Guest Essay by Eric Worrall
A new NASA study suggests that global warming is being suppressed by particulate pollution.
The Abstract of the Study;
Implications for climate sensitivity from the response to individual forcings
Kate Marvel, Gavin A. Schmidt, Ron L. Miller & Larissa S. Nazarene
Climate sensitivity to doubled CO2 is a widely used metric for the large-scale response to external forcing. Climate models predict a wide range for two commonly used definitions: the transient climate response (TCR: the warming after 70 years of CO2 concentrations that rise at 1% per year), and the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS: the equilibrium temperature change following a doubling of CO2 concentrations). Many observational data sets have been used to constrain these values, including temperature trends over the recent past inferences from palaeoclimate and process-based constraints from the modern satellite era. However, as the IPCC recently reported, different classes of observational constraints produce somewhat incongruent ranges. Here we show that climate sensitivity estimates derived from recent observations must account for the efficacy of each forcing active during the historical period. When we use single-forcing experiments to estimate these efficacies and calculate climate sensitivity from the observed twentieth-century warming, our estimates of both TCR and ECS are revised upwards compared to previous studies, improving the consistency with independent constraints.
Read more: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2888.html
Sadly the full study is paywalled, but I think we get the idea – the abstract is essentially arguing that global warming is being suppressed by other forcings.
From the Press Release;
The new calculations reveal their complexity, said Kate Marvel, a climatologist at GISS and the paper’s lead author. “Take sulfate aerosols, which are created from burning fossil fuels and contribute to atmospheric cooling,” she said. “They are more or less confined to the northern hemisphere, where most of us live and emit pollution. There’s more land in the northern hemisphere, and land reacts quicker than the ocean does to these atmospheric changes.”
Because earlier studies do not account for what amounts to a net cooling effect for parts of the northern hemisphere, predictions for TCR and ECS have been lower than they should be. This means that Earth’s climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide–or atmospheric carbon dioxide’s capacity to affect temperature change–has been underestimated, according to the study. The result dovetails with a GISS study published last year that puts the TCR value at 3.0°F (1.7° C); the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which draws its TCR estimate from earlier research, places the estimate at 1.8°F (1.0°C).
“If you’ve got a systematic underestimate of what the greenhouse gas-driven change would be, then you’re systematically underestimating what’s going to happen in the future when greenhouse gases are by far the dominant climate driver,” Schmidt said.
Read more: (e) Science News
The issue I have with this kind of theory is that it postulates an improbably exact balance between all the different forcings. If you start with zero or near zero warming, you can crank up the other forcings to anything you want, as long as everything sums to zero, as long as everything cancels out. The problem is that an observed random balance between powerful forcings is implausible. The stronger you make the forcings, the more improbable it is, that the terms will exactly balance. Why should CO2 exactly balance pollution? Why shouldn’t one term be much stronger than the other? Out of the near infinity of possible sums, suggesting an extended period of perfect balance is due to blind luck stretches credibility.
To me this is the climate equivalent of the Cosmic Anthropic Principle. The Anthropic Principle suggests that the universe is well adjusted for life, because if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be here to observe it. But as a scientific theory the anthropic principle is pretty nearly useless, because it shuts down further questions. Accepting life friendly cosmic constants as simply being due to a lucky throw of the dice, rejects the possibility that there is more to discover.
A much simpler theory as to why our climate is so balanced, despite the release of allegedly dangerous amounts of anthropogenic CO2, is that either the various forcings are actually quite small, in which case any imbalances will be barely noticeable, or that an as yet unacknowledged dynamic mechanism, such as Willis’ emergent tropical heat pump, is compensating for any imbalance we are causing, and keeping the climate stable.
The choice then is either to believe that our current climate stability is an improbable streak of good luck, or to search for evidence of an emergent dynamic mechanism which is suppressing radical change. NASA seems to want us to blindly embrace the theory that we’ve simply been very lucky, which is a shame, because there is a lot of evidence that the Earth’s climate contains powerful dynamic compensation mechanisms, which can easily adjust to counter any imbalance we are likely to cause.
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So burning stuff is a preferred tool in the fight against global warming. I love settled science as it makes it entirely unnecessary to think.
lol
Although it is fair to say that climate ‘scientists’ lack honesty , and actual scientific ability. You really cannot under rate their ‘luck’, for every time they find a new excuse for there is a pause, that is when they are not ironically ‘denying’ its existence. The mysterious forcing always perfectly balances out the effects of increases of ‘evil CO2 ‘ on temperature they claimed ‘must happen’.
We can only be thankful that they put their talents to use in this area, instead of the tables of Las Vagas, although the owners of these tables may have different views.
And these ‘scientists’ may find that ,’heads you lose ,tails I win ‘ is an approach that cuts no ice outside of their fan club.
+1 — “Pour excuser consiste a admettre.” (To excuse is to admit — I only looked up and used the French because IIRC it was originally a French saying).
Pick the bones in this. Right or wrong?
Hansen, maybe the godfather and high priest of the CAGW religion, eventually acknowledged that average global temperature rises had flattened out considerably compared to the theories(religion) that he had fostered and still believed in! He then did investigations and came up with the explanation in a Paper he published explaining that the apparent cooling was in fact due to China’s and other Developing Countries’ uncontrolled and unfiltered emissions of particulate carbon and sulphates in the period from the late 20th onwards which depressed the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface and thus provided a “cooling” effect. This phenomena was known about years before and was termed Solar Gloom.
What Hansen appears not to have realised is that the Developed Countries’ Clean Air Acts in the 1950’s onwards and the later Acid Rain precautions drastically reduced these emissions, prior to any Developing Countries’ ramping up of such emissions. In other words he was accepting that the apparent global warming, from at least the 1950’s onwards, was as much to do with and possibly even more to do with, decreased particulate carbon and sulphate emissions as increased CO2 emissions.
It also follows that by stripping out any Solar Gloom effects to provide the adjusted real CO2 Increase/Temperature Increase relationship means, overall, that the curve for this relationship is much shallower than that used by the warmist supporters, i.e. without the Solar Gloom of the earlier 19th and 20th Century temperatures would have been higher already without any influence from CO2, i.e. we have had a far lower, far slower and more manageable CO2 driven AGW that can be managed far more easily, simply and cheaply in the future than the hysterical catastrophic AGW being preached which is “substantiating” our spending the £billions we are spending and which in turn is driving up all our costs and driving down our competitiveness.
To assess this actual real “adjusted” CO2/Temperature curve you would have to include an allowance for the declining effects of past emissions, i.e. how long excess man-made CO2 generated dissipates back into the land and seas and how long particulate carbon and sulphates emissions in the atmosphere are sustained. I’ve seen postings here that suggest earlier particulate carbon emissions in the atmosphere reduce to about 10% over 100 years or so. How fast sulphates’ and other aerosols’ emissions decline and what the relative Solar Gloom effect of these 3 component emissions are would also need to be factored in.
I note elsewhere that this emissions’ decline over time effect has been given as the basic flaw in the Developing Countries’ argument that Developed Countries must pay for Developing Countries’ Green Energy policies. To this must be added that Developing Countries are at their stage of development on the back of past Developed Countries developments, and technical transfers – all based on the past use of fossil fuels.
Or it’s because there is no such thing as a “greenhouse effect” and atmospheric composition has stuff all to do with mean temperatures.
As gravitationally induced planetary temperature gradients have been experimentally proven in centrifuges, and as the maths to calculate this effect is simple, universal and accurate in describing temperatures on every planet in our solar system, not just our own; it would be the most rational explanation as to why CO2 sensitivity predictions are not yielding results.
As far as I can tell, the supplementary information for the article is not paywalled and it appears to contain much more information than the main manuscript. It also has a link to the underlying data at
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/Marvel_etal2015.html
This is outside my bailiwick but it looks like they are again calling computer runs “experiments” and it looks like this is essentially a sensitivity analysis. Other studies (in other fields) I have seen like this basically output the input values of the partial derivative functions assumed.
Sensitivity must be coded into the model. No need to run “experiments.” Just go ask the programmer. The programmer likely coded what he was told to program. So we’re back to Schmidt. He runs his theories through a computer, and they become fact.
Global Dimming; the video in association with Greenpeace and Toyota.
This has a lot more meat,
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22692o_bbc-horizon-2005-global-dimming_shortfilms
I herald this BBC Horizon episode from 2005 as a touchstone of climate issues that were sidelined by the CO2temp causation crowd. It opens with David Travis’ observation about min/max temp ranges in the US after 9/11 when contrails were absent, and goes on to discuss the possible effects of particulates on albedo. Because it fronts an unpopular notion, that effects of civilization may be reducing average global temperature the narrator was compelled to touch the rosary by declaring Global Dimming may be ‘threatening’ because it is ‘masking’ the ‘true’ extent of ‘global warming’. I must stop now, I’ve run out of single-quotes.
Hang on a minute…there’s a way to produce a negative temperature feedback but we have to stop it? Truly the control freaks have discovered the perfect cleft stick to put on out necks.
It gets cooler, bad – we need to burn less fuel
It get warmer, bad – we need to burm less fuel
I think perhaps flights to and over the maldives should be suspended for a few months. That’ll fix it.
Global dimming is directly proportional to the number of climatologists feeding at the public trough. It is not a description of flagging insolation but a recognition that our very brightest are not entering climate science as an avocation.
I have another ‘take’ on how this may all be represented/presented.
There is a need for a physical mechanism to link warm/cold with the inputs/outputs.
Perhaps ice skating may provided a view point.
Wandering around looking a stuff that might, just might be relevant led me to do a snap comparison between LOD and UAH. Prompted by others showing that data.
The results are interesting. One looks as though it is related to the other.
That then leads on to do a comparison to UT1 (the other side of the same coin) with longer running temperature series. UT1 is a ‘hockey stick’ at these sort of time periods.
As I posted a question on my blog…..
So a change from rotational energy to heat? I can’t do the maths if any exist. Would be a possible explanation though. Cold = Fast, Warm = Slow. Spinning down towards entropy? Like a gaia ice-skater, pulling her arms in when she is cold and spreading them out when she is warm? Mass transfer between the poles and the equator. Over that long, slow, method of energy transport. Balanced finely on either side of a long slowdown throughout the ages to eternity. Too fast a decline and the world speeds back up towards the ‘middle’ and picks up energy, an overshoot because of the lags and it gets hot for a while. Then the steady decline resumes.
Think ‘old fashioned regulated steam engine’. Always chugging up and down on idle around a ‘middle’ speed set overall.
If you consider the possibility of maybe an infinite number of “unlucky throws of the dice,” it is not surprising to find ourselves in one that allows us to exist.
Of course – but this is indistinguishable to saying “god made it so”. The anthropic principle postulates that there is no deeper reason, therefore further investigation is pointless. Instead of a positive prediction which can be tested, the prediction is negative – the prediction is that there is no hope of further insight, therefore there is no point trying. This is why the anthropic principle should almost always be rejected – not because there is no chance it is correct, but because its a blind alley, a dead end, a bar to further insight.
Um. No. I am a simple man, but it is not the same thing to say an infinite variety of circumstances resulted in a particular situation and “God did it”. It is plain to see that if circumstances were such that we could not be present to see it, we would never know about the others. The only occasion where we are present to see it, is where circumstances are favorable. Your argument is an appeal to a non-authority… LOL
In continuation of that thought… Just because we are present in a particular set of circumstances, it does not inevitably eliminate the possibility of detecting other outcomes from our present circumstance. A good example might be the earliest universe, the “big bang”. Conditions were utterly hostile to any possibility of life for an incredible amount of time, and modern humans only present for the last 200,000 years. And yet… we seek, we find, darkly through the looking glass the shadowy outline of what was. “God did it” prevents nothing. A religious man might ask how did God do it?
Mark, I’m not arguing about whether the first domino was pushed over by God, or fell by itself. What I’m saying is the nature of the anthropic principle is to close a line of inquiry – that is why it isn’t a useful scientific hypothesis. If you adhere to the view that a circumstance is random, there is no need to look for any hints of underlying order which might lead to deeper insights.
For example, String theory suggests there are hills and stable valleys in the hyper surface of possible universes. This in itself is a reason to explore the possibility of causal relationships between the different cosmic constants, which is a rejection of the “lucky dip” anthropic principle.
“If you consider the possibility of maybe an infinite number of “unlucky throws of the dice,” it is not surprising to find ourselves in one that allows us to exist.”
If you consider that the possible arrangement of individual grains of sand at the bottom of an egg timer is very large but the chances you will see anything but a cone are small.
small x infinite is infinite. In a world with an infinity present, things can be unintuitive.
That depends on if you look at x or 1/x
Well 1/x times infinity is infinity for all positive x in R. If you have infinity as divisor please explain why you got it there.
I was just pointing out approaching infinity in a X space, approaches close to zero in a 1/X (and vice versa).
Both ends are the ‘same’ really.
I have access to the paper. It’s actually only a “letter”, 4 pages long. The conclusion includes:
“GISS ModelE2 is more sensitive to CO2 alone than it is to the sum of the forcings that were important over the past century. This is largely a result of the low efficacy of ozone and volcanic forcings and the high efficacy of aerosol and LU forcing (which have had a cooling effect over the historical period), although further study is needed to explore model differences in simulating efficacies and to enhance confidence in these estimates. Climate sensitivities estimated from recent observations will therefore be biased low in comparison with CO2-only simulations owing to an accident of history: when the efficacies of the forcings in the recent historical record are properly taken into account, estimates of TCR and ECS must be revised upwards.”
So the reason that observations are giving such a low value in comparison to the models is “an accident of history”. Which of course will never be repeated :). Is this another attempt to explain the pause? Which of course isn’t happening :). What tangled webs!
If anyone wants the pdf I guess I could forward it but I’m sure Nature wouldn’t want me to post it here.
somewhat incongruent ranges … known in scientific circles as the wrong answer
What number are we up to now in the Global Warming hiatus list of excuses from the CAGW fraternity? Has “the dog ate my homework” featured yet?
Another case of: “We aren’t wrong! All of these other things just make us look wrong.”
This kind of paper merely provides the evidence that the warmists have no intention of fixing the climate (assuming it is broken) as they have not explained how they will know when it is fixed. Their USP is that they want the climate to be no more than 1.5 deg C above pre-1850(?) temps, but if that ridiculous target is ever achieved how are we and they to know that it was the result of ‘de-carbonising’ the first world? IOW, what are the defined outcomes of their project and what are the defined success factors.
And, if Gavin is right, ‘de-carbonising’ will surely only lead to a warmer climate.
So he suggests pollution increased in the same way CO2 levels did, by 1/3 over the last 40 years? Or that pollution has a greater cooling effect than CO2 warms at a lower concentration? That’s obvious bollocks when you look at historic levels of both.
“A new NASA study suggests that global warming is being suppressed by particulate pollution.”
The intellectual light-weights at NASA have claimed many things over the years, and their buddies at NOAA try to fudge the numbers to match the latest fad. The fact that they have to cook the books tells us how wrong they are.
But there is a major experiment going on. Mother Nature is adding ever more CO2 to the atmosphere and we are getting no increase in “global temperatures” (whatever that is) despite the government minions cooking the books on temperature the best they can. Imagine what the alarmists would have said in 1985 if you had told them that the CO2 concentration in 2015 would be near 400 ppm. They would have guaranteed substantial warming. Where is it? I want some of it.
Besides all that, some people claim that human CO2 emissions are the cause of the fast rise in global CO2 but no proof of the conjecture is forthcoming. If Mother Nature in her experiment is pumping out 96% of the CO2 each year, why does she get a pass and only human emissions are “bad”? Why is that?
We live in an age of Post-Popper science. 🙁
Everything just falls together ‘just so’ eh Gavin? Pull the other one, it’s got Christmas bells on it.
It’s actually quite tragic that a man of Gavin’s undoubted ability employed in a post of high scientific influence should resort to the climate equivalent of match-fixing to prop up an obviously flawed theory to save face. It’s the antithesis of science.
So, I guess that Gavin went to watch Star Wars: The forcing awakens. last weekend and he thought it was a hollywood physics seminar.
This behavior reminds me of the other scientific scandal of the century, the CFCs cause ozone holes. They formulate a theory, disregarding all data that does not fit with their theory. They make some predictions based on their theory, and when the predictions fail, they search for something that happens to be there by the time the predictions started failing. Without further empirical experimentation and without putting the theory on quarantine the new explanation is accepted and the theory is saved.
Why the ozone hole above the south pole is larger than the one on the north pole? Oh that must be the stratospheric clouds. Why the holes are not getting smaller? Oh, that must be these other catalytic reactions we just found. What are the activation energies of these new reactions. Nobody knows, nobody has measured them, but they must be the exact amount of energy to explain why the holes are not closing as fast as expected.
Same goes with the “forcings”. They remain dormant for the exact amount of time and they awaken at the right moment so save the CAGW theory.
They shift the goal posts so often that I suspect the goal posts are not even in the stadium any more.
It’s a circular stadium in which the field is surrounded by goal posts, allowing the ball to be kicked from any point on the field, in any direction, to make an easy score. No opposing players are allowed in the arena, and there are no spectator seats. The games are played in complete secrecy, and the news merely announces the results given to them by league officials.
This is how the big lies works, the more obvious the truth, the more credibility must be stretched in order to support it. The point is to stick with the lie even to the point of looking ridiculous. Historically the lessons of climate change will be in the areas of sociology,politics and propaganda, the science will be a footnote.
BTW Gavin Schmidt is a moron. Not because of his arguments, but because as a cowardly ideologue he runs away from opposing views and evidence that does not align with his ideology. He hides this cowardice by being dismissive. In impolite circles, this would be called acting like an a**hole.
In polite circles – “anal orifice”.
/grin
look at his eyes. i doubt he is a man that could hold a direct look into the eyes of an honest man. i have seen that look before,always in pathological liars. some who had it were a lot worse than liars ,a lot worse.
Let’s see. The models correctly and accurately account for everything that forces climate, except for the CO2-sulfate aerosols correlation factor. Ok. I can add that for just a half billion USD.
They make it up as they go along.
Bingo!
– AGW
– Global Warming
– Climate Change
– Global Climate Disruption
– Carbon Pollution
While NASA is producing “magic”, a sub-contractor is now doing what NASA should be doing, namely innovating.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35157782
Space X has landed on Earth a stage one booster rocket after use. The idea is to use it again to reduce costs. NASA has become a has been innovation company and now relying on private sector efforts. Sad but true.
By coincidence I have just finished reading a recent biography of Elen Musk , the man who created Space X from , literally , nothing but driven by his own ambition to see Martian exploration happen .
He comes across as a Steve Jobs type character, very hard driving and impatient , a person easier to admire from afar than to work for I suspect although he seems to motivate people well.
One thing that particularly impressed me was his desire to keep manufacturing , both of space vehicles and electric cars , in- house and certainly in the US as much as possible . Contrary to the practice advocated by manufacturing “experts” and taken up by most of his competitors .
The Pluto space probe whose images amazed everyone with Nasa’s capability just a few months ago was, sadly , a time capsule , representing the Nasa of old, many years ago.
…….ELON Musk ???
you will be glad to know he has had millions of your taxpayer dollars to maintain the illusion that electric cars have a viable future in the short to medium term.
The Anthropic Principle tells us one thing though. Even given the form of physical law as we have it in this current universe, spontaneous abiogenesis may not be so easy.
1. It is argued often, that as we have evidence, that life on Earth appeared shortly after the end of Late Heavy Bombardment (which, in itself, was inconsistent with life), the transition from inanimate to animate matter should be an easy one.
2. On the other hand we have pretty strong theoretical reasons to believe, Kolmogorov complexity of evolvable replicators is bounded from below, and this lower bound is rather high (like several hundred kilobits or something). The problem is, Darwinian evolution can’t play a role until the first replicator is given, so its spontaneous formation is an incredibly improbable event a.k.a. miracle.
Points (1) and (2) stand in clear contradiction, unless we call the Anthropic Principle into play. In that case probability of spontaneous abiogenesis can be arbitrarily small (p0=10^-10^110 or suchlike), but the tail end of Late Heavy Bombardment could still be a necessary condition to it in the sense it increased this probability considerably for a brief period to, let’s say something like p1=10^-10^109. Now, p1 is indeed a vastly higher probability, than p0, since p1/p0=10^(9×10^109), a very big number, but p1 is still vanishingly small in itself.
However, if we suppose abiogenesis did happen (and we are the living example it did), it should have happened fast, as soon as the Late Heavy Bombardment was over.
It is not a full fledged scientific hypothesis, because relies on a reasonable, but still genuinely metaphysical element, the Anthropic Principle. In spite of this, the hypothesis has some testable meta-predictions.
a) A “natural” course of events leading to abiogenesis (spontaneous appearance of an evolvable replicator) will never be found. In this sense life remains a miracle forever.
b) No extraterrestrial life will be found anywhere in the Cosmos, the entire assemblage is a barren desert.
These are pretty strong predictions, easy to falsify if untrue, by either reconstructing a reasonable pathway to life in the lab (hypercycle, clay minerals as templates, RNA world, whatever) or finding undeniable evidence for extraterrestrial life (like a successful SETI program or identification of a distant IR galaxy cluster, overshadowed by Dyson swarms).
Martian life is a possible exception though, because considerable material exchange is shown to happen between the two planets, which could transplant evolvable replicators in either direction. But given the arbitrary, still universal nature of terrestrial genetic code, such fake extraterrestrial life forms should be easy to identify, if found.
Of course, if a universal Mind of high (possibly infinite) Kolmogorov complexity is behind the process, then anything goes. In that case the Universe may be teeming with life for example, in spite of its inherent improbability. However, to my knowledge, no revelation points into that direction so far.
One thing seems to be sure. Math is easier than life, because Number Theory can be given in 17 kbit, which sounds much, but certainly insufficient to define an evolvable replicator.
Rarely, mind-prodding metaphysical ideas are aired here, like the above by Berényi Péter
December 22, 2015 at 4:46 am. I enjoyed his post very much. The subject is huge, unwieldy and yet some juice can be extracted from it – testable meta-predictions, no less!! Testable predictions are to be avoided at all costs it seems in the climate of Gavin and his merry men and ladies. Certainly don’t even have an argument with a dissenter – in a rational world, such a confident position as held by the so-called consensus would be glad to take on all comers.
Metaphysics used to be the purview of classical philosophers (and scientists – who were called philosophers: Doctor of Philosophy is a quaint vestige) whose names we all know and who are all dead. Today, with universities overrun and suffocated by the results of “liberal” industrial democracy open-door policy, after first numbing down the early education system with mission-oriented ideological ‘truths’ and persecution of smart kids who ask questions, philosophy is a semantic cold porridge with it’s adherents occupying the space that was created there in a previous time for loftier use. Today’s pedestrian thinkers are known only when they come out to advise that dissenters of doctrine (climate science the topical one) should be tried and executed. I’ve wondered if the ‘Planet of the Apes’ movie was a deep allegorical story about human destiny, but, unfortunately I think not – just another Sci Fi “what if”. I regret this unwitting great idea got used up in this more mundane story.
Oh dear, this is interesting and I have lots to say about the testability of the anthropic principle.
Another possible way of falsification is to identify a planet with Oxygen rich atmosphere. That’s not a completely unreasonable request, because we already know thousands of exoplanets, although most of them are completely weird.
However, tools are evolving fast and analysis of planetary atmospheres should become feasible eventually.
Unfortunately I am not convinced Oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere can be nothing but biogenic. If it were, there should be an equivalent amount of carbon buried deep underground in a reduced state, that is, as kinda “fossil fuel”. However, that’s four hundred thousand gigatons, a hundred times more than all the known reserves and some. Moreover, initially Oxygen was used up to increase the oxidation state of iron and such, so the expected amount of reduced carbon underground is even more. By an order of magnitude, at least. It is not seen.
However, we also have plenty of water, as all planets with a chance to support life should have. If it gets into the upper atmosphere, it’s split into Hydrogen and Oxygen by UV radiation. Then Hydrogen, being light, escapes to space and we are left with Oxygen with no biological process involved whatsoever.
It does not happen under current conditions, because there is a well defined tropopause, separating a troposphere below with vigorous convective flows from a stratosphere above with none. There is little material exchange between them, what is more, there is a very efficient water vapor trap in the upper troposphere, so the stratosphere is bone dry. At the same time, very little UV makes its way below the stratospheric Ozone layer. Therefore, where water is, there’s no UV and vice versa.
However, it was not always this way. In a wet atmosphere dominated by a triatomic gas (like carbon dioxide) there is no clear boundary between troposphere and stratosphere, convection cells go all the way up to ToA (Top of Atmosphere), carrying some water up there. At the same time no efficient Ozone layer is formed for the lack of Oxygen, so there is plenty of opportunity for UV radiation to meet water molecules.
Primordial atmosphere of Earth was exactly like that.
As for carbon dioxide depletion, the vast majority of the original high pressure carbon dioxide atmosphere is fixed in limestone and various other minerals, which process does not need biotic mediation, only water. Life can only speed up the process, but that’s all.
So, even if the presence of water and Oxygen could be detected in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, that would be insufficient to prove extraterrestrial life.
‘One thing seems to be sure. Math is easier than life, because Number Theory can be given in 17 kbit, which sounds much, but certainly insufficient to define an evolvable replicator.’
For starters, I suspect this claim can’t stand. Replicator as of a cell requires lots of rna, but I think chemical replication can happen in a cyclically changing environment without any start data per se.
It is enough to have certain chemicals present with some concentration. This is rare event, certainly, but not 2 ^ 17000 rare. Not nearly. But if you robustly prove this result, then of course multiverse / infinite universe with anthropic principle must be called.
One of the AP problems are that it requires a finite world with finite existence and carbon chauvinism. Life has to die out ‘soon’ otherwise we’d live in a freak accident. Now this could be true, the galaxies will die out in 100 000 Ma time scale and life could be only carbon based. But I hated tha.
It may be the case, but it was never demonstrated in the lab so far.
PLoS Biol 6(1): e18.
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060018
The Implausibility of Metabolic Cycles on the Prebiotic Earth by Leslie E Orgel
Published: January 22, 2008
“What is essential, therefore, is a reasonably detailed description, hopefully supported by experimental evidence, of how an evolvable family of cycles might operate. The scheme should not make unreasonable demands on the efficiency and specificity of the various external and internally generated catalysts that are supposed to be involved. Without such a description, acceptance of the possibility of complex nonenzymatic cyclic organizations that are capable of evolution can only be based on faith, a notoriously dangerous route to scientific progress”.
That is, the field is taken over by postnormal science the same way it happened in climate studies.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilw2qz2C3fI&w=560&h=315%5D
Yet the northern hemisphere was warming more than the southern hemisphere and recent surface tampering increased it further. GISTEMP has done the same tricks as HADCRUT, increasing the warming in the northern hemisphere because it was not warming enough overall.
http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy8/SciMattG/NHTemps_Difference_v_HADCRUT43_zps8xxzywdx.png
Sulfate aerosols and SAOT have been shown to change far too small without major volcanic eruptions to have any influence on global temperatures. The past adjustments in the models for aerosols were found to be far too great during the very recent decades. Repeating incorrect science that observed data doesn’t support doesn’t make it true. This is worse than pseudoscience because the planet has already shown to be false. Burning fossil fuels does not not emit sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere and therefore no global cooling.
Here is how Gavin has been treating the Aerosols in his recent climate model simulations.
You need to add together the Troposphere Aerosols (Direct) and Tropospheric Aerosols (Indirect – this is the impact of aerosols on clouds making them thicker). Stratospheric Aerosols are mostly volcanoes.
I mean, these are just made up “straight lines”. Reaching a peak of -0.89 W/m2 in the year 2000 and then flat afterward. Hansen used to have this total at -1.6 W/m2 when he was in charge of GISS but it was the exact same straight line guesses pattern. How come they changed it to -0.89 W/m2 when Hansen got the same historical simulation when it was -1.6 W/m2.
Fudge factors is all this is which is what the climate models really boil down to anyway.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/Miller_et_al14_fig2.gif
The data is here if someone wants to play around. But the total human forcing in 2012 is +3.32 W/m2 with temperatures increasing only 0.7C. That means the Transient Climate Response is extremely small at only 0.21C/W/m2. It does not translate into any kind of problem at these levels (even with the fake made-up Aerosols negative forcing.)
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/Fi_Miller_et_al14.txt
My comment on a guest contribution at the early days of RC, including Ron Miller of this new report:
To begin with, a back-of-the-envelope calculation: The largest cooling effect is supposed to be from sulfate aerosols. Here we have a good example, the Pinatubo, which ejected 20 Mt SO2 directly into the stratosphere. That lasted 2-3 years, until growing sulfate/water drops fell out. In contrast, humans emit some 80 Mt SO2/year, lasting average only 4 days. The Pinatubo caused a global temperature drop (including water vapor feedback) of app. 0.6 K. If one expects that there is virtually no difference in direct effect for stratospheric and tropospheric aerosols, then the net primary effect of human SO2 emissions would be not more than 0.025 K. But stratospheric changes may have a larger impact than tropospheric (like changes in the jet stream position)…
The effect of aerosols should be measurable in the regions with the largest change, but they are not. Not in Europe, with an over 50% reduction since 1975 (neither did Philipona ea. find a positive change in insolation in their 2005 GRL paper), neither in India, where the tip is warming faster than the only station of the SH in the neighborhood, not under the smoke of increasing emissions. Neither in ocean heat content, where all oceans in the NH are warming faster than the SH parts (if corrected for area), while the aerosol load in the NH is larger.
The influence of (sulfate) aerosols probably is overestimated, and/or the influence of other (soot) aerosols is underestimated. Which leads to questioning even the sign of the total aerosol effect…
Last but not least, the Bellouin ea. paper (I have not read – yet – the other papers in detail) need to be seen as a “worst case” scenario, and probably was intended to give a maximum (negative) influence of aerosols to be used in climate models. In fact, interpreting all fine aerosols over land as anthropogenic by them is way too high.
From the IPCC gaseous precursors and solid aerosols, the quantities involved are:
Anthropogenic: around 560 Mt/y less than 1 micron
Natural: around 350 Mt/y less than 1 micron, around 5300 Mt/yr over 1 micron.
Thus even if these are not underestimates of natural VOC emissions and/or natural fires, the annual natural emissions leading to aerosols present already 38% of the total fraction of fine aerosols. This is higher than the 28% error estimate of the authors.
Even more interesting are the recent findings that the aerosols found over land in the free troposphere are mainly of natural origin. See the 2005 GRL paper of Heald ea.
The main points:
– natural SOA (secondary organic aerosols) in the free troposphere are some factor 7 higher than anthropogenic.
– the mass ratio SOA/SOx (SO2+sulfate) aerosol is app. 2:1 to >10:1, between 0.5 and 5.5 km altitude.
– chemical transport models underestimate SOA’s with a factor 2 at the boundary layer and up to 10-100 times in the free troposphere.
The natural free troposphere SOA already counts for some 10% of the total aerosol optical depth. Add to that the amount of natural VOC aerosols formed below the boundary layer and other natural (fine and coarse) aerosols, and also the sea induced SO2 and salt aerosols over land, then we may safely conclude that the Bellouin study is a huge overestimate of anthropogenic aerosol influence.
In addition to restrictions of the upper bound influence of aerosols in climate models, the upper bound needs to be reduced further (probably more than halved, more like what is found in the Chung ea. study), based on the presence of natural small size aerosols. That has repercussions for GHG sensitivity too, as aerosol cooling and GHG warming are tightly coupled, which results in appreciable differences in projections of future climate:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/ajc_fig1.jpg
Source: RC, not available on their website anymore…
Ferdinand says: “…we may safely conclude that the Bellouin study is a huge overestimate of anthropogenic aerosol influence. ”
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Or as W might say, “Their excuses are misunderestimated”.
Allan,
The strange point at that time (2006) was that there was no response at from the authors… I expected a lot of discussion and rebuttal of my objections, but none at all…
Ferdinand,
That’s because you nailed it and they knew that any further discussion would subject Bellouin to scrutiny which it could not bear. See Joe Bastardi’s post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/21/gavin-schmidts-magic-climate-balance/#comment-2104416
Same thing applies, here.