Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Over at Dr. Judith Curry’s always excellent blog, she has a post headlined by a question, viz:
What are the main sources of heat that account for the incremental rise in temperature on Earth?
Let me start by saying that this is a horribly phrased question. Consider a parallel question:
What are the main sources of heat that account for the incremental rise in my body surface temperature when I put on a jacket?
I’m sure you can see the problem with Dr. Judith’s question—temperatures can rise without ANY new sources of heat or ANY change in existing sources of heat.
For example, regarding the climate system, every year there is more and more oil that goes into the ocean. This oil floats on the surface in a monomolecular layer, and it reduces both conduction and evaporation. As a result, the oceans end up slightly warmer than they would be without the oil … where is Dr. Judith’s mysterious “source of heat” supposedly driving that change?
Here’s another example. Over say the last 50 years the incremental temperature rise at the Poles has been generally greater than in the tropics. This reduces the equatorial-polar “delta-T” (∆T), the temperature difference between the two. But wind speed is generally some function of ∆T, so less ∆T means less wind. And evaporation is linearly proportional to the wind speed, so this would tend to amplify warming from whatever cause by reducing evaporation … and where is the “source of heat” for that wind-related amplification of warming?
With that as a preface, let me start by giving you an overview of our understanding of the historical climate. Be forewarned, it’s depressing. Here we go.
Nobody knows why the Roman times were generally warmer than times prior to that, or why it generally cooled after the Roman Era.
Nobody knows why it then warmed again up to the Medieval period.
Nobody knows why the warmer Medieval times were followed by fairly rapid cooling to the Little Ice Age of the 1600s-1700s.
There’s more. Nobody knows why the Little Ice Age didn’t turn into a real ice age. Certainly, the orbital parameters were there for us to slip into a glacial period … but it didn’t happen. Why? We don’t know.
Instead, and again for reasons nobody understands, rather than continuing to cool, the planet started warming, at about a half a degree per century for the last few centuries, right up to the present.
(Please note that “nobody knows” doesn’t mean “nobody claims to know”. I can find ten scientists tomorrow who all claim they know why the Little Ice Age came about … the problem is, they all have different answers. But the truth is … nobody knows.)
And as far as we can tell … none of those gradual temperature changes were caused by variations in CO2.
Given all of that, it is a giant and unsupported leap to think that we can say either that a) there’s been an increase in some kind of heat source, or b) whatever might have caused that increase in the heat source, it has in turn been the cause of the recent years of incremental warming.
I gotta say, the hubris of climate scientists is beyond all bounds. Despite not being able to explain the past, they claim that they can predict the future out a hundred years … pull the other leg, it has bells on it …
But heck, let’s pretend for a moment that in some mysterious fashion we’ve been able to establish firmly that the change in surface temperature is indeed caused by a corresponding increase in radiation absorbed by the surface. Here’s a graph of the anomalies in total absorbed radiation at the surface (longwave plus shortwave, blue) along with the total absorbed solar radiation anomaly (shortwave only, red).
I’m sure that you can see the problem. The change in just absorbed solar radiation alone is more than enough to explain the entire change in total absorbed radiation at the surface …
So per this particular individual analysis of the CERES data, the source of energy for the incremental change in temperature is … the sun. No need to invoke CO2 or GHGs of any kind. The sun alone provided enough additional heat to completely explain the total increase in absorbed radiation.
Now, does this show that the sun is indeed the cause of the gradual warming? ABSOLUTELY NOT. There are plenty of forces at play in even this restricted subset of climate variables, and the fact that a couple of them line up does NOT mean that one is causing the other.
Part of the problem is our childlike insistence that there is some kind of simple cause-and-effect going on in the climate. I describe it instead as a “circular chain of effects”. Here’s an example. The sun warms the ocean. The warmer ocean generates more and earlier daily clouds. The clouds cut down the sun. Less sun makes the ocean cooler. The cooler ocean produces fewer and later daily clouds … you see the circle, you see the problem.
There’s an insightful Sufi teaching story about this question. Hussein asked the Mulla Nasruddin:
“Well, then, how do you account for cause and effect?”
Nasruddin pointed to a passing procession carrying a coffin and said:
“They are taking a hanged man, convicted of killing another man, from the gallows to the grave. Is this the result of his stealing the knife from the butcher, or of using the knife to murder his enemy, or of being caught by the police, or of his being prosecuted by the magistrate, or of being found guilty by the judge, or of being hanged at the gallows? Which event can you point to and say ‘This is the moment in time that caused him to meet his fate’?”
But then, as Nasruddin was wont to say, “Only a fool or a child looks for both cause and effect in the same story” …
Anyhow, in answer to Dr. Judith’s question, I fear that all we can say with certainty is …“Nobody knows”.
My best to everyone on a lovely winter night,
w.
PS—As usual, I politely request that when you comment you QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE REFERRING TO, so we can all understand what you are discussing. Please note that although the request is polite, if you ignore it, I may not be … I’m tired of picking random unsourced uncited unreferenced spitballs off the wall.
PPS—In addition to the always-fascinating scientific give-and-take here, let me invite you all to contribute to the ongoing discussions of a more political and personal nature at my own blog, Skating Under The Ice, or to follow me on Twitter, @WEschenbach.
There is a great deal of assertions in climate science made with great assurance, and damn little real evidence.
Are, not is. My grammar goes away sometimes.
Start: “There are a great many assertions . . .”
No, you had it right. The “great deal” is a collective subject that calls for a singular verb. “Assertions” in the prepositional phrase isn’t the subject. I’m seeing this error all over the place in recent years, most commonly by British writers, but now picked up by Americans.
Sometimes one, sometimes the other … welcome to English.
The difference is whether something is countable or uncountable. For example, we say “there IS a great deal of confusion” … because “confusion” is uncountable. In general, if you can replace “great deal of” with “a large number of” then it is plural, otherwise, singular. Since you cannot say “there is a large number of confusion”, the singular is correct.
In this case, since we can say “there are a large number of assertions”, then the plural, “are” is correct for “great deal”.
w.
Tom, I just hate it when I’m wrong about being wrong.
You were right the first time. A great deal is only one deal, as attested by the indefinite article “a”, so “is” is correct.
Like UNFCCC? It’s like claiming that lung cancer causes smoking? An ideology that wants us on the road to serfdom?
I know 2 people that I grew up with that were heavy smokers and both died from lung cancer. Sure there are a lot of Churchills around but I wouldnt bet my life on it just to obtain the pleasure of smoking.
Smoking is undeniably a cause of lung cancer. Not the only one, but not all smokers die of lung cancer. The epidemiological evidence is there, as is the evidence of carcinogenic chemicals in cigarette smoke.
I’m afraid you guys missed Santa’s sarcasm. I believe St Nick is repeating Michael Crichton’s example of reverse logic, i.e. “wet streets cause rain”.
Smoking is NOT undeniably the cause of lung cancer because non-smokers also get lung cancer. Epidemiology is the worst of sciences… if it died out tomorrow we’d probably be better off.
If 10% shows causality, yes. Sarcasm or no. It’s the psuedoscience we are drowning in—like asbestos. There’s money be taxed and sued for. IF you accept that tobacco causes lung cancer, you MUST accept the pseudoscience of global warming. Their statistical evidence is at least equal. Humans will accept any pseudoscience that agrees with their world view. Even the skeptics do this on a regular basis.
(Note: My father died of lung cancer. I am not about to let any emotion cloud my scientific understanding. Whether or not the smoking or weed spray or bad luck had anything to do with this, SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW. I had tongue cancer with NO RISK FACTORS whatsoever. Who should I blame and scream and shout about the injustice to? Listerine? Australia says so. It’s all mumbo-jumbo and about blame and money, not science.)
Bob Johnston
Are you saying smoking does not cause lung cancer? If so, you are wrong.
If you are saying it is not the only cause, then that is true…. but that doesn’t mean smoking does not seriously increase your chances of getting lung cancer.
Simon, smoking does NOT necessarily cause lung cancer. An uncle smoked heavily his whole life (82 yrs), died of something else. It might. But I would say that it greatly increases the risk. We probably agree.
Icecore studies tell us that temperature drives/leads CO2 with 800 +/-200 years. So if UNFCCC claim that CO2 is driving temperature ITS like claiming that lung cancer caused smoking or wet streets caused rain etc..
Simon – I’m saying we don’t know if smoking causing lung cancer. Perhaps lighting matches is the cause, perhaps yellow fingers is the cause, perhaps stinky clothes are the cause… the point is we don’t know because it’s unethical to do a randomized controlled trial on the subject. We can’t do that trial because it’s already thought to be dangerous to smoke so without a RCT all we have is epidemiological evidence and epidemiological evidence is sh#t.
It’s the same thing with manmade global warming – there’s only one earth and it’s definitely multi-variant so it’s impossible to run a an RCT on the effects of just added atmospheric CO2 and its effects on temperature… once again all we’re left with is spotty observational data and once again, observational data is sh#t.
A lot of hypotheses actually go unstudied – they sound reasonable on the surface and become standard practice and nobody ever tests the idea. An example of this is stenting a patient with blocked arteries. It sounds good in theory but we’re finding out now that there’s no benefit to stenting in people who aren’t having a heart attack. Think of how many billions are wasted and how many people have side effects (like death) because a stent was inserted with no actual benefit. It’s much the same for statins – unless you’ve actually had a heart attack and are a male under 50 there’s no proven benefit and in that small class of people the benefit is teeny tiny and could easily be dismissed as drug company shenanigans. And it’s never been shown in females for a statin to be effective against heart attacks yet doctors routinely subject their patients to all the known side effects of a statin for no possible gain.
I guess my point is we believe a lot of things that sound logical but in practice isn’t really the case. Yes, I believe smoking contributes to the cause of lung cancer but people who don’t smoke also get lung cancer it’s obviously not the entire story. I actually believe that cancer is a metabolic disease, a disease of mitochondrial dysfunction and not genetic in origin as oncologists and cancer researcher have been chasing their tails attempting to prove for decades. Does smoking cause mitochondrial dysfunction in the lungs or does it cause genetic mutations – I would bet the former. I would also suspect that diet plays a huge role in the formation of cancer – namely sugar, wheat and polyunsaturated seed oils (corn oil, canola oil, soybean oil, etc.). It would be interesting to study the diet of smokers who get lung cancer and those whop don’t.
Anyway, I’m rambling… but I hope my point is made that we don’t really know jack about a lot of the chronic diseases that affect us today, if people tell you otherwise they’re full of it.
Bob: I agree. There are “risk factors”. These are not causes. As I have said before, my oncologist said “We really don’t know what causes these cancers”. If the oncologist could be honest enough to tell me that, I fail to see why scientists throw tantrums when “we don’t know” is used to describe things. Risk factors are not causes. They are statistical behaviors and so forth that indicate you MAY have a higher risk of cancer. You may not. Much of the time, the “cancer fear” is just a way to try and terrify people. Many of the things that are risk factors are very small risk factors. Come on, it should not have taken lung cancer to make it evident that smoking was a bad idea. People do things that are bad ideas all the time. Get over it—it’s called free will.
Although there is other evidence, what was put forward as irrefutable evidence was that 9/10 men who got lung cancer were smokers while it was only 7/10 women. You were a smoker if you smoked 20 cigarettes in your life. No stats on how many men and women who never got lung cancer were smokers – 9/10 men and 7/10 women is my guess. The majority of victims are 80+ and under 50 is very rare.
Not in the pay of Big Tobacco but got suspicious because of the continual analogy.
“I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.”
― Michael Crichton
And here is another aphorism: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.—Voltaire “
Agreed with both quotes.
Tom I got your bigger point regarding great assurance with little evidence.
My grammar goes away some times too, or is that sometimes also, but then it comes back again never perfect. Is there a psych term for fear of pedanticism.
Pedantophobia. 🙂
Not that I ever heard of, but someone probably came up with some pseudo-latin term for nearly anything.
Tom Hella, Here in Oz a large study was made of immigrants to find out if they learnt english before they came here or after. Some of the feed back and quotes were priceless.One woman said most of the first words she learned were rude ones, but the one that was a real treasure that gives our language it’s teeth was “you have a word for everything”
English (and the English) have a long tradition of appropriating anything from foreign languages ( and foreigners) anything the found useful, and filing off any serial numbers and claiming it as their own. So American English has a good amount of Spanish words for which the settlers were not quite familiar. And the same sort of thing has gone on with most every language and culture English speakers have encountered. It is not a matter of borrowing, it is unashamed theft.
When it comes to ‘measuring’ the ‘global temperature’, may I point you to what is known as ‘the coastline paradox’.
(from wikipedia)
If the coastline of Great Britain is measured using units (62 miles) long, then the length of the coastline is approximately (1,700 miles). With 31 mile units, the total length is approximately 2,100 miles, approximately 370 miles longer…etc etc.
I do not think that we can safely say we know what is happening to Global Temperature until we have fifty years of stable, universally accepted, calibrated measurements…and not the hotch potch of ‘adjusted’ garbage that passes for data today.
What is the point of measuring something that varies significantly based which way the wind blows? Literally. I suppose we could use it to determine which the wind was blowing last year. Lest you think I jest consider el Nina and El Nino. It’s not like temperature is a measurement of energy. It’s relationship is often not even linear. At a minimum we would need pressure and humidity also.
This is what Willis is saying, we don’t have even close to enough data. And, no way is temperature the only data we need.
“This is what Willis is saying, we don’t have even close to enough data. And, no way is temperature the only data we need.”
That seems to me to be the whole point of the article, and he’s right.
Why only 50 years? How about 500?
I like fifty million years. Climate has progressed in a regular periodic way to get to this modern ten thousand year paradise. The lengths of the periods and the magnitude of the bounds did change in an understandable way. This cannot yet be discussed in an open forum because someone with credentials shuts the discussion down with their own bias and repeat the dreaded words, “no one knows”, “no one can know”.
Tom Halla wrote: There a great deal of assertions in climate science made with great assurance, and damn little real evidence.
There is plenty of real evidence. We have many proxies and we especially have the ice core proxies for 800 thousand years in the SH and more than a 100 thousand years in the NH. There is damn little real discussion about most of it. Much of earth is covered by water. There is ice on land and ice covering water. Water changes state between liquid, vapor and ice with huge energy changes. Planets and other bodies in space without water do not regulate temperatures like earth. Earth regulates temperatures with the circulation of water on the surface and in the atmosphere. Convection carries energy in the oceans and atmosphere. Climate people treat earth as static with energy getting removed by IR traveling from the surface up through the heat trapping greenhouse layers. The convection in the oceans and lakes and rivers and in the atmosphere blows this away and it is being ignored.
Earth climate is self correcting. Earth is heated by the sun, but like people, it adjusts its atmosphere and ocean and ice as needed to stay in narrow temperature bounds. Earth is not a non responding object of external forces.
There is plenty of real evidence, we must start openly discussing it.
Agreed!
Agreed!
Ice cores are pretty much taken on faith to be thermometers, as are tree rings. There’s plenty of evidence this is not the case. Let’s discuss that.
No need to discuss it, Sheri. The only reliable way to determine the temperature of anything is with a thermometer.
What we really need, is the exposure as liars of charlatan’s claiming that whatever particular part of our multivariate world they happen to study, is a reliable guide to past temperatures.
I would say that at a minimum we need two full PDO cycles worth of data. Which would be about 120 years.
Nit pick, “For example, regarding the climate system, every year there is more and more oil that goes into the ocean. This oil floats on the surface in a monomolecular layer, and it reduces both conduction and evaporation. As a result, the oceans end up slightly warmer than they would be without the oil … where is Dr. Judith’s mysterious “source of heat” supposedly driving that change?”
Does this mean oil introduction to the ocean is accelerating? I don’t think it is. Besides various microbes metabolize oil so its concentration doesn’t build beyond some pseudo equilibrium. As oil is extracted from fields, natural leaks and seeps are actually reduced. Oil is also hydrophobic. It would not spread out to form a monomolecular layer. Further, some oil is heavier than water and sinks.
R. Shearer March 9, 2018 at 9:01 pm Edit
Thanks, R. I’m sorry for the lack of clarity. I didn’t mean the rate was accelerating, just that every year more oil is added, year after year. Although indeed, it may be accelerating, as more and more boats of all kinds and sizes spend more time on the ocean, and more fossil fuels of all kinds are shipped in fragile vessels, and more and more fossil fuels are dumped into streams and rivers …
Only if we assume that the same amount is added each year …
Sorry, but that’s simply not true. The reason you get a rainbow from fossil fuel in the water is because the layer is so thin … see e.g. Variation of the Microwave Brightness Temperature of Sea Surfaces Covered with Mineral And Monomolecular Oil Films …
Yes, and some oil never gets into the ocean at all … SO WHAT?
I don’t mind picking nits, but you’ve gone OTT with your line of discussion. It is an EXAMPLE, not a dang PhD thesis on oil. I fear that like the poet< said, you had the experience but missed the meaning …
Best regards,
w.
I don’t think it was a good example and wasn’t of the same quality as the rest of your piece. Anyway, like I said I was nitpicking.
I’ve always found it interesting that historically, Spanish explorers and Chumash Indians told of natural oil sheens in Santa Barbara Bay as an example where extraction has generally reduced its prevalence today (barring accidental leaks and spills too). Sheens are on the order of the wavelength of light from which interference and non-uniformity causes the rainbow effect. As a chemist, I perhaps took mono-layer too literally.
R. Shearer March 9, 2018 at 10:09 pm
No matter what I write, someone will jump up to tell me I did it wrong, and that I could have done it better if I’d only done it the way that THEY wanted … today, it’s you. Congratulations.
Truly, amigo, you’ve got to start doing your homework before uncapping your electronic pen … I find this:
You go on to say:
I just sent you a scientific citation about LITERAL monolayers of oil, so I have no clue what you mean by that.
Regards,
w.
Willis, you are obviously very intelligent, but you seem rather thin skinned. You cannot accept any criticism, no matter if it’s prefaced by it being nitpicking. Perhaps it would be more effective to just say “point taken” and move on instead of acting condescending and getting into a pissing contest about something trivial. When you are writing to presumably persuade people of your viewpoint, it doesn’t help your cause to denigrate them. Surely the entire nature of the climate debate would be a good example of this.
WR March 10, 2018 at 12:48 am
Why on earth should I “accept” nitpicking? I have no problem with valid scientific criticism. Like anyone I’m never happy to admit I’m wrong, but when I am I do so loud and clear. I’m probably the only scientific blogger with a post entitled “Wrong Again”, and another later post on another subject entitled “Wrong Again, Again”. So yes I accept criticism IF it is backed by facts. As the man said, “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”
However, as Popeye remarked, “I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam”, and no, I don’t suffer fools gladly.
Been there, tried that. You do realize I’ve written over 700 posts for the web? I have found through painful experience that if I don’t hit back at people for insults and meaningless nit-picking, very quickly another person jumps in to attack me, and then another. You seem to think this is a wonderful warm environment run by good feelz … in fact, it is much more like a lion cage, and the lion tamer is ill-advised to let the lions do what they want, they’ll gang up and eat you given half a chance.
What about when I’m writing to try to get people to stop attacking me on meaningless grounds? Heck, if you want to blow in their ears and rub their tummies, or just say “Point taken” and slink off into the night, go for it. Not my style … but hey, thanks for the writing advice.
w.
Yes I know you have written many many posts, and I have read many of them, with what I noticed (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) is a similar condescending attitude full of ad hominems towards anyone who may have any disagreement with you, no matter how minor. Your response here is another good example. It’s interesting that you view disagreements as “attacking”, “meaningless”, “insults” and “nitpicking”. No wonder you respond in kind.
Dale Carnegie would certainly disagree with your tactics. In your “painful experience”, as you say, of going on the attack when anyone disagrees, you seem to confuse shutting people down with convincing people of your position. Sure people will stop responding to you when you go on the attack, but then you have also likely fail to persuade people of your position.
The vast majority of people here are in general agreement with you, so there’s really no need for nastiness and friendly fire. Save that for the alarmists.
“It is an EXAMPLE…”
This is the central point.
I knew what you meant, and the line of reasoning you were conveying.
I have had this same thing happen to me twice recently, on another site where I spend a lot of time.
It was regarding Warren Buffet having said that doubling your (generic “your”) net worth will not make you happy.
I took exception to this, and said so in a short blurb at the top when I shared the story on my FB page.
Further along what had mysteriously become a hotly contested debate (not by me, I was merely offering my opinion) I used an example of the sorts of things some rich person may worry about, vs the sort of things that people living pay check to pay check might worry about.
Oh, no, I was told…rich people do not worry about that. I did not know what I was talking about.
The point was not the example I had chosen, but the idea that wealthy people may have problems, but they are qualitatively different than those faced by the not-so-wealthy.
I feel your pain Willis…yup…feeling it.
And as usual, I share most of your thoughts on the topic of your article.
WR March 10, 2018 at 10:49 am Edit
Hey, he’s the one that called it “nitpicking”, at least get your nonsensical attacks straight.
Clearly you mistake me for someone who gives a rat’s fundamental orifice about the opinion of random internet popups. Look, I do scientific research and I write about it as best I know how. I truly don’t care if anyone gets all butt-hurt as a result. That’s their business. I’m not trying to be a master persuader. I’m trying to tell the truth as I know it. If I persuade people, great. If I don’t, great. I’m doing the best science I can, in the best manner I know how.
In the process, I take heaps of flak. To me that’s OK, because when you’re taking flak it means you’re over the target.
Now, obviously you think you are the expert on how to handle the flak, but guess what? I’m the one who has experimented with all kinds of responses to the flak, not you. I’ve tried gentle, I’ve tried humorous, I’ve tried soothing, I’ve tried corny, I’ve tried aggro, I’ve tried a whole host of things. In the long run, what I find has worked best is to hit back twice as hard when someone starts in with their ugly nonsense. It works wonders “pour décourager les autres”.
And you don’t like it?
So what?
Seriously, why should I care about the opinions of a man who doesn’t have the albondigas to sign his own name to his own opinions?
When you finally get up off your dead … chair and write and publish something on the web, then you can decide for yourself how to deal with the inevitable ill-wishers and malcontents and village experts and the rest of the curious inhabitants of the blogosphere. Like I said, if you want to blow in their ears and tickle their tummies then more power to you. I’d never say you were wrong for doing it. But it hasn’t worked for me.
Yes, the “vast majority” may agree with me, but there is always a vicious, nasty minority that want to do nothing but attack me. My response is, I hit back twice as hard. And if that doesn’t sit right with you, then GO AWAY AND READ SOMEONE ELSE’S WORK!
w.
WR,
Willis is not schooled in the sciences, so what’s the point of discussing science with him? And maybe this is where some of his frustration lies.
I would suggest you do as Willis stated, “GO AWAY AND READ SOMEONE ELSE’S WORK!”.
skepticgonewild March 11, 2018 at 11:52 am: “Willis is not schooled in the sciences, so what’s the point of discussing science with him?”
WR (Wim Röst): Skeptic gone wild. Too wild.
skepticgonewild March 11, 2018 at 11:52 am
Oh, man, that’s hilarious. Frustration? Get real. My only frustrations are dealing with random anonymous internet popups who are unwilling to sign their own name to their opinions, and trying to explain basic thermodynamics to the congenitally inadequate … but then, given the quality of many of those anonymous opinions, I suppose it should be no surprise that they wish to remain well hidden and unaccountable for their words.
And yes, skeptic, I’m like many scientists throughout history, I’m self-taught in the sciences. So what? The only valid question is, are my claims correct, not whether my schooling fits your fantasies or not.
But despite being entirely self-taught in science, I’m one of the most-read climate bloggers on the planet, and Nature magazine thought enough of my scientific ideas to peer-review them and publish them as a “Brief Communications Arising”, and I have over sixty citations in the scientific journals to my work … man, those ugly facts must really frost your banana.
w.
How to stretch the truth: “my scientific ideas”
.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02689
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Writing a comment about the work of other scientists is not a “scientific idea” it is simply a comment, which of course what BCA is all about: https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/bca
Whatever makes you happy Willis.
SkepticGoneWild March 11, 2018 at 3:18 pm
What makes me happy is people contributing to moving the scientific conversation forwards … but you wouldn’t know about that …
w.
“and trying to explain basic thermodynamics to the congenitally inadequate”
You cannot even get the thermodynamic concept of “heat” correct. Have you taken a university physics course? No. Have you taken a university level thermodynamics course? NO!..Then why should I give credence to your notions regarding thermodynamics?
How can anybody believe you are qualified to explain thermodynamics to anyone? The prerequisites for thermodynamics courses requires 1.5 years of calculus and 1.5 years of general physics. Do you have anything close to this?
.
Re R. Shearer March 9, 2018 at 9:01 pm
I share R. Shearer’s puzzlement about ‘monomolecular layers’ of oil on the surface of the oceans, although I disagree with him that his puzzlement is nit-picking, since Eschenbach baldly concludes that ‘the oceans end up slightly warmer than they would be without the oil’.
The puzzlement comes from all the unquantified generalities in that one statement – particularly ironic since the author takes Dr. Curry to task for ill-formulated statements.
1 ‘every year there is more and more oil that goes into the ocean’
– Maybe, but how much goes in?
– How much of that is bouyant?
– What are the rates of evaporation of the various bouyant oil fractions?
– In other words what is the destruction rate?
– And therefore what is the net balance?
2 ‘This oil floats on the surface’
– Better: some types/fractions of oil float on the surface.
3 ‘in a monomolecular layer’
– In ‘a’ single layer, or patches?
– Of what extent?
– Where is this layer (or layers) found? In which oceans? At which latitudes?
– Persistance of this layer?
– Breakup by wave action? Interaction with seawater…
– …which, of course is not pure water but which is a very complex mix of micro-objects.
– Destruction at shorelines?
4 ‘it reduces both conduction and evaporation’. We need some empirical data here.
– To what extent does a ‘monomolecular layer’ reduce conduction?
– It may even have a higher conductivity that sea water.
– The oil in the layer will also have a gas phase and an equilibrium; it will also evaporate.
– Why is this ‘monomolecular layer’ considered impervious to water vapour?
Summa summarum: Would the author or one of his Persian mystics quantify ‘slightly warmer’ for his baffled readers? And please do it without ad hominem invective.
NB: The paper Eschenbach cited in his response to Shearer in no way supports Eschenbach’s assertion about a ‘slightly warmer’ ocean.
That was a wonderful way to emphasize Willis’ point. kudos. Even in one small item as the effect of oil and quantity there are so many variables and unknowns. Or causes and effects.
NB: The paper I cited was to support the existence of monomolecular layers, NOT to support the warming.
w.
This paper Meredith questioned used “…. a monomolecular surface-film experiment with oleyl alcohol…” My Merck Index says it is found in fish oil. Fish oils, often used to locate fish schools, and other organic products are common causes of slicks as previously noted. They often don’t last long especially with a heavy sea. The largest pollution with oil was probably in WWII, to an extent afterwards for a few decades. The amount which natural seeps have been reduced along with anthropogenic oil leaking and oxidation would be an interesting figure. I once went looking for papers on slicks, didn’t find much. Any organic chemists know more about this?
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4157409/?reload=true
“Summa summarum: Would the author or one of his Persian mystics quantify ‘slightly warmer’ for his baffled readers? And please do it without ad hominem invective.”
I shall take a stab at it.
The point was not whether it was a significant amount of heat, or evenly distributed, or whether it was even measurable.
Logically, some heat is kept from leaving the surface for some amount of time.
This principle is used to keep swimming pools from getting cooled off on chilly nights, so it is a provable and well known effect.
The point is not the amount of heat.
It is “some” heat.
Who knows or cares how much?
No one, methinks.
The amount was not the point.
Some scientists you mean.
Others…not so much.
Are you familiar with what is known as a “rhetorical device”?
menicholas March 10, 2018 at 5:25 pm
I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the question. “Slightly warmer” is not quantified. Why should it be? Again, what I gave is an EXAMPLE, not a PhD thesis on monomolecular oil layers. I also didn’t quantify the size of the ocean in question, the water depth, the ambient temperature, or the amount of oil … so what? I’m discussing CONCEPTS, not numbers.
w.
Do not overlook that oil is a natural result of life; especially in the ocean.
Every time, there is a fish feeding frenzy, an oil slick forms on the ocean/sea/lakes/rivers/etc.
Surface oil slicks naturally form over schools of particularly oily fish or crustacea species; e.g. herring and krill.
These slicks form anywhere/everywhere there are fish, crustacea, mammals and water.
Perhaps this could be a new threat, ocean oil mono-layerization (OOM or OOML).
Anyway, the comment about natural fish/krill oil slicks is interesting. From my perspective, I assumed “oil” to be crude oil. I assumed that some type of accumulation of crude oil was being implied. My initiation reaction was that accumulation of oil in this manner is not likely because of so many biological and physical mechanisms at work which destroy petroleum in the marine environment, not the least of which is wave action but also photo-chemical reactions and oxidation, metabolization, solublization, vaporization, etc. (Fish oil is naturally polar from the existence of fatty acids, the acid end being hydrophillic.) There is some complexity to this as noted by GM.
Crude oil is a mixture. Much of it is non-polar hydrocarbons that are hydrophobic, which preferentially agglomerate, especially on a disturbed non-flat surface. Some polar molecules do indeed like to form films with water but they also will make micelles depending on concentration but all layers (mono-layer or not) are broken by waves. At infinite dilution, everything is dissolved.
All biological, geological, chemical processes are complex.
Inherent in the assumption that surface oil slicks are solely temporary conditions requires a static belief that oil slicks dissipate or are consumed quickly thus eliminating the oils.
A belief that ignores surface oil slicks formation is continuous. That oil slicks dissipate or are consumed is irrelevant, new slicks form continuously.
Whether oil is mineral sourced or biologically sourced, there are constant supplies existing, forming and/or entering oceans, rivers, lakes.
Oil slicks are easily spotted by the weakening of wind action on waters. An effect noticed, hypothesized and tested by Ben Franklin.
Large amounts of oil and gas is constantly being spewed out of the ground by itself, the human contribution to this ‘pollution’ is miniscule. Whenever there is a ‘large’ oil leakage caused by human activity, it appears dramatic at first. Microbes will take care of it surprisingly fast, even in areas that many people mistakenly consider as vulnerable to oil.
Ha Ha I believe the English Navy used to use Oil Bags to still the waters. Having read the input from the chemists on this thread, I thought that I might hope for a definitive ruling on the efficacy of the oilbag from the loo dispersation method for stilling the ocean waves, or at least overcoming their breakieness. Please help one who sails a little boat.
FundMe March 10, 2018 at 11:13 am
Good question, Fund. I’ve been a swabby all my life, so I’ll answer this one. Oil definitely retards and diminishes the breaking of waves. It’s the origin of the English saying “to pour oil on troubled waters”, meaning to calm things down.
However, you don’t want to put it down the loo. Since in heavy weather you’re generally going downwind, you want to stream a source of oil (a canvas waterbag with a few holes pricked in it is traditional, a plastic jug also works) behind the boat. That puts the oil between you and a possible breaking wave.
Stay safe on the ocean … and if you haven’t read it, you might enjoy my post entitled In Which I Finally Understand the Fair-Weather Gale” …
w.
Since the whole point of this post appears to be pedantry, let’s have at it:
Because we were in an ice age before, during, and after? We’re in an ice age right now, just not a glaciation.
Man, the grammar Nazis are out in force today. If you look up “ice age” in the dictionary it says:
And yes, I know in scientific terms they’re called “glacials” and “interglacials”, but I write English as she is spoke, not as you fantasize it should be spoke …
And no, the “whole point of the post” is not “pedantry”. Stop picking nits and LOOK AT THE MEANING.
Sheesh …
w.
We are in an ice box climate which is cold oceans and polar ice caps.
We have been in ice box climate for millions of years and it’s an Ice Age. Within this Ice Age there are glacial and interglacial periods. Interglacial periods tend to be shorter periods between the glacial periods and don’t have large ice caps in the temperate zones.
It is thought that polar ice caps may have causal factor related to the cold ocean though if oceans were warm, there would not be polar ice caps.
Our ocean’s average temperature is about 3.5 C and during our ice box climate, it’s average ranges from about 1 to 5 C.
willis , i thought everyone knew the answer to all of the above was co2 😉
It is not pedantry at all.
It seems some folks are expert at missing the point.
I think Willis knows that we’re in an ice age with glacials and interglacials,but the common general public calls the glacials the “ice ages” and in all scientific litterature they use the term ice age for the glacials.
It’s a very correct description if you are just talking about concepts in a for a large public understandeable way…
some here are really missing the point between just summing up some concepts that may/may not cause or may be/may not be an effet of the rising temperature that is measured.
concepts are not exact numbers but the principles behind the numbers, It is there that everything starts. When you take just concepts as real science and try to correct it then i think you are comparing apples with melons.
In this context Willis is imho just debating about the concepts of climate change which is the framework that says what to investigate, check measure and what can be causing it without exact.
It’s like this concept: “to make a room warmer you have to turn the heater on”
but anyway i say good point Willis let the concepts come, i find them very interesting
“they claim that they can predict the future out a hundred years”
Come off it Willis this is straw man territory. Who is “they”? And where I their quote?
You’ve written lots about what we don’t know but what we do know is that on top of any other fluctuation adding CO2 to the atmosphere will warm it.
zazove March 9, 2018 at 9:17 pm
Dude, if you’ve never heard a climate scientist tell us what will happen by the year 2100, you are far, far beyond my poor power to add and detract. Google “climate scientist 2100”, you’ll find hundreds of examples, I’m not gonna hold your hand.
No, we absolutely do NOT know that. For example, after we came out of the last glaciation, the CO2 continued to rise for about a thousand years while the temperature was falling … kinda blows a giant hole in your theory.
What we do know is that increased CO2 increases atmospheric absorption of longwave radiation. Whether that actually causes the surface to warm is far from established. For example, a change of a few percent in the cloud albedo is enough to offset a doubling of CO2, and neither you nor anyone can say that does not happen.
Let me suggest that you might profit by meditating on Mark Twain’s words:
Best regards,
w.
zazove,
what we do know is that on top of any other fluctuation adding CO2 to the atmosphere will warm it
Willis,
No, we absolutely do NOT know that. For example, after we came out of the last glaciation, the CO2 continued to rise for about a thousand years while the temperature was falling … kinda blows a giant hole in your theory.
Me:
It would blow a giant hole in the theory, if we knew for sure that at the coming out of the last glaciation there weren’t other fluctuations. But obviously there were. I think we can safely agree that CO2 does not cause glaciations nor their end just by itself. I agree with zazove that we do know what he says we know. What we do not know is what other natural fluctuations are currently in play. We cannot blame CO2 and CO2 alone for the little variations currently happening to the climate.
“they claim that they can predict the future out a hundred years” is your silly claim, you google it and show who says it.
Apropos of nothing it’s an amusing irony that whenever someone quotes an aphorism like this, they always seem to attribute it to some famous person or other with no evidence that they ever said it – thus demonstrating the truth of the quote.
Bellman March 10, 2018 at 8:36 am
Thanks, I hadn’t realized that in fact, nobody knows who might have said that first … as you say, ironically demonstrating the truth of the quote.
w.
If I might add one further point to the cloud story it is not just the change of a few percent but when in the day that the cloud is present to the point that that defines if it cools or warms the planet.
Are you guys seriously suggesting you are unaware of claims made of being able to predict changes to the climate caused by man burning fossil fuels?
I doubt it.
No one who spends any time reading or commenting on the CAGW meme could possibly be unaware that such claims are made…it is the entire basis of the alarmism.
Wow…just wow.
‘…..adding CO2 to the atmosphere will warm it.’
In a laboratory, not in the atmosphere at large.
Why not?
zazove.
because of water vapour convective cooling.
because of water vapour transport of heat to winter polar regions.
What laboratory experiment conducted sensibly ever showed a temperature change?
because of water vapour convective cooling.
Then it condenses.
because of water vapour transport of heat to winter polar regions.
Where it melts the ice.
The energy doesn’t disappear.
Zazove…why do you think Greenland put on an extra 250 GT of ice during the ‘warmest year evah’?
How did all that ice get there?
Zazove…why do you think Greenland put on an extra 250 GT of ice during the ‘warmest year evah’?
How did all that ice get there?
Um, it lost that much and the sea ice volume is down 70% in 30 years.
http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/files/2017/08/GrnLndMassTrnd.png
You were telling me where all that heat was going, do go on…. or you could just give yourself another uppercut.
Oh look, a graph that starts in 2002. The year greenland ice sheet mass took a downturn.
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Greenland-Ice-Sheet-Mass-Balance-Fettweis-2017.jpg
Needless to say. It was gaining mass for years just prior.
~¿~
zazove, that “graph” is from nasa. There’s your problem — goobermint paid shills…..
zazove, the atmosphere is gaseous. Warming a gas (or a mixture of gases) causes it to expand, if it can. The atmosphere can expand (there is no rigid roof). It does expand. Yes, as you note, the energy does not “go away” — it converts to a different form, e.g. mechanical, as in the expanding atmosphere.
Lol, charles posts nonsense and you choose to reply to me instead. Biased much?
zazove, stop and think for once. If energy didn’t “disappear” then the earth would have first melted and then vaporized millions of years ago.
Convection cause by water vapor carries heat high into the atmosphere where it does indeed “disappear”, into space.
zazove, changing the subject -> cognitive dissonance. The energy that charles describes being moved does not necessarily cause a temperature change; any energy that causes a mechanical change (or an acoustic change or a chemical change or an electrical change . . . ) cannot also cause a temperature change. It was your insistence that the atmosphere “must” warm that was nonsense.
zazove, just like all alarmist data your nasa graph is discontinued right before the growth year. january 2018 would have shown the 250 GT increase. but they discontinued it….
how inconvenient is that?
Really?
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/29/climate-science-on-trial-evidence-shows-co2-cools-the-atmosphere/
CAGW is not only scientifically unsound, it is scientifically impossible.
Science of Doom has a slightly more professional approach to this.
Hugs—yes, but they also have something of a slant. I enjoy readiing their site, but I’d never question them because I would expect to be put down for not believing as they do.
http://www.iflscience.com/environment/what-will-climate-be-2100-expect-surprises-says-new-met-office-study/
“Come off it Willis this is straw man territory. Who is “they”? And where I their quote?”
Can you possibly be serious?
The entire AGW scam is based on constant production of, and constant transmission of, horrifying long-range predictions of the effects of CO2. A hundred years is the scammers’ typical projection. The entire power base the alarmists have built is based on terror–their fraudulent predictions of dire effects in the future.
Even if you don’t follow this issue, the 100 year predictions of doom are constantly broadcast through every possible media, to every possible audience. Also in schools, Hollywood, TV, and everywhere else influence is possible. You might want to get out more, if you seriously do not know who “they” are, or what they predict.
Here are just 3 examples, the top results of a Bing search on :
“It looks like the world could be a much hotter place by the end of the century.New data released by Nasa scientists is revealing how temperature and rainfall patterns around the world may change by the year 2100.
Using climate change predictions based on increasing levels of carbon dioxide, the data reveals what may happen to the climate in individual towns and cities.” Daily Mail, 2015
“According to scientist David Archer, whose research is often featured in the renowned Nature magazine, the C02 that we are emitting from fossil fuels today will still be affecting the climate in many millenia from now. His conclusion is that even though the majority of C02 emitted from burning a single tonne of coal or oil today will be absorbed over a few centuries by the oceans and vegetation, approximately 25% of it will still be lingering in the atmosphere in 1,000 years, and 10% still remaining and impacting the climate in 100,000 years time.” UN University, 2011
“Scientists nearly double sea level rise projections for 2100, because of Antarctica
“Sea levels could rise nearly twice as much as previously predicted by the end of this century if carbon dioxide emissions continue unabated, an outcome that could devastate coastal communities around the globe, according to new research published Wednesday. The main reason? Antarctica.” Washington Post, 2016
Thousands more such predictions are issued every week. Try a Google Alert on “climate predictions 2100.” You’ll be able to compile your own list! Try it, it’s fun!
Here’s a good one I think you will like, “We don’t inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children.”
We’re all being pressured by this systemic emotional guilt trip by claims that cannot be proven to be true.
“Come off it Willis this is straw man territory. Who is “they”? And where I their quote?”
Can you possibly be serious?
Yeah, an extreme example of somebody playing “stupid”.
Zitherzatherzuzz is trolling…I can sense it.
Hey, zazz…do your own homework.
If you are somehow unaware of this, stick around and pay attention this time.
beng135, he’s not playing.
Com’on Kent Zazove supports the IPCC claims, their predictions only go to 2097 not 2100! Everybody knows that!
(sarc)
FWIW,
“Knowing is not understanding. There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.”
Charles Kettering
If oil on the surface of the sea reduces evaporation wouldn’t that result in less rain, more droughts?
Richard111 March 9, 2018 at 9:42 pm
Could be, Richard111. The basic rule of the climate system seems to be:
w.
There has always been oil on the ocean (except when there wasn’t … or something).
Thus, per Richard111, evaporation and precipitation might change if people added more, but ..
that might encourage faster growth of the microbes that metabolize the oil. The population of microbes might overshoot and chew up more oil, and . . . I think I see a circle!
Makes my head hurt.
The issue extends to CO2. More in the atmosphere — the “sinks” ramp up. If the amount of CO2 being added to the atmosphere begins to go down . . . well, the bulked up sinks will still be there. Over time they will adjust.
Enough circles. A last sip of wine and I’m headed to bed.
Cheers.
do we know for certain that globally the total amount of precipitation has to equal the total amount of evaporation assuming that comets dont provide much water on a global basis?
I suspect it’s probably still true; but it used to be (in the states) if you spilled fuel in the water enough to cause a sheen e.g. fueling your boat; you were supposed to report it to the Coast Guard so they could come out and issue you a citation.
Anyone remember this:
Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at
The police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for
Being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn’t very likely, and
We didn’t expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out
And told us never to be seen driving garbage around the vicinity again,
Scafetta’s cycles based on solar orbit wobbles, due to planet perturbations, is worth a closer look because of its connection with the PDO and 60 year cycle, found in ice cores and shallow sea cores.
I would also point out that the LIA came to an end around 1900 in the Southern Hemisphere, icebergs were large and plentiful, which maybe related to Length of Day (LOD).
ironicman March 9, 2018 at 10:03 pm
Scafetta? Don’t make me laugh. Been there, done that. See here for the details. TL;DR version?
Sorry, but Scafetta’s work is a scientific joke …
w.
Okay, thanks Willis, I’ll take Scafetta off my Red Team.
In regards the LIA, do you think it was a Bond Event?
What is so ironic Willis is that you are going to have to eat your hat when it come to what Scafetta is saying. He is closer to the mark than you might realize even though he may not be on solid scientific grounds. Anthony Watts – your co-collaborators and Basil Copland claim the following periods appear in the smoothed world’s mean temperature: 9.2 year and 20-21 years. They even say that:
“As for the decadal signal of 9.22 years, this is too short to be likely attributable to the 11 year solar cycle, but is very close to half the 18.6 year lunar nodal cycle, and thus may well be attributable to the lunar nodal cycle.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/23/evidence-of-a-lunisolar-influence-on-decadal-and-bidecadal-oscillations-in-globally-averaged-temperature-trends/
Are you laughing at them as well?
astroclimateconnection March 10, 2018 at 8:29 am
Thanks, astro. What is so ironic is that I just showed how Scafetta has already claimed four totally different and contradictory things … so which one of them am I going to have to eat my hat over?
As to the early work by Anthony Watts and Basil Copeland, I think that they were seduced by the apparently cyclical nature of climate, and at that point almost a decade ago they had not realized the limitations of fitting curves to natural climate observational data.
Regards,
w.
Like you do…?
First chuckle of the day.
Willis’ article ‘The Source Of The Heat’ rather nicely sums up our knowledge of how the Climate works.. The answer is that we know almost nothing about how it all works. There is no shortage of theories, but no sure knowledge of which theory is right. Fortunately, nothing really unusual is happening in the weather right now.
+ a whole big bunch
What is driving the shortwave increase post 2012? Less clouds I am assuming, but why?
That’s my guess — less clouds. Why?
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
https://youtu.be/L-fIO7_HJBo
The sources of heat that may change and that cause a change in ambient heat are
1) coming from outside in, i.e. the sun
2) coming from inside out, i.e. the earth
1) There was some change in heat coming in but we reached a zero point somewhere around the new millennium. My results show that more CO2 does not cause any heat entrapment so we can rule out this interaction.
2) most probably due to a realignment with the sun, earth’s inner core has been moving, north east. Quite fast over the past century, compared to previous centuries. This may account for the [extra] warming of the arctic. Namely, my results show that there has been no warming in the SH. In fact, here where I live, in South Africa, it has been cooling [looking at minimum temperatures.
“2) coming from inside out, i.e. the earth”
That has been a big question I keep asking with generally no quantifiable response.
Volcanoes, lava, sea floor vents, and general conduction from the earth’s core… How much heat is going into our atmosphere from the core and how is this affecting climate?
If the science is truly settled, then someone has the numbers.
fizzissist March 10, 2018 at 6:32 am
Average flux for continents is ~65 mW/m^2, oceans on average 101 mW/m^2.
As flux this is irrelevant compared to the solar flux, BUT the temperature of the crust just below our feet (20-30 m) is completely caused by geothermal energy, Same for the oceans below the solar heated mixed surface layer (the “base” temperature)
This means that every morning the sun rises it doesn’t start to warm a blackbody at 0K, but it adds its energy to an already warm surface, increasing its temperature a little.
In this situation occasionally large magma eruptions in the oceans can increase this base temperature.
eg the Ontong Java Event, some 100 million km^3 magma erupting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontong_Java_Plateau
Ben, fizzizist
I have followed an empirical process to prove that there is no man made warming, as shown below. I have no answer on why in South Africa there never was any warming other than that earth inner core has been moving north east.
To give a summary of all my investigations into climate change starting ca. 2009/2010
Concerned to show that man made warming (AGW ) is correct and indeed happening, I thought that here [in Pretoria, South Africa} I could easily prove that. Namely the logic following from AGW theory is that more CO2 would trap heat on earth, hence we should find minimum temperature (T) rising pushing up the mean T. Here, in the winter months, we hardly have any rain but we have many people burning fossil fuels to keep warm at night. On any particular cold winter’s day that results in the town area being covered with a greyish layer of air, viewable on a high hill outside town in the early morning.
I figured that as the population increased over the past 40 years, the results of my analysis of the data [of a Pretoria weather station] must show minimum T rising, particularly in the winter months. Much to my surprise I found that the opposite was happening: minimum T here was falling, any month….I first thought that somebody must have made a mistake: the extra CO2 was cooling the atmosphere, ‘not warming’ it. As a chemist, that made sense to me as I knew that whilst there were absorptions of CO2 in the area of the spectrum where earth emits, there are also the areas of absorption in the 1-2 um and the 4-5 um range where the sun emits. Not convinced either way by my deliberations and discussions as on a number of websites, I first looked at a number of weather stations around me, to give me an indication of what was happening:
The results puzzled me even more. Somebody [God/Nature] was throwing a ball at me…..The speed of cooling followed a certain pattern, best described by a quadratic function.
I carefully looked at my earth globe and decided on a particular sampling procedure to find out what, if any, the global result would be. Here is my final result on that:
Hence, looking at my final Rsquare on that, I figured out that there is no AGW, at least not measurable.
Arguing with me that 99% of all scientists disagree with me is fruitless. You cannot have an “election” about science. You only need one man to get it right…..
henryp, please do a guest post here. Thank you kindly.
Willis: nice article that makes us all think about rethinking about what we think. I like it!
PS good job responding.
Willis,
I agree 100% with your Analise,
But 97% of the above disagree with my decision.
Thanks Willis, as usual great .
As an example of just how bad an average scientific climate study report can be
Here are my first 19 criticisms of David Battisti and Etienne Tetrault-Pinard and M.B. Baker’s “scientific paper” called “Impacts of Surface Moisture on Surface Temperature Variability. Submitted, J. Climate, Dec.2015″ Dr. Battisti is one of the top 10 global warming hoaxters.
1) Both in the abstract and paper, Battisti and the other 2 authors say
” A striking finding is that globally, all land areas belong to one of two
regimes, defined by the role of surface moisture on temperature variability. In
’dry’ regions variations in moisture enhance the impacts of forcing anomalies
on temperature, whereas in ’wet’ regions, surface moisture variations, acting
by a somewhat different mechanism, damp the temperature fluctuations.”
This statement is unbelievable in every way. In the body of the paper he even has different formulas for each area. Computers love it when they only have to consider 2 outcomes of a variable. Reality not so much.
2) Battisti and the other 2 authors have it right when they say that surface temperature variability depends on turbulent heat flux. However he puts together variables and coefficients into equations as if he invented the term heat flux. If he had checked the literature he would have seen that there are no set of equations that can accurately describe heat flux. There are only approximations. At present noone has proved any equations relating Reynolds numbers to turbulence. Turbulence has a mathematical definition. It is the ratio of inertial forces to viscous forces. Dr. Richard Feynmann described turbulence as the most important unsolved problem of classical physics. For Battisti and the other 2 authors to use the word “turbulent” in their study as in the words “turbulent heat flux” is an insult to all the greatest physicists of the ages. Furthermore Not one of Battisti and the other 2 authors’s references were to any general or even specific textbook or paper on heat transfer. They all referenced other climate model studies. For those interested I refer you to the bible “Radiative Heat Transfer” by Dr. Michael F. Modest
3)The title of the paper should have read ” Survey and computer simulation analysis of climate model variability on the impacts of soil moisture on summertime land surface temperature variability” If you compare this corrected title to what Battisti and the other 2 authors actually ended up naming it you can see how fraudulent this paper really was.
4) The abstract says that heat flux is a function of surface moisture and this is oberved both in observations and models. Yet the body of report says this is true only in GCMs(General circulation computer models).
5) line 89 the word “large” should be replaced with “small”
6) The abstract quotes “Although temperature variance is generally somewhat under predicted by our model” This makes it seem as if he is referring to reality when in fact their model is underpredicting other models. I have come to the realization that climate scientist PhDs sometimes get so lost in their computer simulations that they forget that there is a real world out there.
7) All through the report Battisti and the other 2 authors refer to ERA40 reanalysis data as if it represents real world soil moisture samples. It doesn’t. It is a computer simulation that uses satellite data to calculate soil moisture. I will quote the ERA web site limitations A) Tropical moisture larger than observed from 1991 onwards B)precipitation greatly exceeds evaporation C) Spurious arctic temperature trends. Nowhere does Battisti and the other 2 authors mention these caveats.
8) The last sentence of abstract says “where warming causes a climatological shift from the moist regime to the dry regime.” Common AGW theory says that increased temperatures will cause water vapour forcing. How that would cause a climatological shift from a moist regime to a dry regime can only be found on Hercules’ bare bottom.
9) page 6 of the report says that the physical parameters controlling summertime surface temperature variability are not well understood. So how is a computer simulation (that Battisti and the other 2 authors calls his “toy model” that is then compared to other computer simulations) going to improve our understanding?
10) Equation 6 on page 12 states that heat flux into ground from surface is linear where the coefficient is always positive. However the general standard model of AGM is Heat anomaly = (@ * Temp diff) + IR forcing However Heat anomaly in this equation is fictititious and isnt 0 if the system is not in equilbrium. Therefore If in equilbrium -@ * Temp diff = IR forcing Clearly the coefficient is negative in Standard model and positive in GCM usage. So I guess that the computers to be able to calculate anything have to disagree with the standard model of AGM. Sometimes I get the idea that I am reviewing PhD work from “Alice in Wonderland”
11) page 7 The 3rd sentence “An
unexpected and somewhat puzzling finding in our study is that (at least in the world of GCMs) on
monthly time scales surface moisture fluctuations also have a significant impact on sensible heat
fluxes, which also modifies temperature variability.”
Every scientific report should have a hypothesis to which the scientist is carrying out experiments to try to prove the null hypothesis.The sentence
above is a finding which should be the basis of another scientific study. It should not be included as part of this report’s hypothesis. It seems climate scientists dont even know what the scientific method is all about.
12) on page 7 the hypothesis should include the word “summer”. The text also crudely defines summer as 3 specific calendar months in Northern hemisphere and 3 others in Southern hemisphere. However in figure 16 they present 5 months as summer in the Northern hemisphere.
13) All the variable letters and subscripts should be in 1 easy to reference table. The table that is given lists only 7.
14) Only 15 references are given
15) The members of the peer review committee are not stated
16) page 8 The authors mention that they should use the 10cm sil temperature but instead they use the 2 metre air temperature because of ability to compare the results with University of Delaware observations. However they do not compare the error factor that will result from this.
17) The report often talks of parameterizations. However true parameterizations consist of fitting a curve of an independent variable to a dependent variable variable by connecting data points that represent real world sample data. This report only fits curves to computer produced data points.
18) Figures 13 and 14 are confusing as to what the fit really is for the “toy” model vs the other GCMs.
19) LE is defined on page 10 as latent heat yet on page 33 it is split up into latent heat flux and evapotranspiration and on page 9, L is defined as the latent heat of evaporation and E is net flux of vapour to the atmosphere. on this same page 9 in equation 1 , LE is a latent heat flux but how can it be both heat flux and a water vapour amount?
I am only 1 /3 of the way through this report. More to come.
It is the Reynold’s number not turbulence that is defined as the ratio of inertial forces to viscous forces. While no closed form exact equation describes the onset of turbulence, or it’s heat or mass transfer details, approximations like LES do a fair job of estimating net averages in limited cases. For very complex situations like atmospheric flow, the result is chaotic flow and no long term solution is ever going to be made with any accuracy, but the envelope of boundaries can be made from the energy balance, storage possibilities, transport (wind and ocean currents), and latent heat storage and release.
Ya thanks for correcting me Shows that copying from notes can screw things up. In any case trying to calculate energy balance,storage possiblities, wind and ocean currents and latent heat storage and release is amugs game not to mention getting the correct dependencies when everything seems to affect everything.
I have 2 major questions
1) Does global precipitation overall have to equal global condensation not counting asteroids as a source of water?
2) How much of the latent heat upon release of condensation and precipitation goes into outer space?. My guess is almost all of it because if a significant portion of it stayed in the atmosphere we would have runaway global warming just with water vapour alone.
Everything we do results in waste enthalpy being emitted into the environment. If you summed up all this heat energy, what would be the equivalent W/m² value?
I have often made this observation, even with all machines working at 50% efficiency the waste heat has got to be significant.
Jeff, is this what you are looking for? Or something like?
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
I estimate about 0.04 W/m², just from primary energy consumption in 2013, however the IEA defines that.
Humans in total emit about 0.00005 W/m² just from existing.
The start of the article does not need the sophistry. No matter if “the oceans end up slightly warmer than they would be without the oil” or there’s a “rise in my body surface temperature when I put on a jacket”. Because it’s still a valid question to ask about “the main sources of heat that account for the incremental”.
Note that nobody mentioned any “new source” or “changed source”. Only Willis introduces this notion.
As if to illustrate Willis exactly does the same trick when he writes “Nobody knows why the Roman times were generally warmer than times prior to that”. Which just implies again Judith’s question on what are then “the main sources of heat that account for the incremental rise in temperature” — in this case the Roman Times.
Which leaves us with a horribly phrased article without much coherent logic in relation to the introduction. The technical content as such is okay but it’s unclear why it needed to be written like that.
I believe you are correct on all points.
What are the main sources of heat that account for the incremental rise in temperature on Earth?.
1. Heat source the sun, any small cumulative increase in it’s temperature or distance closer to the earth.
2. Factors that modify the influence of the sun.
a. water vapour and clouds
b. increases in other GHG
c. albedo decrease changes, more soot, less polar icecaps, algal blooms, reforestation etc.
3. Possible slow turnover of deeper warmer currents on a 60-100 year timescale, like El Nino but longer.
Problem is implies less heat went out when currents went under and not really a sustainable cause of incremental heat rise.
Sub sea volcanoes could add to this.
4. Increase in activity of earth’s core causing more heat diffusal out.Problem is this is very small in the scheme of things.
5. Going through bigger meteorite clouds for years?
Scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
–
Mr Dessler seems fixated on small amounts of minor GHG to the exclusion of a lot of the more important things. Does he have an agenda in mind?
Please, everyone, it’s = it is. Its is the possessive. Yes, I’m both a Grammar Nazi and a nitpicker.
But how does one remember? Its is like his and hers. No apostrophe.
“But how does one remember?”
The way I remembered when I was learning was to remember “never possessive”—i.e., “it’s” is always a contraction, and therefore “its” is never possessive.
There is one source of heat on Earth and that is a warmed ocean.
And presently, it appears that sunlight is main source of heat which warms the ocean.
The ocean surface temperature is the global air temperature.
The average ocean surface air temperature is about 17 C.
And average land surface air temperature is about 10 C.
Without the higher ocean surface air temperature, the average land surface temperature would
colder than 10 C.
gbaikie, could you tell me where you did get your numbers from?
Berkeley Earth. At:
Berkeleyearth.org/papers
(Bottom on list:
“New estimate… )
Also google: average ocean surface temperature:
Window 2universe.org:
” average temperature of the ocean surface waters is about 17 degrees celsius”
and 70% earth surface is ocean which results in 30% of land being 10 C if average global is about 15 C.
Thanks for the info gbaikie, I will have a look at the Berkeley Earth paper.
I also add, that it’s been said for a long, that the tropics warms the rest of the world.
I would add that about 80% of tropics is ocean and that it is the tropical ocean not the tropical land
which warms the rest of the world- though that’s fairly obvious and one could say it doesn’t need to
be said.
And the average temperature of tropical ocean which is a bit less than 40% of entire earth surface,
is about 26 C.
And having this large warm area, increases the oceans average temperature both in sense that smarter kids will increase the grade average of a class and it actually warms the rest of the ocean.
Re, doesn’t need to said, Africa has tropical land, Africa doesn’t warm Europe, but the Gulf Stream does warm Europe. India is tropical land, India doesn’t warm China and average temperature of China is colder than continental US. And Indian has very warm average temperature.
Berkeley Earth: India: 24.5 C and China: 7.5 C
And Africa is known as warmest continent.
And both Africa and India are increasing all of Earth’s land area average temperature in terms of
the class average of 10 C as they are a significant fraction of all land area.
Or India is 1/3 of land area of China, but if India and China were in same class the much warmer India significantly increase average temperature of China. China and India average is about 12 C.
Or average land temperature of 10 C may not seem cold but a lot land areas are cold, as in Canada being – 4 C but Africa increases the class average score. But Africa does not warm the air of Canada or Europe. Rather it’s the warmer ocean which increases the air temperature of Canada and Europe.
Thanks Willis for posting the CERES data. I had been wondering how the large drop in surface temperature recorded in 2008 ….about 0.7 C, would show up in CERES data. I can see that although there is a drop in surface absorption of solar short-wave, there is a greater drop a couple of years later, so there does not seem to be a simple relation of solar incoming at the surface and surface temperature. I would think this relationship must be subject to phases of storage and release of ocean heat in the top layers (about 200m) – which in the case of ENSO cycles, seems to depend on oscillations in wind.
If you take a look at the Greenland ice-core data (Alley), you can see abrupt shifts in surface temperature of the order of 3 C almost from one year to the next…..something that could only be caused by shifting winds. The warming occurs in a distinctive pattern – most particularly in the depth of the last ice-age between 50ky and 30 kyr BP…….sudden warming occurs in what looks like a damped oscillation with several peaks (Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles) within a 10,000 year beat cycle. If one looks at the duration of each of the D/O events, they peak in an 8:5:3:2:1:1 series within the beat cycles, but this clear Fibonacci series disappears either side of the glacial maximum where things are more chaotic. However, one could discern a similar but less clear pattern for the Holocene (which may also be a 10,000 year beat cycle).
If this pattern is indeed a feature of the earth-system, then the peaks and troughs such as Roman Warm Period and Medieval Warm Period/LIA are relatively predictable. Recent work on the Tibetan Plateau using tree-ring data by a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences claims to find an 1100 year cycle over the last 2500 years of data, using spectral analysis. But as we can see from the Greenland data, the cycles are not ‘regular’ and averaging may obscure the pattern. Of course, I am with you on the ‘nobody knows’ when it comes to what might drive such a pattern – these are long time periods for some kind of solar driver.
Here is a radical thought. A story which I came across earlier today sparked a new thought on a speculative thought from a few years back. Here is the story, …https://www.space.com/39942-africa-blob-earth-magnetic-flip.html
Three or four years ago I noticed a long shot correlation between great quakes on the Cascadia Fault zone, and the shift between Warm and Cool Periods. It just so happens that there is a major quake spaced at the beginning of the Medieval WP as well as one at the end of the MWP. Then there is one in 1700 AD which I think marks the transition point to our current Warm Period. This correlations holds true goping further back in time.
So the connection between the above is that the story at Space dot is talking about the magnetic field anomaly in South Africa, and that a way was found to flesh out the history of changes and shifts in the magnetic field. Here is an excerpt from the story detailing the last occurrences “…The data show that the magnetic field experienced sudden directional shifts between A.D. 400 and 450, and then again between A.D. 750 and 800. Between about A.D. 1225 and 1550, …”.
So with the above dates in mind here is the list of known very large Cascadia quakes which align with the above dates of magnetic field shifts, …400 AD, 810 AD, and 1310 AD. This makes my initial thought on the relationship between Cascadia quakes and climate shifts even stronger, and it points to a possible cause of the Cascadia large quakes. Think of the picture that this shows of how the climate system may work.
“What are the main sources of heat that account for the incremental rise in temperature on Earth?”
“What are the main sources of heat that account for the incremental rise in my body surface temperature when I put on a jacket?”
“I’m sure you can see the problem with Dr. Judith’s question—temperatures can rise without ANY new sources of heat or ANY change in existing sources of heat.”
Hmm.
Judith is asking if there is an incremental rise in temperature [taken as a given], which, if any of the known heat sources changing [increasing] is/are mainly responsible.
Basically.
I presume she is asking if you exclude CO2/GHG as causes, and if the temperature is still going up in increments over a long period of time, what natural causes would be occurring to explain this.
The question could have been pedantically worded better, I agree.
She was not asking about the GHG effect She states elsewhere on her blog GHG may have an important role in the warming [if any is occurring], just that this is not quantifiable yet , hence what other mechanisms might be causing incremental heat gain.
I think it is a fair question if taken in good faith.
Could we discuss it as it was meant to be understood instead?
Good points.
“temperatures can rise without ANY new sources of heat or ANY change in existing sources of heat.”
Though you did not alter the heat sources you altered the equation by changing the state of the system.
Judith’s question did not relate to changes in the system, only the heat sources.
You are unfairly comparing apples with oranges.
Furthermore, given a few caveats, unchanging source of heat, unchanging radiating receptor of heat, set distance apart, no overcoats or unicorns, I doubt the temperature could vary. Note the emphasis on unchanging receptor, planets with atmospheres and seas are definitely not unchanging
angech March 10, 2018 at 1:26 am
Thanks, angtech, but I don’t understand this objection. Dr. Judith’s question ASSUMED that there was some change in heat source behind the incremental temperature rise.
My point was that the question was very poorly phrased, since temperatures can change with no change in heat sources.
w.
30 odd Years plus untold millions of dollars worth of super computer computations later and what do we have ? Its Co2 wot dunnit 97% of us agree and us climate scientists don’t lie .
Perhaps a few Bitcoins mined at taxpayer’s expense also, at least recently.
@Willis
Come on, Willis, you know enough of physics to answer
“What are the main sources of heat that account for the incremental rise in my body surface temperature when I put on a jacket?”
In the case of your jacket, the heat source is the slight imbalance in flux experienced during your putting the jacket. You have to count it as a source
Your body radiates/convects ~80W before you put the jacket.
And your body +jacket will radiate just as much after reaching a new equilibrium.
But, before reaching the equilibrium, the jacket will radiate slightly less. Maybe ~50W average for a few minutes. Manwhile you accumulate ~30J/s
This source doesn’t last,
It is needed to accumulate some heat to rise your skin temperature,
It is not needed to keep the new temperature reached at new equilibrium.
Same on Earth: for the Earth to globally warm, you need an imbalance top of atmosphere (1). It need not be huge.
However, surface and atmosphere can also warm if some other place (ocean) cools, just through different distribution of heat. Just shouldn’t be called “global warming” (2)
In both case, a fraction of W/m² is enough (*). So we know that we don’t have data precise enough to know if we experienced (1) or (2) in recent decades,
I, however, know there is NO reason for the top of atmophere to be at precise equilibrium in the +/-0.01W/m² range required for no significant warming (or cooling) to occur in a decade.
For the very simple reason Earth is not flat, homogenous, non rotating as Trenberth and friend picture it. So Earth is forever out of equilibrium by day and summer (more energy recieve than lost) and by night and winter (opposite). And this more or less balanced out… but only “more or less”; not with the required precision.
So best guess is (1). Obviously, past event show that no GHG are required for it to happen.
Actually, the miracle is rather that Earth temperature is so stable, in a narrow +/-1% range. It takes huge negative feedbacks and bumpers to constrain temperature so much.
(*)a year is 31,5 millions seconds, 0.01W in a century, or 0.1 W in a decade, are 31.5 MJ, enough for a 1°C rise in temperature of ~7,5 ton of water, or, equivalently, the whole atmospere column above 1m². 1°C/century : this is the magnitude of the effect we are looking for. To see this effect, we need +/-0.01 W/m² data precision. 3 order of magnitude better than current instrumentation.
Also, to destroy the example, your body will adjust its metabolism or make some other change to maintain stasis.
I don’t live in stasis, and I lose less heat with my ski jacket (not a black body) on.
Strangely enough you DONT lose less energy with your ski jacket on, in the sense that, jacket on or not, you still lose just as much energy you produce.
The difference is, without the jacket, your skin is the jacket for your inner body, keeping it warm while being cold; OTOH, with the jacket, your skin is warm, too, instead of being cold, which is much more confortable.
And, of course, being homeotherme, you tend to adjust your production of energy with the temperature of your skin, and this too, is a source of discomfort.
The Earth is not homeotherme, doesn’t adjust it energy production to its “skin” temperature.
I have two questions.
What happens to water vapour in a period of glaciation and does it lead or follow
Can as- seen with recent sudden stratospheric warming events, high and low pressure system align in a certain pattern where the heat balance falls or rises. For example in the northern hemisphere’s winter where large high pressure systems cling like barnacles on north America and Eurasia thus atmospheric heat leaks into space. I haven’t read all of Willie’s article but when he says if you put a coat on you get warmer of course you do as humans actually create body temperature but with the earth as far as I get it there are only three source of heat the sun, the oceans and the molten core
If an internal combustion engine stops working (won’t start) it is reasonable to look for a single cause — no fuel, no spark, no air, dead battery etc. If an internal combustion engine runs but is down on power, there may be a single cause or a number of things that contribute to the problem — leaky rings plus restricted air filter plus dirty injectors.
Why would anyone try to blame “global warming” in a complex climate system on a single cause?
Because that’s where the money is.
Do you hear that change in noise the engine is making? I don’t. But believe me, if you don’t switch to this expensive fully synthetic lubricant today, that engine is going to die in 100 years.
Because progressives wish to “help” to “make things better” and so forth.
Blaming conditions upon something that “they” and eventually all of us can do something about is the root of the hysteria. The real climate science folks may have started without understanding the progressive mentality, but it was easy to find a human emission of a human activity and it was offf to the races. Endless grant money, other people’s money, and a continued source of income.
I will guarantee that if the “consensus” was that climate was changing and we can’t nail down “the one thing”, that little grant money would be available except for mitigation and preparation.
Gums sez…..
pull the other leg, it has bells on it …
&f=1
Willis, Is this you ?
The source of heat is every atom on and around the planet whose temperature is above absolute zero.
Plus the sun’s radiation.
It’s kind of an irrelevant question.
Movement of heat is what matters. Movement.
By “climate” we mean the movement of heat in the atmosphere and oceans.
The climate is a dissipative open system (heat engine) moving heat from equator to poles.
It is complex and characterised by numerous both negative (friction) and positive (excitable) feedbacks.
As such it is chaotic and subject to nonlinear pattern formation – the emergence of dissipative structures whose function is the export of entropy.
Thus the only certainty about the climate system is that it will always be changing.
Primarily by it’s internal dynamics, with or without external periodic astrophysical forcing.
Alternate configurations, called attractors, exist with very different temperatures at a given location but no difference in the global heat budget.
Such as glacial and interglacial. Or MWP and LIA, etc.
Mr. Eschenbach, some reinforcement of “it is the Clouds”.
This Chinese study suggests that the “haitus” may have been caused by changes in cloud cover.
Note that they do not propose the reverse, ie that changes in cloud cover could have caused the warming, that of course was CO2.
https://www.thegwpf.com/new-study-cooling-clouds-caused-global-warming-hiatus/
Willis Says
PS—As usual, I politely request that when you comment you QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE REFERRING TO, so we can all understand what you are discussing. Please note that although the request is polite, if you ignore it, I may not be … I’m tired of picking random unsourced uncited unreferenced spitballs off the wall.
It is not a single word that I find fault with, however I do have an increasing dislike for the general attitude expressed in most of your posts. I am finding your posts increasingly hard to read with your extremely smug know all attitude. I think that Dr Roy put it more politely several years ago in this post.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/10/citizen-scientist-willis-and-the-cloud-radiative-effect/
And I am trying to be polite….
Let’s hope he’s off “meditating on Mark Twain’s words”.
Gibo March 10, 2018 at 3:06 am
Gosh, you mean I wrote something and someone doesn’t like my tone? Gibo, no matter what I write there is always someone, usually an anonymous internet popup like yourself, who wants to tell me that they don’t like my tone, or the feelz, or how I phrased a passage, or something.
Today, that random anonymous popup is you. Congratulations.
And I think that Dr. Roy falsely accused me of plagiarism because he didn’t take the time to do his homework. See here for my response. He was way out of line.
We all are …
w.
Willis,
You say, “this is a horribly phrased question.” in reference to the headline on Dr. Curry’s blog. Then you say, “I’m sure you can see the problem with Dr. Judith’s question.” I agree the question is poorly worded from the viewpoint of the concepts of heat and temperature.
But it should be noted that this is not Dr. Curry’s question. It is from Judge Alsup.
http://blogs2.law.columbia.edu/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2018/20180306_docket-317-cv-06011_order.pdf
From the viewpoint of a judge, this is a reasonable question, as I see it.
True, it’s the Judge’s question, and it’s also the title of Dr. Judith’s piece.
And that’s exactly why we generally don’t use judges to settle scientific disputes …
Thanks,
w.
As, I hope?, every engineer knows: temperature is only one of the manifestations of energy or as we engineers call it enthalpy. The others include: velocity. pressure, strain, potential, latent etc. etc.
Most of the confusion within the climate debate lies in this fact; as repeatedly radiation is equated with temperature via this ubiquitous term: “sensivity.
The IPCC is responsible for this confusion due to its definition of Radiative Forcing, equating this to an energy flux and then a temperature. Total thermodynamic rubbish.
Analogies are never very good; but here is an example:
Stick your wet finger up in the air to find out the direction of the wind. The cool side tells you what you want to know. Now ask where the energy went.
Well we all know the answer to that —: Phase change on your wet finger, manifested by a change in temperature; but NO change in the enthalpy involved. The evaporated water has scarpered off with it.
OK you pedantics, we could waste a lot of time on this; but I trust you get my drift.
I meant to add to this that Willis is right: there does not need to be a change in heat, enthalpy, energy or whatever for temperature to change.
yes, he is right
in numerous situations
as is cognog2
and wrong
in other situations.
Care to narrow it down a bit?
@Willis “…this is a horribly phrased question. …”
Willis doth protest too much, methinks. Lady Judith’s use of the term “source” is perfectly valid, if construed as an observation, not a judgement.
“What are the main sources of heat that account for the incremental rise in my body surface temperature when I put on a jacket?”
So, your ‘body surface’ was just hanging around, minding its own business. Then, suddenly, it started to sweat. “I’m getting warm. Something must be heating me up. Where’s that heat coming from!”
Then it ‘observed’. It made this observation: something new, that wasn’t there before. A ‘jacket surface’ had suddenly appeared The body observed: “long wave IR measurements confirm that more heat is being absorbed from the direction of the ‘jacket’, than before the ‘jacket’ appeared.
Lo, a new source of heat hath appeared! (From the POV of the ‘body surface’)
😐
The source of the heat is the the same source as for the geothermal gradient.
However, if “every year there is more and more oil that goes into the ocean” and “this oil floats on the surface in a monomolecular layer,” there would be a very thick layer of oil at the surface of the ocean.
And hence, Canadian oil sands…
Dr Judith Curry posseses an internal source of heat, doesn’t she ?
Willis, that was not Judith’s question; it was the #8 on the JUDGE’S list of questions as a prelude to the “Exxon knew” affaire. You don’t seem to have paid much attention to Judith’s always excellent blog this time. I’m sure JC would have asked a different question.
If a judge asks a question, he may like an answer rather than being told he should have asked a different question, which the resonder is about reword for him and then answer that instead, with his own pet hypothesis.. The answer to #8 is, of course, the Sun.
If we may assume that he is not totally illiterate on the issue, he may in fact be asking the plaintiff to establish where the heat is coming from: the sun or Exxon’s products !
His use of the term “incremental warming” is also encouraging. He does not seem to be a fan of Al Gore movies.
At the top of J.C’s article:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/03/09/what-are-the-main-sources-of-heat-that-account-for-the-incremental-rise-in-temperature-on-earth/
extra CO2 is not a source of ( heat ) energy. Do the 3D flux integral around a volume or air or CO2 and the result is zero. It is not a source of heat.
“extra CO2 is not a source of ( heat ) energy. Do the 3D flux integral around a volume or air or CO2 and the result is zero. It is not a source of heat.”
I suspect that was the point of the question.
Exactly
We don’t need any source of heat to get rising temperatures – all we do is use/let/force the existing heat energy to impinge upon something with a lower specific heat capacity.
By actual example ‘dry dirt’ versus ‘damp dirt’ or ‘clear cut forest’ versus ‘growing/mature forest’
Water has an epic heat capacity hence, altering the water content of anything will dramatically alter its temperature response to a given energy input,
Ask any (arable farmer why he ventures out with a plough/cultivator in the springtime.
He’ll tell that one of the main reasons, apart from destroying the competition to his intended crop, is to “dry out and hence warm up the seedbed”
The Farmer has to do that because the only significant sources of fertile dirt on the Earth are at high latitudes – places with short growing seasons and very variable climates. The farmer sets out with the deliberate intention of changing the climate and since (end of) World War 2, has had the tools to do it = very large tractors, ploughs and cultivators.
He creates a low albedo surface with a large (rough) surface area and devoid of shade that comes from living plants.
Regard chlorophyll as Ma Nature’s sun cream.
Even before we get into the subject of ‘nitrogen fertiliser’ – one of the biggest misnomers of our modern times. Yes it makes things green and growing but it actually strips fertility out of the dirt.
Doing so effectively dries the dirt by removing the organic (moisture retaining) fraction of the dirt
We know that because its seen as rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
But of course, no-one wants to in any way ‘blame’ the farmers. To do so might result in there being nothing on the supermarket shelf.
Its like when you ask “Who is eating all this food?
Everyone lowers their eyes, tries to be invisible and avoid the question.
Same as when discussing world population.
Who made all these babies you might ask
Cue deathly silence.
Answer – We made the babies and we are eating the food.
Admit. it. Grow up. Take responsibility.
But no. All we’ve done is create an epic buck passing machine called Climate Science
Ridiculous comment. You have not a clue about dry land strip farming. I grew up on the practice. Strips of land were left fallow to absorb moisture. Land ready to plant was VERY carefully handled to preserve that moisture that had built up during the fallow period. How the hell do you think you could grow a crop on land you could not water?
Addendum. Every farmer I know would NEVER plow too wet soil to dry it out. Bad things happen to tractors, let alone leaving the soil severely compacted.
Regarding: “every year there is more and more oil that goes into the ocean. This oil floats on the surface in a monomolecular layer, and it reduces both conduction and evaporation.”:
I thought the Deepwater Horizon incident and other things showed that this oil does not accumulate on the ocean surface as the decades go on. Microbes have been found that consume it, and even tarry particles of oil suspended in the ocean. Even plastics are getting consumed by microbes according to https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/17/an-ocean-of-plastic/ (well into a long article). Also, organic compounds such as petroleum hydrocarbons do get oxidized, ultimately to water and CO2. If oil accumulation was significant, there would have been a noticeable accumulation from natural petroleum leaks over many millions of years such as in the Gulf of Mexico.
If oil that leaks into the environment accumulates over decades without oxidizing or getting consumed by microbes, then oil spills, oil well leaks and pipeline leaks would cause as much permanent or long-term (more than a few decades) harm as environmental activists claim.
Yep. And natural oil seeps put far more oil into the oceans than E&P operations do… And nature was putting oil into the oceans for millions of years before Col. Drake drilled his first oil well.
At one time there was a large reduction in SSTs at the end of WW II in the Hadsst data. One of my thoughts was the sinking of hundreds if not thousands of ships had led to a lot of oil being spilled. While a lot of the cooling has been adjusted out of the Hadsst3 data, I am still wondering if this could be possible.
I assume the organisms that feed off of oil would grow near natural oil sources but would not exist everywhere. This would mean it would take some time for this oil to disappear. My view is the layer of oil would reflect more sunlight which would cool the oceans rather than prevent evaporation.
Thoughts?
The post-WWII cooling halted the rise in atmospheric rise in atmospheric CO2.
The HadSST adjustment was to account for bias changes due to shifts in nationality and military/civilian type of ships.
I was trying to make some of these points.
Regarding the graph titled “Total Surface Radiation and Total Solar Radiation Anomalies, CERES Data Mar 2000 – FEB 2017”: I would like a cite for the source. This graph shows solar surface radiation increasing since 2000, mostly since the most recent solar maximum. I thought radiation from the sun was decreasing. Also, decreasing solar activity is supposed to let more cosmic rays reach Earth (which is actually happening) and that’s supposed to make Earth’s atmosphere cloudier.
My assumption is the chart includes albedo. Thus, it most likely is showing a decrease in clouds.
Donald, you say “I would like a cite for the source.” The source is the CERES Data Mar 2000 – Feb 2017. I’m using Edition 4.0 of the data. The CERES data includes 1°x1° gridded datasets for both the total radiation absorbed by the surface, and the total solar radiation absorbed by the surface. I analyzed the datasets myself. The data is available here.
w.
Thanks!
Another good post by Mr. Eschenbach, unfortunately flawed by a logic error. “Nobody knows” which of course somehow Mr. Eschebach “knows”. There could easily be several people on the planet that “know” the answer but do not have sufficient facts to prove that it is the answer in an acceptable way. It would have been more interesting to point out the flaw in Prof. Curry’s question and how that presupposition leads to potentially bad science.
Eric, you just scored a point for Willis simply based on your poor attempt to use logic. If facts are missing to support “knowing” the cause, the only logical conclusion is to state there is no “knowing” the cause. Faith in a cause and effect is not the same as knowing it. Without facts, it is still just faith. Might as well have faith in fairies dancing on the head of a pin.
Your comment seems off topic. I pointed out that Mr. Eschenbach made a truth claim, “Nobody knows”. Prove it. I generally enjoy his articles but conjecture is just that. Perhaps you have misread what I was saying.
well if someone knew they would have said it. I have searched for a scientific explanation backed up by experiments to prove that CO2 causes warming in the atmosphere. THERE IS NONE. Noone knows what in the hell is going on Even Michael F. Modest (perhaps the world authority on radiative heat transfer) refuses to get drawn into the controversy. So the climate modellers jumped in with computer simulations and mucked up everything. Now computer simulations have taken over and drive all policy which has lead to carbon taxes. What an ugly mess!!!!!!!!!!
1. Assuming someone would have said “it” if they knew “it” is an assumption. Probably true but possibly not.
2. The inablity to find somethng does not prove it is not there. (Lack of proof is not proof to the contrary)
3. That unscrupulous or ignorant people use shoddy science definately makes “an ugly mess” but wasn’t my point.
4. I was just trying to point out a flaw. The use of fallacious arguements is just a distraction, e.g.
(If facts are missing to support “nobody knows”, the only logical conclusion is to state there is no “nobody knows”. )
5. I generally find Mr. Eschenbach’s post interesting when he concentrates on verifiable data. The tendency to engage in philosophical or epistemological arguements I personnally don’t find as interesting.
The question is from a judge not Dr Curry so you owe her an apology.
crowcane March 10, 2018 at 6:10 am
1) It’s the headline of her post. She adopted it as her own by asking it on her blog.
2) Unless she has appointed you as her spokeswoman, who cares what you think about apologies? If Dr. Judith thinks I owe her an apology, I will certainly not be opposed … but you?
I’m sorry, but I don’t pay attention to people like yourself who take second-hand offense on behalf of someone they never met … when it comes to apologies, my iron-clad policy is to deal with the organ-grinder, not the monkey …
w.
Wind speed is a function of pressure differences ∆P, not ∆T.
eg a high surface pressure of 1030 hPa can exist at a pole with surface temp -30C or over a desert with surface temp +30C. In both cases the air will flow towards the surrounding lower pressure (modified by the Coriolis effect) regardless whether the surrounding temperature is higher, lower or the same.
Temperature differences like those between equator and poles CAN create pressure differences AT ALTITUDE that cause air to flow from equator towards the poles.
Citizen science has its own rules.
Ben Wouters March 10, 2018 at 6:24 am
Thanks, Ben. While wind is indeed a function of atmospheric pressure differences ∆P, atmospheric pressure, in turn, is most often a function of air temperature.
We see this all the time here in California, when the southern desert heats up. The solar-driven higher surface temperatures in the desert expand the overlying air, leaving it less dense and lowering the atmospheric pressure. Meanwhile, there is cold denser higher-pressure air just offshore above the cold ocean. As a result, an air flow is set up between the cold ocean and the hot desert. This temperature difference is what drives the horrendous winds of the “fair-weather gales” that plague the coast and have sunk many ships …
The same is true with the “terminator winds”, the winds that blow nearly constantly across the “terminator line” dividing night and day. You may know them as the “dawn wind” and the “dusk wind”. Day is warmer, night is cooler, and as a result the winds always blow from night to day. Yes, they are driven by the pressure differences across the terminator … but those pressure differences in turn are the result of the temperature differences. As a result, once again the wind is being driven by the temperature differences, which create the pressure differences which push the wind. Heck, there’s even a moon wind that blows across the moon’s terminator …
As you can see, the pressure differences in all those cases are NOT causing the temperature differences. Instead,the temperature differences are causing the pressure differences … which is why I said that that winds are generally a function of ∆T. You are correct about ∆P, but you didn’t follow the chain of logic to the next step, to the actual driver of ∆P, which is almost always ∆T.
Best to you, and thanks for the comment,
w.
skepticgonewild March 11, 2018 at 9:49 pm
So does congenital bitterness, so it seems … skeptic, please read the above. Nature, not “citizen science” but nature, has its own rules, rules which you appear to be as innocent of as a newborn babe …
w.
“what I really meant to say”, just doesn’t cut it.
Per Wikipedia:
“Wind is caused by differences in the atmospheric pressure. When a difference in atmospheric pressure exists, air moves from the higher to the lower pressure area, resulting in winds of various speeds. On a rotating planet, air will also be deflected by the Coriolis effect, except exactly on the equator.”
You were correct, Ben. Willis does not take too well to criticism.
skepticgonewild March 11, 2018 at 11:44 pm
Since I never said that, nor anything remotely resembling that, why on earth should I care what it cuts or doesn’t cut?
Don’t try to stuff words in my mouth, skeptic. It just makes you look vindictive, and more to the point, it won’t work.
w.
Instead of saying he was wrong about wind speed and ∆T, he goes for the save and fails. We look at isobaric maps for wind speed analysis, not isothermal.
He just shoots himself in the foot. He can’t admit his error and move along. No. Some long winded explanation with random wind event factoids to make him seem knowledgeable. Like he’s some master sage, passing his profound wisdom to Ben.
People see right through this. You are only fooling yourself.
skepticgonewild March 12, 2018 at 12:46 am
WR: “Skeptic”, you are still going wild. Much too wild.
Weather and climate are about the physical world. For that: leave all personal things out. If there is anything left, you may comment.
Willis Eschenbach March 11, 2018 at 10:57 pm
Thanks for your response.
I brought this up again since this is a widespread misconception.
The higher surface temperatures in the deserts DO expand the column above, but this does NOT result in a lower surface pressure since the weight of the column does not change. Due to the expansion the pressure AT ALTITUDE will become higher than the pressure at the same altitude over eg the ocean.
Now air will move AT ALTITUDE from desert to ocean. Now finally less air above the desert (lower column weight) means lower surface pressure and more air above the ocean (higher column weight) mean higher surface pressure so the air AT THE SURFACE begins to move from the ocean towards the desert.
This mechanism is exactly the same as that for the Hadley circulation, no CB’s at the ITCZ required.
Ben Wouters March 12, 2018 at 2:08 am
Ben, since the end result is that pressure is lower over warm areas and higher over cold areas, I fear that what you describe does NOT contradict what I said. Yes, I left out a bunch of intermediate steps. However, you’ve left out some too—there is additional work expended as the air warms and expands for example, which you didn’t mention. And when the column of air expands, it does NOT just expand vertically as you seem to think, it expands horizontally as well. This is a separate part of the reason low pressure is associated with high temperatures. As usual, everything in climate is complex.
But I was not interested in the precise details of the mechanism. I was pointing at the end result, so I skipped over all the intermediate steps that you correctly list, and simply said that we get lower pressures in warm areas and higher pressures in cold areas. The fact that I left out those intermediate steps, however, does not make my claim a “misconception”.
Best regards,
w.
PS—Cue skepticgonewild for his latest rant on how I’m the devil incarnate or whatever his latest fantasy might be …
The question is one of 8 which the judge asked both parties to answer in the case brought against the oil companies. This judge evidently believes that he will be able to understand enough of the issues involved in the climate debate to determine which side is at fault.
The judge is dreaming but he should stick to the null hypothesis scientific method. If you tell me a pink elephant exists, then it is up to you to prove it. A computer simulation does not do the trick.
There’s a new paper that may be appropriate for understanding why the planet has been warming over the past 3-400 years. It is not a climate paper directly which may be why it avoided censorship from climate gatekeepers. There is a nice chart (figure 2) that shows proxy SSTs along with salinity changes in other proxy data. There is a very nice correlation.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02846-4
In the proxy data we clearly see the LIA, previous warm periods and the modern warming. Here’s an interesting quote:
“However, the proxy-observation match of anomalously fresh SSS [salinity] in the northern Atlantic Ocean bolsters our confidence in implicating a weakened Gulf Stream and reduced surface-ocean circulation as an important dynamical process during the LIA.”
Just looking at the SSTs one could easily surmise that the modern warming “heat” has come from the oceans. The reason the oceans warmed was due to salinity changes. No need to invoke any greenhouse effect.
What drove the salinity changes is still an unanswered question although the paper does mention some possibilities.
Richard, that is an interesting paper, linking changes at a strategic spot in the Gulf of Mexico with changes in the larger world influenced by the Gulf Stream. From the conclusions:
?w=768
“The broad agreement between the analyses supports similar ocean-atmosphere processes on multidecadal-to-centennial timescales, and provides additional evidence of a robust century-scale link between circulation changes in the Atlantic basin and precipitation in the adjacent continents.
Regardless of the specific physical mechanism concerning the onset of the LIA, and whether AMOC changes were linked with circulation changes in the surface ocean, we hypothesize that the reported oscillatory feedback on centennial-time scales involving the surface-circulation in the Atlantic Ocean and Western Hemisphere hydroclimate played an important role in last millennium climate variability and perhaps, over the late Holocene.”
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2018/01/26/oceans-make-climate-sst-sss-and-precipitation-linked/
That the long term climate patterns leading and/or existing during glacial and interglacial periods (let alone what to call the damnable things), is complicated is quite the understatement of the modern age. That AGWs think it is not boggles the mind.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/2015RG000482/asset/rog20091.pdf?v=1&t=jelhxauo&s=568cb6b107f80a3734c6adc399c2af8a3b466f82
Damn. When the singular/plural form of is/are gets too far from the reference, my 62yo mind can’t recall what I went to the kitchen for.
Pamela,
Take it from one who knows, it gets worse, I think. What were we talking about?
Pamela,
The neighbor on the porch is waiting for that cup of sugar…..
Indeed, complicated is the “settled seance” let alone the “sign-tists” clamoring for more gravy!
Good fun with all the pedantry and word play but don’t let that detract from Willis’ main point.
This is a very powerful piece by Willis. His graph shows a very good fit between recent solar radiation and temperature.
That is good enough for me. It’s now up to the CAGW crown to prove that global warming is not due to the sun! Next time someone tells you to prove global warming is not due to CO2, show them this graph.
Let them try and prove a negative for a change!
In your past life you bought snake oil because somebody said something that matched you biased belief system. Worse, Willis didn’t say that internal solar variation causes Earth’s temperature variation. Yet you found something in his post to verify your already biased view.
In research, and especially critique, you MUST shelve your belief and leave no stone unturned to disprove your belief.
Agreed. The message seemed to be “No one knows” yet people grab on a graph and “know”. There is nothing wrong with “We do not know”, though you will most likely be ripped apart by evolutionists, Big Bang theory believers, epidemiologists, etc because they BELIEVE.
Bernard, you seem to have missed the part where I said:
w.
Willis,
No, I did see that.
What I missed was /sarc 🙂
Good post by the way.
I saw it, too, Bernard.
The thing that always pops out is THE SUN! Seems we could assign a weight to heat from the Earth’s core and possible radiative effects of cosmic rays, then the rest is due to the big ball of hot gas we see every day.
The re-radiative heating seems to be the biggest bone of contention. And I already attributed the paranoia of the progressives because carbon dioxide is something that humans can influence ( not CONTROL completely). Therefore, the evil gas is given an undue weight in the regressions and feedback aspects of the poor models that is hard to challenge effectively.
Jez say in’
Gums
Willis,
One of my life’s primary observations is that a most difficult thing for any engineer or scientist (amateur or professional) to admit is “Nobody, including myself, knows.”
Congratulations on showing how it should be done, nobly.
Great article.
Only one thing more difficult than that, Gordon. It’s for a scientist or engineer to say “I was wrong” …
w.
It is not so much the error, as the fact you made it.
I did… to you years ago… and yeah… it was hard. 🙂
As an Engineer, I even had a boss tell me early on never to admit that you didn’t know. It was always better to say “I’m not certain”, and “I’ll look into it further”. I didn’t agree, but had to go along with the theme.
In response to your comment about the jacket. It depends on the source of the heat and the type of jacket whether your skin will become warmer. A fireman wears a jacket because the source of the heat is much hotter than he is. I wear a shirt when I jog at noon in the summer to stay cool because the sun is generating more heat than I am. If I am racing I may not wear a shirt because I am generating more heat. The source of the heat is very important and rarely discussed. When people want temperature sensors moved because they are too close to heat sources, it appears to me they are admitting that humans and land uses are a source of heat. When large cities are warmer than the surrounding areas it is not because of a CO2 jacket. It is because they are generating more heat. Your jacket has big holes that allow most of the infrared leaving earth to escape anyway. That is why we can take infrared pictures of earth from satellites and drones. We just don’t use 15 micron detectors. I cannot even find anyone that makes a 15 micron detector. There is probably such a small amount of energy at that wavelength that actually makes it anywhere that it would be expensive any useless to make that kind of detector except maybe to prove how much back radiation we are getting from CO2 which I don’t think anyone really wants to know.
Good work as always, Willis.
It is long past time for a peer reviewed paper to be published titled “We don’t know, nobody knows”. It will be one of the few that makes scientific sense.
The author states that Dr. Judith Curry’s question was:
After posting an “example” the author states, to wit:
Unless the “reading” observer …… assumes or mentally injects the word(s) “average” or “global average” or “calculated global average” as descriptor(s) of the word “temperature”, …. in both the above statements, …… then neither one is logically or factually correct.
There has been a “pseudo calculated” incremental rise of the near-surface average temperature in the NH’s northern and polar latitudes on Earth, ……. but there has NOT been a “pseudo calculated” incremental rise of the near-surface average temperature in the NH’s southern and tropical latitudes on Earth.
And I specifically stated “pseudo calculated” simply because the afore stated “incremental rise of the near-surface temperature” infers that there has been a new source of heat, …… whereas the literal truth is that the cool/cold fall and wintertime near-surface temperature in the NH’s northern and polar latitudes have not been decreasing as much as they use to, thus resulting in a calculated average increase in temperature without the need of an increase in heat energy.
If the increase in the aforesaid fall and wintertime temperatures are the result of a new or increased heat source …… then shouldn’t, wouldn’t the spring and summertime temperatures be increasing also?
“The cooler ocean produces fewer and later daily clouds … you see the circle, you see the problem.” Sorry W, but I just don’t see any cause/effect failure in that logic.
Thanks, DMacKensie. The failure is that the temperatures cause the changes in the clouds … and the clouds in turn cause the changes in the temperature. Which is cause and which is effect?
w.
I tend to think that whatever might cause an ocean surface temperature increase of say 15C to 1 degree higher, it could be an upwelling warm tropical current, would cause 7% more water vapor above that bit of ocean, which would then cause 7% more cloud on its random journey from sea level to top of troposphere at -55 C, thus reflecting more sunlight back into space, albeit a couple of days later and a couple of hundred miles away from the warm ocean surface that started it all, thus causing surface cooling at some other location. The cause and effect seem clear to me, although I admit if you assume the degree of warming was caused by sunshine to start with, you can more readily convince yourself that a chicken and egg scenario is under way.
w ==> At least you and I agree on something of importance — to whit: Nobody Really Knows.
I once sent Anthony an essay to post titled “What Causes The Temperature?” — which comprised an imaginary conversation with my then-seven-year-old granddaughter — with her playing devil’s advocate to my attempting to explain something as simple as daily temperature variations in her hometown of Ashland, Oregon. My conclusion was to admit, “Gee, we really don’t know what causes the temperature….”
Anthony declined the essay — probably rightfully so, we do so hate to admit that we don’t know, we don’t understand, such seemingly simple things.
“we do so hate to admit that we don’t know, we don’t understand, such seemingly simple things.”
But it is perhaps the best point we can make: ‘Nobody Really Knows’. It means that somebody who says he/she knows, probably will fail when he has to make an exact prediction.
It is easier to explain that there are so many factors with so many releationships and so many unknown data besides (!) the chaotic behaviour of both oceans and atmosphere that no one is able to predict.
Ask ‘predictors’ what the first date in May will be for perfect barbecue weather, with a hundred percent certainty: 25 degrees at 6 o’clock in the evening in place X, no rain, no wind. Who cannot predict such a simple thing, is not able to predict climate because future climate is the average of weather over the next 30 years.
Bravo Willis for your article and comments.
Willis,
A small point:
Dr. Curry did not pose the question you are objecting to. They were asked by US District Court Judge Alsup.
Here is a summary of the questions asked by the judge: http://blogs2.law.columbia.edu/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2018/20180306_docket-317-cv-06011_order.pdf
Will we be able to evaluate Judge Alsup’s probable understanding of each side’s tutorial presentation by seeing how much time passes before his eyes glaze over?
It’s a very frustrating experience when you’ve made the effort to write something interesting, and someone ignores the ideas to nitpick about the language. Happily, the comments got back on track, so I’ll comment on the language question. English is not Latin, or Spanish: the question of number is not one of rigid rules, but of sense. Try this: “A group of teenagers was / were walking along the road.” The head noun is singular, but who cares? A group doesn’t walk, people do, so it’s “were”. “The team has won the championship; the team are very happy.” A team as a unit wins, but it’s the team members who are happy.
“It’s the Sun, stupid.” And the natural variability in natural water vapour heating, if real, DWARFS any CO2 effect even the most biased models can justify for their grants. But there is another effect that varies by +/- 15% pa and is ignored. ++ Ned Nikolov’s planetary science can account for our atmospheric temperature anomaly using graviational pressure and adiabatic heating alone. No greenhouses required, that science is a flawed 19th Century theory that simply doesn’t stand scrutiny using what we now know about planetary atmospheres elsewhere, as he describes it. The science never was settled.
Thank you. Great article. I’m reminded of Hume’s treatment of causality as constant conjunction as we go through life imagining causes. Doubtless an ancient hominid or more recent neanderthal finally made the causal connection between having sex and a birth nine months later and storks no longer got the blame for the pain; it was all the fertility god’s fault.
I don’t know. I’ve been told repeatedly that the science is settled and the debate is over. 😉
I will be talking about my work at the 2018 Sun-Climate Symposium, after which I will report on both.
“LASP SORCE TSI, the CDR, and Historical Solar and TSI data were analyzed to determine that the increasing trend in solar irradiance over 400 years, from the sun’s long low activity of the Maunder Minimum to it’s equally long Modern Maximum 70-year high sunspot activity period, was the primary source of energy responsible for the increase in ocean temperature since the Little Ice Age.
Oceans Warm Under Rising Solar Activity or Insolation over any duration- a week, month, year, solar cycle, or many strong cycles such as during the late 20th century.
Equatorial ocean heat content and temperatures are observed as sensitive to and linear-lagged with daily TSI-insolation variation, from upwelled heat accumulation of sub-surface solar penetration from prior clear sky high insolation as observed in every solar cycle onset El Nino event over solar cycles 19-24, and/or rising or high TSI.
Decadal scale ocean warming and post-solar maximum El Nino events are determined to occur after solar activity rises above a long-term average of 120 sfu F10.7cm, equivalent to 94 v2 SSN and 1361.25 W/m2 SORCE TSI.
HadSST3 is found to be linearly sensitive to the annual change in SORCE TSI at a rate of 0.5°C/W/year.
An empirical F10.7-TSI-SST model was made combining a F10.7cm-SORCE TSI correlation and regression model and the HadSST3-TSI sensitivity factor, predicated on the SWPC Solar Cycle 24 panel 2016 F10.7cm flux forecast.
The author used this model in December of 2015 to uniquely and successfully predict the 2016 HadSST3 temperature fall to within 3% error.
Solar minimum La Nina events result from insufficient TSI over time, driving less equatorial evaporation, less cloud cover and precipitation, causing drought. Drought is now expected for the US 2018-20 from low solar minimum TSI.
The Solar Cycle Influence is the accumulated terrestrial temperature effect from all solar cycle activity, which varies with solar cycle magnetic field evolution, is herein found to be the primary energy source forcing net ocean warming or cooling, tropical evaporation, and subsequent extreme precipitation events or droughts.
Solar warmed oceans drove 20th century climate change, driven by higher than average sunspot cycles and TSI, higher than the determined 1361.25 W/m2 warming level.”
Solar cycle 24 has set a record: the earliest lowest average level of sunspot activity of all 24 cycles.
What are the implications and what are the implications of two such similar solar cycles?
What would happen if your furnace shut down and stayed in its minimal state for several years?
What will happen at the top of the next solar cycle? Does solar science know enough yet to know the timing of a solar maximum? I’d sure like to know. If I find someone else who knows I’ll let you know, otherwise accurate climate forecasting is only as good as our grasp of the strength and timing of the next solar cycle(s).
“Only a fool or a child looks for both cause and effect in the same story” …
=======
hadn’t heard that quote. so many problems in science disappear. with one simple yet profound insight. starting with the chicken and egg question. it cannot be answered because cause and effect are combined in the same story. very interesting.
Ferd, if you don’t know about it, you might be interested in “Granger Causality”. There are three possibilities for two phenomena, A and B:
1) A “Granger-causes” B.
2) B “Granger-causes” A.
3) Both A and B each “Granger-cause” the other one.
From Wiki:
There’s a good description of how to use R to do Granger-tests here
w.
PS—Let me append two relevant quotations:
Billy the Bard of Avon
and
JBS Haldane
ferdberple – March 10, 2018 at 4:20 pm
During my adolescent/teenage years I was probably so gullible as to believe that the “chicken and egg” question could not be answered, …… but that was then, …… this is now, …… to wit:
Samuel
That is a good answer. Under certain directed radiation the reptilian eggs mutated to birds’ eggs. But now with the reptilians: what came first the reptilian or the egg?
Henryp March 11, 2018 at 7:35 am
Samuel
That is a good answer. Under certain directed radiation the reptilian eggs mutated to birds’ eggs. But now with the reptilians: what came first the reptilian or the egg?
I would say the egg since the evolution of the amniote from the amphibians was what allowed reproduction on land without the need to return to water. Occurred about 315 Mya.
Nah. Dont think that is right. Anyway, how would you know? You still believe in man made global warming?
Henryp,
Me thinks that sexual reproduction in multicellular animals always involves an egg (ovum) and the “short” definition of evolution is “descent with modification” meaning random beneficial mutations. Thus, me thinks it is correct to say “the egg always comes first”, …… with one (1) important exception one has to consider, …… to wit:
The Cambrian Explosion, approximately 541 million years ago, was the period when most major animal phyla appeared in the fossil record.
Personally, I do not believe it was possible for evolution via “descent with modification via random mutations in the developing embryo” to produce the extreme variations in the major animal phyla that exists today, thus, it is my learned opinion that “horizontal gene transfer” was primarily responsible for said Cambrian Explosion.
NOTE: Asexual reproduction occurs in multicellular animals via fission, budding, fragmentation, and parthenogenesis via an unfertilized egg.
once the egg or embryo exists, mutations are possible.
When man directs such radiation it is usually chaos. Think of Hiroshima and all the deformed babies that were born,
When God directs the universe to blast earth with some unusual radiation there is usually the sudden development of new species.
Henryp, …. iffen that is what “turns your crank”, …… then so be it.
It is not surprising to me that most religious fanatics have been nurtured to avert their eyes and their mind to the literal facts about the natural world they live in.
Henryp, …. iffen you actually believe that “what man directs is usually chaos”, then consider the fact that 90+-% of the food that you have been eating all of your life is the result of man directing their growth and development.
Henryp, …. was there any new species development after your God directed the universe to blast Sodom and Gomorrah?
Samuel
true.
It seems that you know your bible stories. Why do bad things happen to good people? it is the same thing that Job was wondering about when bad things happened to him. In fact a very bad thing happened to me today. Perhaps God is saying: would you still love me when things are going bad and I take away your most precious possession? [which is in fact what happened to me today]
Samuel,did your faith go on the side line when things were going bad? That is pity.
yet, without faith it is impossible to enter the realm of eternity.
In fact, everything points us that God is not Superman but that He is in fact our Father who wants us to join hands with Him to solve the chaos in the world, as I have proven many times,
e.g
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hsl5zot99abizen/Jesus%20is%20God.DOC?dl=0
chapter 3
Let there be Light
Here ya go, Henryp, …. ponder this excerpted commentary, to wit:
A need for religious beliefs arises.
As the individuals within these groups (of early humans) became more intelligent and knowledgeable of their environment they began to question those things they were subjected to that they didn’t understand, including thunder, lightning, the seasons and their own origins.
And when such questions arose in social groups of humans their leader(s) were queried for an answer to them. But their leaders didn’t have a clue, ….. or no longer had any memories of, …… or no access to any of the alien explorers that originally created humans, ….. to nurture/educate them on their origins, or any historical records that would explain things to them. Therefore, the leaders and/or oldest members of these isolated groups were forced to use their imagination to create acceptable “reasons” for said origins in order to appease the curiosity of the individuals in said group.
Thus, Gods and Goddesses were thought up to “explain the unexplainable”. And the isolation of the different groups of humans resulted in differences in their imagined “reasons”, otherwise known as “religious beliefs”. Our knowledge of said religious beliefs are recorded in both the archeological and historical records of past cultural groups, of which some are the root source of most all present-day Religions.
A per say, ….. Religious belief decent with modifications, ….. from the polytheism worshipping of the past to the monotheism worshipping of the present.
Cheers
So what cane first
The reptilian or the egg?
Neither one.
The prokaryotes came long, long, long before reptilians or eggs.
Henryp, a question for you …….
How much was Jesus Christ paying the scribes and reporters that were following him around 24-7 and writing down EXACTLY whatever he was saying and preaching so that all those “quotes” attributed to Jesus could be included in your Bible when it was 1st published 325 years after JC was crucified?
Proka what?
[Proka dots get paid for their talent, Amateur polka dots merely dance around their circle for the fun of it. .mod]
Sam
I will answer your question with another question. Read the first chapter of my book and i ask you: how is it possible that so many prophecies from the OT came true during JC life on earth and on His way to the cross?
NO, ….. NO, ….. NO, ….. Henryp, …… I answered your questions, …. now you answer my question.
I am not going to play your silly arsed game of “ask-a-question-to-answer-a-question” that you apparently employ to bedazzle, amaze and confuse the learning disabled, miseducated, clueless and/or highly gullible emotionally handicapped individuals that are basically “scared of living and afraid of dying” simply because of their adolescently nurtured beliefs in/of a God of Creation and the Christian religion.
You need to read up on the First Council of Nicea that convened in 325 AD ….. which was where your Biblical contents were 1st being chosen, composed, edited, rewritten, etc, etc,. that resulted in the Bible you have today.
Faith without works is pointless. Perhaps even bad. Matthew 25: judgement day.
Willis, did my fart last week, or last decade lead to global warming?
Mr.Trenberth has noticed that TOA LW radiation to space has increased in the CERES data rather than decreased according to greenhouse theory. He now opines that extra absorption of shortwave makes up the difference.
Dr. Trenberth is correct about the LW, although the trend is not statistically significant.
However, as I pointed out above, the putative “cause” of this or any change in the status quo ante is very difficult to discern.
w.
Applying the Granger-test I discussed above to TOA longwave and surface solar (shortwave) gives us the following results (p-values in bold):
This says that surface net shortwave Granger-causes change in TOA longwave. Here’s the other direction:
And this, in turn, says that TOA upwelling longwave Granger-causes changes in surface shortwave absorption.
This is a clear example of the problem I pointed out in the head post. Rather than just one of them Granger causing the other one and not the opposite, in fact each of them Granger-causes the other one.
w.
Isn’t it more like C(louds) causing both A and B?
The nino effect is more apparent when yearly averages are used rather than subtracting the seasonal component.
The nino effect is generally more pronounced in LW outward flux than SW, and for some reason, the 2015-16 nino did not seem to increase SW reflectance (outward flux).
Since TOA incoming SW is constant to within a fraction of a W/M2, outward SW plus LW flux should equal the net inward flux. Close but no cigar.
Willis Eschenbach: a “circular chain of effects”
WR: A great way to describe shortly what is happening. The quote above surpasses simplistic views like ‘cause and effect’ and ‘feedback or forcing’.
If we would talk about ‘one of many possible chains of effects’ we would even be closer to reality and ‘uncertainty’ would get the place it deserves.
dr curry is one smart cookie
I have great respect for Dr. Judith, she’s one of my heroes … and heroes are in short supply these days.
w.
Willis wrote: Part of the problem is our childlike insistence that there is some kind of simple cause-and-effect going on in the climate. I describe it instead as a “circular chain of effects”.”
There IS a simple cause-and-effect going on in climate, obscured by chaos. The simple cause and effect is due to the law of conservation of energy: Temperature change depends on the net difference between incoming and outgoing energy fluxes across the TOA. You and many other skeptics lose sight of this simplicity by focusing on surface energy balance. (Though today’s alarmists don’t want to admit it, every scientist who considered CO2 before the 1960’s made the same mistake of focusing on the surface energy balance.) Fluid fluxes CHAOTICALLY REDISTRIBUTE heat within the climate system (atmosphere, surface and ocean), but the total amount of heat to be distributed is determined by the TOA imbalance.
For example, evaporation is a complicated phenomena proportional to surface wind speed and undersaturation of the atmosphere immediately above the ocean. Nevertheless, until the latent heat of evaporation is carried aloft, released as precipitation and escapes to space as LWR, increased atmospheric humidity provides a negative feedback that suppresses evaporation. By focusing on the TOA imbalance (and not internal redistribution), one doesn’t need to be concerned with the complicated phenomena of evaporation.
Neither net SURFACE SWR nor net SURFACE SWR+LWR is what one needs to know. When these quantities began to rise around 2013, surface temperature was also rising and negating some of that downward flux. Presumably neither surface LWR nor surface SWR are observed quantities; they are calculated from some model. TSI and albedo ARE observed, but about 1/3 of non-reflected SWR is absorbed between the TOA and the surface.
Chaos is more complicated than a “circular chain of effects”. With chaos, some chains of apparent cause and effect can appear, disappear or change in periodicity, while others may persist.
Frank March 11, 2018 at 8:31 am
Frank, do you see the part in the head post there that says:
What you just posted about me “and many other skeptics” is just such an unsourced uncited unreferenced spitball. It’s a random accusation that you are throwing against the wall to see if it will stick. It won’t.
In fact, I’ve written extensively on the TOA radiation (im)balance here on WUWT, including recently. See e.g. “Temperature and TOA Forcing“. Your statement is either a very stupid mistake caused by not doing your homework before uncapping your electronic pen, or it’s a lie … and being a generous man, I’m provisionally going with the former. My rule of thumb, which I try to follow, is “Never ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity”, so I’ll go with that here.
Folks, don’t even try this kind of “throw it at the wall” nonsense. It will not work with me, and you’ll end up looking as foolish as Frank. QUOTE WHAT IT IS YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!
TIA,
w.
Willis: When I wrote the passage below I didn’t mean any offense, as long what I believe is a mistake that was unintentional:
?w=720&h=682
“You and many other skeptics lose sight of this simplicity by focusing on surface energy balance. (Though today’s alarmists don’t want to admit it, every scientist who considered CO2 before the 1960’s made the same mistake of focusing on the surface energy balance.)”
Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius and Callendar are among the illustrious scientists who made the mistake of focusing on surface energy balance, so it shouldn’t be an insult to be included in their company. Gavin Schmidt and others like to pretend that the scientific basis for the enhanced GHE has been properly understood and roughly approximated for two centuries, but this is false; no one did calculations at the TOA before Manabe and Wetherald in the 1960s. (Nor was the build up of carbon dioxide properly characterized until Keeling). Mis-direction by alarmists has obscured the difficulties of using a surface energy balance perspective and the advantages of the TOA perspective.
The problem with a surface energy balance perspective is that upward convective fluxes can’t be calculated from first principles – and in the long run those fluxes are limited by the outward LWR flux (or the TOA balance if you prefer). I’m somewhat frustrated because we’ve discussed these issues before, but perhaps I have been less clear or persuasive than I thought. (Aren’t we all?) The TOA perspective is far simpler, because all fluxes are radiative and we know how to calculate those (given temperature and composition).
The figure below from the post you linked shows the net TOA imbalance, which you describe below. This older Figure 2 and your words then provide a very different (and more accurate) message about what controls temperature (in the long run after chaos averages out).
“We can also take a look at the amazing stability of the net TOA radiation over time. Figure 2 shows the month-by-month changes in the global net TOA radiation.”
Willis: When one considers a surface energy balance perspective, one quickly runs into the following dilemma. If latent heat flux from the surface rises with warming at the same rate as saturation vapor pressure (7%/K), that would be 7%/K * -80 W/m2 = -5.6 W/m2/K of additional heat that must be radiated from the upper atmosphere to space with each K of surface warming. (If it doesn’t, convection slows, humidity builds up in the lower atmosphere and evaporation slows. The surface and TOA flux change with warming must be the same in the long run: -? W/m2/K.)
However, for a climate sensitivity of 3.7, 1.85. or 1.2 K/doubling, only -1, -2, or -3 W/m2/K of increase net flux across the TOA develops. From a surface energy balance perspective, climate sensitivity depends on how much the hydraulic cycle slows as the planet warms. A warming causes a slowing of the hydraulic cycle???? Very counterintuitive. Convection and precipitation can’t be calculated from first principles and GCMs can be parameterized to give a variety of answers. GCMs predict only a 2%/K increase in precipitation with surface warming and therefore a significant slow down in the hydraulic cycle. With even 1 K of warming, -5.6 W/m2/K is bigger than the forcing from doubled CO2; it is a huge number. All attempts to think simply about surface energy balance flounder on the problems of convection and precipitation related to this huge number. Things are much simpler at the TOA.
The change in the net flux at the TOA with surface warming depends on the change in TOA OLR and reflected SWR (sometimes called OSR). Reflected SWR totals 100 W/m2, so a 1 W/m2/K change in SWR is about a 1%/K change in reflection. That is a big change when you consider that it was 5 K colder at the LGM. So most of the -5.6 W/m2/K calculated above can’t be compensated for by a change in OSR.
Frank March 11, 2018 at 12:54 pm
I didn’t “take offense”, I simply asked you to QUOTE WHATEVER THE HELL IT IS YOU ARE BABBLING ABOUT.
Since you haven’t done so despite two clear requests, I’m sorry, but I have no interest in reading further. Talk to the hand, the head ain’t listening … I’m not interested in your uncited, unreferenced, unquoted babble.
Sorry, but you were warned …
w.
Willis wrote: “Part of the problem is our childlike insistence that there is some kind of simple cause-and-effect going on in the climate. I describe it instead as a “circular chain of effects”.”
?w=557&h=546
I omitted the first quotation mark, but otherwise copied and pasted your words from THIS POST exactly.
Since the Figure below copied from this post includes no information about outgoing heat and refers only to surface fluxes, it only confuses the simple cause-and-effect producing climate change.
Since the third graph in the next Figure below from the post you linked above includes both incoming and outgoing heat as measured at the TOA, it might illustrate the SIMPLE CAUSE of climate change, the imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation. To see how well that explanation works, we would need some temperature data – warming RATE, not just temperature.
Then we could have a conversation about what temperature data to use (most of the heat goes into the ocean, so ARGO would be best), about how chaos, average period, and data limitations might still make it hard to see the simple cause-and-effect that must be controlling our climate: The law of conservation of energy.
Thanks, Frank. I look forward to the results of your analysis, it sounds interesting.
w.
Willis wrote: “Thanks, Frank. I look forward to the results of your analysis, it sounds interesting.”
Touche (and thanks for the reply).
Actually, the analysis is already complete. There is perfect agreement between the imbalance at the TOA and the flux of energy entering the ocean. The instruments on CERES can’t measure in difference between incoming and outgoing radiation fluxes (about 240 W/m2) accurately enough properly quantify the 0.7 W/m2 (0.3% of 240 W/m2) flux of heat that is entering the ocean. So the scientists who compile the CERES EBAG data set have included a fudge factor so that the long term radiative imbalance they report is equal to the flux of heat entering the ocean according to ARGO. It should have an average imbalance of +0.7 W/m2. (I’m not sure which version of he data you plotted in your graph, but it doesn’t look like it is EBAG.
When climate scientists adjust data like this, it is obvious that their experiments/instruments are inadequate for the job. (Actually, the changes in the imbalance are supposed to be useful, even if the absolute magnitude is off.)
Nevertheless, the analysis was complete when the law of conservation of energy was accepted. That is why I said that there is a simple cause and effect going on in climate. Either you believe the law of conservation of energy applies to our climate system or you don’t.
<George Daddis March 10, 2018 at 6:43 am
<I’m afraid you guys missed Santa’s sarcasm. I believe St Nick is repeating Michael Crichton’s <example of reverse logic, i.e. “wet streets cause rain”.
It's because true "street wetting" has not been tried on a large enough scale. Then you will get the Amazon Effect, where it creates Its own weather.
Betty Pfeiffer March 11, 2018 at 1:21 pm
Betty, if you are truly too ignorant to know the difference between a “comment” in Nature and a peer-reviewed “Brief Communications Arising”, you should stop commenting entirely. Google is your friend, look up the instructions for authors on the Nature website.
I will also note that the NEW ideas I presented in the Brief Communications Arising were confirmed nearly a decade later by someone who found the same thing I’d found, had their peer-reviewed ideas published in Nature, and cited my prior work on the question.
So yes, saying “my scientific ideas” is perfectly appropriate. I have over 60 citations in scientific journals to my published scientific ideas, and my scientific work has been quoted from the New York Times to the Sydney Morning Herald … how about you? Were your ideas ever peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals as mine have been? Have you been quoted in major newspapers?
Man, the “Tall Poppy Syndrome” is on display in full force today … sour grapes much?
w.
PS—Just for fun, I did something I almost never do. I googled my name on Google Scholar. It finds 136 results … and for “Betty Pfeiffer”?
… um … er … well … zero.
Medico, cura te ipsum …
Willis says: “Betty, if you are truly too ignorant to know the difference between a “comment” in Nature and a peer-reviewed “Brief Communications Arising”, you should stop commenting entirely.”
…
Betty is correct: “Comments on recent Nature papers may, after peer review, be published online as Brief Communications Arising, usually alongside a Reply from the original Nature authors.” https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/bca
…
That’s from the BCA website buddy……note the word: COMMENTS (first word in sentence.)
Keith, I fear your logic is faulty. Yes, a comment can become a “Brief Communication Arising”, just as a child can become an adult.
However, that doesn’t mean that a BCA is a comment, any more than it means that an adult is a child.
Please note also that my BCA was cited by a later author of a scientific paper on the subject as being correct … but comments are NEVER cited in scientific papers.
What is it with you guys? You spend all your energy trying to drag down successful people. What kind of pathetic life is that? Lead, follow, or get out of the damn way. How many times have YOUR words been peer-reviewed and published in Nature?
w.
Your “comment” was directed at the work of O’Reilly, Alin, Plisnier et al. You critiqued their work. Hardly your scientific ideas. Betty was right, you stretch the truth. She said: “Writing a comment about the work of other scientists is not a “scientific idea.”
Willis says: ” As such, I truly don’t care what you think.”
…
Keith repeats his previous assertion: “I don’t have to ask, you care a lot, proven by your inability to let this go.”
Oh, do come on! Of course it is, what else is science if it isn’t – at the the very least – the sentient* re-cognising sentience!
Willis mentioned one of his heroes and one of mine is Emilie du Châtelet (1706-1749).
Du Châtelet was arguably the leading interpreter of modern physics in Europe as well as a master of mathematics, linguistics; and the art of courtship!
She was at least as well read as her lover Voltaire – correcting him and improving on Newton – essentially through literary review.
Without her we would not have the “squared” in E=MC! There are books about the evolution of that famous equation and it was her interest in “Energy” that connected the work of other scientists, improving on Voltaire’s mv1 to show that multiplying an object’s mass by the square of its velocity (mv2) was a more useful indicator of its energy!
Again to be clear, it was her acute awareness of the current scientific literature of the time that gave the world a breakthrough. And that makes me wonder further about the “acausal” chain of events that Willis has spoken about so intelligently in his post!
*Why? Because logic is akin to sentience it is a-priori of all study or knowledge.
Keith, I feel sorry for you. All you are doing is trying to denigrate the work of another, which is a sick, pathetic way to waste your precious time on this lovely planet. I’m sure that NOTHING I could do would impress you … now ask me if I care.
w.
I am not denigrating your work. What I am doing is pointing out that you are misrepresenting what you actually did. You post: “Nature magazine thought enough of my scientific ideas…” which as Betty said is stretching the truth. You were commenting on the scientific ideas of the original authors. They weren’t your ideas in the first place. Then you get all wound up when someone calls you out puffing up your credentials.
PS, you should also apologize to Betty. When you post: “.. if you are truly too ignorant to know the difference…… you should stop commenting entirely.” you seemed to miss the fact that she was right on the money.
Keith, what I said is that I had my ideas peer-reviewed and published as a “Brief Communications Arising”. There is nothing “puffed up” with that, it is a FACT, a fact that obviously you are doing your pathetic best to minimize and denigrate.
Seriously, is this the best use of your god-given gifts, to try to deny the undeniable fact that my ideas were peer-reviewed and published in Nature, in order to make me look bad?
w.
PS—While I was commenting on the ideas of others, I also added my own ideas, which is why they published it—because it contained new ideas.
From your perspective, I’m sure you’d say that Einstein was just “commenting on the scientific ideas of Newton” … and no, before you start huffing, I’m NOT comparing myself to Einstein. I’m commenting on the inanity of your argument.
Keith Sketchley March 11, 2018 at 4:01 pm
Sorry, I don’t deal with people taking second-hand offense on behalf of someone else. If Betty wants an apology that’s her business, not yours.
When it comes to apologies, my invariable rule is to deal only with the organ-grinder, and never with the monkey.
w.
Wills posts: ” now ask me if I care”
…
I don’t have to ask, you care a lot, proven by your inability to let this go.
Keith Sketchley March 11, 2018 at 4:08 pm
Ah, my dear fellow, I see the problem. You misunderstand what is going on here.
I write for the lurkers. I’m not writing to convince you of anything. You are so sunk in your bitterness and your dislike of me and your bile that you are untouchable. As such, I truly don’t care what you think.
I do care, however, about the opinions of the lurkers, many of whom have not made up their minds. I don’t want them to get infected by your desire to denigrate other peoples’ accomplishments. So I continue to point out that given the choice to lead, follow, or get out of the way, instead you want to bite my ankles. No shame in that, given that it’s as far up as you can reach—I just don’t want others to get fooled into following your unpleasant lead.
And as for me, I have great trust in the lurkers to fairly judge for themselves just who is who here …
I’ll leave it at that and gladly give you the final word … rage on …
w.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/09/the-source-of-the-heat/comment-page-1/#comment-2763011
PS—Just for fun, I did something I almost never do. I googled my name on Google Scholar. It finds 136 results
I don’t believe there is a cure for an ego this big
PS—Just for fun, I did something I almost never do. I googled my name on Google Scholar. It finds 136 results … and for “Betty Pfeiffer”?
… um … er … well … zero.
Wow! Just wow!
Betty. Consider it a badge of honor to be denigrated by an individual whose sole scientific credentials include a BA in psychology and a California Massage Certificate.
Thank you skepticgonewild. Both you and Gibo zeroed in on one of this guy’s defining personality characteristic. I still get a laugh watching him try to make his “comment” in Communications Arising into a major scientific publication.
Betty, I NEVER said it was a “major scientific publication”, that’s your sick fantasy. I said it was a Brief Communication Arising, which it was. I made NO claim further than that, other than to point out that your claim that it was a “comment” was a joke. Her’s a protip for the next time you get confused on the matter—you can distinguish the two because Brief Communications Arising are peer-reviewed, and comments are not. You’re welcome.
Other than that I made no claims as to its importance, that’s just the voices in your head.
Best wishes,
w.
How many times do we have to repeat this Willis? How many times before you “get it?”
…
https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/bca
…
“Comments on recent Nature papers may, after peer review, be published online as Brief Communications Arising, usually alongside a Reply from the original Nature authors.”
…
What is the first word in that quote?
Betty Pfeiffer March 12, 2018 at 9:40 am Edit
Thanks, Betty. It appears you mised what I said above when Keith made the same stupid allegation:
I’d note also that my submission was NEVER a comment, nor was it ever submitted as one. It was submitted and accepted as a Brief Communication Arising, it never went through the comment stage.
Seriously, Betty, you are wasting your talents and your time on this mindless attack. My work speaks for itself, my words can’t make it better, and your words can’t make it worse.
w.
Willis, you are wrong when you say: ” However, that doesn’t mean that a BCA is a comment.” That is all they are.
.
Your “submission” (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02689) was a COMMENT: Arising from: C. M. O’Reilly, S. R. Alin, P. -D. Plisnier, A. S. Cohen & B. A. McKee Nature 424, 766–768 (2003); The authors REPLIED to your comment here; https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02737
…
Betty is corret
Keith Sketchley March 12, 2018 at 10:22 am Edit
Keith, why do you suppose they have different names? Why is one called a “Brief Communications Arising” and the other a comment?
And no, it’s not a brief COMMENT arising, as you claim. Either that is a lie or you cannot read. It is a Brief Communication Arising, viz:
The word “COMMENT” doesn’t appear in there anywhere as you falsely claim.
The differences are clear. Here’s a field guide to assist you in distinguishing them:
A BCA is peer-reviewed. A comment is not.
A BCA is allowed two graphics. A comment is not allowed any graphics
BCAs are limited to 1200 words, and can have up to 15 references. Comments are limited to 300 words.
BCAs require a “competing financial interests statement” and an “author contributions statement”. Comments do not require either
Comments are classed as “Letters to the Editor”, viz:
A BCA, on the other hand, is published in its own section of the magazine, not in “Letters to the Editor”.
Finally, I said my work was submitted as a Brief Communications Arising,which it was. I never said it was a major scientific breakthrough or anything like that, I made no false claims at all. I see that you don’t like and don’t understand that it was a BCA … but that’s what it was, and I never claimed it was more than that.
Like I said … surely you have better things to do than to vainly try to besmirch my name …
w.
Willis, your submission says: “Arising from:…” followed by the article in Nature you are commenting on.
..
Next you say: “it’s not a brief COMMENT arising”…. However you still ignore this: https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/bca WHERE IT SAYS: ““Comments on recent Nature papers may, after peer review, be published online as Brief Communications Arising, usually alongside a Reply from the original Nature authors.”…
…
Now you are ignoring this further on down in the link I provided:
..
“Brief Communications Arising are exceptionally interesting and timely scientific comments and clarifications on original research papers or other peer-reviewed material published in Nature. Comments should ideally be based on knowledge contemporaneous with the original paper, rather than subsequent scientific developments.”
…
The ONLY thing BCA are comments on previously published papers, with a reply from the orginal authors.
…
All you did was comment on C. M. O’Reilly, S. R. Alin, P. -D. Plisnier, et. al’s work, and they replied.
…
PS: ” now ask me if I care” obviously you do.
…
PPS: “I’ll leave it at that and gladly give you the final word.” guess that one is out the window.
[??? .mod]
Betty did not use any ad hominem attacks on Willis, yet Willis calls her ignorant, stupid, mindless, hearing voices in her head, sick.
If Willis can’t take criticism, maybe he should not be posting articles on WUWT.
And furthermore, Willis does NOT have any “scientific work” published.
Willis says: “Comments are limited to 300 words”
No Willis. The 300 word limit is for “Correspondence Items”. These are described as follows:
“These items are ‘letters to the Editor’: short comments on topical issues of public and political interest, anecdotal material, or readers’ reactions to informal material published in Nature (for example, Editorials, News, News Features, Books & Arts reviews and Comment pieces).”
Note that Correspondence pieces are not technical comments on peer-reviewed research papers. Please submit these instead to Brief Communications Arising.”
We have THREE places which define BCA’s as “comments”:
1. “Comments on recent Nature papers may, after peer review, be published online as Brief Communications Arising”
Hello! Comments may be published online as Brief Communications Arising. How much clearer can you get?
2. “Brief Communications Arising are exceptionally interesting and timely scientific comments”
3. “Please submit these [ referring to ‘technical comments on peer-reviewed research papers’ in the previous sentence] instead to Brief Communications Arising”
Willis says: “Comments are classed as “Letters to the Editor”
NO. Nature specifically says Correspondences are classified as Letters to the Editor.
Willis says: “A BCA is peer-reviewed. A comment is not”
WRONG. Naure specifically states, “Correspondence submissions are not usually peer-reviewed and so should not contain primary research data.”
Willis says: “A BCA is allowed two graphics. A comment is not allowed any graphics”
NOT TRUE. Nature says, “Correspondence items should be no longer than 300 words. They do not usually have figures, tables or more than three references.” In Nature, under the BCA tab, BCA submissions are further defined as “manuscripts”, which are then referred to as “comments and replies”.
Willis says: “BCAs require a ‘competing financial interests statement’ and an ‘author contributions statement’. Comments do not require either”
NOT TRUE. As noted above, Nature defines BCA’s as comments. Correspondence items do not require the financial statements and author contribution statement.
Everything Willis has stated about BCA’s not being comments is not true, He has twisted and redefined terms to his own liking.
Years ago I became fascinated with the biology of deep water thermal vents. We know that the Earth has been cooling since it was created but it is not a steady rate of cooling. The amount of cooling fluctuates. We also know the largest geological feature on Earth is the Mid-Ocean ridge where many thermal vents exist. I have seen estimates of one thermal vent for every 2 to 20 kilometers. So I asked myself what effects do all the deepwater thermal vents have on the oceans and are they one mechanism that is cooling the Earth. I tried to communicate with a couple of researchers on the subject and they just blew me off saying there were not enough thermal vents in the deep ocean to matter. Then someone sent me an item anonymously, several scientists were monitor (I believe it) five very large vents in deepwater off the SW tip of South America. The estimated flow rate was several time larger than the Amazon River’s rate of flow. We are talking about vent water temperature upwards of 464 degrees C (867 degrees F.)
Please consider, that an increased surface radiation (as measured by a satellite) can NEVER be due to GHGs! GHGs, so the theory, would block surface emissions and thus increase surface temperatures. In fact surface temperatures would go up just to compensate for the increased opaqueness of the atmosphere with regard to IR. Emissions, ceteris paribus, will stay exactly the same.
Arguing that increased surface emissions would be proving a GHG induced global warming is a logical contradiction on its own.
My suggestion for the Judge would be the following:
If I were the Judge, I’d ask the climate alarmists to show that their claims meet all of those five criteria … good luck with that.
w.
“Nobody knows why the Little Ice Age didn’t turn into a real ice age.” Going on what seems to have happened for the past half a million years, rather than gradual its a very variable climate with a small -0.06° per millennium trend. Why that is the case might be unknown but that we have another 80 000 to get to the minimum was expected.
I can only say there is much about the sun and its emanations we know nothing about, there appears to be a force that enter the earth in the polar regions and most comes out in the tropical regions.
It would appear it stirs up the interior of our world keeping it molten and causing volcanoes and earthquakes, the mood the sun is in seems to create these happenings. History and the solar record tends to correspond, the extra heat or lack of could be from the suns moods and the forces we know very little,or nothing of.
Maybe we need to think outside the square and do much more real science before we can even begin to comprehend how our planets and the sun actually works.
At the surface, the absorbed solar radiation ASRS is balanced by the sum of the net fluxes of LW radiation, latent heat LH, sensible heat SH and ocean heat content OH.
Surface Balance:ASRS= Netflux (LW+LH+SH+OH)
CERES data: OH is balanced , OH=0.
CERES 4.0 trends 2001-2016
ASRS W/m²; 0.70; +/- ;0.22
LW W/m²; 0.12; +/- ;0.38
SH+LH W/m²; 0.58; +/- ;0.65
The unit of the trend is W/m² per Decade
Willis,
As we are talking about concepts has someone ever tried to lay all the known cycles together adding them up like it is done with sound when you make a wave synthesis?
then i am talking about ENSO PDO IOD solar cycles etc etc, in short all cycles that are known and then make a running sum of these factors.
i would not be surprised to see global temperature fit in this ensemble as the outcoming wave synthesis or “sound”
Of course: unlike as in sound creation where you chose waveform and amplitude and frequency, we do not know “the amplitude” of each cycle, to reach the resulting “sound” we see, Let it be that amplitude is the defining factor of your outcome.
but i do somehow believe that as a concept it might reveal something. How the resultant of all these driving forces looks like and how all known drivers do interact leaving room for all what is unknown… I can’t help but it’s the logic i use to approach all these cycles, and it is how i try to see them fit the big picture of the current warm episode.,Perhaps a bizarre concept due to my 24 years as sound engeneer, but when i hear talking about cycles i can’t help to approach the matter as a “sound wave”…..
Thanks, Frank. The problem is that although things like the planets have unvarying cycles, natural climate datasets don’t. Instead they have what I call “pseudocycles”. What happens is that some cycle, say a five year cycle, will appear in the data and last for three or four cycles … and then it will fade away and be replaced by something else, maybe a nine year cycle. That cycle in turn might just last for a couple of cycles, and then it fades away and there is no cycle at all for a while … let me see what I can find to show this …
OK, here’s the Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (CEEMD) analysis of 150 years of El Nino 3.4 data …
Look at empirical mode 5 … you can see how there is a signal, but as I described above, it fades out and changes. A look at a Fourier periodogram shows what is going on …
Checking out empirical mode 5, you can see that there are two different signals going on, one at about 20 years and another at about 30 years.
So I fear that while your idea would work for things with actual cycles, say sound which you use as an example, climate datasets typically don’t have actual cycles, they have pseudocycles which make your idea inoperable.
My best to you,
w.
PS—For more information on CEEMD, see my post on “Noise Assisted Data Analysis” …
w.
I also discuss CEEMD in “CEEMD and Sunspots” …
w.
Without a doubt, theories and speculations what causes rise Earth’s temperatures will continue.
Below, I present my theory on 2 (two) aspects of that issue being hotly discussed both in scientific community and media.
1. Overall rise of Earth temperatures being observed.
The rise in Earth temperatures is caused mainly by an increased absorption of Sun’s radiation by oceans.
Explanation:
The main heat source increasing Earth’s temperatures is the Sun. Oceans cover most of Earth’s surface. Oceans’ albedo is quite low in .06 range. That means that oceans absorb Sun’s heat easily. As a result of heat absorption, water evaporates creating clouds. The clouds created by evaporation have high albedo in .80 range. Therefore clouds have an ability to reflect Sun’s radiation back into space stopping the heat absorption.
Such a powerful mechanism is the main regulator of the Earth temperatures for millions of years.
However, the most recent human activities created a thin layer of oil covering the oceans. That prevents evaporation and disrupts the self-regulating mechanism. Reduced evaporation results with fewer clouds reflecting Sun’s radiation back into space. Oceans absorb more heat and Earth’s temperatures rise.
2. Faster temperatures rise on Earth’s poles
Faster temperatures rise on North and South poles are caused by a significant reduction of ice area covering the poles.
Explanation
Higher temperatures of the oceans surrounding the poles result with melting ice covering both Earth’s poles. As result, an area covered by ice with high albedo (0.50-0.70 range) is being reduced and replaced by ocean water with low albedo 0.06. That, in turn, increases local heat absorption at the much higher rate. Therefore, temperatures on poles rise relatively faster than on the rest of Earth.
Januz
I think your theory is interesting but at the very least you need to have some data to prove it.
My data are showing that arctic warming is due to the magnetic stirrer effect that causes earth’s inner core to move north east.
As an experiment I suggest a test in a swimming pool where
a) a certain amount of heat (J) is applied and the subsequent heat loss (eg delta T) is recorded after a day, 2 days, 3 days etc.
b) a certain amount of heat is applied, a thin oil film is applied and the subsequent heat loss is recorded after similar periods as a)
obviously ambient T must be constant so you have to conduct the experiment in a closed environment where ambient T can be regulated.
Let me know what you find.