of carbon dioxide; nor do the ‘jump’ and ‘spike.’ So, the IPCC uses the increase between 1978 and 2000 as evidence for human (anthropogenic) global warming (AGW).
Their argument is somewhat strained and their evidence is questionable. They claim that their models simulating the temperature history of the 20th century show no warming between 1970 and 2000 – when they omit the warming effect of the steady, slow CO2 increase. But once they add the CO2 increase into the models, they claim good agreement with the reported global surface temperature record. Ergo – evidence for AGW.
There are three things wrong with the IPCC argument: It depends very much on detailed and somewhat arbitrary choices of model inputs, e.g., the properties and effects of atmospheric aerosols, and their temporal and geographic distribution. It also makes arbitrary assumptions about clouds and water vapor, which produce the most important greenhouse forcings. One might therefore say that IPCC’ evidence is nothing more than an exercise in curve fitting. According to physicist Freeman Dyson, the famous mathematician John von Neumann stated: “Give me four adjustable parameters and I can fit an elephant. Give me one more, and I can make his trunk wiggle.”
The second question: Can IPCC fit other climate records of importance besides the reported global surface record? For example, can they fit northern and southern hemisphere temperatures using the same assumptions in their models about aerosols, clouds and water vapor? Can they fit the atmospheric temperature record as obtained from satellites, and also from radiosondes carried in weather balloons? The IPCC report does not show such results, and one therefore suspects that their curve-fitting exercise may not work, except for the global surface record.
The third problem may be the most important and likely also the most contested one. But first let me parse the IPCC conclusion, which depends crucially on the reported global surface warming between 1978 and 2000. As stated in their Summary for Policymakers (IPCC-AR4, vol 1, page 10): “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”
But what if there is little to no warming between 1978 and 2000? What if the data from thousands of poorly distributed weather stations do not represent a true global warming? The atmospheric temperature record between 1978 and 2000 (both from satellites and, independently, from radiosondes) doesn’t show a warming. Neither does the ocean. And even the so-called proxy record — from tree rings, ice cores, ocean sediments, corals, stalagmites, etc. — shows mostly no warming during the same period.
Now let me turn to the “deniers”. One of their favorite arguments is that the greenhouse effect does not exist at all — because it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics; i.e., one cannot transfer energy from a cold atmosphere to a warmer surface. It is surprising that this simplistic argument is used by physicists, and even by professors who teach thermodynamics. One can show them data of downwelling infrared radiation from CO2, water vapor and clouds, which clearly impinge on the surface. But their minds are closed to any such evidence.
Then there is another group of deniers who accept the existence of the greenhouse effect but argue about the cause and effect of the observed increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. One subgroup holds that CO2 levels were much higher in the 19th century; so, there really hasn’t been a long-term increase from human activities. They even believe in a conspiracy to suppress these facts. Another subgroup accepts that CO2 levels are increasing in the 20th century but claims that the source is release of dissolved CO2 from the warming ocean. In other words, they argue that oceans warm first, which then causes the CO2 increase. In fact, such a phenomenon is observed in the ice-core record, where sudden temperature increases precede increases in CO2. While this fact is a good argument against the story put forth by Al Gore, it does not apply to the 20th century: Isotopic and other evidence destroys their caset.
Another subgroup simply says that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is so small, they can’t see how it could possibly change global temperature. But laboratory data show that CO2 absorbs IR radiation very strongly. Another subgroup says that natural annual additions to atmospheric CO2 are many times greater than any human source; they ignore the natural sinks that have kept CO2 reasonably constant before humans started burning fossil fuels. Finally, there are the claims that major volcanic eruptions produce the equivalent of many years of human emission from fossil-fuel burning. To which I reply: OK, but show me a step increase in measured atmospheric CO2 related to a volcanic eruption.
I have concluded that we can accomplish very little with convinced “warmistas” and probably even less with true “deniers”. So we just make our measurements, perfect our theories, publish our work, and hope that in time the truth will out.
Quotes:
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” — …Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.” — …Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” — …Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” — …Sir John Houghton, First chairman of IPCC
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” — ..Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, specializing in climate science and energy policy. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committeeon Oceans & Atmosphere. He is a senior fellow of the Heartland Institute and of the Independent Institute. In 2007, he founded and chaired NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change). For recent writings see http://www.americanthinker.com/s_fred_singer/ and Google Scholar.
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Sounds like Theists, Atheists and Agnostics, ya know?
Yes.
Generally a good article, however….. CO2 is not as simple as proposed in this article. There are really two halves to the CO2 debate and where it goes and how much man is responsible. One is physics where CO2 is just moved about from one source to a sink. The other is biological. We don’t actually know by observation which larger. Dr. Salby makes a fair argument that its “surface properties” with a 1/3 to 2/3 split man vs nature.. Even then, temperature is probably a secondary effect. But we don’t know. There are biological processes which rely on CO2 to consume more CO2 and these processes disassemble CO2 into C and O2. These processes require sunlight, more sun more heat = less CO2. These processes are also related to the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere more CO2 = more C and O2. Much of the disassembly does not necessarily make it back to a CO2 molecule. This is an active area of research with a lot of innovative experiments going on by all sides of the debate.
David,
The net consumption of CO2 by the biosphere (plants, bacteria, molds, insects, animals) is known with reasonable accuracy thanks to the oxygen balance: slightly more oxygen is produced than used since ~1990. That gives that the biosphere is a net absorber of about 1 GtC/year:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5462/2467.short
and free:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Ferdinand,
6 stations? Two research papers? Please that is hardly global, and does not apply to the entire biosphere as O2 concentrations in the ocean are highly variable. I think this area qualifies as an active area of research and in order to make broad claims you need to sample every different type of biosphere that exists, which they haven’t. Not that the paper wasn’t interesting or a good read, they are just reaching like a lot of scientists seem to do today.
v/r,
David Riser
David,
Oxygen is a well mixed gas, distributed with some delay from the sinks and sources towards height and between the hemispheres. Even if the data were from one station, its trend would be sufficient to do the calculations, as is the case for CO2. Using more stations mainly reduces the error bars, which are quite huge in the case of oxygen measurements.
There is no need to sample every biosphere, as all what one need is the overall oxygen change, as good as the overall emissions and overall CO2 increase in the atmosphere to know what the total CO2 sink capacity of the biosphere for each year is.
The biological processes in the oceans are quite different from these in the atmosphere, as CO2 is not a limiting factor, nutrients and trace elements like iron are far more important. But even so, what is produced or used as oxygen will exchange with the atmosphere and will be counted with the land biosphere, with a small correction for the solubility of oxygen at different temperatures. In general the ocean surface is saturated for oxygen…
Fernando you overlooked methane.
nc,
Not really, methane increased (in ice cores) somewhat earlier than CO2 (rice cultivation for an increasing population?), but boomed together with the start of the industrial revolution. Must be a hell of a coincidence for (a)biotic methane to start increasing at the same timing and size as human emissions…
Over the medium haul, methane has been increasing, but the the rate increase has been decreasing. A convex curve.
Methane is a minor player. Persistence of only ~20 years, and it abrades chemically rather than doing the CO2 sink dance, so when it’s gone, it’s gone.
[snip – you are welcome to resumbit leaving out the racial slur -mod]
Fred,
I have yet to read the article to it’s entirety, (i haven’t read the last few due to work) But the first few paragraphs struck me. I will come back to the rest later today.
I think I get your point, but the term denier is not a term of my making, and though I am a skeptic about most things, human caused global warming as an example, I am placed in the denier column only due to the efforts of those climate nazi’s who created the term denier in the first place. I believe that it is their intent to put all those who do not march to their beat in the denier column.
I willfully accept participation in the pejorative category since it is not of my definition nor control. Sticks and stones…
I will not judge myself by the term however, your mild adoption of the term is a bit troubling, particularly since you choose to parse it and assign nuance. I’d rather you, as a skeptic of man-made global warming, stick to terms of science rather than adopt the vernacular of those who wish we science-loving types ill-will. You may be attempting to establish ownership of the word and if so, forgive me, but then again, the word is corrupt beyond repair. IMO.
I’ll come back a bit later.
Agreed.
I won’t be adopting the “D” word(s) and it’s regrettable that SFS has gone down that road.
The atmospheric temperature record between 1978 and 2000 (both from satellites and, independently, from radiosondes) doesn’t show a warming.
????????????????
RSS and UAH both show warming between 1998 and 2000
1978
Steve Case.
That is what I found as well. Even if you take out the 1998 El Nino spike, RSS and UAH show warming.
harrytwinotter:
Wrong.
j.peter,
Go argue with arch-Warmist Dr. Phil Jones, of Climategate infamy. He was the one who designated 1997 as the start year for determining whether global warming has stopped.
In an interview in 1999, Jones was asked whether global warming had stopped, since it had not risen for two years. Jones replied, “Yes, but only just.” Jones explained that fifteen years were necessary to determine statistically whether warming had indeed stopped.
That brings us to 2012 (1997 + 15 years), at which time skeptics began reminding Dr. Jones and others of what he had said (the internet never forgets, to Jones’ chagrin).
So by 2012 it was clear that global warming had stopped, according to über-Warmist Dr. Phil Jones. It didn’t resume after 2012, either. Global warming remains stopped: 18+ years and counting.
Therefore, according to Dr. Jones — one of the central authorities in the AGW crowd — global warming stopped in 1997.
Naturally, anyone can cherry-pick a particular year like 1999 that shows something else. But that devious game playing ignores the experts.
If j.peter was sincere, he would write to Dr. Jones, and ask his opinion. Instead, he diddled with the Wood For Trees site until he found what suited his belief system. That is a common trait among the climate alarmist crowd, because the truth is not in them.
j.peter says:
Your first chart uses 2002 as a starting point
Yes, as an example to show people like you that the WFT site can be used to show anything. It’s not my fault you don’t pay attention.
Your second chart does not remove the El Nino spike.
Again, you deflect. What you either don’t understand or are deliberately misrepresenting is that Dr. Phil Jones designated 1997 as the start year, which includes the spike — not scientific skeptics. So you keep squirming around, trying to avoid Dr. Jones’ start year. Jones is available. Go argue with him if you don’t like it.
And it’s true that harrytwinotter didn’t mention Jones. Why would he? That would be taking in all the available information, and your side never does that. You argue by confirmation bias, which forces you to pre-select only those factoids that support your eco-religion.
Skeptics look at all facts and all the evidence. If they warrented concern over the rise in CO2, skeptics would be first in line demanding action.
But all available facts and evidence show that CO2 is completely harmless, and it is beneficial to the biosphere. Therefore, the MMGW scare is debunked nonsense. QED
Wellllll, I usually use the 20 years between 1976 – 1996 as the only time in the earth’s history when both CO2 and global average temperature rise at the same time, but if y9ou want to use 1978 and 1998, it seems a bit prejudiced towards the “El Nino” Supreme year of 1998 as that end ppoint. Nevertheless, lettuce assume 1998 is useable. We would then see a 20 year rise, followed by an 18 static period – while CO2 rose and the earth’s temperature remained steady.
Preceded of course, by the 23 year period between 1945 and 1978 when CO2 rose and global average temperatures declined.
And the long period before that between 1908 and 1945 when CO2 was essentially steady, but global average temperatures rose measurably.
Seems you don’t like to remember those other years, do you?
j.peter
Yeah. Eating dead green stuff the consistency and flavor of shredded green paper is a waist of time, money and effort.
Food = Maximum number of needed calories in the shortest time possible at the lowest possible price at the place and time I happen to be inconvenienced by hunger.
Provided with the lowest amount of time and effort possible.
Hell = I ate enough yesterday.
Why should I need to waste time and money eating something again today?
You did not read carefully, did you? 8<)
Speed, efficiency, time of consumption, total time of support and supply and logistics, availability and cost are all relevant.
Word salad.
j.peter called the WFT chart I posted “bogus”. Yet he posts WFT charts just like I do. A hypocrite, no? And criticizing me for mentioning Dr. Phil Jones, while making his off-topic comments? Really, j.peter makes it too easy for me. It’s like arguing with a child.
j.peter also whines about the chart date. So here is a chart with both dates; 1997 and 1998. Notice that they corroborate my other links.
j.peter is twisting himself into a pretzel trying to avoid the fact that even the head of the IPCC has admited that global warming has stopped, and that one of the true stars of the alarmist universe — Dr. Phil Jones — has designated 1997 as the start year for deterining whether global warming has stopped.
Misdirection, deflection, misinformation, moving the goal posts, and ad hominem attacks are the tools of the alarmist clique. That’s because they have lost the basic argument: their incessant predictions of runaway global warming and climate catastrophe have been so thoroughly debunked that whenever they’re mentioned, people laugh at them. They’ve even given up on their original scare: global warming. Now it’s the Orwellian term “climate change” — which means nothing.
Finally, RACook is correct, and j.peter has no answer. So he changes the subject. Typical misdirection. Alarmists have lost the debate, and I think they know it. We certainly do.
Christy and Spencer acknowledge that UAH data need adjustment and are working on the problem.
Meanwhile, RSS, though run by alarmists, shows global cooling, although not statistically significant back to the 1990s.
So, yeah, what’s not for skeptics to like in their observations? But for the sake of humanity, let’s hope that the Modern Warm Period continues at least until fusion works commercially.
Since j.peter cherry-picks the WFT charts he likes, while saying others cherry pick WFT charts he doesn’t like, I think we can just ignore him. Hypocrites are not worth listening to.
I prefer to listen to the head of the IPCC, who has stated that global warming has stopped, over an anonymous site pest.
J. Peter,
You apparently don’t know what confirmation bias is, despite practicing it with such reckless abandon.
I didn’t pick either. I pointed out that RSS is presently preferable to UAH because the latter needs some justified adjustment, as recognized by its operators.
DB,
Right. And in neither data series is there statistically significant warming for going on twenty years, despite steadily rising CO2.
[snip -fake poster using multiple IP addresses that are physically impossible in time and space – all your posts and replies to it will now be deleted, punk – Anthony]
No one complains about open, justified adjustments, with good reason.
A one time adjustment to surface station data to account for the switch to digital thermometers, for instance, would be acceptable. As would adjustments for time of observation, etc. But the climate criminals continually make the past cooler and present hotter. They use UHI adjustments to make the record hotter rather than colder. They adjust the oceans higher to bring them in line with the falsely heated land “record”, for instance.
GISS, HadCRU and their fellow unindicted co-conspirators for long have committed unjustified, continual adjustments, mainly in secret until forced to make public their ludicrous algorithms. Dragged kicking and screaming, more like.
I suspected that Peter pulled a boner. Probably Denial in drag.
“peter” is someone who co-opted another user’s identity. He’s been deleted and banned.
As you have been repeatedly shown, the cooling is from the late 1990s, not since the 1980s.
Anthony Watts
April 17, 2015 at 1:09 pm
Thanks for your vigilance. I won’t ask how that outrage is committed but can think of some possible means.
I feel slightly culpable even when using the ID on my phone instead of my name on this computer. I let people know who I am when I do.
I am not sure why dbstealey shows a temp dataset chart with different years. He has to post something I guess, even when it is wrong.
I can’t believe dbstealey has trotted out the Phil Jones says global warming has stopped hoax again. Phil Jones was misquoted, he did not say global warming had stopped (read the whole article for context).
“BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
BBC: How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
Phil Jones: I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.”
@harrytwinotter,
What I wrote to another numpty applies to you, too:
warrenlb is incapable of identifying any global harm from the rise in (harmless, beneficial) CO2. Therefore, CO2 is “harmless”. QED
There is ZERO empirical, testable scientific evidence showing that what we have observed globally over the past twenty years is outside of past parameters.
Therefore, what is observed is nothing more or less than natural variability. You see a “human fingerprint”, but that is entirely in your imagination. People constantly see patterns that aren’t there. That’s why we use the Scientific Method.
Go back to you eco-church and tell them about the climate Null Hypothesis, which has never been falsified. They probably have some canned response for their lemmings, which should keep you in line.
For thinking folks, though, all you are doing is searching for cherry-picked factoids to support your MMGW confirmation bias. That may impress unthinking acolytes. But real scientific skeptics know better.
As for your eco-religious belief, Phil Jones shows conclusively that there is nothing happening now that is any different from what has happened before:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hadley/Hadley-global-temps-1850-2010-web.jpg
I laugh at you religious numpties, seeing an imaginary “fingerprint of MMGW” where none exists. Fools will beleive anything told to them by climate charlatans, and credulous folks like you are what keeps those Elmer Gantrys in business.
Go peddle your nonsense where unthinking folks hang out. Here, we know better than anonymous numpties who are afraid to identify themselves.
dbstealey charging around the field with the goalposts, shouting insults all the way.
RSS and UAH both show warming between 1998 and 2000
That, being a huge whipsaw, is a meaningless interval for general purposes. Be very wary about any start or end point that occurs in that interval. Two-way street for cherrypicking (skeptics like 1998 for start-point, while alarmists favor 1999-2000).
Anthony and I use start and endponts of our subseries in both 1998 and 1999, but we do not claim either is representative of overall trend: we are deliberately selecting that breakpoint so as the examine the effects of warming vs. cooling on stations/microsite. But 8 times out of 10, 1998-2000 is an inappropriate start/endpoint.
1978
~1650
97%
What do we call the warmistas who are adjusting the basic climate data in order to keep their warming belief system on the table. If not for these adjustments, the warmistas would have had to admit already that the theory is off. The same goes for the aerosols forcing estimates which are slowly being re-estimated downward.
There is a big ethical question here that the three simple categories does not fully address.
Its the “liars” vs “deniers”
“What do we call the warmistas who are adjusting the basic climate data in order to keep their warming belief system on the table.”
Doesn’t the term “anti-science” float around in these discussions?
“What do we call
the warmistasanyone who are adjusting the basicclimatedata in order to keep theirwarmingbelief system on the table.”My preference is liar. But fraud, fake, and charlatan also apply.
The real climate criminals, guilty not only of fraud, theft, waste and abuse, but arguably mass murder.
I don’t care what you call me. The problem is Dr. Singer is playing their game.
We know for a fact, by real world observation, that any (or none) impact of changes in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to date are overwhelmed by natural forces. There is no requirement to know what those natural forces are. Man made global warming, to the extent that it is dangerous, is false on its face.
Yes, the ethics of tampering with temperature data, removing thermometer stations cutting these by more than 50% in Canada, the US and elsewhere, the use of computer models that never change when incoming data proves these to be rigged to show only warming, etc.
The collapse of ‘science’ here is entirely one sided. The warmists have their fingers on the temperature scales and are making the past colder and the present warmer via computers. This flies in the face of reality where it is getting rapidly colder on the real planet we live on.
There is no ‘pause’ we are now entering a true cooling cycle and we have no idea where the bottom of this cooling lies or how long it will be.
” This flies in the face of reality where it is getting rapidly colder on the real planet we live on.”
IMHO, once huge reductions in fossil fuel usage is forced upon us, that same cooling will be attributed to those reduction mandates. Once the hook is set, there is no going back.
Thank you, prof. em. Singer. Whether nature abhors a vacuum or not, I don’t know, but I do know I abhor extremists at whatever side.
Your arguments are the kind I as a skeptic need to reasonaby argue with what you call “warmistas”. That in itself is difficult enough. But then come along what I will call (after dr. Spencer) the “Dragonslayers” (I wish to avoid the D word), and that of course gives the “warmistas” all the opportunities they need to invoke the straw man argument.
I keep running across the word “believe” in this thread. Believe is a religious term, and has no place in science. So I have to conclude you guys are having a religious debate, which leaves me out. Environmentalism, BTW, is a fundamentalist religion, not a field of scientific inquiry.
Excellent post.
It always helps to be reminded of the lay of the land by a serious person. Trading gotcha’s has become tedious.
Not to take away from anything else Dr. Singer said, but I felt it was particularly good to be reminded of the following:
Everyone makes mistakes, but the difference between true scientists and charlatans lies in how they react when they’ve made them. True scientists admit their mistakes. Charlatans bluster, evade, ignore, misdirect, or attack the messenger: anything but face the issue head on.
I personally think it’s the warmist camp that is more densely populated by charlatans, but charlatans should be called out no matter what side of the debate they’re on.
There is no “greenhouse”
==================
correct. greenhouses work because they block vertical circulation of air. they are not the result of down-welling radiation. thus to say the greenhouse effect warms the earth is wrong scientifically.
But ‘greenhouse effect’ can mean whatever the CO2-obsessed want it to mean. Just like ‘climate change’.
Well then we should stop talking about GHG’s.
+!
Wouldn’t a real (i.e., not laboratory) atmosphere just “fluff up” more when it warmed?
ferdberple wrote: “greenhouses work because they block vertical circulation of air. they are not the result of down-welling radiation. thus to say the greenhouse effect warms the earth is wrong scientifically.”
At worst, that means that “greenhouse” is a bad analogy. Both a physical greenhouse and the atmospheric “greenhouse” work by influencing heat transfer: convective heat transfer in the case of the former, radiative in the case of the latter.
ferdberple’s argument is like arguing that Conservation of Energy is scientifically wrong since we all know that when we burn gasoline we use up the “energy” in the gas.
Words mean different things in different contexts. Sometimes unfortunate, but unavoidable.
mellyrn
April 16, 2015 at 6:23 am
+!
Wouldn’t a real (i.e., not laboratory) atmosphere just “fluff up” more when it warmed?
In fact, it does. One of the less discussed aspects of the current stable or even slightly cooling period is a reduced necessity to adjust the orbits of satellites in low orbit (e.g. GPS satellites which have very low orbits).
Duster April 16, 2015 at 11:00 am
mellyrn
April 16, 2015 at 6:23 am
+!
Wouldn’t a real (i.e., not laboratory) atmosphere just “fluff up” more when it warmed?
In fact, it does. One of the less discussed aspects of the current stable or even slightly cooling period is a reduced necessity to adjust the orbits of satellites in low orbit (e.g. GPS satellites which have very low orbits).
==========================================================
Check out: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/15jul_thermosphere/
This is NASA acknowledging that CO2 cools the upper atmosphere, and that instead the Sun is in control of the upper atmosphere’s temp and volume.
“But the numbers don’t quite add up,” says Emmert. “Even when we take CO2 into account using our best understanding of how it operates as a coolant, we cannot fully explain the thermosphere’s collapse.”
According to Emmert and colleagues, low solar EUV accounts for about 30% of the collapse. Extra CO2 accounts for at least another 10%. That leaves as much as 60% unaccounted for.”
I submit the reduced solar wind during solar minimum was a major part of the unaccounted 60%, and thus was a major part of the warming effect when solar activity was high. Solar wind is one factor not included in TSI.
SR
‘red-kneck dogmatists’ is what Singer seems to be talking about, but really there aren’t many of them, perhaps a few thousand mostly in the US. And that is the context he should have set.
– Yes alarmists generally seem to seek to caricature ALL Climate SKEPTICS as a particular type of ‘red-kneck dogmatists’ who have certainty in the mirror image of the extreme alarmists ie perhaps believing in such things that GHG effect is certaintly zero and an ice age is starting in a few years. However their mirror image whose certainty includes things like 6C rise by 2100 is certain and/or that solar/wind are credible replacements for real power within 30 years, are certainly MANY MORE in number. Add that to the fact that the rest of the entire warmist side has dogmatic certainty. Whereas the rest of the skeptic side just don’t go beyond the evidence and only have certainty about things that have actually been proven, which leaves a wide range of possible scenarios with probabilities that you can argue about.
Perhaps we could put the context as..
: 3% of skeptics give skepticsm a bad name.
: 80% of warmists give warmism a bad name
: the remaining 20% give warmism a criminally/insane name.
regardless if the ignorant uneducated right wing or blind denier types are mainly in the US or not(I hardly think that) the only people we have to worry about are the well informed on the subjects science or lack there of. Of these people we have the skeptics or “saners” who mostly don’t have any monetary or political skin in the game. That would be most people on this blog. We also have the well informed “warmists” who by simple logic have to know this is a scientific scam and continue to push it do their political and monetary interests. They may think that the science is secondary to their other interests due to to feelings of ideological grandiosity. This is another type of ignorance on the other side of the spectrum. The red necks and yuppie know it alls or not really important. Tribal uninformed ideologs should not be part of the issue.
I go beyond being a denier and think nicer weather and more abundant crops would be great. I pray that the extreme warmists are right but think we’ll get zero detectable warming. I am, however, a climate alarmist on the subject of the imminent end of the current brief interglacial. What should we call such people? Sane? Non-idiots? People who aren’t morons?
Seems to me that Singers meaning of a climate ‘denier’ is someone who is not a warmista but does not have an open mind.
why invent a new word when the words already exist and they are much more accessible and explanatory ?
There are those of us who are convinced for various reasons that CO2 does not warm the planet and that the 33 degrees warming due to “back radiation” is just not true. Since there is a banned group who happens to also believe as I do, not for exactly the same reasons, I can not mention my reasons as it is not allowed on this blog.
I can mention, without violating the site policy, that I think Dr. Singer is wrong on how this planet’s weather system works. I offer no defense of my beliefs other than my beliefs were pretty commonplace before James Hansen spread his fear mongering. So, I’ll now go away for this thread.
The purpose of this little exercise is to illustrate the power of water vapor in controlling the climate’s heat load.
For this example 350 W/m2 is the approximate heat flux at ToA.
A watt is a power unit, energy over time, and equals 3.4 Btu/h.
In 24 hours the entire atmospheric volume will rotate through this heat flux and accumulate x.xxE? Btus.
For dry air, no moisture, 0% RH, to absorb this heat would result in a temperature rise of 1.34 F.
The evaporation of water into vapor at 950 Btu/lb without any increase in temperature, i.e. isothermal, would increase the atmospheric water content by about 14%, i.e more clouds, more albedo, less heat.
It’s the H2O thermostat that controls the greenhouse, not CO2. It’s the H2O thermostat that controls the simplistic blanket analogy as well.
Power Input, W/m2 350
Btu/h per W, Btu/h 3.4
Heat Input, (Btu/h)/m2 1,190.0
Earth Cross Sectional Area, m2 1.28E+14
Time, h 24.0
Heat/Energy Input over 24 Hours, Btu 3.64E+18
Atmospheric Dry Air, lb 1.13E+19
Dry Air Heat Capacity, Btu/lb-F 0.24
Dry Air Temp. Rise over 24 Hours, F 1.34
Water Vapor Heat Capacity, Btu/lb 950
Water Vapor Increment, lb 3.83E+15
Water Vapor in Atmosphere, lb 2.80E+16
Incremental Water Vapor, % 13.70%
Miatello explains water vapor using calculus.
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/PSI_Miatello_Refutation_GHE.pdf
http://www.writerbeat.com/articles/3713-CO2-Feedback-Loop
Personally it is the lack of scientific rigor that is lacking these days. Where is The Scientific Method being applied for climate research inside the IPCC and out side of the organization?
I see models as a research TOOL,not something that can fully answer questions,since the underlying information is often incomplete, not adequately understood enough,to make a credible case for a position.
There are simply too many loose ends in climate research to be making all kinds of far into the future scenarios,and call it good science.
Hi Fred: I have put up a response to your post on my blog:
http://claesjohnson.blogspot.se/2015/04/fred-singer-about-nay-sayers-like-me.html
I would appreciate a comment by you on my blog.
Nice reply to Mr. Singer. I do hope he drops by over there and makes a reply. Time will tell.
edX is now hosting a climate science denial course and of course the normal idiots like John Cook, Scott Mandia and Dana Nuccitelli are running the show. I think we need people to signup to show that these “deniers of science” are the problem not the solution.
Making Sense of Climate Science Denial
Climate change is real, so why the controversy and debate? Learn to make sense of the science and to respond to climate change denial.
University of Queensland
Starts April 28th, 2015
Enroll Now
Level: Introductory
Length: 7 weeks
Effort: 1-2 hours per week
Subject: Communication
Institution: UQx
Languages: English
Video Transcripts: English
Price: Free
Basic high school science recommended.
About this course
In public discussions, climate change is a highly controversial topic. However, in the scientific community, there is little controversy with 97% of climate scientists concluding humans are causing global warming.
Why the gap between the public and scientists?
it is because many people in the public understand the science. That would be both scientists and other intelligent people who took the time to do the research. it is quite clear for anybody who does proper research of just the science that the propaganda is way off, It is also clear that the 97% consensus is completely contrived. i would suggest researching the science and staying away from the journalism and polls. From my own experience the scientific community as a whole does not in an way support this movement from a scientific point of view. i hope soon that at least this phony consensus propaganda will be cleared up.
All this talk of warming, why is there no mention of thawing? The great North American ice sheets used to extend well into the United States. The ice has been steadily thawing for thousands of years. One would think that if thawing is at work, then night time temperatures would account for most of the global temperature rise over time.
As Feynman explained in a minute, the “warmistas” were and will remain forever, wrong.
And the “deniers” were correct- and that also for forever, and really does not matter what reasons a denier choose to give.
And people on fence were not correct.
The so called Deniers may be annoying. But if someone trying to lead everyone in a gas chamber, whether person who object to the idea is ill mannered or whatever reason is oppose to it, the important point is they are correct.
And forever correct.
“One can show them data of downwelling infrared radiation from CO2, water vapor and clouds, which clearly impinge on the surface. But their minds are closed to any such evidence.”
Downwelling IR, fine, but it is reflected, not absorbed. That’s a huge difference. The energy levels equivalent to the IR emitted by the cold upper troposphere are already full in Earth’s surface and thus will simply be reflected back upward. Thermodynamics is still valid here.
Concur.
+1
But this would still slow down outbound heat transport, wouldn’t it? The IR photon is bounced back to lower levels of the atmosphere and has to begin its upward travel once again. Whether it’s absorbed by the earth surface or by another CO2 molecule doesn’t make that much of a difference.
@Michael: The theoretical energy value of that ‘DWLR’, if it could be kineticised, would only ‘heat’ us into a frozen block. That is, not at all. Brett
What?
You’re on it Michael, he’s talking gibberish.
No it’s mostly absorbed at the surface either land or water.