From the “yes, but satellite data is good enough when they want to scream the Arctic is melting” department comes this powerful takedown of recent claims about the satellite temperature data being inferior to surface temperature data.
I was traveling yesterday, so could not cover this live. Dr. Christy said in testimony:
‘When you look at the United States record of extreme high temperatures you do not see an upward trend at all. In fact, it’s slightly downward. That does fly in the face of climate model projections.
I’ll say.
Here is the video of his testimony:
And his written testimony is here: U.S. House Committee on Science, Space & Technology, 2 Feb 2016
Testimony of John R. Christy, University of Alabama in Huntsville.
The full video of all testimony is here:
Just read it through The Global Warming Policy Web site. Very powerful presentation. Wait for the vilification of Christy (again) from the usual suspects. I don’t know how you can prove Christy wrong using science only.
The rhetoric used by the warmists is exceeded only by their ignorance of scientific method, and their consequent inability to apply it.
They wont use science. They draw their plays from a list of the Fallacies of Informal Logic.
They are re-writing the scientific method to subordinate it for the purpose of CAGW and all the political agendas riding on it. At the same time they are discrediting and destroying the scientific edifice.
Well said. This is it in a nutshell, they allow for no scientific debate.
“…………The rhetoric used by the warmists is exceeded only by their ignorance of scientific method, and their consequent inability to apply it……..”
Not quite.
The warmists know exactly what they are doing and they understand the scientific method perfectly well.
Their strategy it to promote a political agenda – redistribution of income and to demolish the capitalist economic model – and to that end, they simply lie, distort, mislead, cheat and destroy those whom do not follow their Stalinist/Orwellian dogma.
Realistic minded folks have to get over the notion that everybody wishes the same outcomes and differences arise only as to the means to obtain these outcomes. WRONG !! WRONG !!! WRONG!!!!
History is replete with examples of individuals/groups/nations that seek the destruction of the status quo (for better or worse), and they find no limits whatsoever in attempting to achieve their goals.
Wake up folks .
Another FAIL of a hearing that accomplished nothing except now giving legitimacy to a connection that green economy = huge economic growth. Yes some green jobs will be made when governments pour massive subsidies and grants into industries that couldn’t stand on their own. But we never hear how many “non-green” jobs get lost in the process. It is hugely skewed and results in negative economic growth. We already did that experiment in several countries (e.g. Spain, Portugal, Germany).
Once again, this kind of hearing just allows Democrats to spout untruths without getting challenged directly with facts. Congressman Bera says it’s a fact that weather extremes are increasing and that we can agree on that. NO WE CAN’T AGREE BECAUSE IT’S NOT TRUE!!!! Extreme weather events (hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods) are not increasing. There is NOAA data that shows Mr Bera is LYING! Congressman Bera says polar ice caps are melting and that’s a fact on which we can agree. NO WE CAN’T AGREE BECAUSE IT’S NOT TRUE!!!! Ice mass in Antarctica is GROWING (says NASA) and Antarctic sea ice extent was recently above average for three straight years and reached record extents in 2014. Arctic ice mass has been increasing since 2012 (says PIOMAS) and arctic sea ice extent is the same as it was a decade ago.
Democrats don’t even look at the data because they know the data doesn’t support what they’re saying.
Challenge every bogus statement directly and repeatedly at the time they are made! Make them look like fools or this sh!t will never stop.
…spot on. While watching I kept wishing someone would circle back and disarm the baseless, false assertions made by the Democrats. You mentioned the biggest ones, to which I’d add the comments about crop yields dropping (not true), the presumed “belief” of “climate change” by the “military” (they take orders and are not climate scientists), the sweeping assertion that “acidification” is impacting fisheries and oceans wholesale (not happening, and where trouble is observed it is related to over-fishing).
Lastly, the woman who asserted that asthma is somehow mitigated by this non-binding confab might as well have said the agreement can levitate things with a wand. What is the link between CO2 and asthma?
Nobody raised the harsh reality that the US is staggering under the weight of our own financial obligations, a soaring debt nearly doubled during Obama’s two terms. Yet, we are expected to shoulder the principle burden of servicing a phantom menace.
The stark rift between rational, objective, legitimate scientific perspectives of the majority of the panelists and the Democrats – almost all blindly ignoring the expertise in front of them – is stunning. I feel like our country and economy are collectively holding breath until Obama and these absurd incantations are dismissed next year.
Love the name – I’m also a Boulder skeptic.
Very well written.
Please contribute more.
Well IpsoPhakto, we’ll have to hit one of our local Boulder craft breweries and have a loud conversation about how unscientific this whole CAGW is and see what reaction we get.
Mr Christy is wrong wrong wrong.
If you look at the latest adjusted homogenized data of the last 100 years you will see the climate has actually been on a very smooth upward path from 1880 to today and almost 100% in complete correspondence to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. 30+ adjustments to the temperature record have PROVED beyond a doubt that these things like ships being able to cross the northern passage in the 30s and 40s and the climate getting colder in the 70s were false perceptions of the thermometers and people of the time who somehow were apparently involved in mass hysteria of some climatalogical sort.
Mr Christy, you fail to take into account the hysteria in prior data that needs to be corrected out.
Of course, Mr Christy is correct that the CO2 should be most measurable in the bulk atmosphere but it isn’t. It is on the surface we see this heat and after adjustments to find the heat we see it. It is also plainly obvious if Mr Christy would look that all the missing heat simply went into the deep ocean from 20,000 feet above the ocean to 3,000 feet deep in the ocean it snuck in. All of it, for 20 years for the bulk of the atmosphere except the part about 5 feet over the surface. The 5 foot temperature is heating really almost perfectly according to and in precise lockstep with CO2 measurements after we adjust the record carefully for the errors humans and thermostats always make. So, the heat has clearly not been heating the bulk atmosphere but at 5ft and -3000 feet in the ocean. Mr Christy doesn’t KNOW where the heat from CO2 will go. He keeps saying the theory. He doesnt even know the theory. We are talking data. The heat is going to these two places from the CO2 obviously.
Mr Christy points out another problem that needs to be corrected. We also have to adjust our hysterical reporting of the past in other areas. For instance looking at the reported natural disasters of the early 20th century there were clearly some serious misreportings. They show millions of people dieing from droughts and floods and storms. We all know the worst calamaties are occuring NOW not back then. The world was much more peaceful in the past. It is only now with the enormous CO2 burden we have placed that all these bad things are happening.
There may be jobs for those 110 Australian climate modelers who lost their jobs correcting historical records. For instance, when I go to the NCDC’s records database for temperatures it still shows the 30s and 40s as having most of the heat records. Clearly this is wrong. We all know the latest temperatures are the hottest EVAH!@ So clearly those old records need to be downscaled and adjusted to the correct temperatures. All the press articles that quote temperature records of over 100 degrees for 10 days or 20 days need to be erased because the thermometers of the day were all broken. Mr Christy shows a graph with the number of over 100 days reported by stations which clearly shows the errors in past station thermostats. The models clearly show the past was colder so it is easy to go back and adjust the NCDC data records to get those records adjusted.
There’s plenty of work to do to fix the past so we are able to understand the severity of todays weather better.
Lovely diatribe. Surely this concept of correcting the past can be turned into a streamlined masters or doctorate program. It can be sold as an international degree w internships at the various leading nations on the issue.
There are NO standard methods for temperature adjustments. Zero. Imagine the fertile teaching opportunities under the mentorship of one schooled in such.
The mind runs wild with opportunities for such a skillset. Why stop at temperature ?
Is that before or after adjustments, though?
And someone will try to spin that as “fewer 100 degree days but hotter ones.”
Someone will say that the days with temperatures below 40F should be added to the 100+ days, and the resultant “strange temperature days” taken as a sign of CO2 climate weirding.
The record high temperature evah! in my hometown of Lewiston, Idaho, 117 degrees, was set in (wait for it…) 1961. Because global cooling. Yes?
I suffered a nasty heat stroke due to poor planning and stupidity while working on the Bryden canyon road project in your home town in August 1998 I think. Seriously hot!
Exactly!
As a daily example, the temperature log at our local government weather station recorded a top temperature of 28.6C on the 2nd of February.
By 9am on the 3rd of February, that had rison to 29C.
At 6am on the 4th that 29C is now 29.7!
And please, enough with the “spikes”.
Till the methodology of “world’s best secret practice” of UPWARD adjustments is revealed, we have but two options to consider.
Magic or fraud.
If anybody else has a better discriptive word , I’d seriously like to hear it.
Since standard methods for land based temperature adjustments have not been thru a rigorous standard methods approval and validation process, they get to rely heavily on best professional judgement. If you couple that with closely held raw data AND the nontransparency (or poorly documented reasons) for the bpj you end up with far too much temptation when too much is at stake.
The congressional committee has the power to blow this wide open because all raw data is public record when spending public funds. They are taking baby steps.
The most likely reason I’ve heard is since CAGW is a low voter interest issue they’ll plod along and not pick a major fight which uses up battle coins and takes away from larger voter issues.
If the usual suspects manage to push through some sort of carbon pricing scheme and electricity starts to get within hailing distance of $1.00/kWhr it won’t be “low interest” any more.
Yes DJ and obviously the opposition gets that little nuance. Frog in a boiling pan and all that.
They’ll march along to the tune slowly demonizing fossils while spreading your tax dollar to make investors richer … eh … you people are smart and get it so I’ll stop.
Skeptics are trapped in being correct, yet the train is moving along. It feels like it took decades for modern medicine to reexamine the link between cholesterol and heart disease.
How much longer for CAGW ?
Has the ruse made deep enough penetration into energy policy to be quickly fixed ?
Will too many people lose their shirts ?
It shouldn’t be a low profile issue but it is so.
CAGW is the most dangerous threat to the modern world but of course not in the manner it is being presented.
Do you remember the times square debt clock? Probably the single greatest attention grabber concerning the debt awareness.
Imagine the same thing for the satellite temps.
Make a real time graphic in a prominent place.
Perhaps add in some nakedness …. errrrr well … okay maybe not.
Famous TV meteorologist Bob Ryan seems to be a subtle climate skeptic.
From his twitter:
Bob Ryan @BobRyanCCM · Jan 31
Great read-think AGW theory – Karl Popper: What Makes a Theory Scientific https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2016/01/karl-popper-on-science-pseudoscience/ … via farnamstreet
Obviously AGW is not falsifiable, therefore it is pseudoscience.
claiming that AGW cannot be falsified in response to a post that falsifies AGW a bit… strange? 🙂
benben, benben…
Skeptics don’t have to prove anything. You’ve been told that several times, but you keep trying.
Give it up. This is a science site. You don’t belong here.
a post that falsifies AGW
==================
Does it? Does Climate Science accept that model failure to predict the future correctly would constitute falsification?
The answer is NO. Even the IPCC admits that models are not predictions. They are projections, which is quite a bit different animal. You cannot falsify a projection, because it is ALWAYS true that the model projects what it is projecting.
The problem is that only predictions can be falsified and models do not offer predictions.
dbstealey said: “Skeptics don’t have to prove anything.” The AGW case has been proven to the satisfaction of the world’s scientific organizations, the majority of climate scientists, and nearly all governments – as well as the private sector. So yes, if you want to convince any of these groups to change their position, skeptics DO have to prove their case.
Governments accept the “science” of “climate” (whatever that is)?
Big surprise.
Of course they do. They generally accept baseless pseudoscience when it suits their agendas.
Climate models are very easily falsifiable, as evidenced by this blog. So the statement that climate science is not falsifiable is just plain wrong, no matter on which side of the debate you stand. Everyone should agree on that right?
Everyone except dbstealey of course. But that’s ok. Special rules for special people 😉
In slightly more detail: science doesn’t work in the way that once you discover your results are not what you expected you throw away everything and become a gardener. Every model ever made in any scientific field is ‘wrong’. You might conclude that you need to change tack completely, or you decide to refine the model. Or you might decide that even though its patently wrong, its still valuable to continue working on it (string theory is a perfect example). The discussions on this blog are a valuable part of that process. So I don’t see the need to be so combative all the time.
benben says, “claiming that AGW cannot be falsified in response to a post that falsifies AGW a bit… strange? 🙂
———————————————————–
You have to define who says what. Of course skeptics consider CAGW falsified. The “C’ is MIA. Hell, the “G” and the “W” are MIA as well. The proponents of CAGW are the ones making claims that CAGW is not falsified, that it will cause more/less snow and more drought/floods, etc. When it is shown that this has not occurred, they point to the next drought, flood, storm etc, and claim a non supported CO2 influence.
So yes, different people disagree, and that is not “strange”.
dbstealey – what exactly is the null hypothesis of climate change? I am not sure exactly what you mean.
Seaice,
DB can answer for himself, but in the philosophy of science the null hypothesis is that nothing out of the ordinary is happening, so nothing needs to be explained. Before promulgating an alternative hypothesis, a scientist first has to able to reject the null hypothesis.
In the case of so-called “climate science”, the null hypothesis is that any warming which might have happened since 1850 (or end of the LIA), 1945 (end of WWII) or whenever, is not out of the ordinary, well within normal bounds, and therefore a “human fingerprint” is missing.
Of course AGW can be falsified. If temperatures start to drop and continue for some years woth no measurable change in inputs that would probably do it. It does of course depend what you mean by “AGW”. The principle of the greenhouse effect could be falsified if molecules stopped absorbing IR radiation, for example. That would also falsify AGW. This can be tested easily by measuring the IR spectrum of molecules. So far they continue to absorb.
This is very different from something not being falsifiable because it is true. The basic theory of molecules absorbing radiation could in principle be falsified, but it will almost certainly not be not be because it is very probably true. If it is true, then it is unfalsifiable in practice, because no test will actualy falsify it.
There was a post yesterday about the Met Office predictions for the next 5 years. If in 5 years the temperatures do not bear any resemblance to those predicted, that would pretty much falsify the AGW hypothesis.
But we don’t need to wait 5 years, do we. Because there was a forecast made 5 years ago. We can see if the reality bears any relation to the predictions.
Turns out that it does. Most of the world is within the 95% confidence limits. The theory could have been falsified, but it was not. It was shown not to be perfect, but we knew that anyway. the reality is close enough to the predicted to have failed to falsify the hypothesis.
People argue that the figures have been adjusted to fit the forecast. There are limits to how much that can be done (if a all). At best this makes it harder to falsify, not unfalsifiable.
seaice1:
You say
I will answer your question.
I will provide a blunt answer and then I will explain it, but I warn you that the explanation is about science and, therefore, you are likely to find it very, very hard to understand.
The Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed a system has not experienced a change unless there is evidence of a change.
The Null Hypothesis is a fundamental scientific principle and forms the basis of all scientific understanding, investigation and interpretation. Indeed, it is the basic principle of experimental procedure where an input to a system is altered to discern a change: if the system is not observed to respond to the alteration then it has to be assumed the system did not respond to the alteration.
In the case of climate science there is a hypothesis that increased greenhouse gases (GHGs, notably CO2) in the air will increase global temperature. There are good reasons to suppose this hypothesis may be true, but the Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed the GHG changes have no effect unless and until increased GHGs are observed to increase global temperature. That is what the scientific method decrees. It does not matter how certain some people may be that the hypothesis is right because observation of reality (i.e. empiricism) trumps all opinions.
Please note that the Null Hypothesis is a hypothesis which exists to be refuted by empirical observation. It is a rejection of the scientific method to assert that one can “choose” any subjective Null Hypothesis one likes. There is only one Null Hypothesis: i.e. it has to be assumed a system has not changed unless it is observed that the system has changed.
However, deciding a method which would discern a change may require a detailed statistical specification.
In the case of global climate in the Holocene, no recent climate behaviours are observed to be unprecedented so the Null Hypothesis decrees that the climate system has not changed.
Importantly, an effect may be real but not overcome the Null Hypothesis because it is too trivial for the effect to be observable. Human activities have some effect on global temperature for several reasons. An example of an anthropogenic effect on global temperature is the urban heat island (UHI). Cities are warmer than the land around them, so cities cause some warming. But the temperature rise from cities is too small to be detected when averaged over the entire surface of the planet, although this global warming from cities can be estimated by measuring the warming of all cities and their areas.
Clearly, the Null Hypothesis decrees that UHI is not affecting global temperature although there are good reasons to think UHI has some effect. Similarly, it is very probable that AGW from GHG emissions are too trivial to have observable effects.
The feedbacks in the climate system are negative and, therefore, any effect of increased CO2 will be probably too small to discern because natural climate variability is much, much larger. This concurs with the empirically determined values of low climate sensitivity.
Empirical – n.b. not model-derived – determinations indicate climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. This is indicated by the studies of
Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satellite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
Indeed, because climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of CO2 equivalent, it is physically impossible for the man-made global warming to be large enough to be detected (just as the global warming from UHI is too small to be detected). If something exists but is too small to be detected then it only has an abstract existence; it does not have a discernible existence that has effects (observation of the effects would be its detection).
To date there are no discernible effects of AGW. Hence, the Null Hypothesis decrees that AGW does not affect global climate to a discernible degree. That is the ONLY scientific conclusion possible at present.
Richard
richardscourtney February 4, 2016 at 7:18 am
The Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed a system has not experienced a change unless there is evidence of a change.
The Null Hypothesis is a fundamental scientific principle and forms the basis of all scientific understanding, investigation and interpretation. Indeed, it is the basic principle of experimental procedure where an input to a system is altered to discern a change: if the system is not observed to respond to the alteration then it has to be assumed the system did not respond to the alteration.
In the case of climate science there is a hypothesis that increased greenhouse gases (GHGs, notably CO2) in the air will increase global temperature. There are good reasons to suppose this hypothesis may be true, but the Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed the GHG changes have no effect unless and until increased GHGs are observed to increase global temperature. That is what the scientific method decrees.
This is a misrepresentation of the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis states that there is no change or difference as a result of the independent variable. The alternative hypothesis states that there is a change or difference. In a scientific experiment you have a control experiment where the relevant variable is not changed and everything else is kept the same. That is not true of the Greenhouse effect. We don’t have the control experiment in the case of the earth to show what the null hypothesis is. The best we can do is to correct the data for the effect of known other variables, if we do that for el Niño, atmospheric aerosols, and fluctuations in solar output we find that there is a significant GHE.
Phil.:
You dispute my statement
and my application of it to AGW which concludes
You respond
That response is twaddle!
Your phrasing of “The null hypothesis states that there is no change or difference as a result of the independent variable” is merely a rephrasing of my definition except that my phrasing is more clear for laymen.
Importantly, we don’t need a “control experiment in the case of the earth to show what the null hypothesis is” because we know what the null hypothesis is for AGW because AGW says that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases – notably CO2 – will raise global temperature.
Therefore, if global temperature is not observed to rise in a manner or a magnitude that differs from previous global temperature rises then it has to be assumed that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases – notably CO2 – have not raised global temperature. This is because there is no reason to invoke an hypothesis to explain what is not observed.
Richard
Richard.
“The Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed a system has not experienced a change unless there is evidence of a change…
There is only one Null Hypothesis: i.e. it has to be assumed a system has not changed unless it is observed that the system has changed.”
But what system are we looking at? After all, there is overwhelming evidence of change in the climate system. The climate is always changing. I am sure you agree with this. The null hypothesis that the climate system has not changed is therefore false. It is the job of science to explain that change.
You say: In the case of global climate in the Holocene, no recent climate behaviours are observed to be unprecedented so the Null Hypothesis decrees that the climate system has not changed..
Here is your problem. You are now looking at a different system. You are looking not at the climate system, but at the way the climate system changes. That is the wrong null hypothesis. You said there can only be one null hypothesis – mine is the correct one.
Take a very simple analogy. We observe a ball being batted back and forth across a table. The system is always changing – the bats and ball change direction and momentum dramatically. We do not have any theory of motion to explain these changes. We introduce a small amount of air movement into the system. This affects slightly the way the ball behaves.
Your approach is to say the null hypothesis is that there is no change in the way the ball’s movement is changing. To see if the wind has any effect we must analyse the ball movements to detect any change. In the absence of any theory at all, it is excedingly difficult to demonstrate that the motion has changed. We measure huge changes in momentum and direction before the wind, and we measure very similar huge changes after the wind. Certainly there is nothing unprecedented. Without a theory, we have no way to detect these are any different from the movements without the slight wind. Looking at the signal we would conclude, to paraphrase your words, “no recent ball behaviors are observed to be unprecedented so the Null Hypothesis decrees that the bat and ball system has not changed.”
In contrast, the correct scientific approach is to say the null hypothesis is that there is no change in the bat and ball system. This is disproved, since we can see the system is changing. Therefore we must explain the movements. We arrive at a Newtonian theory of motion to explain the large changes. Now we can say that the movements with the breeze do not quite match what we expect to see. We observe small deviations from the expected. It is then quite simple to fit the small perterbations from the air movenments into this theory. We cannot do this unless we have some idea of what is expected.
You have the wrong null hypothesis. The system is the climate, it is not how the climate system changes.
(You said “I will provide a blunt answer and then I will explain it, but I warn you that the explanation is about science and, therefore, you are likely to find it very, very hard to understand.” Richard, I do not believe I have given you any reason to think I would have trouble understanding a simple explanation about science. I hope my response has demonstrated this to you, and you will refrain from derogatory remarks in the future. If you think I have failed to understand, please point out exactly where my argument fails. The crux is that the system is the climate, not the way the climate system changes.)
seaice1:
You asked a question and I answered it by saying with explanation
You have responded
The Null Hypothesis as it applies to the hypothesis of AGW is under discussion: the “job of science” is not.
And I warned you that I was discussing science and, therefore, you were likely to find it very, very hard to understand. Clearly, that warning was well placed.
Of course “the climate is always changing” and “the null hypothesis that the climate system has not changed is therefore false”. Indeed, that is why I did NOT say any change to the climate system was pertinent to the Null Hypothesis for AGW.
I said
In case you have again missed it, I said, “the Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed the GHG changes have no effect unless and until increased GHGs are observed to increase global temperature“.
I concluded that same explanation to you saying
Subsequently, Phil. tried to obfuscate the issue and I told him
seaice1, the Null Hypothesis is so fundamental a principle of the scientific method that until you understand it you can have no hope of ever understanding science.
Richard
Richard. Please try to respond to my points instead of just repeating yourself. I say the system we are studying is the climate. Therefore the null hypothesis should be that the system, i.e. the climate, has not changed. This has been falsified, so we should reject the null hypothesis. I further say that not only should this have been done, but this is exactly what has been done. The result is what we are calling the AGW theory. The AGW theory is much, much more than just saying CO2 affects climate. It is a theory of climate.
You want to re-cast the null hypothesis as something completely different. You want to say the null hypothesis is that the changes we currently see in the climate system are indistinguishable from changes we have seen without CO2, with no attempt to explain the changes we already see. That is not how science is done. That is not how climate science is done. This is the wrong null hypothesis.
Go back to my analogy. The ball is moving back and forth. There is a small wind. Does the wind affect the ball? We will call this “the wind theory of ball movement”. This is analagous to asking if CO2 affects the climate and calling this “the AGW theory of climate”.
1) Do you accept this a valid analogy – if not please tell me why not.
Where I think you have gone wrong is you are seeing the problem as only the wind. You want to accept or reject “The Wind Theory of Ball Movement.”
Your null hypothesis is that there is no change in ball movements with and without the wind. Your approach says we should look at the movements of the ball before the wind, then look at the movements after the wind, then see if we can spot a change in the movements.
2) Do you agree that this is an accurate description of your null hypothesis? If not, again why not.
We will have a huge variation in data before the wind, and a huge variation after the wind. Spotting the change is very, very difficult. It is very likely that we would conclude with that we cannot reject the null hypothesis, and conclude that there is no evidence the wind affects the ball. Agreed again? We would reject “The wind theory of ball movement”
3) Do you agree that it would be difficult to spot the wind signal?
The science approach is to work out why the ball is moving at all. It is important to have the correct null hypothesis, which is that the system is not changing. Having rejected the null hypothesis that there is no change to the system, we can seek to find out the mechanics of the system. We study this, predict where the ball will go without wind, then measure any difference. In this case we have a much better chance of spotting the signal. And we will be able to explain the movements before the wind into the bargain. We would accept “The wind theory of ball movement”.
4) Do you agree that this is how the scientific approach to this problem should go?
5) Do you also agree that this is how the scientific approach to the climate should go?
6) If so , please explain why you think this is not the approach that has been taken.
All analogies are flawed, but this one seems to encapsulate the main points.
You can see where your problem lies – it is in calling the theory “the wind theory of ball movement”. As a label it may serve, but it gives the wrong impression and seems to have led you to think that the theory is that the wind drives all movement of the ball, instead of just having some effect.
“seaice1, the Null Hypothesis is so fundamental a principle of the scientific method that until you understand it you can have no hope of ever understanding science.”
So help me out. Explain to me in the context of my example where I have gone wrong with understanding the null hypothesis and the scientific method. That means addressing the points I have made and explaining why they are wrong. I have numbered them for ease of reference.
seaice1:
You had made no “points” for me to answer.
You have provided a combined ‘straw man’ and ‘red herring’ in the form of an inappropriate analogy which I ignored – and will continue to ignore – because ignoring it was and is the most polite of the sensible responses to it.
And you provided a gross misrepresentation of what I said; viz.
I said; “the Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed the GHG changes have no effect unless and until increased GHGs are observed to increase global temperature“
which you tried to pretend means I said any change to the climate system applies refutes the Null Hypothesis for AGW.
I understand that you believe your faith in catastrophic AGW is more important than the scientific method but I am talking about science and not your belief.
In hope that this time you will try to understand it, I again repeat
If global temperature is not observed to rise in a manner or a magnitude that differs from previous global temperature rises then it has to be assumed that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases – notably CO2 – have not raised global temperature. This is because there is no reason to invoke an hypothesis to explain what is not observed.
You now do make a point – to be precise, a ridiculous assertion not a point – when you say
NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!
I have repeatedly refuted that nonsense in this sub-thread first in my original explanation when I wrote
To date there are no discernible effects of AGW. Hence, the Null Hypothesis decrees that AGW does not affect global climate to a discernible degree. That is the ONLY scientific conclusion possible at present.
There is no evidence for AGW; none, zilch, nada. Three decades of research conducted world-wide at a cost of more than$5 billion per year has failed to find any. In the 1990s Ben Santer pretended to have found some such evidence but that was soon found to be an artifact of his selecting data from a part near the middle of a time series.
AGW is at best an hypothesis and more properly a conjecture. It most certainly is NOT a theory because it has no supporting evidence; none, not any.
Richard
benben and seaice1 have been schooled by experts, but their response is typical (and Phil. conflates the experiment with the hypothesis; two different things).
The central claim of the climate alarmist crowd is that global warming is being caused by rising CO2. If so, then termperatures would be accelerating upward. They’re not.
Runaway man-made global warming was endlessly predicted in the late ’90’s, when it did look like it might be the case. But it was only a strong el Nino, and global warming stopped after that.
There has ben no acceleration in global warming. In fact, there has been no global warming. Therefore, rising CO2 levels are not doing what the CO2=AGW hypothesis required. Thus, the CO2=AGW hypothesis is wrong. It has been falsified by the ultimate Authority: the real world.
Now, the correct thing to do is first, to admit that the hypothesis has been falsified, and then go back and try to understand why. Then, formulate a new hypothesis in an attempt to explain the real world.
But they’re stuck at #1. They simply cannot admit they were wrong. That takes their hypothesis out of the purview of science, and makes the question entirely political. But they can’t admit it’s political, either. So what do they do?
They lie outright: ‘Satellite data is no good’. And, ‘The (so-called) “Pause” never happened’. But less than a year ago they were putting together dozens of reasons to explain why global warming had been stopped for almost twenty years.
Finally, benben, you want to know why I’m “combative”? It’s because you rent-seekers either know the truth, or you’re incompetent. Either way, your fingers are rooting around in my wallet and they shouldn’t be. You’re trying to justify your ride on the climate gravy train, and as a hard-bitten taxpayer I don’t like it. You want to be friends? Then get yourself some honest employment.
Richard:
You had made no “points” for me to answer.
I not only made them, I numbered them for you so you would see them and I told you I had done so. Apparently you did not see that.
which I ignored – and will continue to ignore
Ignoring them instead of answering them is an admission that you cannot answer them. Think fingers in ears and la la la. (or see dbstealey’s link)
Otherwise, address the points and explain why you think they are fallacious.
which you tried to pretend means I said any change to the climate system applies refutes the Null Hypothesis for AGW.
I said no such thing. I gave two versions of the null hypothesis, your one and the correct one. It is very clear that you did not say any climate change invalidates your null hypothesis, but that is because you are wrong about the null hypothesis. If you look at my analogy you will see why, but you are ignoring that.
I said that the null hypothesis you proposed was not the right one, and was not the one used by climate scientists, nor any scientist. When you see “natural” change in the climate, you accept it as not requiring explanation. Whereas when a scientist sees any climate change they seek to explain the changes. That is why your null hypothesis is wrong, because it accepts “natural“ changes as not requiring explanation.
I understand that you believe your faith in catastrophic AGW is more important than the scientific method but I am talking about science and not your belief.
It appears you understand very little; you certainly have not understood my arguments, and you surely do not understand the scientific method. Instead of addressing the points (that you admit you are simply ignoring) you attack my motivation, about which you have no evidence.
To date there are no discernible effects of AGW. Hence, the Null Hypothesis decrees that AGW does not affect global climate to a discernible degree. That is the ONLY scientific conclusion possible at present.
If only you had addressed my points you would not keep making the same mistake over and over. If you were to look at my analogy, you would see the error, since using your approach the only conclusion you could draw about the effect of wind on the ball was that wind did not affect the ball. Since you will only ignore it, you are unlikely to progress.
The scientific method is to construct a model for the movement of the ball, including effect of wind, then see if the measurements fit better with or without the wind component. If they fit better with the wind component then we can conclude that there is evidence the wind affects the ball. It is NOT to take the existing movement as a given, as though it occurred by magic, and then try to superimpose the wind on top of this. Similarly for the climate.
It most certainly is NOT a theory because it has no supporting evidence; none, not any
You have constructed a null hypothesis that hides the evidence, then you insist there is no evidence.
dbstealey
I am pretty sure I am wasting my time here, but what the heck, lets see if discussion is possible with you.
The central claim of the climate alarmist crowd is that global warming is being caused by rising CO2.
No. That is the bit you focus on. The central claim is that climate responds to forcings. Since most of these forcings are beyond our control, then policy tends to focus on those that could be controlled. You should not mix this up with the central claim of the science. If you think the claim is one thing, when actually it is something completely different it is no surprise you do not see the evidence.
You say that the scientists put together dozens of reasons why the reality does not match the model. Can you explain why this is not doing exactly what you say should be done – that is “go back and try to understand why. Then, formulate a new hypothesis in an attempt to explain the real world.”?
The fact is that all attempts to explain the real world that do not include significant contribution from AGW do not work as well as the ones that do include it. That is evidence.
Any climatologist is free to come up with a model that does not include AGW. If AGW is false, then this model will fit the measured data better than the one with AGW. That climatologist would be on for a Nobel Prize as the person who came up with the fundamental hypothesis that finally got the climate right. Yet nobody has done so. Until then, the best evidence we have includes AGW.
You post an amusing link to a monkey with fingers in ears. That would be prefect to illustrate Richard’s approach to my arguments -i.e. to ignore them.
“I said that the null hypothesis you proposed was not the right one, and was not the one used by climate scientists, nor any scientist.”
No.
You are just making up stuff.
You have zero idea what the scientific method is.
seaice1,
You preposterously claim that the CO2=AGW conjecture is not the central issue of your climate alarmist pals. Ri-i-i-i-ght.. And War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, and we’re still at war with Eastasia. As usual, you will ‘Say Anything’.
The claim that CO2 is the central problem underlies every argument made by the alarmist crowd. Where do you think the “carbon” scare came from?? Take that away, and who is going to fund ‘climate studies’? What happens to their “carbon” tax? Now, tell us that the “carbon footprint” narrative is nonsense. I want to see you write it. I want to see you say that CO2 doesn’t much matter. Because if you do, you’re left with natural climate variability; you lose the argument, and you’re on your way to becoming a skeptic.
You’ve conditioned the public to be alarmed about the rise in (harmless, beneficial) CO2. Without that scare, your main argument goes away. You’re at the point now of asserting things that everyone can see simply aren’t true.
CO2 as a forcing underlies everything argued by climate alarmists. Take that away, and you’ve got nothin’.
Finally, you say:
The fact is that all attempts to explain the real world that do not include significant contribution from AGW do not work as well as the ones that do include it. That is evidence.
That is either complete nonsense, or deliberate prevarication. You can’t even produce a measurement quantifying AGW, but you believe it controls the climate! And you say “That is evidence”.
Maybe it’s evidence on your planet. But here on Planet Earth, measurements are evidence. But you have none at all. You just believe in it. That’s not science, that’s just your religion.
“Finally, benben, you want to know why I’m “combative”? It’s because you rent-seekers either know the truth, or you’re incompetent. Either way, your fingers are rooting around in my wallet and they shouldn’t be. You’re trying to justify your ride on the climate gravy train, and as a hard-bitten taxpayer I don’t like it.”
But my dear dbstealey, this is the internet, not your neighbourhood newspaper forum. I’m actually living in Europe. And anyway, my project is paid for by a company. So, let me be more precise: no reason to be so combative with me, because I’m not one of your love-to-hate money grubbing rent seekers. Problems solved! Now that this has been clarified we can all get along 🙂
dbstealey. I asked you to separate policy from the science. You failed.
“You preposterously claim that the CO2=AGW conjecture is not the central issue of your climate alarmist pals.”
I claimed no such thing. I claimed CO2 driven warming is not the central part of the scientific theory. It is pretty central to lots of policy discussions. That is different. Look at what you wrote-
“the central issue.”
“The claim that CO2 is the central problem underlies every argument made by the alarmist crowd.”
I argue science, you respond politics. It may or may not be the central problem, but that is a separate issue from the scientific evidence.
You want to leave “natural” changes in climate unexplained. You have no interest in explaining the climate – all you want to do is poke holes in one aspect of climate theory. The scientists do want to explain the climate, and they can’t do it unless they include CO2.
Read what I wrote, and if you have any relevant comments I will respond.
Just as an illustration, using my analogy you are saying there is no evidence that the wind moves the ball. When some people lobby for a windbreak you protest that the ball moved about a lot before the wind, there is no way to prove the wind moves the ball. The scientists respond that they do know the wind moves the ball because they have a theory of ball movement and the movement of the ball cannot be explained unless they include the wind.
seaice1 sez:
You failed.
Impotent assertions like that are amusing to the grown-ups here. In fact, it is your side that has been an abject failure: you can’t even produce a measurement quantifying something that you insist must be happening.
You can fool yourself, it’s easy. But the fact is that the CO2=AGW conjecture is the central issue of your side of the debate. You lost that one. If it were not for the “carbon” scare, there wouldn’t even be a debate. It’s the central issue, and your silly assertions cannot change that fact.
Next, you say:
You want to leave “natural” changes in climate unexplained.
You have a way of making assertions like that, which makes it easy-peasy to debunk your position. Clearly, you have no understanding of the climate Null Hypothesis; what we’re observing now is all ‘natural’. Wake me when you can produce measurements showing the fraction of AGW out of all global warming, including the ongoing recovery from the LIA. Then we can debate facts. Right now, you’re fact-free.
Since you can’t produce measurements quantifying AGW, it’s all just your conjecture. The Null Hypothesis has never been falsified. So you’re in essence arguing about a black cat that’s under your bed. You’re absolutely certain it’s there. You can almost hear it breathing. You believe it.
But when you turn on the lights and look… there’s no cat. And there never was. That’s your “dangerous AGW” scare.
Your belief is the basis for everything you argue. That’s because you lack any credible data. You argue that there is a “significant contribution from AGW”, but you can’t show us any AGW. That’s incrdibly lame. No wonder you always lose your arguments. It all comes down to verifiable facts, but you don’t have the necessary data.
benben, benben,
Who pays your company? Does it get income from any government entity?
Next, your argument is untenable. You lost it when Planet Earth did the opposite of what you expected or believed it would. Nothing that you’re worried about is happening. Every alarming prediction has been flat wrong. As a scientist, what is your response to that? Is it to go right on believing in something that’s been repeatedly falsified by the real world? That isn’t how honest science works.
Even if AGW exists (I happen to think it does), it is obviously so insignificant that no one has ever been able to quantify it with measurements. But money continues to be shoveled into what appears from all angles to be a hoax, starving other ares of science in the process.
For example, if even half the money wasted on ‘climate studies’ was put into preparing for a possible asteroid strike, there’s a reasonable chance that tens of millions of lives could be saved. Other alternatives are pretty much endless. But ‘climate studies’ and associated grants are sucking up too much of the money. That needs to stop, STAT.
It all comes back to the plain fact that AGW is a non-problem. What’s more, it turns out that the rise in CO2 has been entirely beneficial, and completely harmless.
So… why do you keep trying to flog that dead horse? All the “dangerous AGW” claims have been thoroughly debunked. It’s time to MovOn.
“I claimed no such thing. I claimed CO2 driven warming is not the central part of the scientific theory.”
So, why all the fuss over CO2?
[snip – language -mod]
DB – thank you for proving my point “Null Hypothesis; what we’re observing now is all ‘natural’. ”
Your null hypothesis leaves natural climate change unexamined, unexplained and outside your hypothesis. No scientist would do this.
Look back to my analogy. There is debate about whether or not the wind affects the ball at the bat and ball club since the trees were removed. Imagine some club members want to construct a windbreak.
Skeptic: “Oh no, that will be a waste of money because there is no proof the wind affects the bal.l”
Windist: “Of course there is evidence, we understand the laws of motion, and the wind is the best explanation for the deviations we observe.”
Skeptic: “No, the null hypothesis is that the changes in ball direction are not caused by the wind. Lets call it “natural”. If you look at the data, you see the ball naturally moves in a gentle parabolic motion, then rapidly undertakes a sudden transition of approximately 180 degrees, then the pattern repeats. After the wind we see exactly the same pattern. There is no evidence for a change in this pattern”.
Windist: “That is not how we do it. We do not leave the “natural” motion outside the model with no attempt to explain it. We try to explain all the motion in terms of forces on the ball. We have discovered that what you call “natural change” is actually caused by the bats hitting the ball. Understanding this we can easily isolate the wind component.”
Skeptic: “There is no evidence for your wind theory, since the null hypothesis is that what we are observing now is all natural.”
Windist: “Are you listening to anything I say?”
Skeptic “No, I am ignoring the points you make.”
Simple Touriste. Try to separate the science from the policy. The central issue in the example above is the windbreak. The central aspect of the science is the force model of ball movement.
It is ironic that it is the skeptics that insist the windists are fixated on the wind. In fact, the windists see the wind as only a part of the story, and it is the skeptics who insist on making everything about the wind.
“Your null hypothesis leaves natural climate change unexamined, unexplained and outside your hypothesis. No scientist would do this.”
100% gibberish
An hypothesis doesn’t examine anything, so it doesn’t leave things “unexamined, unexplained and outside your hypothesis”.
Your word salads are really really boring.
Seaice:“Your null hypothesis leaves natural climate change unexamined, unexplained and outside your hypothesis. No scientist would do this.”
Touriste: “100% gibberish. An hypothesis doesn’t examine anything, so it doesn’t leave things “unexamined, unexplained and outside your hypothesis”.
Definition of hypothesis “a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.”
See the words “Proposed explanation” in there? Clearly my words, salad or otherwise, are not 100% gibberish. A hypothesis is a proposed explanation. The hypothesis of dbstealey includes no proposed or attempted explanation of “natural” climate change. It is outside his hypothesis.
The only part you can possibly object to is the “unexamined” part, since hypotheses do not actually examine. However, since the hypothesis is the starting point for further examination, the hypothesis is clearly central to what will be examined, the existence of a hypothesis implies an investigator. I think the meaning is abundantly clear, but just to help you out, I will re-phrase it.
Your null hypothesis leaves natural climate change unexplained, it is outside your hypothesis. Using your hypothesis you would leave natural climate change unexamined. No scientist would do this.
Better? I would put it at about 98% not gibberish.
Since you cannot dismiss my point, perhaps you will either agree with it or make a challenge to it. Richard admits he ignores it, presumably because he cannot counter the argument, dbstealey is strangely quiet, and you so far have only made an incorrect attack on the semantics.
simple-touriste says:
100% gibberish. That’s 100% correct. That guy is clueless. ‘seaice’ argues in circles, and he argues by assertion. Then he sits back and says, ‘There, I showed them!’ …heh.
Not one scary prediction ever made by his alarmist crowd pals has ever happened. But that is ignored like a duck ignores a rainy day. The real world has repeatedly debunked seaice’s nonsense, but like Chicken Little he just keeps clucking about it.
‘simple-touriste’ also said, You have zero idea what the scientific method is. That is clear from seaice’s tanglefooted attempts to explain the scientific method. But he has no clue.
Next, ‘seaice1’ says:
…there is overwhelming evidence of change in the climate system. The climate is always changing. I am sure you agree with this. The null hypothesis that the climate system has not changed is therefore false.
Again, ‘seaice1’ has no clue. None at all.
What is being compared are past and current parameters, such as temperature. ‘seaice1’ doesn’t get it, but for other readers it’s simple to understand: The current global temperature (T) over the past century has fluctuated by about 0.7ºC. Prior to that, global T has fluctuated by TENS of whole degrees — within only a decade or two! That happened before there were any industrial CO2 emissions at all. Therefore, the Null Hypothesis has not been falsified. Any rational person with normal intelligence can understand that concept. But ‘seaice1’ doesn’t have a clue. He believes that any climate change falsifies the hypothesis. *Sigh* He just doesn’t understand.
Next, ‘seaice1’ says:
Of course AGW can be falsified. If temperatures start to drop and continue for some years woth no measurable change in inputs that would probably do it.
He’s clueless. Or maybe devious. Or both. Because the same thing applies if temperatures do not rise. Temperatures don’t have to “start to drop”. That’s just playing word games. The fact that global warming stopped for 18+ years falsifies AGW per the Null Hypothesis: the Alternative Hypothesis says that a rise in CO2 will cause global warming. That has not happened. Thus, CO2=AGW is falsified.
(This is not to say that CO2 has no warming effect. It does. But almost all of that effect takes place within the first couple dozen ppm.)
Next, ‘seaice’ says:
If in 5 years the temperatures do not bear any resemblance to those predicted, that would pretty much falsify the AGW hypothesis.
Per seaice’s own definition, the AGW hypothesis has been falsified: it has been three times that long without any global warming.
‘Seaice1’ is constantly tripping over his own feet, trying to support his belief that ‘dangerous AGW’ is happening. It’s not. AGW is too small to measure.
The alarmist crowd has lost the science argument. So now it’s morphed into a political argument. They’re beginning to lose that argument, too: the public considers AGW to be a non-problem. They’re tired of hearing that false alarm.
See the words “or”?
In science, an hypothesis often doesn’t propose an explanation.
Scientific theories aren’t usually about explaining stuff.
“In science, an hypothesis often doesn’t propose an explanation. Scientific theories aren’t usually about explaining stuff.”
This is possibly the most desparate attempt to salvage an argument I have ever seen!
The only thing you can conclude from the statistical hypothesis test that Richard and dbstealey subscribe to is that the null hypothesis is not rejected. This is not the same as accepting the null hypothesis. I explained why not rejecting the null hypothesis based on this statistical test is not the same as there being no evidence for AGW, and why this is not the best way to approach the problem. Whilst I believe my arguments are valid abd correct, it turns out that it is not important, because the null hypothesis has in fact been rejected.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-014-2128-2#
“to be as rigorous as possible, we must demonstrate that the probability that the current warming is no more than a natural fluctuation is so low that the natural variability may be rejected with high levels of confidence.”
They conclude “Even in the most unfavourable cases, we may reject the natural variability hypothesis at confidence levels >99 %.”
They describe this approach, as favored by Richard and DB as “the most convincing demonstration of AGW.”
I still contend that even if this is the most convincing, the other methods are both valid and sufficiently convincing. However, this argument is somewhat moot, since the null hypothesi has been rejected. Perhaps we can now accept AGW and move on?
You are pathetic, dude.
There is exactly zero evidence of AGW.
When you find one, please tell me.
Also, guesswork doesn’t count as evidence.
seaice1,
There’s a well known climatologist who has been studying the subject for decades: Dr. Roy Spencer.
Dr. Spencer wrote:
No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.
In other words: no one has ever falsified the climate null hypothesis.
Just because you found some nonsense written by a couple of rent-seeking paper shufflers means nothing. You don’t understand the null hypothesis, so you appeal to corrupted ‘authorities’ to support your eco-belief system.
Global temperatures have remained amazingly flat over the past century — but you actually believe that falsified the null hypothesis??
The null hypothesis would be falsified if global T exceeded past parameters. Sorry you can’t understand that, it’s pretty simple. But there it is.
Wait, even though one can not prove that the changes in the climate are not natural, they can use that “non-proof” as evidence that climate changes must be caused by humans?
No wonder skeptics have problems discussing the climate with them. The Alarmists have allowed their thinking to become so distorted that they have no clue how absurd they sound.
seaice1,
Since you still cannot understand the climate Null Hypothesis, you are in no position to give your opinion on it. You really are in over your head here. I suggest going back and reading up on the subject. Use the WUWT search box. Take a few weeks to try and educate yourself, because right now you just don’t understand the concept.
You complain that RC didn’t answer your points (which in fact he did — you just didn’t like the answer). But like the rest of the alarmist crowd, you consistently avoid answering any questions yourself.
You seem to be a juvenile, with little experience in the real world. A mature reader would accept the fact that since global warming stopped many years ago, the entire ‘dangerous AGW’ scare has been debunked. But you still cling to your beliefs. Why is that? You cannot man up and just admit that you’re wrong. The ‘man-made global warming’ hoax has been so thoroughly debunked that you’re a parody of the Black Knight; your arguments have been demolished, but you say, “‘Tis but a scratch”..
You’re posting on the wrong site. Go back to SkS, or hotwhopper. They love deluded commenters who can’t face reality. They love the Black Knight, because they are the Black Knight.
This is a real science site — the internet’s ‘Best Science & Technology’ site. You’re just trying to lead new readers astray here, but we won’t let that happen. Every argument you’ve made has been deconstructed, because every argument you make is based not on reality, or facts, or evidence, but on assertions, and on your tedious tactic of ‘Say Anything’.
At this point you’re being a site pest. I wish for the first few years after WUWT began, when commenters dicussed actual science, without the climate alarmist crowd trying to run interference. But now the snake is in the garden, trying to cause problems. It’s easy to chop the head off your arguments. But really, you’re convincing no one. Name one reader here who was a skeptic, that you have convinced of anything. But there’s not a single one. You argue impotenly, like a juvenile. No one agrees with you, but you don’t get the hint.
Read up on the subject, instead of ignorantly pontificating. Your basic premise has been demolished by the only Authority that matters: the real world. It’s clear that you can’t accept that verdict. But could you please stop being such a pest? You’re wasting everyone’s time here. Hotwhopper awaits you with open arms.
dbstealey:
Since you still cannot understand the climate Null Hypothesis,
I understand it, if you read my comments you would see I argue that it is not the appropriate null hypothesis, not that such null hypotheses are never approriate. The Lovejoy study: “Rather than using complex computer models to estimate the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions, Lovejoy examines historical data to assess the competing hypothesis: that warming over the past century is due to natural long-term variations in temperature.” I think that accurately sums up your prefered null hypothesis. It is rejected without the use of computer models so despised here.
Someone said of this paper “Lovejoy examines historical data to assess the competing hypothesis [to CO2 forced warming]: that warming over the past century is due to natural long-term variations in temperature.
Well, no kidding! If that isn’t a circular argument, what is?”
Showing, I think, a failure to understand the null hypothesis. (Yes- it was you)
Pat Frank on wuwt said “He says that a statistical comparison will provide “the most convincing demonstration of anthropogenic warming“! Earth to Prof. Lovejoy: the only demonstration of physical causality is provided by a falsifiable physical theory.” It seems Pat Frank does not agree that your null hypothesis is any good, and thinks that a physical theory is not only the better approach, but the only valid approach.
Even if this paper did not exist, your arguments are not valid because you are testing a different hypothesis than the scientists are. Your hypothesis is that climate changes are “natural”, which is not a scientific explanation of anything. It is applying a very crude test, and failure to reject the null hypothesis in this test is not the same as there being no evidence for AGW using different hypotheses. However, since we now have evidence that the null hypothesis can be rejected using a certain statistical approach it is even more worthless.
You complain that RC didn’t answer your points (which in fact he did — you just didn’t like the answer).
He did not answer them except to say he was ignoring them. That is not an answer. So not only did he not answer them, he specifically stated that he was not answering them. I don’t really understand how you can see that as answering my points.
You seem to be a juvenile, with little experience in the real world…instead of ignorantly pontificating…
More insults- please look up Judith Curry’s post on this. When you see insulting and derogatory comments it is often a sign of intellectual dishonesty.
You’re posting on the wrong site.
it would seem so if I want disussion and reasoned argument.
Every argument you’ve made has been deconstructed,
No argument I made has been deconstructed. My points have been ignored – explicitly by RC and de facto by you. Simply dismissing all evidence you don’t like as the result of corruption and ineptitude is not deconstructing the argument.
I wish for the first few years after WUWT without the climate alarmist crowd trying to run interference.
Yes, you would prefer to silence reasoned argument that contradicts your view.
It’s easy to chop the head off your arguments.
Then why don’t you do so? Here is what you said:
Just because you found some nonsense written by a couple of rent-seeking paper shufflers means nothing… you appeal to corrupted ‘authorities’ to support your eco-belief system.
The best you can come with to counter my peer reviewed paper is to insult the authors as “rent seeking paper shufflers” and “corrupt” without any evidence. Then you critisise my use of this published evidence as “appeal to authority”, backing up your argument with an appeal to the authority of Dr Spencer with no date or reference.
Your basic premise has been demolished by the only Authority that matters: the real world.
Not according to the paper I cited. The authors conclude that the null hypothesis is rejected. There may be other views, but you have not presented them.
Dr. Roy Spencer, who knows more about the subject than you do, wrote:
No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.
In other words: the climate Null Hypothesis has never been falsified.
The Null Hypothesis is the statistical hypothesis that states that there are no differences between observed and expected data. I keep asking someone, anyone (and I’ve asked you) to produce a measurement quantifying AGW. If you could produce such a measurement, it might falsify the Null Hypothesis, if it were sufficiently large. But neither you, nor anyone else has been able to produce such a measurement. So all your cut ‘n’ pasting is just a meaningless appeal to an inferior authority.
Finally, what you preposterously labeled “reasoned argument” is nothing more than praising rent-seeking behavior that you agree with. But it is not ‘reasonable’ because it is based on assumptions and assertions. As a previous commenter here accurately observed:
Scientists have been trained with grant funds the way Pavlov’s dogs were trained with dog biscuits.
You can find a ‘paper’ that says anything. But as we’ve seen in the Climategate email exposé, the climate peer review process has been so thoroughly corrupted that it is meaningless. But that is your source. Excuse me for not accepting the output from a corrupt source like you do.
Next, you say:
Your hypothesis is that climate changes are “natural”…
That isn’t my hypothesis, that is the Null Hypothesis. It has never been falsified, despite a century of trying. There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening with global temperatures, much as you wish there was.
Next:
No argument I made has been deconstructed. LOLOL!! You just keep believing that, puppy.
And:
…you would prefer to silence reasoned argument that contradicts your view.
More projection. I’ve been silenced more times than I can count. And I could silence you, but I never do. It is your alarmist ‘authorities’ that routinely censors out the facts and evidence they don’t want people to see. They censor because skeptics’ points cannot be refuted; they are based on what the real world is doing. That’s tough for your propagandist pals to take, so they censor out the inconvenient facts.
Finally, you say:
The best you can come with to counter my peer reviewed paper is to insult the authors as “rent seeking paper shufflers” and “corrupt” without any evidence.
You’re thoroughly deluded, and you don’t even know it. To enlighten you, I refer you to the Climategate email dump, which reveals the rampant corruption in the climate pal-review system. Those people admitted to their unethical, corrupt behavior. But they’re your HE-ROes, so they get a pass from you.
Surgical
DB, Rather than demolishing your points individually, lets get back to the arguments. I have made 3 arguments, summarised as follows.
1) The null hypothesis you prefer is not the only or most appropriate test. It is a statistical test and a physical theory is more appropriate in this case.
db response: ignore the argument and simply assert that your prefered statistical approach is the only one that matters.
2) Because of 1, even if that particular null hypothesis could not be rejected by the statistical test, it is not the same as there being no evidence for AGW based on physical theories. Different theories require different tests.
db response: Ignore, by simply asserting that your prefered statistical approach is the only one that matters, and therefore “a measurement” is the only evidence that counts.
3) In any case, the null hypothesis has been rejected. I provide a published paper by an eminent member of the field as evidence. It is a fact that the null hypothesis has been rejected by this author.
db response: To reject the evidence as corrupt and the authority, despite a stellar publication record, as inferior.
If you have any actual arguments, please present them. If not you are just making noise. Note that saying all published material is worthless is not really an argument.
Knutsea – can you explain why you posted the word “surgical”?
seaice1:
You are becoming tiresome.
I am replying to the first of your three assertions because it has already been refuted and its refutation makes your other two unsubstantiated assertions irrelevant.
The null hypothesis has NOT been overcome. I have repeatedly explained this to you upthread for example here where I wrote
There is NO OBSERVED EFFECT OF AGW and that is why you cannot provide the evidence of AGW which dbstealey has repeatedly requested of you.
Saying somebody has written something which you assert claims the Null Hypothesis has been breached is meaningless: what is the evidence that there is something – anything – which is outside the range of observed natural climate behaviour?
Your mind block seems to have been expressed when you wrote
Every scientist would do that!
The question at issue is whether the AGW-conjecture may be a useful explanation of some climate behaviour. There is no scientific reason to invoke the conjecture when there is no observed climate behaviour which needs the conjecture to explain it. And there is no such climate behaviour because the range of observed natural climate change includes all observed climate behaviours.
Thus, the Null Hypothesis rejects the AGW conjecture as being a distraction from investigation of all the factors which are observed to affect natural climate change; i.e. ENSO, Milankovitch cycles, cloud seeding by cosmic particles, etc., etc., etc..
The Null Hypothesis also rejects the conjecture that activities of witches are causing climate change. The AGW and witches conjectures are each rejected by the Null Hypothesis for the same reason and in the same way.
Richard
Richard. “Saying somebody has written something which you assert claims the Null Hypothesis has been breached is meaningless:”
I did not just assert they had rejected the null hypothesis – I quoted them saying it, and I provided the link to verify that. Are you saying that they did not say that? It is surely impossible for you to claim that this paper does not exist, and impossible for you to claim that they did not conclude the null hypothesis was rejected.
You propose a null hypothesis. I provide irrefutable evidence that at least one expert has on the basis of evidence rejected it, and you say it is meaningless!
What would be meaningful for you then? They did exactly what you are asking – they did a statistical study to test exactly the null hypothesis you propose, and they concluded that the null hypothesis is rejected.
How can this possibly be meaningless?
‘seaice1’ says:
DB, Rather than demolishing your points individually…
No, no, I insist. Please, ‘demolish’ any points I’ve made. I want to see what that looks like, because you haven’t done it yet. So go ahead, puppy. Demolish away.
But the reality is that you couldn’t demolish an anthill. You’re always tap-dancing around like that because the planet refuses to do what you want it to do. Arctic ice isn’t disappearing. The natural sea level rise is not accelerating. Global warming stopped many years ago. None of your alarming predictions have ever happened, and your arguments consist of evidence-free appeals to corrupted authorities.
All you do is emit pixels. Until/unless you can produce measurements quantifying AGW, your arguments are nothing more than simple-minded assertions; opinions. Conjectures.
You say you have three arguments, but the first one is just another of your endless assertions:
1) The null hypothesis you prefer is not the only or most appropriate test. It is a statistical test and a physical theory is more appropriate in this case.
Since you don’t understand the Null Hypothesis, you rely on asserting that you must be right. But Planet Earth says you’re wrong. Which one should we believe?
You’re always asking questions, but like the rest of the alarmist crowd, you never answer questions. So answer just that one question: which should we believe? Planet Earth? Or you?
Because you cannot both be right.
.
(Knutsea, thanks. And he knows what “surgical” means.)
DB et al
My 2 cents worth. Seaice’ wiggle worm techniques of deny divert and confuse are no match for you folks. Recommend slaying larger fish at places like Yale Climate Org. You may have to up your e game to twitter though. Yale is part of the epicenter of the Intellectual Elite and often writes the script for feeder NGOs.
Seaice 1:
I wrote saying to you
You have replied saying in total
In my statement you purport to be answering I explained it is meaningless because it does not provide “evidence that there is something – anything – which is outside the range of observed natural climate behaviour”.
You are claiming opinions are evidence.
Opinions are NOT evidence. Your so-called experts could say they think Father Christmas came down their chimney but that would not be evidence he did.
Richard
Richard:
In my statement you purport to be answering I explained it is meaningless because it does not provide “evidence that there is something – anything – which is outside the range of observed natural climate behaviour”. You are claiming opinions are evidence. Opinions are NOT evidence. Your so-called experts could say they think Father Christmas came down their chimney but that would not be evidence he did.
The authors did not express an opinion, they published the results of research. There is a vast difference. This cannot be dismissed as “opinion” because the workings are in the paper. They did the math. Your objection is without merit. db dismisses it as corrupt, you dismiss it as opinion. You really have no proper answer to this do you? I find it ironic that db accuses me of being juvenile, when the standard of argument is so low as to consist of nothing more than finding spurious reasons to reject evidence.
db – You say I do not understand the null hypothesis. Then tell me what is wrong with my version of it
It is amusing that you accuse me of tap-dancing when you are changing the subject and avoiding answering a single one of my points. I made three numbered points for you to comment on. Two you ignore, and when you attempt an answer, you show complete misunderstanding by responding to my point 3 in response to my point 1.
Let me walk you through it so you know which point you are trying to argue against.
1) In this point I am not saying that there is evidence to reject to null hypothesis. I am saying that the use of the null hypothesis you prefer is not the best test of the evidence. There is a hypothesis and a null hypothesis The hypothesis you want to test is that the recent changes are due to CO2. The null hypothesis is that the changes we have seen recently are not caused by CO2, but are within what we would expect from natural variations. I explained that this hypopthesis does not attempt to explain “natural” variation at all. I argue that a better approach is to construct a physical hypothesis that attempts to explains all change, whether natural or man made, and then to test that hypothesis. You have made no argument at all to justify you prefered method. I suspect you do not understand.
2) Following form my point 1, even if the null hypothesis you prefer cannot be rejected on the strength of the evidence, that is not the same as there being no evidence for global warming using the physical hypotheses I suggest are the better option. I gave an example, where a statistical approach would not reveal the effect of wind, whereas a physical theory of motion leads to a new hypothesis, and this one, when tested does reveal the effect of wind. You have not commented at all on this point, again I suspect it is because you do not understand it.
3) Now we get to the point that your comment refers to. I provide evidence that the null hypothesis is rejected. The formulation of the rejected hypothesis is essentially the same as yours – that the variation is natural, the observations are within what would expect given previous historical variations, so there is no question we are talking about the same hypothesis. What is your argument to refute this?
No actual argument at all. You and Richard simply insist that the null hypothesis has not been rejected, despite irrefutable evidence that it has been. Do you argue that the methods were wrong, or that the errors were underestimated, or the time period was too short, or anything? No. you both simply deny that the null hypothesis has ever been rejected, despite overhwhelming evidence to the contrary.
In summary, I have made three points. I have explained each point and provided evidence and examples. In total they mean that your null hypothesis approach is not the only approach, therefore it is not conclusive even if it were correct, and finally it has been shown to be incorrect.
No coherent response has been offered to any of these points.
Dan,
AGW itself is true, thus can not be falsified. The problem is that they over-estimate the magnitude of the effect by about a factor of 4 in order to support CAGW, CAGW is falsifiable using first principles physics to establish limits on the sensitivity. Another way is to use data to show that from space, the planets behavior is indistinguishable from that of an ideal gray body with an emissivity of 0.6 whose deterministic sensitivity is less than the lower limit claimed by the IPCC. There are many more ways to falsify the high sensitivity which directly falsifies CAGW.
Unfortunately, consensus climate science does not believe in the restrictions of the Stefan-Boltzmann LAW as they obfuscate the mostly linear behavior in the power domain by specifying sensitivity in the non linear units of degrees per W/m^2. This is illustrated by considering that to increase the surface temperature by 0.8C from 1 W/m^2 of forcing (the IPCC nominal sensitivity), the surface must emit 4.3 W/m^2 more based on its current average temperature. If each of the 239 W/m^2 of solar forcing increased surface emissions by 4.3 W/m^2, the surface temperature would be near the boiling point of water. Moreover; the T^4 behavior of the SB Law dictates that the incremental sensitivity must be less than the average sensitivity, which is only 1.6 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing and far less than the 4.3 W/m^2 required.
They then go on to justify the 4.3 W/m^2 by invoking theoretical positive feedback, which of course is another broken analysis where the feedback model they use has an implicit and infinite power supply (not the Sun) that provides the post feedback output power. They fail to acknowledge that in the climate system, input and feedback power are consumed to produce output power and not measured to determine how much output power to deliver from an infinite source.
You’re so wrong in the physics that I would not know where to start from… OMG.
@Nylo
If you do not know where to start, then you do not understand physics. So, what, specifically, is your objection? Since I am not an expert in physics I would like to know.
I read this all the time – AGW is a fact. AGW is proven. AGW is a theory, and there really is no such thing as a set theory that is explicitly true. AGW is too broad a statement not to have elements of it to appear to be true, but others can and often are not exactly as presented. All science is theory seeking truth, it is not truth. Recall, it supposedly only takes one test to prove a theory wrong – unless it is in Climate “nearly” science theory, where it only takes one test to prove it true.
Well for starters, the earth from space looks nothing like ” an ideal gray body ” regardless of what emissivity you want to ascribe to such an object.
A ” gray ” body ; specially an ideal one, has a spectrum that exactly matches a theoretical black body, only the spectral radiant emittance at any frequency from down to but not including DC up to but not including infinity, is attenuated by the constant factor (e) for emissivity.
Earth’s spectral radiant emissivity looks anything but constant for all frequencies.
G
“””””….. the surface must emit 4.3 W/m^2 more based on its current average temperature. …..”””””
This is loosely described as ” gobbledegook ”
Nothing in the universe has a ” current average Temperature ” .
” Current ” is real time as in precisely NOW. An average Temperature of a surface can only be determined after some period of accumulation of instantaneous Temperature values, which are then averaged.
As a consequence, once you have calculated (NOT measured) that average Temperature, you have absolutely no idea when that Temperature occurred; i.e. when that value was the ” current ” value.
Average is something from statistical mathematics, which is fictitious; it does not occur anywhere in the physical universe, which is real.
G
CO2,
In what sense do you imagine that AGW is “true”? There is not a shred of evidence in support of the hypothesis of man-made global warming, and all the evidence in the world against it.
Humans have affected local climates, such as creating urban heat islands, but there is no evidence to support the contention that our activities have measurably affected world-wide climate since 1945. CO2 levels did take off after WWII and have continued rising monotonously since then, but global temperature (in so far as it can be determined) has not tracked this increase. For the first 32 years, earth cooled noticeably under this rising GHG regime. Then, when the PDO flipped in 1977, the world did appear to warm slightly for the next 20 years, but climbing CO2 did not demonstrably contribute to this alleged mild warming, but rather GASTA and GHG concentrations accidentally coincided (although a warmer world causes more CO2 to be released by the oceans). Then, for the about 20 years since 1997, earth’s temperature has stayed flat or slightly declined. So CO2 and temperature are not positively correlated in the real world.
Had you said that there is a greenhouse effect from more CO2, then your statement could be “true”. although many question even that. However if true, then in the real climate system, there must be prompt negative feedback effects, since for some 52 of the past 71 years, steadily rising CO2 has been associated with strongly falling or flat GASTA. Thus the AGW hypothesis resurrected in the 1980s was in fact born falsified.
AGW can be and has been falsified. What can’t be falsified is the anti-scientific spawn of this failed hypothesis, “climate change”, under which insidious doctrine whatever happens to the weather is bad and humanity’s fault. Previous AGW hypotheses in the 20th century were falsified by the frigid 1945-77 interval, yet when the monster was reborn, now it’s a catastrophe instead of beneficial, as Arrhenius and Callendar supposed it to be.
PS:
Earth cooled so much during the first three post-war decades, despite rapidly rising CO2 levels, that scientists in the ’70s were worried about the onset of the next big ice age.
AGW itself is true, thus can not be falsified.
================================
If it cannot be falsified then AGW is not science. It is pseudo science.
@Gloateus
AGW is “true” as a matter of first principles. If human activity affects any of the drivers for climate, whether local or global, then there is Anthropogenic (human caused) Global Warming. It may be positive OR negative, and/or too small to matter, but it exists because we exist. Yes, it’s a bit pedantic, but there you go.
I agree with D. J. Hawkins. As a matter of first principles AGW must be true. (Although perhaps Anthropogenic Climate Change is a better term since the actions of man could cool as well.)
Where’s the pea? One unit of solar energy can either warm a molecule, or stimulate re-emission. AGW tries to count both.
DJ,
If it’s only local, then it’s not global. If warming or cooling arguably caused by human activities exist in a some places around, the globe, but are too insignificant to affect any meaningful global average, then man-made global warming doesn’t exist.
The 1980s hypothesis that man-made GHGs are warming the earth was born falsified, since rising CO2 from 1945-77 coincided with a cooling earth. This interval convinced Callendar that his 1938 hypothesis of AGW had been falsified, as indeed it had been. As noted, the reborn hypothesis added the new wrinkle that AGW, if it existed, would be catastrophic rather than beneficial, about which Arrhenius and Callendar were right.
“The 1980s hypothesis that man-made GHGs are warming the earth was born falsified, since rising CO2 from 1945-77 coincided with a cooling earth.”
It’s different this time because man made THIS CO2. Because this CO2 brought wealth to some and not others it is socially unjust CO2. It’s just bad stuff and it’s going to change the earth in ways that are bad. You must be bad because you don’t see that it’s bad. Please stop comparing the two. It’s different this time.
The confusion about what defines AGW is part of the problem. GHG’s definitely make the surface warmer than it would be otherwise. As I said, they significantly over-estimate the effect and the incremental warming from CO2 emissions is finite, but buried in the noise of natural variability. The pause and other factors do not falsify AGW, but falsify CAGW. What has happened is AGW, CAGW and climate change have been conflated by the consensus and even many skeptics fall into this trap.
The data shows that the Earth looks nearly like an ideal gray body from space. While it does not produce an ideal Planck spectrum, the power reduction in the absorption bands is generally only about 3 db and not much of a factor. The important feature is how the average emitted power integrated across the emitted spectrum varies relative to the average surface temperature as illustrated by this plot which aggregates this ratio for constant latitude slices of the planet over 3 decades of satellite data. Each small red dot is the average of one month of data for one slice of latitude.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/tp/fig1.png
When the data is plotted at the same scale as the SB relationship for an ideal gray body whose emissivity is 0.62 (the green line), it becomes undeniable that the planets LTE behavior in the power domain is nearly indistinguishable from that of an ideal gray body. The larger dots are the 30 year average for each slice and this gets even closer to ideal. If you look at a single slice, the relationship between emissions and temperature follows along the green line as the seasons change. This characterization of the power output path from the surface to space sets the upper bound on the sensitivity to be about 0.3C per W/m^2 and is a test that falsifies the high sensitivity claimed to support CAGW.
“… they significantly over-estimate the effect and the incremental warming from CO2 emissions is finite, but buried in the noise of natural variability. The pause and other factors do not falsify AGW, but falsify CAGW.”
Well articulated. Thanks.
But this time it’s different. This is evil CO2. It’s unjust. Causes asthma. Acidifies the ocean. It’s production from fossil fuels enriches some and not others. It’s very bad.
simple-touriste.
“And don’t forget: the average temperature of an object is a meaningless computation. It has no physical meaning.”
That silly talking-point again? I am interested if you have a reference to the peer-reviewed scientific literature to back up your claim.
Can they estimate the average surface temperature of the earth? Of course they can they do it all the time. They even use the satellite measurements to estimate the average temperature of the lower troposphere for the globe. Unless you are saying all those climate scientists have been wrong all this time.
“That silly talking-point again? I am interested if you have a reference to the peer-reviewed scientific literature to back up your claim.”
Everything I write is rooted in physics, everything YOU write is a silly talking point.
“reference to the peer-reviewed scientific literature to back up your claim”… PLEASE… this is sooooo old.
simple-touriste.
“Everything I write is rooted in physics, everything YOU write is a silly talking point.”
So I take it you do not have a reference to back up your claim.
You are an ignoramus, possibly a troll. (An extremely stupid one.)
Why should I provide a reference? about what?
simple-touriste.
“You are an ignoramus, possibly a troll. (An extremely stupid one.)”
Well, you have proved that you are a jerk, even if your won’t prove your claim.
Coward.
Dismissed.
YOU made an extraordinary claim, it’s up to YOU to back it up.
You have NOT even managed to make a proper authority argument fallacy, as it would require you to actually name the alleged authority. You did NOT.
You don’t understand the scientific method or even how a make an argument.
simple-touriste.
Well I know the authority is not you. You have made that very clear to everyone who reads this blog.
“Well I know the authority is not you”
Well, duh.
I have never claimed more authority than the “authority” of a 10 years old.
FYI, “simple” is NOT my first name and “touriste” is NOT my last name.
You can’t find “simple-touriste” in any academic listing. Don’t waste your time. There is no “simple-touriste, PhD” listed anywhere. I can’t claim verifiable academic credentials, I don’t want to, and everything I write is easily verifiable.
You have NOT explained how average temperature is relevant for anything, or useful for purpose, or that it has PHYSICAL meaning. (BTW, I am quite sure you have zero idea what “physical” means.)
Also, don’t waste EVERYBODY’S TIME with your moronic claims. You have no understanding of the world and no knowledge of scientific research beside watching Climate Fox News or something.
Christ and other deities of choice! AGW definitely is falsifiable, but it is not a point since it is simply true. What is the real question is the size of AGW, location and timing of AGW, and whether it poses and what kind of problems to humans.
What is not falsifiable, is CAGW dressed as CC, because everything imaginable is climate change, thus everything is a ‘proof’ of CAGW. When global warming is explained as CC implying CAGW, it is very difficult to object. Yes, climate tends to change. Yeah, change COULD be dangerous.
Hugs and co2isnot,
AGW is not a scientifically falsifiable assertion because it is mere conjecture, not a true hypothesis, i.e., it is not CAPABLE of being falsified in the scientific sense, for, so far, there is no way to do any experiment to prove or disprove AGW. Thus, essentially, AGW is nonsense. It “just seems likely” is not science, nor is “my intuitive guess is… .” Saying, “AGW is true,” (much less, screaming, “AGW is true!” lol) provides not one bit of evidence that your assertion is fact. There is not ONE measurement of any significance vis a vis the climate system called “earth,” NOT ONE PIECE OF DATA, that makes even a prima facie case for AGW.
AGW is, as of today, still ALL speculation. Worse than that, it flies in the face of the evidence:
CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
It’s all about data. And science.
Janice for Logic and Facts and the Scientific Method
P.S. Please, forgive my rather blunt tone. If I waited until H.’s taking Jesus’ name in vain was no longer making me feel annoyed, I would be on to other tasks of the day and likely forget to return here.
Further, AGW flies in the face of evidence from ice cores which strongly indicates that CO2 lags temperature by a quarter cycle.
AGW definitely is falsifiable
===================
1. what specific test can be applied to falsify AGW?
2. what unexpected result did AGW predict?
Rising temperature post 1950 cannot be unexpected, since temperatures were rising for 100 years prior to that.
Hugs and Janice
Try these three ways that science can disprove CAGW:
1. Changes in atmospheric CO2 follow changes in temperature which is the opposite of the CAGW claim. This is true in the short term (see Mauna Loa data) and the long term (see ice core data).
2. CO2 radiates IR radiation in all directions equally (i.e. isotropically), not just downwards. Much of the upward radiation from CO2 is lost to space. Therefore, if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increased, the amount of radiation lost to space must also increase. If the incoming radiation from the Sun stays the same that means the Earth must be cooled by increased CO2, not warmed by it!
Seems to me that the above two ‘scientific proofs’ indicate that CAGW is not just wrong but completely backwards!
If those don’t convince you, try this:
3. A radiating body cannot raise the temperature of an absorbing body above its own temperature. CO2 absorbs and emits electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength centered around 15 microns. This is equivalent to the IR radiation from a heat source at a temperature of -80 c. It could therefor only raise the temperature of the earth to -80 c.
What Janice said. The conjecture of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) has been turned by the Climastrologists into an assumption, and that used as the basis of a speculation that increased human-produced CO2 will produce catastrophic AGW (CAGW). So we have a speculation based on an assumption based on a conjecture, none of which can be falsified. This is not science; it is fantasy. Fantasy can be entertaining, but if it becomes the basis of policy, it is delusion.
/Mr Lynn
Bernard Lodge,
“1. Changes in atmospheric CO2 follow changes in temperature which is the opposite of the CAGW claim.”
Please give a source for that claim. It just isn’t true. The ice core data was cited in the AR3. It doesn’t disprove anything.
“Therefore, if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increased, the amount of radiation lost to space must also increase.”
Only if the CO2 is radiating at the same temperature, which it isn’t. The emission occurs from higher colder levels.
“It could therefor only raise the temperature of the earth to -80 c.”
Just nonsense. CO2 lasers are used for cutting steel.
Janice,
First, Thanks for your recent link to what I found to be a very fine paper that was extremely apropos to our discussion on another post . . (and if you watch the video I summonsed there, I feel very sure you will thank me . .)
” If I waited until H.’s taking Jesus’ name in vain was no longer making me feel annoyed, I would be on to other tasks of the day and likely forget to return here.”
I believe He meant; Don’t be superficially “Mine” . . as in merely claiming to be His servant/disciple without living that out in reality.)
A cooler body can slow down the heat loss of a warmer body. If the warmer body is receiving heat from an outside source then the warmer body will heat up in the presence of the cooler body.
Basically the earth receives energy from the sun. The addition of greenhouse gases will impede the flow of outgoing energy from the earth so the earth (and it’s atmosphere) will receive more energy than it emits – it will therefore warm.
RE: Nick Stokes February 3, 2016 at 3:02 pm to Bernard Lodge
“1.Changes in atmospheric CO2 follow changes in temperature which is the opposite of the CAGW claim.” Please give a source for that claim. It just isn’t true. The ice core data was cited in the AR3. It doesn’t disprove anything.
Acknowledgement of: http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html#CO2Lags
CO2 Lags Temperature:
Coherence established between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature
(Nature, Volume 343, Number 6260, pp. 709-714, February 1990)
– Cynthia Kuo et al.
“Temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide are significantly correlated over the past thirty years. Changes in carbon dioxide content lag those in temperature by five months.”
Ice core records of atmospheric CO2 around the last three glacial terminations
(Science, Volume 283, Number 5408, pp. 1712-1714, March 1999)
– Hubertus Fischer et al.
“High-resolution records from Antarctic ice cores show that carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 80 to 100 parts per million by volume 600 ± 400 years after the warming of the last three deglaciations.”
Atmospheric CO2 Concentration from 60 to 20 kyr BP from the Taylor Dome ice core, Antarctica (PDF)
(Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 27, Number 5, March 2000)
– Andreas Indermuhle et al.
“The lag was calculated for which the correlation coefficient of the CO2 record and the corresponding temperatures values reached a maximum. The simulation yields a lag of (1200 ± 700) yr.”
Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations over the Last Glacial Termination
(Science, Volume 291. Number 5501, January 2001)
– Eric Monnin et al.
“The start of the CO2 increase thus lagged the start of the [temperature] increase by 800 ± 600 years.”
The phase relations among atmospheric CO2 content, temperature and global ice volume over the past 420 ka (PDF)
(Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 20, Issue 4, pp. 583-589, February 2001)
– Manfred Mudelsee
“Over the full 420 ka of the Vostok record, CO2 variations lag behind atmospheric temperature changes in the Southern Hemisphere by 1.3±1.0 ka”
Timing of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature Changes Across Termination III
(Science, Volume 299, Number 5613, March 2003)
– Nicolas Caillon et al.
“The sequence of events during Termination III suggests that the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 ± 200 years and preceded the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation.”
Southern Hemisphere and Deep-Sea Warming Led Deglacial Atmospheric CO2 Rise and Tropical Warming
(Science, Volume 318, Issue 5849, September 2007)
– Lowell Stott et al.
“Deep sea temperatures warmed by ~2C between 19 and 17 ka B.P. (thousand years before present), leading the rise in atmospheric CO2 and tropical surface ocean warming by ~1000 years.”
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration Across the Mid-Pleistocene Transition
(Science, Volume 324, Number 5934, pp. 1551-1554, June 2009)
– Bärbel Hönisch et al.
“The lack of a gradual decrease in interglacial PCO2 does not support the suggestion that a long-term drawdown of atmospheric CO2 was the main cause of the climate transition”
The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature (PDF)
(Global and Planetary Change, Volume 100, pp. 51–69, January 2013)
– Ole Humlum et al.
“There exist a clear phase relationship between changes of atmospheric CO2 and the different global temperature records, whether representing sea surface temperature, surface air temperature, or lower troposphere temperature, with changes in the amount of atmospheric CO2 always lagging behind corresponding changes in temperature.”
John Finn
“A cooler body can slow down the heat loss of a warmer body. If the warmer body is receiving heat from an outside source then the warmer body will heat up in the presence of the cooler body.”
So by that theory, the Earth would be warmer if it had two cold moons orbiting it rather than one?
Or, consider a warm body in space and next to it a cooler body suddenly appears – does the warm body get warmer? I think you would agree that it does not.
Thanks Manfred
Manfred,
Sorry to be unclear. I meant the claim that “which is the opposite of the CAGW claim.”. Of course CO2 lags in the ice record – as I said, that was acknowledged in the AR3. But it doesn’t contradict any “CAGW claim”. The AGW issue is that if you put Gtons of CO2 in the air, it will; get warmer. The fact that temperature varied in the past, with consequent CO2 change, doesn’t disprove that.
“So by that theory, the Earth would be warmer if it had two cold moons orbiting it rather than one?”
That theory is called physics.
In a non quantified universe, you could warm the Sun by pointing a flash lamp to it. In the real world, it’s very unlikely that you can get a quantum of energy from the flash lamp to the Sun.
Warmer doesn’t mean warmer in any measurable way.
“So by that theory, the Earth would be warmer if it had two cold moons orbiting it rather than one?”
Yes, it would. Because the extra moon at 250K, say, blocks an area of space at 3K. Stand in front of a freezer and you fel cold. Close the door, and you feel warmer. Though the door is colder than you, it’s warmer than the freezer,
John Finn has it right. Earth’s temperature is the point at which IR outward radiation balances incoming solar. Any extra IR coming in shifts that balance upward.
Nick Stokes
“Yes, it would. Because the extra moon at 250K, say, blocks an area of space at 3K. Stand in front of a freezer and you fel cold. Close the door, and you feel warmer. Though the door is colder than you, it’s warmer than the freezer,”
You just made my point. The moon at 250k would not be able to warm the Earth above 250k and the rest of space at 3k would not be able to warm the Earth above 3K. Since the Earth temperature is above both, it would not change.
@Bernard Lodge
Why do you believe you understand physics or logic or anything?
You can’t seriously go on arguing about this. I mean, even your host agrees CO2 warms a little. But the Moon radiation — surely it theoretically makes a miniscule effect, but it is probably covered by occasional eclipses.
Nick writes
You’re right, it doesn’t disprove that. But what it does prove is that CO2 hasn’t been a “control knob” in the past. The data we have from the ice cores proves to us that any CO2 warming is incidental to whatever else has caused the overall warming trends.
Thank you Manfred for your list of references.
My 2008 icecap paper predates Humlum et al (2013) by five years.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/15/voxs-david-roberts-consilience-or-just-plain-silliness/comment-page-1/#comment-2098864
This is the dCO2/dt vs. temperature relationship I was referring to above.
See my 2008 paper at:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
or this plot:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah/from:1959/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
There are several observations about this striking dCO2/dt vs. temperature relationship:
1. The dCO2/dt vs. temperature correlation is remarkably strong for a natural global phenomenon.
2. The integral (of dCO2/dt) is atmospheric CO2, and it LAGS temperature by about 9 months in the modern data record. CO2 also LAGS temperature by about 800 years in the ice core record. Thus CO2 LAGS temperature at all measured time scales. Thus the global warming hypothesis assumes that the future is causing the past. Thus the CAGW hypothesis fails.
3. This close dCO2/dt vs temperature relationship indicates that temperature drives CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
4. The dCO2/dt vs. temperature correlation is the only detailed signal I have found in the data – there is NO evidence that CO2 LEADS temperature or that increasing atmospheric CO2 significantly increases global temperature.
5. Furthermore, global temperature declined from ~1940-1975, increased from ~1975-2000, and has stayed flat (or cooled slightly) since ~2000, all while atmospheric CO2 increased; so the correlation of temperature to increasing atmospheric CO2 has been NEGATIVE, Positive, and Near-Zero. I suggest Near-Zero is the correct estimate of the sensitivity (ECS) of global temperature to increasing atmospheric CO2. There is and never had been a manmade global warming crisis – there is no credible evidence to support this failed hypothesis.
6. With few exceptions including some on this blog, nobody (especially the global warming alarmists) wants to acknowledge the LAG of CO2 after temperature – apparently this LAG of CO2 after temperature contradicts deeply-held beliefs about global warming dogma.
7. While basic physics may suggest that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the overwhelming observational evidence indicates that the impact of increasing CO2 on global temperature is so small as to be insignificant.
8. In summary, observational evidence strongly indicates that the manmade global warming crisis does not exist.
9. Finally, atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high; in fact, it is dangerously low for the survival of terrestrial carbon-based life on Earth. Plants evolved with about 2000ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, or about 5 times current CO2 concentrations.
10. In one of the next global Ice Ages, atmospheric CO2 will approach about 150ppm, a concentration at which terrestrial photosynthesis will slow and cease – and that will be the extinction event for all terrestrial life on this planet.
11. More atmospheric CO2 is highly beneficial to all carbon-based life on Earth. Therefore, CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
12. As a devoted fan of carbon-based life on this planet, I feel the duty to advocate on our behalf. I should point out that I am not prejudiced against other life forms. They might be very nice, but I do not know any of them well enough to form an opinion. 🙂
Regards to all, Allan
Bernard lodge:
“Nick Stokes
“Yes, it would. Because the extra moon at 250K, say, blocks an area of space at 3K. Stand in front of a freezer and you fel cold. Close the door, and you feel warmer. Though the door is colder than you, it’s warmer than the freezer,”
You just made my point. The moon at 250k would not be able to warm the Earth above 250k and the rest of space at 3k would not be able to warm the Earth above 3K. Since the Earth temperature is above both, it would not change.”
No he hasn’t: It is a slowing of cooling.
NOT warming.
It would change.
That is what GHG’s do in an atmosphere or any similarly radiating object placed in front of a hotter one that is in itself warmer than it’s background..
Radiated enrgy comes back to the radiating “reservoir”.
It does not make the “reservoir” (Earth) warmer but is simply a slower rate of cooling.
A balance is achieved which results in the reservoir maintaining a higher temp than without the hypothetical moon (as the Earth has it’s “reservoir” filled by a constant source of energy from the Sun)
Bernard Lodge February 3, 2016 at 4:46 pm
Or, consider a warm body in space and next to it a cooler body suddenly appears – does the warm body get warmer? I think you would agree that it does not.
Well if you agree with that statement you’re wrong, try reading a undergraduate text on radiation heat transfer: Hottel and Sarofim for example (Radiative Transfer, McGraw-Hill series in mechanical engineering, Hoyt Clarke Hottel, Adel F. Sarofim)
Nick,
The failed AGW hypothesis posits that the atmosphere should warm before the surface and faster. That this has not happened is yet another falsification of the crackpot conjecture.
Allan,
“Only” about 85% of plants would die out if CO2 fell below 150 ppm, ie those using the C3 pathway. C4 and CAM plants would survive. So too would phytoplankton, as the cold water would retain a lot of CO2, so not all life would be wiped out.
Thank you Gloateus – that is most comforting.
So we terrestrials get to eat:
crabgrass
corn
sugarcane
sorghum
and pineapple?
Yum!
At what atmospheric CO2 concentrations do C4 plants shut down?
If not 150ppm CO2, then what? 140?130?
Regards, Allan
Phil writes
Sorry Phil, on this point you’re wrong.
If you have an object in space at say 300K and you introduce another object next to it at 300K or less then neither object will be warmer than 300K.
If the “object” is being warmed by a heat source (eg Sun) then that’s a different matter but that wasn’t specified in the example so either you actually dont understand thermodynamics or more likely simply didn’t understand the example.
Nick Stokes wrote this, and it irks me:
The AGW issue is that if you put Gtons of CO2 in the air, it will get warmer.
No, that is not the ‘AGW issue’! The issue is how much warming will occur?
The answer should be obvious by now even to Nick: very, very little. Almost all of the warming has already taken place. CO2 could be doubled, or even tripled from here (from ≈400 ppm to 800, or even 1200 ppm), and the warming that would result would still be too minuscule to measure. This chart shows why:
Given that almost all of the global warming from CO2 has already taken place, and given that the rise in CO2 is a net benefit to the biosphere, and given that there has been no observed damage, downside, or harm to the planet as a result of the rise — which is anyway only one part in ten thousand higher than a century ago — the country should promptly eliminate the $1 billion+ being wasted on ‘climate change’ studies, and at least re-direct it into worthwhile areas of science, if not refund it to the taxpaying public.
There is no saving grace, no upside to continuing to fund this hoax. The AGW scare is a scam on the public, and it’s about time for the silent majority of scientists to begin speaking out. It’s becoming a travesty that they don’t.
(This is annoying.)
“the rest of space at 3k would not be able to warm the Earth above 3K.”
NO
The SUN does. The 3 K space just slows down the cooling VERY slightly.
Saying that space “warms” the Earth isn’t even physics, it’s MATH.
You write the equations. It’s clear.
Also, it is NOT measurable. You can’t see the effect on Earth climate. But theory says it’s there.
And pissing in the lake of Geneva must raise its level, even if there is no way to measure that.
simple-touriste.
“Also, it is NOT measurable. You can’t see the effect on Earth climate. But theory says it’s there.”
The 3K CMB does indeed warm the earth. By around 3C on average I presume. I think you are getting tangled in semantics.
The satellites actually use it for calibration.
3C is indeed measurable by a basic thermometer.
“By around 3C on average I presume.”
I presume you are joking.
The space radiation would heat a dead space body from 0 K to 3 K. It means that as far away from the Sun as you want, you can never get colder than 3 K (without the help of a cooling system). But the Earth isn’t a dead body, it has an active core. Even driven away from the Sun by some magical force, it wouldn’t cool to 3 K.
The Earth has a climate system that makes any table napkin computation attempt very silly. Let’s take a body without a biosphere, oceans, and atmosphere.
So let’s assume here a Earth-like dead body (no core) with a Moon-like moon. We consider only these emissions:
– the 5773 K Sun surface
– the 100 K to 373 K moon surface
– the 3 K mostly empty space in the rest of the sky
Sources:
http://www.space.com/14725-moon-temperature-lunar-days-night.html#sthash.ECGL0MtS.dpuf
http://www.space.com/17137-how-hot-is-the-sun.html
How large are these bodies from this hypothetical Earth-like dead body?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_angle#Sun_and_Moon
So we see:
– the Sun in about 5e-6 of the sky
– the moon surface in 5e-6 of the sky
– the mostly empty space in the rest of the sky (1 – 1e5 of the sky actually)
We then do a very simple computation for each contribution to the radiating power received:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law
So we have as power per surface area:
– deep space: 81
– moon: between 1e9 and 2e10 (assuming maximum daylight temp everywhere for simplicity)
– Sun: 1e15
The contribution of radiation power received by a point object is proportional to the apparent surface area of the object, or proportional to the fraction of the celestial sphere occupied by the object:
– deep space: 81
– moon: up to 9e4
– Sun: 1e15 * 5e-6 = 5e9
The calculation shows that the temperature of such Earth-orbit dead body would be driven exclusively by the Sun: the contribution of the 1-1e5 of cold space is neglectable. The 1e15 Sun radiation swamps everything else when seen in 5e-6 of the sky.
The temperature of the Earth-like dead body would be much more influenced by its moon than by the deep space.
But again, the Earth isn’t a dead body, and if you are going to consider small contributions like the effect of the radiation from the Moon, you can’t neglect geothermal heat.
And don’t forget: the average temperature of an object is a meaningless computation. It has no physical meaning.
V
Isn’t it odd that a flat earth only exists in the simple average temperature models of the CAGW-inspired minds?
Is it not more important to assume a “spherical world, 70% covered by oceans and 30% by water, rotating at 23.5 degrees in an elliptical orbit?” Or is it beyond the ability of the CGM’s to work with what is only a coarse approximation of the real world?
Janice Moore.
“AGW is not a scientifically falsifiable assertion because it is mere conjecture, not a true hypothesis, i.e., it is not CAPABLE of being falsified in the scientific sense, for, so far, there is no way to do any experiment to prove or disprove..”
What a bizarre claim. You are taking denialism to a whole new level. You are denying the scientific method.
No, the scientific theory of AGW is falsifiable. And the climate scientists do AGW experiments all the time.
I have even seen author post the results of experiments in this blog. If AGW was not a scientific theory, then there would be nothing to post in this blog (ignoring political opinions of course but they do not count as science).
1) The atmosphere will still never get about the temperature of the radiating body.
2) It would be impossible for a day where the low temperature is below the previous day’s low temperature, to make a new high temperature if it is solely due to CO2.
3) The Deserts are the best place to demonstrate the impact of CO2, and not a lot of heat is contained in that atmosphere, and what heat is there is due to conduction and convection, not radiation.
Allan MacRae
February 4, 2016 at 11:58 am
I don’t know exactly how low CAM and C4 plants can go without starving to death, but they can survive if not thrive under remarkably low CO2 levels, in the tens of ppm. Maybe 40.
AGW is falsifiable that’s the problem. The satellites falsify the entire theory so they are ignored.
You mean the hotspot? They put limits on the understanding that models may provide to us ATM, not falsify AGW.
Of course, to falsify something you have to define clearly what you talk about. AGW is vague in the sense it does not mention GHGs, let alone CO2.
The models simply reiterate the physics. It is fundamentally impossible for there to be AGW without a hotspot. If the surface records were actually correct and there was surface warming and no tropospheric warming then its time to come up with a new theory because its not AGW.
Nothing in the real world is absolutely falsifiable. (Nothing in the real world is about all animals being black or white.)
Even a coin toss experiment giving 10 consecutive H is compatible with the coin being biased toward T. You just might have been “unlucky”.
Of course it’s utterly irrational to cling to such hypothesis based on nothing.
But results are always interpreted in context. Context might suggest that some negative results are just an unlucky outcome. Also, people can lie. I am willing to bin a “study” concluding something contrary to everything I know from repeated, robust studies. I don’t need “absolute proof” that such study was rigged. Of course, the study might come out of the bin latter. Few things are fixed in stone.
Popper was the epitome of epistomologists and a powerful advocate for the scientific method.
As a handy guide to distinguishing science from pseudoscience I recommend James Lett’s “Field Guide to Critical Thinking.” – easier to read than Popper.
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/field_guide_to_critical_thinking/
Unhappily, he’s citing Karl Popper, a “positivist” and therefore reviled by “postmodern” or “postnormal” “scientists” who regard “positivism” or any similar approach as a dead end. So any opponent can toss quotes from others such as Paul Feuerabend who happily ignore the problem of maintaining the usefulness or productivity of science in favor of a “relativist” – not in the sense of physics – approach. From that perspective almost any view of reality can be treated as potentially “scientific.” Entire books can and have been written about this problem, but the reality is that very few people – regardless of outlook – really prefer a scientific truth to their pet, preferred views.
This link gives you the current members of the committee: Committee on Science, Space & Technology. The chairman is Lamar Smith of Texax.
And???? What’s your point?
Smith is chair of the house committee, not the Senate mentioned in the title. I think Cruz id the chair of the Senate Committee. Some of the article refers to the house Committee. I need to read more carefully
No Smith is the Chair of a different Senate committee. The problem comes from a mistake the page footing in Chrisie’s PDF, which uses the word “House”.
AGW theory has been falsified. Drs Hansen & Mann will both admit that for AGW Theory to be true tropospheric temps MUST increase faster than surface temperatures (the ‘Hot Spot’). Satellites (and balloons) measure troposhperic temps and in the 30 years they have been doing so, there is no evidence whatsoever that Tropspheric temps are increasing faster than surface temps – quite the opposite in fact if GISS is to be believed.
dccowboy
Please direct me to where Drs Hansen & Mann both admit tropospheric temps must increase faster than surface temperature for AGW to be a reality. I will look forward to your post.
I don’t have quotes from them saying 2+2 equals 4, either.
But skeptical science admits that climate models say it should happen…when have you heard Hansen fault climate models? Do you think his models produce thr opposite result? Lol
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=415
And if you don’t want to ask those turkeys, you should be able to sketch-up some radiation balance diagrams and realize for yourself that warming should not occur faster at the boundary with the earth’s surface. This is pretty basic stuff. Or just be lazy and google it.
AGW propaganda is dependent on the believers not knowing anything about the actual theory other than CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
See IPCC AR3 and 4.
The IPCC said so in their reports. The (non-calculus) rationale is that CO2 is in the air, not just at the surface, and when it absorbs sunlight the air gets heated. Most of the mass (about 75-80%) of the atmosphere is in the troposphere which reaches up to 20 km (12 miles) altitude. This is where the legendary ‘greenhouse effect’ is supposedly born.
The midpoint of the atmosphere, the point where half the air lies above it and half below, and where the absorption of sunlight by CO2 should be most noticeable, is at the 500 millibar level – about 5.5 km or 3.4 miles. At higher altitudes the air is too thin and at lower altitudes the sunlight has already been partially absorbed.
What troposphere altitude (ASL) is represented best by the satellite temperature surveys?
So I am picking that Drs Hansen & Mann have never said that this must happen. Quotes anyone … from them?
Simon,
As usual your reading comprehension sucks. dccowboy said: … will both admit ….
What is it about “will” that has you so confused?
Or is that your usual state of mind?
RACookPE1978 February 3, 2016 at 1:30 pm
What troposphere altitude (ASL) is represented best by the satellite temperature surveys?
Maybe this is what you are looking for:
charts for relative weighting and altitude
Mike the ML
What??? No they wont admit it. But when and if they do, wake me up. This has become ridiculous.
RACookPE1978 February 3, 2016 at 1:30 pm
What troposphere altitude (ASL) is represented best by the satellite temperature surveys?
Difficult to say, if you’re talking about RSS then TMT peaks at about 4km whereas TLT peaks at about 2km.
UAH used to produce a TLT which peaked at 2km (upto 5.6), their new version which appears to agree with RSS TLT however peaks at 4km (in other words should be compared with TMT not TLT). I note that Christy has taken to talking about TMT recently without explicitly addressing this change.
Follow me here Simon, Dr. Hansens own model shows the troposphere heating more see Plate 1. from Hansen 1988.
dccowboy, I fear you may have fallen victim to the warmists slight-of-hand. It would have been a big slip-up for them to have used any definitive terminology, like “must”. Their tone and body language indicate “must”, “will”, “is”, but they actually use the weasel words “should”, “could”, “might”, “may”. This is how absolutely everything “possibly” an indication of CAGW, while nothing is evidence against it. Classic snake-oil salesmanship.
dbstealey
Nice to hear from you. Lovely to see your language is improving. Sucks? Really? I thought you were a big boy now?
I think it will be a cold day in hell when either of them make a statement like that. If you think otherwise please explain.
Simon,
I should have realized that word would get you excited. My bad. And now you’re writing about boys…
Everyone in this subthread is right except you, Simon. Since you alarmist folks are so hung up on the ‘consensus’ (since you don’t have credible facts), what do you think about that particular consensus? Or do you cherry-pick them, too, like your climate factoids?
Finally, did you think no one would notice your strawman question? You set up your strawman and knocked it right back down, deflecting from the original point. You’re a brave strawman slayer, Simon, I’ll acknowledge that much.
DB
I think if Cognitive Dissonance Camp for Climate Alarmists ever took off, it should require an initial orientation from you.
That would provide long term job security.
DB
So that last (rather close to the edge with the suck and boys innuendo) comment was really your long winded way of saying you agree that Mann and Hanson would never say and have never said that tropospheric temps MUST increase faster than surface temperatures for AGW to be real. Which was was my original point. Thanks.
Simon February 3, 2016 at 8:32 pm
You really need to start confining yourself to what people say. No where was it stated that Mann and Hansen “stated” temps must increase faster in the troposphere.
The original statement by
“dccowboy February 3, 2016 at 8:46 am” said:
“Drs Hansen & Mann will both admit that for AGW Theory to be true troposphere temps MUST increase faster than surface temperatures”.
Note the term “will” it implys a future statement on the subject if asked. Whether or not dccowboy is correct in this assumption rests with Drs Mann and Hansen.
Read more carefully in the future. And don’t be so quick to find fault, it casts you in a bad light.
michael
Excellent reminder for posting and in real life. The pulse quickens, the blood stirs, the mind and body rally for attack. Breathing deeply appears to counterattack the initial impulse. Collects the brain. Allows for a more intentioned response.
Thanks Mike
knutesea February 3, 2016 at 10:06 pm
All of us make a mistake now and then. Its how you you say “I was wrong”.
I’ve had to do it.
Not always with good grace but that to is human.
Good to hear from you
michael
Simon sez:
…you agree that Mann and Hanson would never say and have never said that tropospheric temps MUST increase faster than surface temperatures for AGW to be real. Which was was my original point. Thanks.
Don’t thank me, because that’s not what I wrote. That’s only the strawman you set up and knocked down. You did the same thing with ‘dccowboy’.
You’re in over your head, Simon. Out of your league. A chihuahua trying to keep up with the big dogs. Amusing diversions, those chihuahuas. ☺
If anyone wants to see a description of the so called “hot spot” or otherwise known as the predicted greenhouse gas signature, go to Joanne Nova’s site and on the left side find “The Skeptics Handbook.” Go to page 4 of the text and there are 2 multicolored images and descriptive text. This was put out in 2009 and may be a bit dated – don’t know. However, it is a place for some to start.
Are satellite temp readings viewable in real time for the general public ?
The WUWT references tab is your friend:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/global-temperature/
There is also Wood For Trees where you can easily compare and contrast the different temp records in various ways once you learn to use the tool:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/
Thanks DM
I often skim the post which spurs a question and I forget to look for the answer first on the webpage. Appreciate you helping me out this time.
I didn’t see an actual running real time tabulation for the satellite data. It creates a certain authenticity for the public to see it in real time. Perhaps someone could put that in the suggestion box.
I believe what you are looking for is this:
https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/amsutemps/amsutemps.pl?r=003
But ch04 and ch05 are no longer working and I do not find ch06 too reliable. However I did note that ch06 indicated that January 2016 would be warmer than January 2015, and it was on both UAH and RSS.
Not really in real time but as soon as they are processed. I am not sure the sounder readings would mean very much without processing them into temperatures. Even the “current” temperature is somewhat behind. Unlike thermisters, where temperature is basically a lookup table from voltage, the raw channel data has to be processed to make it temperature. Then it has to be quality checked before the monthly product is put out.
The monthly process uses more instruments and has a good deal more cross checking. The data on the daily product is kind of a rough cut on what temperatures might be doing.
I know, clear as mud.
Well you took a good stab at it.
And the method sounds more replicable
than land based bpj. The point is that the more the public can actually SEE what your doing while your doing it the more the credibility of the method becomes.
One always enjoys watching the teller count your money out before they hand it to you. (At least when they were human beings).
It is well worth downloading Dr. Christy’s testamony (PDF file linked to in main post) and saving it. The appendix contains many useful sections to refute frequently made claims of increased severe weather, crop losses, etc.
Agree! His written testimony is one of the best summaries of the state of climate understanding and misunderstanding.
It’s a keeper!
+1
Thanks for the tip.
Agreed, I’ve already saved it to file.
This time J Christy emphasized the 4 radiosonde balloon data. You see this is very important because the warmistas are attacking the satellite data as being subject to drift ect, Unfortunately until recently skeptics have nearly always overlooked the 4 radiosonde data sets, each confirming the satellite data trends. There are in fact SIX datasets supporting no warming at all in fact, NOT TWO ONLY satellite datasets. BTW the radiosondes measure temperature by thermometers, so no, its not deduced..
Seven. NOAA produces a satellite record also (if I recall correctly, STARS) but does not publicize it because it agrees with UAH and RSS.
I can imagine that tone even if never heard of STARS.
‘Let’s not raise this into publicity, it would not be on message and it would give ammunition to skeptics.’
‘The uncertainties are large and the results are not inconsistent with surface data sets.’
‘The results do not appear to support the tropical hotspot robustly predicted by the GCMs. We suggest this is due to yet an unknown source of bias. Recent post-mortem recalibrations have improved the results significantly, but the correlation is still slightly negative. We want to fix this obvious error before publishing the results.’
‘We do not want to do another seas-are-cooling mistake. Lets find the reason for anomalous results instead of making fools of ourselves.’
Is this what you’re talking about? Maybe it should be on the reference page.
http://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/smcd/emb/mscat/images/MSU_AMSU_Global_Trend.jpg
Recalled almost correctly. STAR. Available at http://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov Shows that 2015 was 5th warmest, not warmest as the karlized NOAA surface data claimed.
[Link fixed. ~mod]
“NOAA produces a satellite record also”
What they don’t produce is a record for the Lower Troposphere (TLT) which people quote here. They don’t think they reliably can. Their TMT, as shown above, increases at about 1.2K/cen since 1979, where UAH has 0.7K/cen – not wonderful agreement.
Nick Stokes says:
“Their TMT, as shown above, increases at about 1.2K/cen since 1979, where UAH has 0.7K/cen – not wonderful agreement.”
Typical Stokesian disingenuity. You do know, of course, Nick, that the trend given is from 1979 to 2015, not from 1997 or 1998 to 2015. And you also do know that the dispute here is not about the 1979-2015 period, but all about the period 1997/98-now, that is, the “Hiatus” or “Pause”. Have a look at the NOAA STAR TMT and TUT curves. Do you see the “Pause” from 1997/98 on? Exactly verifying the UAHv6 tlt and RSSv3.3 tlt “Pauses”. Or do you see a relentless, GISS-like no-pause upward trend?
Nick Stokes says:
“Their TMT, as shown above, increases at about 1.2K/cen since 1979, where UAH has 0.7K/cen – not wonderful agreement.”
That’s the typical accuracy vs precision argument that always happens when choosing a temperature sensor. I’ll let the engineers argue about whether NOAA or RSS is more accurate, but precision-wise, they are almost identical. And the key point is that The Pause is alive and well, even in NOAA data.
Yea yea, the results are not warm enough. /cynic
Kristian,
” You do know, of course, Nick, that the trend given is from 1979 to 2015″
Yes, I said so. I was responding to ristvan who said:
“NOAA produces a satellite record also (if I recall correctly, STARS) but does not publicize it because it agrees with UAH and RSS.”
And it doesn’t. I read over and over at WUWT how various things like radiosonde agree with RSS/UAH, but hardly ever anything quantitative. And when I look into it, there actually isn’t good agreement. Sondes barely agree among themselves.
RH,
“precision-wise, they are almost identical”
They differ by nearly a factor of 2. Maybe that is as good as can be expected, but that is hardly a recommendation.
Hugs,
“Yea yea, the results are not warm enough.”
You won’t find UAH people talking about TLT so much now either. With Christy at Congress it was all TMT.
“precision-wise, they are almost identical”
They differ by nearly a factor of 2. Maybe that is as good as can be expected, but that is hardly a recommendation.
Precision:
http://www.mathsisfun.com/images/low-accuracy-hi-precision.gif
Accuracy:
http://www.mathsisfun.com/images/hi-accuracy-low-precision.gif
So Eliza, just what is a ” thermometer “.
Everything I have ever ” measured “, I have done so by comparing it to some proxy or other which purports to be traceable to some internationally accepted and reproducible standard for that property.
I don’t currently have at my fingertips the accepted proxy for ” Temperature ” but I’m guessing that it relates to a zero value at which the volume of an ideal gas sample goes to zero, and a second reference point at which water (H2O) exists simultaneously in all three phases. (solid, liquid, gas).
Christy’s ” thermometer ” is as reliable as any radiosonde’s thermometer, which is not to claim it is as robust or moreso, but is more than satisfactory for the application.
G
ITS-90 Temperature standard:
read here.
I think my citation relates to the Charles Law property of an ideal gas; the PV = RT thing.
V = 0 at T = 0.
The SI explanation seems about as hokey as the ” Pyramid Inch “.
But evidently it is a practical (useful) measure of Temperature.
g
I see what you were getting at. In the range of temperature appropriate to climate, though, the “thermometer” is, in fact, a platinum resistance device calibrated against a number of fixed points. Temperature is an electrical resistance measurement, therefore. ITS-90 uses a constant volume gas thermometer (pressure measurement) only below 24K.
Triple point of mercury (234.3K), triple point of water (273.16K) and melting point of gallium (302.9K) are the standards most relevant to ambient conditions.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jmsj/93/1/93_2015-001/_pdf
Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan, Vol. 93, No. 1, pp. 5−48, 2015 DOI:10.2151/jmsj.2015-001
The JRA-55 Reanalysis: General Specifications and Basic Characteristics
See RSS in fig. 14; satellites doing fine
I hope the House committee can find some means to force the EPA to pay attention to Christy’s excellent exposition of the failure of the climate models when formulating or,as it should, abandoning its CO2 emission regulations.
The climate models on which the entire Catastrophic Global Warming delusion rests are built without regard to the natural 60 and more importantly 1000 year periodicities so obvious in the temperature record. The modelers approach is simply a scientific disaster and lacks even average commonsense .It is exactly like taking the temperature trend from say Feb – July and projecting it ahead linearly for 20 years or so. They back tune their models for less than 100 years when the relevant time scale is millennial. This is scientific malfeasance on a grand scale. The temperature projections of the IPCC – UK Met office models and all the impact studies which derive from them have no solid foundation in empirical science being derived from inherently useless and specifically structurally flawed models. They provide no basis for the discussion of future climate trends and represent an enormous waste of time and money. As a foundation for Governmental climate and energy policy their forecasts are already seen to be grossly in error and are therefore worse than useless.
A new forecasting paradigm needs to be adopted. For forecasts of the timing and extent of the coming cooling based on the natural solar activity cycles – most importantly the millennial cycle – and using the neutron count and 10Be record as the most useful proxy for solar activity check my blog-post at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
The most important factor in climate forecasting is where earth is in regard to the quasi- millennial natural solar activity cycle which has a period in the 960 – 1020 year range. For evidence of this cycle see Figs 5-9. From Fig 9 it is obvious that the earth is just approaching ,just at or just past a peak in the millennial cycle. I suggest that more likely than not the general trends from 1000- 2000 seen in Fig 9 will likely generally repeat from 2000-3000 with the depths of the next LIA at about 2650. The best proxy for solar activity is the neutron monitor count and 10 Be data. My view ,based on the Oulu neutron count – Fig 14 is that the solar activity millennial maximum peaked in Cycle 22 in about 1991. There is a varying lag between the change in the in solar activity and the change in the different temperature metrics. There is a 12 year delay between the activity peak and the probable millennial cyclic temperature peak seen in the RSS data in 2003. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980.1/plot/rss/from:1980.1/to:2003.6/trend/plot/rss/from:2003.6/trend
There has been a pause since then – or, more properly,the earth entered a cooling trend which is temporarily obscured by the current El Nino. There is likely to be a steepening of the cooling trend in 2017- 2018 corresponding to the very important Ap index break below all recent base values in 2005-6. Fig 13.
The Polar excursions of the last few winters in North America are harbingers of even more extreme winters to come more frequently in the near future.
Two things that government agencies NEVER do are: (1) admit to an error, and (2) allow empirical facts to interfere with their perennial efforts to consolidate and grow their power.
Like cancer cells, bureaucracies are immortal and grow without bounds.
Well done John Christy. Temperatures may be increasing,,, but not that much, and it is mostly the minimum temperatures that increase. Which is a good thing.
But, most importantly, not increasing consistently with the models. The models are invalidated for use in making policy decisions.
I wouldn’t say the models are ‘invalidated’. Rather, their limits are found. You can’t push a model too far, unless you want to ride a dot-like massless horse in vacuum at the speed of light.
The question is, how much model you can buy, eat and still not choke? The TLT is wrong, precipitation is wrong, long term behaviour is, lacking better words, catastrophically diverging.
Since energy loss (radiation) from a black body (and most other bodies too) tends to increase as the 4th power of the Temperature (not anomaly), it follows that the rate of warming or cooling of any body, and particularly a black body, that is not in thermal equilibrium, will vary as the cube of Temperature.
Ergo lows change faster that highs for a given power unbalance.
Hugs, I think it’s misleading to say ‘not invalidated but rather limits found’. Surely the important thing in any modelling is fitness for purpose and if it is clearly unfit for purpose then I have no problem with calling that invalidated. Otherwise we may as well say a model predicting apples rising from the tree is correct within the limits imposed by the possibility of regionalised negative energy density. I would prefer to not get too philosophically sidetracked by these things and just say it’s wrong.
But, but, we live on the ground and the only temperature that counts exists no more than 6 feet up (next argument presented by globull warmists).
To which, the immediate riposte is, the AGW hypothesis claims the troposphere should be more sensitive, should show greater warming, than the surface.
It doesn’t. Ergo, the hypothesis is wrong in its present form, and the warnings of catastrophic consequences have no scientific foundation.
Yet it doesn’t keep the simpletons and agenda-driven profiteers from parroting it over and over and over….
The important thing to keep in mind is that, prior to the Karlization of the surface temps, they all agreed that there had been a pause. Suddenly, Karl et al. decided that ocean temps needed revamping by adjusting the best measurements to match the worst.
So, now we have a surface temperature record that has been adjusted to disagree with the satellite measurements via data which do not impact the satellite measurements at all.
Only a fool or a knave would believe, or feign to believe, that the satellite temps should now be adjusted to match the adulterated surface temp record. Only a fool or a knave would believe, or feign to believe, that the surface record is now superior to the satellite record.
I was under the impression that the satellite system was put in space because it would be far superior to the ground based stations and would offer far more coverage. But then the system started showing that the alarmists were wrong — so the system was no longer wanted.
The alarmists hate honest data because their theory is heifer dust. Real data to them is like Holy Water to Count Dracula.
When you have one arm of NASA basically saying that the other arm’s instruments are essentially worthless, you are metaphorically watching an animal chewing off its own limbs to escape a trap of its own devising.
Cognitive Dissonance at its best.
Regards
Climate Heretic
Yes.
Yeah, GISS saying that MSFC is wrong is like a midget wanting to box Floyd Mayweather. Can anyone tell me what GISS has actually contributed to NASA and the American people with their funding? I think more calls for defunding GISS need to be made.
I think they are helping the people of earth understand the amazing contributions of Muslims to the world.
In his testimony, when discussing Karl (2015) and Huang (2015) decision to adjust buoys using (adjusted) ship data, Dr. Christy notes:
NOAA was “unable” to provide this information?!?
How can that be true? Wasn’t that information generated in the course of preparing Huang and Karl for publication?
NOAA was unable to accommodate this request, not unable to provide this information – completely different things.
Unable to accommodate ‘cos it would make them like stooopid, not ‘cos they don’t have the data.
They lacked some motivation. The motivation was missing because they knew how the results would look like.
The real bite in Christy’s remark is that he then proceeds to give the committee exactly that analysis, done by himself and his grad student. And sure enough, It shows how bunged up the karlization is.
ristvan …… +1
So basically these people are flat-out criminal frauds and not even bothering to hide the fact anymore. And they are allowed to get away with this how?
so that’s Iowa done and dusted reckon get New Hampshire and home and dry ?
30% church goers
not so many Cubans but I reckon that will kick in in later states.
all in all looking good for sensibility on your side of the pond.
now if we could just get rid of the Quisling on our side all might be good.
Just so you know, Iowa has a generally not very good record in terms of going for the ultimate victor. The game has just begun.
Apparently that is because recent Iowa winners exited the Caucus broke which is not the case for Cruz who is appently flush with cash.
The U.S. Constitution says “natural born” citizen to be President.
Would you prefer a Soros who is also not “natural born”? There is a good reason why this was included in the Constitutional.
Could throw this into the Republican Convention or runner-up at the Convention.
So you also need to tell zem dat the Magna Carta does not conform to sharia law. Because that’s going to bite y’alls in the arse one of these days.
Good luck anyhow mate.
G
But, we all know now that satellite “measurements” are really just voltages on a detector.
…and most thermometer measurements now are just electrical resistances.
And those platinum resistance “thermometers” have their own set of error modes, for example:
http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/31/006/31006060.pdf
RTDs will not have problems measuring temperature accurately if procedures consistent with ITS-90 are pursued, including heat treatments of RTDs subjected to excessive temperatures. RTDs are calibrated by comparison to standard fixed points.
And those thermometer measurements that aren’t just electrical resistances are just liquids moving up and down a glass tube with markings on it. 😎
Even without considering just where those tubes are placed and before the numbers those markings represent are adjusted, how pure and uniform over the last 100+ years in their response to temperature changes are the liquids those tubes? How precise are those markings on those tubes, then and now?
Do we know the GLOBAL temperature, now or then, with the certainty and precision required to justify trillions of dollar changes to the world’s energy production or anything else for that matter?
If you don’t realize the answer is “NO!”, then, as was often said where I work when someone repeatedly made the same mistake, “Time for school”.
Roy,
That is certainly true the the major processing industry industries especially in high temperature service
It’s rather disconcerting when every major corporation is showing their support for Big Green. I don’t know what the end goal is, but it’s blatantly obvious that they’re trying to eradicate the middle class and push them into third world poverty.
You can scream the truth all you want but in the end, humanity will lose and the privileged will win.
Judith Curry has a post on the Committee hearing, with links to the other presentations. In lauding Dr. Christy’s participation, she said:
In addition she called out a presentation by Steven Groves on legal issues from the Paris agreement:
Somehow the link to Judith Curry’s post got botched. Please go here: https://judithcurry.com/2016/02/03/paris-climate-promise-a-bad-deal-for-america/
I don’t understand why Groves’ testimony defies easy summary. It says in effect that a large number of factors demonstrate that the Paris Agreement must be ratified by the Senate, and the President cannot put his agreement into effect without funding from Congress, nor without broad and major impacts to the various states. He provides three immediate strategies for pouring sand in the President’s gears.
Alan, In response to your suggestion to download the written testimony I did just that. I just finished reading it. It is very clearly written and just devastates the CAGW alarmist arguments. Thank you for the suggestion.
KK: I think that might have been the good Professor’s slightly taciturn way of saying OMG YEEESSSS!!!
Memo to Paris: We don’t need to cut emissions because the Zika virus accomplishes the goal of population control or significant reduction. Those seeking this outcome can give medals to the development team now.
More news from the,,,, well insert your own word.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/suzuki-harper-should-be-jailed-for-his-climate-positions/ar-BBp2yVx?ocid=spartandhp
Harper was the last Canadian Prime Minister, a conservative, along the lines of Australia’s Tony Abbot. He was replaced by the liberal Trudeau a rather naive sort.
Look out Australia Suzuki is going to blaze a carbon trail your way.
Suzuki isn’t likely to step foot here ever again.
Not after having his backside handed to him on national television by a local scientist.
I don’t have the link to hand, but damn, it was funny watching him squirm when he realized he wasn’t considered an untouchable god here.
https://youtu.be/Jqqz3l6nW38
RollingStone Australia, Feb.2, 2016
Suzuki scheduled to be in Australia March 2016
Item 2:
“I really believe that people like the former Prime Minister of Canada should be thrown in jail for willful blindness.”
http://www.rollingstoneaus.com/culture/post/david-suzuki-encounter/3089
Who are the people like the former Prime Minister?
http://www.torontosun.com/2016/02/02/cmon-suzuki-lets-jail-trudeau
Hearing after hearing, same people and same issues .. Why?
Do they ever resolve any issues? I see the same black woman say the same thing each time, apparently immune to facts and science while she goes on and on and on about climate change, she means man made climate change, but she doesn’t say that ..
John Christy presents real science, real data and real facts, – then what?
What is the point of these hearings?
Politics. Obama’s environmental legacy was to be the unconstitutional Clean Power Plan the EPA is trying to impose. How he meets his Paris pledge. This hearing shows that there is no AGW problem to solve since the models that say there will be don’t work. And that even if there were, a the US simply disappeared (zero emissions starting now) it would make no global warming difference. Getting this stuff on the record helps in an election year for whoever the Republican presidential candidate will be. Ammunition for the upcoming election contest.
The black lady is a California Democrat. Nuff said.
Actors in a play.
Message masters propping them up.
Theatre.
The trick is to have your own message to deliver and to turn the question into your opportunity to deliver that message.
Tennis with words.
Repartee.
Christy has been battle tested and he shows it. I got goosebumps. Felt a little manlove.
@roaldjlarsen: This is just my opinion, but I think we need to be patient and keep our fingers crossed that a climate skeptic Republican president makes into the White House in November…..or even a Republican who lends a sympathic ear to his fellow Republicans in Congress who are skeptical. Senator Cruz is skeptical if I recall correctly. We should look at these hearings as just an act of laying the groundwork or foundation for what we hope will happen if some like Cruz gets to the White House in November. This CAGW con game has been going on long enough–too long in fact.
Although it is probably a matter of faith to believe con games will always be exposed and terminated eventually, I admit that there is no guarantee that the CAGW con game will be blown wide open and die out anytime soon. As I said, a LOT hinges on what happens in November and beyond. If Hillary or Sanders gets to the White House, the CAGW con game will probably be safe for another four years at least.
And the CAGW con game is only half of it. The fraudulent belief that wind and solar energy can meaningfully and successfully scale up to commercial base load levels as a replacement for our fossil fuel power plants is the other half. That money needs to be redirected to 4th generation nuclear power plant research and development. It was good to see some money being allocated (by the DOE I believe) toward the development of the Liquid Chloride Fast Reactor recently which IIRC can also run on thorium along with LFTR.
http://energyfromthorium.com/2016/01/16/doe-terrapower/.
Just my two cents worth……
Cruz gets it and this guy is working hard on it as well –
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426883/rubio-has-best-and-most-serious-energy-plan-robert-zubrin
his piece when BO was in Alaska featuring doom and gloom –
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423403/securing-americas-energy-future
Trump ?? dunno, but policy ain’t his ting to date
Mostly hearings are theatre. They used to be showcases for politicos to make the news cycle. Nowadays it’s less the above. Depending in the public interest in the subject and the speaker they can still attain interest. CAGW is a humdrum issue so it doesn’t attract the interest as compared to benghazi.
It’s not for resolving things if that’s what you mean.
At 1:15:00, Mr. Beyer tries to take Christy to task using Climate Inc. memes, and of course Dr. Christy destroys the memes to the point to where he doesn’t even want the rest of his questions answered. Worth a look.
Would someone please direct me to a resource or explain how satellite receivers discriminate the altitude of the temperature source. I understand that an IR receiver response to a frequency. How do we know origin of the heat source? How is the hot earth masked from the image of the stratosphere?
Roy Spencer’s blog had an explanation relative to UAHv6. Simple answer is via temperature lapse rate. Higher is colder. There are several MSU channels tuned to different IR frequencies. Recall that a lower frequency is less energetic so ‘colder’, so coming from a higher altitude. In reality, the algorithm is more complicated, but you get the idea.
I believe they use different channels on the satellites that receive different wavelengths that are emanating from different depths of the atmosphere.
http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature
Thanks. I have used FLIR cameras in the laboratory and had to cope with surface effects, the insulating nature of regular glass and air turbulence. I had to use germanium lenses and filters and getting “inside the samples” was impossible for me. So I suspected that there had to be some kind of modifying principle embedded in software…
I will look into Roy’s sight and the link from LT
I am much obliged.
“How is the hot earth masked from the image of the stratosphere?”
Surface interference is indeed a problem, espoecially with lower troposphere (TLT). RSS omits some high altitude regions for just this reason. And you may notice that Christy quotes exclusively MT (mid-trop) results in his reports. In mentioning some past problems, he emphasises that they related to TLT, not TMT. But TLT is still what is quoted by Lord Monckton et el.
In the basis document, they say:
“As a result, the middle tropospheric temperature (TMT) and lower tropospheric temperature (TLT) products have a component of surface emission “shining through” the atmospheric layer being sensed which, depending upon the surface, may or may not be directly proportional to temperature of that surface.
These sources of contamination have been found to be relatively small (but not totally negligible) in the time-variations of the TLT and TMT products, so throughout this document Tb variations will be assumed to be loosely proportional to temperature variations.”
Particularly contamination by emissions from ice surfaces, the reason why RSS doesn’t include Antarctica, the Arctic and the Himalayas.
Wow. Thanks guys. I figured it wasn’t straight forward considering my difficulties.
I was looking at Weather Underground checking on local rainfall. When saw that the high temperature in California was 50 C in Napa. I thought this was strange to say the least so I went to the Napa County station records. Sure enough, there it was sticking out like a sore thumb. I went to the station to see is this a consistent problem oright or an anomaly that one station should be almost 30 C higher than the surrounding stations. The temperature graph showed that all was normal until Monday when the temperature reading went up 40 C in a couple hours. It looked as if there was a nascent source right next to the sensor on Monday. I snipped the screen.
Weather Underground picked this single anomalous station as the hot spot in the state. Although this wasn’t an official station, Anthony and his team have identified many such anomalies.
Calistoga up the road from there has bested 40C many times but I don’t think 50C has been bested even in Calistoga more than a handful of times. During my own life I think they’ve bested it maybe 3 or 4 times. Napa is a different matter. I can think of once when Napa might have bested it – we had a big offshore wind event June 1, 2000. I measured 45C at our place in Central San Mateo County that day – YMMV. I reckon what you are talking about might not have been during the warm season so probably bogus.
Trundle over and look at the temperatures in Eastern Russia,i just had a look around the globe and spotted minus 54C over there,the whole area is suffering right down to china.
http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/
The standard tripe in the NYT for dismissal of the satellite data presentations of reality is to use a contrived debate argument and then knock it down that the skeptics (fact checkers) are misusing the data trends with selection bias of a high El Nino year as the starting point for a trend line. Such standardized tactics need boilerplate inserts in testimony with about a half page of response to head it off. That starting point argument is the Great White Hope of advocacy groups and media groupees and also a sneaky way to get readers to ignore the satellite data. Never mind the fact that the satellites were put up there at great expense to get around the deficiencies of the surface temperature record and methods. Advocacy logic is all about fooling the masses and confusing any attempt at fact checking, satellites included.
The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans and Mankind does not have the power to change it. Despite all the cliams, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record. There is evidence that warmer temperatures cause more CO2 to enter the atmosphere but there is no evidence that this additional CO2 causes any more warming. If additional greenhouse gases caused additional warming then the primary culprit would have to be H2O which depends upon the warming of just the surfaces of bodies of water and not their volume but such is not part of the AGW conjecture. In other words CO2 increases in the atmosphere as huge volumes of water increase in temperature but more H2O enters the atmopshere as just the surface of bodies of water warm. We live in a water world where the majoriety of the Earth’s surface is some form of water.
The AGW theory is that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes an increase in its radiant thermal insulation properties causing restrictions in heat flow which in turn cause warming at the Earth’s surface and the lower atmosphere. In itself the effect is small because we are talking about small changes in the CO2 content of the atmosphere and CO2 comprises only about .04% of dry atmosphere if it were only dry but that is not the case. Actually H2O, which averages around 2%, is the primary greenhouse gas. The AGW conjecture is that the warming causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which further increases the radiant thermal insulation properties of the atmosphere and by so doing so amplifies the effect of CO2 on climate. At first this sounds very plausible. This is where the AGW conjecture ends but that is not all what must happen if CO2 actually causes any warming at all.
Besides being a greenhouse gas, H2O is also a primary coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere transferring heat energy from the Earth;s surface to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. More heat energy is moved by H2O via phase change then by both convection and LWIR absorption band radiation combined. More H2O means that more heat energy gets moved which provides a negative feedback to any CO2 based warming that might occur. Then there is the issue of clouds. More H2O means more clouds. Clouds not only reflect incoming solar radiation but they radiate to space much more efficiently then the clear atmosphere they replace. Clouds provide another negative feedback. Then there is the issue of the upper atmosphere which cools rather than warms. The cooling reduces the amount of H2O up there which decreases any greenhouse gas effects that CO2 might have up there. In total, H2O provides negative feedback’s which must be the case because negative feedback systems are inherently stable as has been the Earth’s climate for at least the past 500 million years, enough for life to evolve. We are here. The wet lapse rate being smaller then the dry lapse rate is further evidence of H2O’s cooling effects.
The entire so called, “greenhouse” effect that the AGW conjecture is based upon is at best very questionable. A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of the heat trapping effects of greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass reduces cooling by convection. This is a convective greenhouse effect. So too on Earth..The surface of the Earth is 33 degrees C warmer than it would be without an atmosphere because gravity limits cooling by convection. This convective greenhouse effect is observed on all planets in the solar system with thick atmospheres and it has nothing to do with the LWIR absorption properties of greenhouse gases. the convective greenhouse effect is calculated from first principals and it accounts for all 33 degrees C. There is no room for an additional radiant greenhouse effect. Our sister planet Venus with an atmosphere that is more than 90 times more massive then Earth’s and which is more than 96% CO2 shows no evidence of an additional radiant greenhouse effect. The high temperatures on the surface of Venus can all be explained by the planet’s proximity to the sun and its very dense atmosphere. The radiant greenhouse effect of the AGW conjecture has never been observed. If CO2 did affect climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused an increase in the natural lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. Considering how the natural lapse rate has changed as a function of an increase in CO2, the climate sensitivity of CO2 must equal 0.0.
This is all a matter of science
It sounds like cherry-picking to me.
The USA is not the whole world. So I cannot see how this invalidates the climate models.
Gee. You might be right. Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) wasn’t a shield to keep out ballistic missiles. And it wasn’t discontinued. It was to keep out the real threat to the USA, GLOBAL WARMING!!!
(Apparently, it has succeeded.)
/sarc tags and all that.
What climate model leaves the USA out of the globe?
What do the models say if the USA surface station are left out?
What percentage of the land surface readings come from the USA?
Gunga Din.
I think Dr Christy is playing a shell game here. He talks about very hot days for the US only, and then goes on to talk about climate models for the state of Alabama.
A very narrow focus.
I cannot find any reference in his written testimony to climate models that only apply to Alabama or to the US. He does refer to climate models, but they appear to be global climate models. He then talks about middle tropospheric temperatures but does not compare them to the surface data sets.
Also his comparison between satellite and balloon measurements ends in 2005. Why 2005?
There are other data sets that do show a warming trend in the US. He does not refer to these, either.
The global climate models agree with the observed global satellite readings!?
Then why all the fuss?
Anyone with half a brain who heard this testimony by Dr. John Christy’s to the powerful Senate committee would be immediately convinced of the falsehood of CAFW. However, looking at the members of the Senate, this may be very few people.
Christy does an amazing job of explaining the substance of his work and laying out the measured argument for not allowing policy to be stampeded by alarmists. Unfortunately reason does not inform alarmists. Their primary objective is not winning a scientific debate but an ideological one and a guy like Christy has a hard time understanding how he ended up at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
A note of optimism. It was Rep. Lamar Smiths tea party, and he is no mad hatter. This will pay political dividends, which is where the real fight is.
I hope so. I wasn’t referring to this particular hearing in my previous comment. It’s just amazing to me how people can refuse to even listen and need to shout down somebody like Chirsty (In the figurative sense just take a read over at skeptical science). It’s more like a psychological pathology than a difference of philosophy.
fossilsage:
Usually these hearings are just political theater, but they do have the effect of creating a public record, which is important. When considering how history would judge his tenure, Winston Churchill said:
Actually he did not say that exactly but it is a fair summary of:
Churchill understood the importance of getting his point of view on the public record. Dr. Christy obviously believed it was important to show up and set forth his views, which I think he has done admirably. Regardless of its effect on the Committee members, Dr. Christy’s presentation stands on its own. As Judith Curry wrote:
I concur.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections and commented:
Dr Christie’s written testimony (pdf) here:
https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-114-SY-WState-JChristy-20160202.pdf
Maybe Dr. Christy should be the next president’s science advisor.
One favorite argument in the Trollosphere is that the UAH data has been ADJUSTED!!!!
The fact that the adjustments are in the order of 0.05 deg/C for instrumental drift doesn’t worry a true believer.
“The fact that the adjustments are in the order of 0.05 deg/C for instrumental drift doesn’t worry a true believer”
It’s a lot more than .05. Here is Dr Spencer’s plot of the difference:
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/2/v56.png
Here is my version, with the cumulative changes to GISS over ten years (set on the same 1981-2010 anomaly base) for comparison:
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/2015/12/uahadj1.png
And it wasn’t just instrumental drift. There were many issues. In fact, it’s really a matter of reviewing choices that have been made over the years, like diurnal drift, and choosing differently. Now I don’t think that is necesarily a bad thing. But it must follow that if the current choices are right, the previous choices and results were wrong, over a long time.
I should add that my plot is smoothed with a 12-month running mean, which explains why the peaks are less than in Dr Spencer’s version.
That’s a bit of a silly argument Nick. Sat datasets are roughly twice as sensitive to rate of change, as this now out of date plot shows:
http://s16.postimg.org/fhuqxbdhv/Sensitivity.png
Adjustments of similar proportions overall are therefore roughly comparable.
Thank you for your efforts Dr. Christy. But President Obama is still correct. Climate change is the seminal issue of our times. Whether we follow the domga or whether we follow the science, THAT is the question we must answer for our progeny.
Robert,
They can’t both be right. So we have a ‘community organizer’ disputing a PhD scientist who has been studying the subject for decades.
Dogma vs science.
And “climate change” is a “seminal issue” only because it’s been made into a political argument.
Whatever they mean by “climate change” is irrelevant to science, because the climate always changes; it isn’t changing any more than usual, and in fact, global warming stopped almost 20 years ago.
“a ‘community organizer’ disputing a PhD scientist”
A bizarre appeal to authority. You won’t win by counting PhDs.
Nick – “A bizarre appeal to authority. You won’t win by counting PhDs.”
Except if it is a 97% consensus.
I notice in real life that there is some penetration of the 97% meme as a punchline for snarky humor.
Maybe CAGW humor is the way to awareness.
Nick, I was doing a comparison. But thanx for trying…
Nonsense.
I can drive less than ten miles along a local road, and experience more climate change than is purported to be the cause of all of this global warming climate change ruckus, since way back in 1850.
So we know that climate changes, and every spot on earth has its own climate that isn’t necessarily the same as any other place.
I’ve been around for a significant portion of that time since 1852; and I can tell you that the climate changes more in just 24 hours than I can say I’ve experienced over all of those years. It goes up, and it goes down.
G
If it worries you, then don’t spawn any progeny.
Robert we have a divergence problem and it has come about because the Klimatariat can’t give up the ring.
January 5, 2009: email 1231190304
Phil Jones writes to Tim Johns, Chris Folland, and Doug Smith, regarding temperature
predictions:
“I hope you’re not right about the lack of warming lasting till about 2020. I’d rather hoped to see the earlier Met(eorological) Office press release with Doug’s paper that said something like—“half the years to 2014 would exceed the warmest year currently on record, 1998”!
“Still a way to go before 2014.
“I seem to be getting an email a week from skeptics saying “where’s the warming gone”? I know the warming is on the decades scale, but it would be nice to wear their smug grins away.”
“we must answer for our progeny”
Well if you are that worried about the Children and the Childrens Children, you should think about the Turmoil that is in the World at this moment rather than worry about something a hundred years hence.
Think nuclear war in 5,4,3,2,1.
“Nick, I was doing a comparison.”
Well, I see you are often disputing PhD scientists. What are your qualifications?
Re: Why corporations are on the green bandwagon.
It used to be said that a successful politician watched to see where the crowd was headed and then sprinted ahead so he could lead the parade Now, the successful politician looks to see where the crowd is headed, then sprints ahead to put up a toll booth. Support for the green bandwagon is the corporation’s toll.
+ 10 and a hand clap
Just 1 hand?
Like any good monkey I hold onto my bananas with the other hand.
Global Warming never happens in your back yard, but someplace else. In fact, everywhere else, where it cannot be disproven by life experience.
Ha,Ha, so true, have a look at all the amateur and professional weather stations on ‘Wundermap’ and have a scroll around the Globe,Where is all this Unprecedented Heat?
Plenty,Plenty,cold here, heat in big Sun,but not here,pray to Sun God for Glowbull Warming.
Ah, as the Queen said in Alice In Wonderland, “The rule is jam tomorrow and Jam yesterday, but never jam today.”
The warmistas are trying to get us to live in a looking-glass world.
OH OH besides Canada having Suzuki, Andrew Weaver we also have, Harjit Sajjan Canada’s defense minister blaming the conflicts in Africa and Syria on climate change, I kid you not.
“Sajjan went on to say that politicians had failed to see the crises that propelled the growth of militant Islam.”
“The issues of climate change, of creating grievances in many different parts of the world — not a big deal when you look at, talk about climate change in isolation. But put it into an area of Africa or Syria, which caused those — potentially those grievances when the cost of food started to go up and people started to complain.… that was that little clue.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/harjit-sajjan-defence-isis-comments-1.3431806?cmp=rss
Fantastic testimony. I’ve read it in full (you should, too). Autoratively but respectfully presented. With all relevant points addressed. I’m very impressed by Dr. John Christy I’m grateful to him for fighting this fight for Truth against very powerful and vicious forces.
Dr Christy has a way with words: “the IPCC and other similar Assessments do not represent for me a consensus of much more than the consensus of those selected to agree with a particular consensus.”
The document reads to me like a justifiably angry man taking extreme care with his language in the probably vain hope that his vital message will be heard. Someone who can control his language like that probably takes similar care with his measurements.
Your statement is a pure character attack.
That makes you appear to be an angry fool.
If you are over age 50, an angry, old fool.
The climate has barely changed in the past 150 years.
Nothing unusual has happened.
The cool centuries from 1300 to 1800 are gone — that’s good news.
More CO2 in the air is greening the planet — that’s good news too.
CO2 has never been the “climate controller” in 4.5 billion years of climate history, and did not suddenly start being the “controller” in 1975.
You leftists go to school, graduate, and learn next to nothing.
You knowledge of climate history appears to be near zero.
A leftist debate is usually a character attack — Alinsky style.
Like your comment.
Posts that are character attacks, with no science content, deserve to be ignored.
That’s why no one replied to your comment for four days.
I’m here just because my name is Richard, like yours, and I object to you posting a character attack making “Richard’s” look angry, and dumb … I wouldn’t care, or respond, if someone named “Mark” had posted the comment.
@Harry Twinotter: you wrote “his comparison between satellite and balloon measurements ends in 2005. Why 2005?”
This is misleading. Yes, the figure on page 3 ends in 2005. But the figure on page 2 is ALSO (amongst other things) a comparison between satellite and balloon measurements, and goes up to 2015. He also wrote at some length about surface data sets. He himself “closely examined individual stations in different regions”, for example, and has published about that. You cannot fairly expect him to say EVERYTHING in the limited time he had. He did mention that “In examining ocean temperatures I discovered that the trends of the water temperature (1m depth) do not track well with those of the air temperature just above the water (3m), even if both are measured on the same buoy over 20 years. So *which* “surface” temperatures did you want him to compare with?
As for extreme temperature days, forest fires, &c, I expect that the explanation is simply that he went with the best data he could get, rather than speculating about unavailable or nonexistent data. If you know of data of similar quality and coverage for other countries, great, tell us where to find it.
Note, by the way, that Dr Christy does not say in his testimony “no warming”. His position boils down to “the models demonstrably haven’t got WHAT happened in the past right, so we can’t trust them to tell us WHY what’s happening is happening.” And that seems beyond any reasonable dispute, really it does. (Except, oddly enough, that “The Russian model (INM-CM4) was the only model close to the observations”. I wonder whether that was luck — someone has to be least bad — or whether they were doing something right?)
“(Except, oddly enough, that “The Russian model (INM-CM4) was the only model close to the observations”. I wonder whether that was luck — someone has to be least bad — or whether they were doing something right?)”
I noticed that, too. And I believe it’s a completely different model from the ones used by IPCC and supporter institutions around the world. Russians are not sold on the AGW propaganda and maybe they really developed a realistic climate model. I should investigate.
Richard A. O’Keefe.
“This is misleading. Yes, the figure on page 3 ends in 2005. But the figure on page 2 is ALSO (amongst other things) a comparison between satellite and balloon measurements, and goes up to 2015.”
OK you are saying he does have data up to 2015. So my point still stands: Why does the comparison he shows ends in 2005?
Harry Twinotter:
In reply to Richard A. O’Keefe resaponding to your quibble by pointing out
you have churlishly replied
Clearly, his Figure 3 was providing detail pertaining to his Figure 2. It seems likely that his detail was from an archive but there may be some other reason for it not continuing after 2005.
Perhaps you can find out the real reason the detail ends in 2005 report it? That would be a great improvement on your pointless nit picking.
Richard
richardscourtney.
“quibble” “churlishly” “pointless nit picking”.
Insults. Nothing but insults. Very sad.
Thanks, Dr. Christy, for telling the truth!
Is the word Senate in the title correct, it seems as though the testimony included was before the House?
No, Christie’s page footing incorrectly used the word House.
There is only ONE pristine surface station data set in the world.
Here it is against the satellite data over that approximate region.
http://s19.postimg.org/uuy2ft3jn/Combined_USA_temperatures.png
Close but a big higgledy, as real data sets would expect to be.
On the other hand, we have a case of blatant data matching.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&datasets%5B%5D=climdiv&datasets%5B%5D=cmbushcn¶meter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2005&endyear=2015&month=12
“On the other hand, we have a case of blatant data matching”
Bizarre! We’re told at WUWT that USCRN is a pristine data set. And USHCN is all sorts of wrong. Zombie stations, adjustments, aircons etc. And yet it turns out to almost exactly match the “pristine” CRN. So it mush be doing something right, no? No, “blatant data matching”.
But where? CRN isn’t adjusted. Not even secretly – they publish their data at least daily. No time to check back on what USHCN is doing with coops submitting monthly reports.
Nick Stokes is always quick to defend the terrestrial data sets. But how does he explain the fact that balloon data matches the (possibly adjusted) satellite data rather than the (definitely adjusted) terrestrial data?
Solomon Green February 4, 2016 at 5:20 am
Nick Stokes is always quick to defend the terrestrial data sets. But how does he explain the fact that balloon data matches the (possibly adjusted) satellite data rather than the (definitely adjusted) terrestrial data?
GISS actually matches the sonde data rather well, RSS on the other hand shows significant downward drift wrt sondes since about 2000.
Phil.:
You say
Please provide your evidence.
Richard
Wasn’t there some stink about Dan Esty, husband of Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty and (according to Dr. Steer) “one of the best known environmental economists in the world,” receiving $205,000 in consulting fees from Northeast Utilities before being appointed Connecticut Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner and strongly supporting construction of transmission lines to increase Hydro-Quebec and NU revenues by 10s of $millions?
And after Mr. Esty consulted with UBS Securities and UBS upgraded NU stock a week later, wasn’t Ms. Esty forced to return campaign contributions she took from NU while her husband was tasked with regulating them?
As that for fabulous boost to Connecticut’s economy thanks to renewable energy…citation, anyone?
John has always been the best thing going for true science.
Science per sec has a long way to go, take our good planet earth 4.5 billion years old roaming around in space that is close to absolute zero, yet it is molten in the core with molten bits still coming to the surface.
Does anyone here see something wrong with that if it is only the sun warming us? Science admits 80% of the universe is missing !!! What the, the missing stuff is energy cycling and recycling, mostly in at the poles and out near the equator this warms or planet, when the sun is active less heat escapes so we warm and vice versa. The sun is controlled by position and feed back from our giant planets thus we have warm and cold periods. i.e, LIA mediaeval warm periods etc longer term variations also take in our position in the galaxy that varies the energy flow that warms us.
CO2 is a total crock as its main function is the health of our friends the plants. Cheers.
wayne Job February 4, 2016 at 1:50 am
Science per sec has a long way to go, take our good planet earth 4.5 billion years old roaming around in space that is close to absolute zero, yet it is molten in the core with molten bits still coming to the surface.
Does anyone here see something wrong with that if it is only the sun warming us?
You’re in good company, Lord Kelvin estimated the age of the Earth to be 100million years old based on the cooling of the magma. At that time no one knew about radioactivity, now we know that radioactive decay in the core is what contributes the extra heating (and therefore age).
At the very least, if the satellite data is so unreliable as to be useless in the analysis of global temperature, the people at NASA who suggested launching these platforms should be sacked. There should also be a Congressional investigation into why such a boondoggle was undertaken and which companies profited from it.
Of course that might force NASA to admit that the data is valid and that there are legitimate questions about the surface temperature vs. the troposphere.
JohnH February 4, 2016 at 5:22 am
At the very least, if the satellite data is so unreliable as to be useless in the analysis of global temperature, the people at NASA who suggested launching these platforms should be sacked. There should also be a Congressional investigation into why such a boondoggle was undertaken and which companies profited from it.
You are mistaken, the satellite sensors (MSU and later AMSU) were not intended to measure temperatures but to be used for weather forecasting. A job they have done very well for decades.
What Spencer and Christy realized was that maybe some of that spectral data could be used to calculate tropospheric temperature. They used that data and after some trial and error produced the UAH dataset, this was not the purpose for which the satellites were designed. Recently on going back and rewriting their analysis that have acknowledged that their previous TLT product was not reliable and have decided to focus on TMT from higher altitudes (includes more stratosphere however).
When compared with radio-sonde data upto the 300mb level RSS shows a downward drift since about 2000, possibly due to issues with AMSU?
The brain washed Senator is a mile wide an inch thick . What 97 % consensus ? Regurgitating
from the global warming play book instead of trying to listen is pathetic . At least it’s on tape for his relatives to watch what a dumb ass he was .
Once again, see the forest through the trees. Can someone please explain to me how CO2 can possibly cause a record daytime temperature? CO2 traps outgoing radiation between 13µ and 18µ, which is consistent with a black body of temperature -55°C and -110°C. Daytime temperatures are almost 100% due to incoming visible radiation. You can fry an egg in the direct daylight, but you can not fry an egg in the shade. Would someone please explain how CO2 causes this? If CO2 is the cause, why won’t this work in the shade?
https://youtu.be/BxI8GN9_41U
co2islife February 4, 2016 at 7:07 pm
Once again, see the forest through the trees. Can someone please explain to me how CO2 can possibly cause a record daytime temperature? CO2 traps outgoing radiation between 13µ and 18µ, which is consistent with a black body of temperature -55°C and -110°C.
Time to learn some physics, 13µ and 18µ is consistent with a temperature of 300K.
Time to learn some Physics. You can do the calculations yourself using Spectral Calc. Here is the link.
CO2 emission of 13µ and 18µ is consistent with -80°C or 185°K. You might want to know what you are talking about before making a post that a calculator can solve. Either you or the calculator is wrong, and I bet on the calculator.
http://www.spectralcalc.com/blackbody_calculator/blackbody.php
Bingo!!! How many million times have I pointed this out, in fact it is pointed out in my previous post. The AGW theory as defined requires creating energy. There is no way for CO2 to warm the atmosphere above the temperature of a radiating body. There is absolutely no way, other than by causing combustion or a nuclear reaction where energy is changed in form, for CO2 to warm the atmosphere above the radiating body. There is no way for CO2 to cause a record high daytime temperature. CO2 captures radiated energy, that is the key, radiated. How can a cooler body warm a warmer body? It can’t. If it can, we have just solved the problem of all our energy issues. We could use the arctic ice to warm the globe. Once again, someone please explain to me how CO2 can cause a record high daytime temperature. If no one can explain that simple fundamental concept, AGW is pure nonsense. Even the climate alarmists example of Venus doesn’t have the atmosphere of Venus warmer than the surface.
Nowhere does the atmosphere warm above the surface of Venus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus#/media/File:Venusatmosphere.svg
co2islife February 5, 2016 at 9:06 am
3. A radiating body cannot raise the temperature of an absorbing body above its own temperature. CO2 absorbs and emits electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength centered around 15 microns. This is equivalent to the IR radiation from a heat source at a temperature of -80 c. It could therefor only raise the temperature of the earth to -80 c.
Bingo!!! How many million times have I pointed this out, in fact it is pointed out in my previous post.
And it was wrong every time you said it, a photon arriving at an absorber carries no information about the temperature of its source. 15 micron radiation melts steel!
Once again, you fail to grasp the concept. The earth is 15°C. The earth radiates IR around 10µ. You will never see the atmosphere above the earth be greater than the radiating body unless it is due to energy changing form or convection. Please explain how CO2 can warm the atmosphere greater than the radiating earth? If you can do that you just invented a perpetual motion machine of unlimited energy. A 13°C item could warm the atmosphere to 15°C, and on and on and on, so that you could have a ice cube power an internal combustion engine. Normally you have a very very hot cylinder of high pressure, and it expands to exhaust low pressure low temperature. CO2 in your theory would allow cold air to expand as heat is created from a lower temperature body.
Thanks Richard, I’m not ignoring that at all. A photon gets absorbed by a molecule, the electrons get sent to a higher more excited orbital. As far as CO2 goes, not only are the electrons sent into a higher orbital, it also causes a “horizontal” vibration. You are using the term energy, I used the term heat. Point is, there is x amount of energy and the amount of energy absorbed and re-emitted can’t be above the amount of the energy originally emitted.
http://www.patarnott.com/atms749/images/normalModes.gif
https://youtu.be/ef2w5JYGZRU
Not sure what your point is. There are x number of photons in a wavelength, and energy is absorbed by a molecule, that energy send electrons into higher orbits and causes a vibration. That energy is then re-emitted as the orbitals return to their normal state. What am I missing?
https://youtu.be/ef2w5JYGZRU
https://youtu.be/KabPQLIXLw4
Here is another graphic. The warmest temperature is always the radiating body. There is no way for the atmosphere to warm above the radiating body using the GHG effect. Never will you see a night time temperature where the atmosphere is warmer than the earth unless it is due to convection of some other method where warm air is transported in. Once again, how can CO2 cause a record daytime temperature?
http://www.ambrosevideo.com/resources/documents/AtmosphereTemperatureGradiant.jpg
Never will you see a night time temperature where the atmosphere is warmer than the earth unless it is due to convection of some other method where warm air is transported in.
Absolute rubbish! On still clear nights you get ‘nocturnal inversions’ caused by radiation heat loss from the surface which conduction’s unable to compensate for. Put an insulated bowl of water out at night in the Sahara and you can make ice!
See for example: http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/wxfacts/Inversions.htm
“In the troposphere, the weather-sphere, inversions cause an increase in stability and tend to limit the upward growth of cloud, preventing further upward convection. When particularly strong, with high potential temperatures that suppress small-scale convection in the layers beneath them, they are often termed capping inversion. The lowermost layer of air frequently becomes an inversion layer known as surface inversion. The condition results, for example, from radiation cooling of the ground and the air above. This usually occurs when there is strong nocturnal radiation, after a clear, dry and starry night, called radiation night.”
You either failed to understand the concept and/or ignored this quote, “unless it is due to convection of some other method where warm air is transported in.”
1) CO2 can’t explain temperature inversions, which is the basis of all these posts.
2) The temperature of the atmosphere never gets above the peak temperature of the radiating body.
3)
Moving around hot air isn’t evidence of AGW, and it isn’t caused by CO2.
co2islife:
You are ignoring certain facts.
The radiation to the Earth originates from the surface of the Sun which is much hotter than the surface of the Earth.
A photon does not know from what it was emitted or the temperature of the emitter.
A photon from the surface of the Earth does not raise the temperature of a GHG molecule that absorbs it (temperature has no meaning in this case) but raises the internal energy of the molecule.
The absorbed energy of GHG molecules is released to (a) other molecules by collisions so warming them and (b) by emission of photons in random directions.
Half of the photons emitted from GHG molecules go down and are absorbed by the surface of the Earth where they add to the energy and, therefore, they increase the temperature of the surface of the Earth.
The energy radiated from the Earth eventually ends up in space which is much colder than the surface of the Earth.
The Sun is the hottest body and space is the coldest.
Richard
Thanks Richard, I am aware of that. My point is that unless energy is changed in form, you can’t warm the GHG molecule above the energy level of the radiating body.
Thanks Richard, I am aware of that. The earth however has a temperature of 15°C. That requires a lot of photons being carried in the 8µ to 12µ EM range. CO2 emits much lower energy between 13µ and 17µ. If the earth radiates the energy content contained between 8µ to 12µ, and CO2 emits back 13µ and 17µ., where is the warming?
Thanks Richard, I am aware of that. My problem is with the conservation of energy. 1) That radiation occurs in a 360° Sphere. How can a molecule that loses part of its energy through kinetic transfer and part of its energy through radiation of a lower energy warm something? How do you reach a record high by diffusing energy at lower levels.
Thanks Richard, I am aware of that. Once again, how does a fraction of 13µ and 17µ. warm something that emits 100% of 8µ to 12µ. That is creating energy.
Thanks Richard, I am aware of that. Space is transparent to IR and Visible light. Energy is not converted from EM energy to thermal energy in the vacuum of space, it simply passes through. There is no energy loss or gain, or is it ever changed in form. That concept doesn’t apply to the GHG effect where everything revolves around Energy being changed in form. IR is emitted, IR is Absorbed, molecules are excited, collide and re-emit radiation at a lower energy level. If I have a body that emits at 8µ to 12µ and re-emits at 13µ and 17µ, where is the warming? Once again, the surface emits 100% of its radiation relevant to the GHG up into the atmosphere. In reality it is like a giant mirror where no light passes through, all light travels in one direction, away from the mirror. The atmosphere however sends radiation in a complete sphere, with only a small fraction of the radiation being sent back to the mirror/surface. For the GHG to actually warm the atmosphere you would have to be able to put a mirror in a room, close the door, turn off the lights, and room would grow brighter and brighter as more light is sent back to the mirror than is reflected. As far as I know, that is impossible.
Once again, staying within the concepts outlined by the GHG effect, how can CO2 cause a record high daytime temperature? Please explain it using this chart.
As a F/U to my other post. Look at the W/M^2 measurements on these charts:
CO2 emitting at 15µ has energy of around 0.9W/M^2/Steradian/Wavelength
http://www.spectralcalc.com/blackbody_calculator/plots/guest1293514885.png
The Earth emitting at 10µ has energy of over 8. The relative energy levels aren’t even in the same ball park.
http://www.spectralcalc.com/blackbody_calculator/plots/guest1249635647.png
co2islife:
You say you are aware of the facts I listed for you but your reply says you are ignoring them.
For example, in response to my first fact which was
you reply
My point was that absorbtion of a photon by a GHG molecule does NOT “warm” the molecule at all: it raises the internal energy of the molecule. Your reply ignores that.
And your wrong assertion that I have quoted here also ignores that I pointed out
to which you have replied
Well, if you are “aware of that” how do you think the photon ‘knows’ when – according to your (untrue) assertion – it can or cannot add energy to the GHG molecule?
co2islife, you say you are aware of the facts I listed for you which you are ignoring, so why are you ignoring them?
Richard
[snip – there’s no need to clutter up this blog with comments and opinions you’ve left on other blogs. Not only is your comment long, and self-serving, it’s mostly not about anything besides your own viewpoints expressed elsewhere. It sets a bad precedent, and we simply aren’t interested -mod]
Your blog, your rules. I’ll not cross-post again.
WUWT, please commission a series of articles that detail the quantum physics behind the GHG effect. Clearly from the above posts there is some confusion as to how all this works together to cause the atmosphere to warm. Here are some questions that may be worth exploring:
1) CO2 absorbs LW-IR between 13µ and 18µ. Once CO2 absorbs that radiation it goes into an excited state. The orbitals go into higher orbits, and the electrons vibrate in a horizontal manner. When the electrons fall from a higher orbital to a lower orbital they release energy. If the electron does not fall all the way back to the normal state, the emitted radiation is of less energy that was originally absorbed. If the CO2 molecule is vibrating and hits another molecule transferring some kinetic energy, the remain energy in the CO2 molecule will be less than the original excited state, so the remaining emitted energy will be less than what was absorbed. Bottom line, an excited CO2 molecule can lose energy either through re-emitting the energy, or through conduction. How can that result in warming?
2) The earth emits at 8µ to 12µ, CO2 absorbs between 13µ and 17µ. The energy is measured in W/M^2/Sr/µ
W=Watts, that is simply energy/time or Joules/Second
M^2 = simply the area over which the Watts are distributed
Sr= steradian or a 3D angle. The longer the distance from the sun, the fewer steradians define the earth.
µ is simply the wavelength.
Put all that together and you see that the longer the wavelength, the fewer W/M^2.
IR between 13µ and 17µ has 0.9W/M^2/sr/µ and 8µ to 12µ has 8.25W/M^2/sr/µ That is almost a 10x difference between the energy emitted by the earth and the energy emitted by CO2.
3) Putting all this together, how can CO2 cause a record high daytime temperature? Using this chart and spectralcalc http://www.spectralcalc.com/blackbody_calculator/blackbody.php How can CO2 result in a record high daytime temperature? Why, if CO2 is the cause, can you fry an egg in the direct sunlight, but not the shade, given that both locations have 400ppm CO2?
This video does a great job differentiating between the impact of IR vs Visible and UV light on a molecule.
https://youtu.be/DJI518yTr2c
Here is another video discussing radiation:
https://youtu.be/48eE9ToxB6k
It appears that IR is absorbed by CO2, which then gets activated, and than the excited molecule then bumps into other molecules like pool balls and converts that radiative energy into kinetic energy/thermal energy. If that is the case, how would CO2 ever cause a record high daytime temperature? There is no way for CO2, which only absorbs a fraction of of the IR ever cause warming above the temperature of the radiating body?
http://www.luc.edu/faculty/dslavsk/courses/phys478/classnotes/heating-atmosphere.pdf
Here are a few other issues that might be worth exploring.
1) At the top of the atmosphere looking down, there is clearly a reduction in the outgoing radiation at the 13µ and 17µ wavelengths.
2) If the earth is a perfect black body, which it isn’t, what happened to that energy?
3) Was that IR changed in form radiative EM energy to thermal/kinetic energy? Was that energy used to move molecules around in space?
4) How does that process ever end? What happens to that kinetic energy over time? Does it dissipate, change in form? Does it eventually result in emitting IR at a longer wavelength?
5) How is IR created? Does the molecule simply stop vibrating and emit the photon like an electron changing its orbital does?
6) If you run MODTRAN looking down from 0.5 or 1km, you see that CO2 has very little effect, the CO2 really doesn’t impact things until you are much higher in the atmosphere. Ground measurements are on the ground, that seems to be measuring something other than the impact of CO2, namely convection, conduction. IR doesn’t seem to come into play until higher up in the atmosphere. Using MODTRAN it is clear why the alarmists want to use ground measurements instead of satellite. Ground measurements aren’t measuring the impact of CO2, they are measuring the heat generated through conduction and convection.
7) At 0.5km looking down, changing CO2 from 400ppm to 0ppm only alters the outgoing radiation by less than 0.32W/M^2. Changing the ground temperature by 1°C alters it by over 5W/M^2. Clearly CO2 has an immaterial impact close to the ground, especial when H2O and more visible light are added to the mix.
This video explains how IR radiation is created. It is just like electrons going to higher orbitals, and then falling back to the ground level.
https://youtu.be/9HfJNnoRMPA
WUWT, if possible, please commission a series of articles to address the quantum physics other physics underlying the GHG effect.
1) In this graphic, it is a MODTRAN result looking down from 0.1km, with 400ppm. This is the area where all ground based temperature stations are located.
2) This is the same MODTRAN calculation with 0.00ppm CO2. Clearly CO2 doesn’t impact the lower 0.1km much. All that is radiated makes it through the first 0.1km of the atmosphere.
3) This is a Spectralcalc Blackbody with a temperature of 15°C. Note the 8.25W/M^2/sr/µ Light at the 10µ is packed with a lot more energy than longer wavelengths.
4) This is the same Spectralcalc for 15µ Note the less than 1.2 W/M^2/sr/µ
In this graphic from 70km up, clearly the radiation around 15µ is not making it to outerspace. What happens to that energy that is “trapped” in the atmosphere? Is it being converted to kinetic/thermal energy? Is used in some chemical reaction? Eventually gets re-emmited at a different wavelength? Is the energy changed in form? Can radiative energy be converted to conductive energy, and if it does, how does that mechanical kinetic energy ever leave the atmosphere?
Any insight to those above questions would be greatly appreciated.
co2islife February 7, 2016 at 6:30 am
WUWT, if possible, please commission a series of articles to address the quantum physics other physics underlying the GHG effect.
Sorely needed judging by all the errors/misunderstandings of the subject contained in this post.
1) In this graphic, it is a MODTRAN result looking down from 0.1km, with 400ppm. This is the area where all ground based temperature stations are located.
2) This is the same MODTRAN calculation with 0.00ppm CO2. Clearly CO2 doesn’t impact the lower 0.1km much. All that is radiated makes it through the first 0.1km of the atmosphere.
No, by looking at the first 100m you’re looking through an essentially isothermal region of the atmosphere. The first 100m absorbs most of the IR in the CO2 absorption band but the CO2 molecules in that region of the atmosphere also emit IR in that band, which is why you see no net change over such a small altitude difference (Kirchoff’s Law). The emission you see is not from the surface though.
3) This is a Spectralcalc Blackbody with a temperature of 15°C. Note the 8.25W/M^2/sr/µ Light at the 10µ is packed with a lot more energy than longer wavelengths.
No it is not, at 10µm Spectracalc gives a spectral radiance of 8.11452 W/m2/sr/µm whereas at 15µm, at the same temperature, Spectracalc gives a spectral radiance of 5.81948 W/m2/sr/µm. However if you take a 1µm wide band centered at each wavelength at 10µm you get 8.1 W/m2/sr ,whereas at 15µm you get 8.7W/m2/sr. If you integrate over the CO2 band from 13-18µm you get a band radiance of 27.7684 W/m2/sr out of a total of 124.178 W/m2/sr or about 22% of the total.
4) This is the same Spectralcalc for 15µ Note the less than 1.2 W/M^2/sr/µ
No it isn’t, it’s at a temperature of -80ºC, we’re comparing emissions from the earth’s surface, not the dark side of the moon!
In this graphic from 70km up, clearly the radiation around 15µ is not making it to outerspace. What happens to that energy that is “trapped” in the atmosphere? Is it being converted to kinetic/thermal energy? Is used in some chemical reaction? Eventually gets re-emmited at a different wavelength? Is the energy changed in form? Can radiative energy be converted to conductive energy, and if it does, how does that mechanical kinetic energy ever leave the atmosphere?
Unlike your earlier MODTRAN calculation this is looking down from 70km where the temperature and concentration of CO2 are much different. At a certain altitude the CO2 concentration drops sufficiently low that it now allows the emitted IR from that altitude to escape to space, however at such a low temperature (~210K) you’d expect a band radiance of about 1.3W/m2/sr.
The difference between the two values indicates how much energy has been transferred to the atmosphere.
Since this would result in the atmosphere heating up, more emissions result from the surface and lower atmosphere, to achieve balance losses at the other wavelengths (window) must increase.
This may help explain some of the gaps in the atmospheric radiation.
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/reasonmclucus/reasonmclucus/3887971/Earth_Is_Not_a_Black_Body/
It would nice to see a series of articles addressing all the issues I’ve raised above, tying Quantum Physics, Newton’s 1st Law/Conservation of Energy, Newton’s 2nd Law Entropy and Heat Transfer, Blackbody radiation, how the earth isn’t a black body and its impact on MODTRAN and using Spectralcal how much energy is contained in the 10µ and 15µ bands, and is that enough to warm the oceans?
Bingo, I knew something didn’t pass the stink test with the climate models. Energy is being changed in form all throughout the system. Algae die and trap solar radiation for millions of years. Coal is trapped solar radiation. Evaporation, conduction, convection, latent, potential, kinetic energy all are ignored in the climate models, they all focus on radiation, and assume 100% of re-radiated as a 300°K blackbody. If the earth isn’t a black body, their conclusions are all wrong. WUWT, addressing the blackbody issue would make for a very interesting series of articles.
One last question about the quantum physics of the GHG effect. Assume a CO2 molecule that has a very tight spectral band because of it not having a bipole, and therefor only 3 main vibration patterns consistent with photons of energy 2.7µ, 4.3µ and 15µ collides with an H2O molecule that has countless vibrational patterns and a bipole. Part of the energy from the excited CO2 molecule would be converted to kinetic energy when the H2O molecule is moved, but some of that energy may also cause a vibration of the H2O molecule. That vibration would eventually emit a longer wavelength than what the CO2 molecule would have emitted had it not transferred the energy to the H2O molecule. What if 2 excited CO2 molecules simultaneously collide with a H2O molecule and transfer all their energy to the H2O molecule. Would the H2O molecule then not be able to emitt a shorter wavelength than either of the 2 excited CO2 molecules? WUWT, a series of articles on the quantum physics of the GHG effect would be very interesting and informtive. I doubt most climate scientists have thought through all those issues.
Both CO2 and H2O have three vibrational modes but because CO2 doesn’t have a permanent dipole only two of its bands are IR active. The most likely collision partners for an excited CO2 molecule are N2 and O2 and the energy transferred can excite translational, vibrational or rotational modes. Emissions will only occur if one of the internal energy levels is excited and an allowed transition can occur to a lower state. Near simultaneous collisions can result in higher energy levels being excited. By the way IR and microwave is due to vibration and rotation of bonds, electrons have nothing to do with it, that’s UV radiation.
From these two graphics, it is clear H2O absorbs as much IR as CO2 at the 15µ wavelength. That may be why there is a pocket in the atmosphere, because the globe, which is 70%+ H2O isn’t emitting that wavelength, ie the globe isn’t a black body.
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/weisseluft/CO2FTIR.gif
http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?Spec=C7732185&Index=1&Type=IR
Here’s a comparison of the 15micron band of CO2 and the corresponding region of the H2O spectrum:
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/H2OCO2.gif
This is the image that didn’t appear in the previous post:
?w=1000&h=&crop=1
I’ve never seen an adequate explanation from Christy or Spencer, of exactly which balloon indices are shown in that graph they keep showing: https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-114-SY-WState-JChristy-20160202.pdf
The graph says “NOAA,” but NOAA’s web site presents NOAA’s RATPAC-A as NOAA’s radiosonde index that is appropriate for looking at global trends: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/weather-balloon/radiosonde-atmospheric-temperature-products-accessing-climate
And RATPAC-A well matches surface trends and not RSS or UAH: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/drift/
The graph says it uses the “UKMet” balloon data from about 1978, but the UKMet’s web site says its global index contains data only from 1997 forward: http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/f2afaf808b61394b78bd342ff068c8cd
So Christy’s graph must be using only the European UKMet index: http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/radiosonde/
RAOBCORE goes up to only 2011, I don’t know if it’s global, and its authors warn that its homogenization can be biased by satellites. Obviously it’s inappropriate to validate the satellite indices with a balloon index that can be biased by those very same satellite data: http://www.univie.ac.at/theoret-met/research/raobcore/
RICH uses only other radiosondes for homogenization, but I believe has the same limited time span and possibly limited geographic span as ROBCORE: http://www.univie.ac.at/theoret-met/research/raobcore/
RATPAC is a homogenized and extrapolated bastard child of NOAA that they invented because the actual weather balloon data sets weren’t showing what NOAA wanted.
The satellites do not need some homogenized extrapolated NOAA trash. They have real time real loc readings and can only be calibrated by real time real loc readings.
Funny how the literature never mentions CO2, they always point to H20,
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/19/