Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
It is likely that every year annual variance in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere exceeds the warming effects of human CO2. I can’t prove it, but nobody can disprove it with any reasonable measure of evidence because there is insufficient data or understanding of natural processes. However, it is likely true, and alone destroys the human-caused global warming (AGW) narrative. This is one reason why AGW is the biggest, most pervasive, and longest lasting ‘fake news’ story to date. It is also a ‘deep state’ story created and perpetuated by and through the bureaucracies.
Part of the reason the deception persists is because of the failure of skeptics to explain the scientific problems with the AGW claim in a way people can understand. As I have written, most people, that is the 85% who lack science skills, find the science arguments of most skeptics too arcane.
However, there are problems on both sides of the debate that preclude, or at least seriously limit, the possibility of clear understanding and explanation. It is the lack of data. There is so much speculation without any facts that it is time to consider the lessons of problem solving identified by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle through his detective Sherlock Holmes.
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
It is important to use a fictional source for this reminder because, in the real world, facts and data are no longer a prerequisite. There is virtually no real weather or climate data, yet people on both sides of the debate build computer models and speculate endlessly. They end up doing precisely what Holmes predicted. It is frightening the number of people who are so certain of the AGW hypothesis yet know virtually nothing.
Another story from Holmes identifies two other problems created by the lack of data and speculation. The first is ignoring variables.
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”
Why are the IPCC and proponents of AGW ignoring and even deliberately omitting major variables in the complexity that is weather and climate? How are they allowed to claim the validity of their predictions when virtually everything is omitted?
The second involves getting so wrapped up in the complexity that you ignore the obvious. This story did not originate with Conan Doyle but uses the Sherlock approach of keeping calm and not losing perspective.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go on a camping trip. After a good dinner and a bottle of wine, they retire for the night, and go to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes wakes up and nudges his faithful friend. “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”
“I see millions and millions of stars, Holmes” replies Watson.
“And what do you deduce from that?”
Watson ponders for a minute. “Well, astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful, and that we are a small and insignificant part of the universe.”
What does it tell you, Holmes?
Holmes is silent for a moment. “Watson, you idiot!” he says. “Someone has stolen our tent!”
There is a multitude of variables overlooked or ignored. Almost all are unmeasured or even minimally measured. There is as much synthetic data created by models that is then used as real data in another model. The results of the models show the inbreeding. When you consider even the most extreme claim for the global warming effect of human CO2, it is within the error of the estimate of almost every single variable. Albedo level varies more from year to year creating an energy variation that likely exceeds the estimated impact of human CO2. Go and look at the work of Kukla and Kukla for early awareness of this issue. The work continued on natural variability of albedo due to snow cover. More recently we learned,
Because of its large seasonal variability and distinctive physical properties, snow plays a major role in the climate system through strong positive feedbacks related to albedo [e.g., Groisman et al., 1994a] and other weaker feedbacks related to moisture storage, latent heat, and insulation of the underlying surface [Stieglitz et al., 2003].
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides this assessment of the situation in Assessment Report 5 (p.359).
In addition to reductions in snow cover extent, which will reduce the mean reflectivity of particular regions, the reflectivity (albedo) of the snow itself may also be changing in response to human activities.
How do they know? It is pure speculation. Then they send a very confused message.
However, spatially comprehensive surveys of impurities in Arctic snow in the late 2000s and mid-1980s suggested that impurities decreased between those two periods (Doherty et al., 2010) and hence albedo changes have probably not made a significant contribution to recent reductions in Arctic ice and snow.
The balance of the entry discusses general conditions under the title, “Interactions of Snow within the Cryosphere.” In the climate models chapter, they say,
There is a strong linear correlation between North- ern-Hemisphere spring snow cover extent and annual mean surface air temperature in the models, consistent with available observations. The recent negative trend in spring snow cover is underestimated by the CMIP5 (and CMIP3) models (Derksen and Brown, 2012), which is associated with an underestimate of the boreal land surface warming (Brutel-Vuilmet et al., 2013).
They don’t know and what they use underestimates reality, which they also don’t know. Despite that, in the AR5 Synthesis Report, they state,
There is very high confidence that the extent of Northern Hemisphere snow cover has decreased since the mid-20th century by 1.6 [0.8 to 2.4] % per decade for March and April, and 11.7% per decade for June, over the 1967 to 2012 period.
They fail to tell us how much of that decrease was due to human-caused warming. They can’t do it because they don’t know what the natural variability is for any time prior to satellite data, but even afterward because, as they acknowledge, the full and accurate data is unavailable. Remember, this is just one variable in a myriad of variables.
I will focus on water vapour because it is the least measured, least understood, and yet critical to the entire basis of the warming due to human interference in the greenhouse gas theory. The IPCC was able to essentially ignore it a cause of warming by the definition of climate change that only includes human causes. Ironically, as I will explain, they use and manipulate it to bolster their deception.
The obsessive political objective was to isolate and demonize CO2 from human sources as the cause of global warming. This was primarily achieved by directing the controlled group of unaccountable people, mostly bureaucrats, to only consider human-causes of climate change. That eliminates the Sun because, as King Canute showed, there are things that no leader (person) can control.
Despite this, the IPCC included a category “sun” in their list of “forcing” variables. Why? Humans don’t and can’t vary solar insolation. The most they can argue is that humans add particulates to the atmosphere and that filters insolation. The problem is we have no idea how much particulate matter is in the atmosphere or how it varies over time or space. We saw an example of this when AGW proponents claimed the cooling from 1940 to 1980 was due to increased sulfate levels from humans. How did they know? They simply added enough to the models to approximate the cooling. The problem was after 1980 it began to warm despite no change in the sulfate levels.
The decisions were more difficult with regard to greenhouse gases (GHG) because humans produce all of them in varying quantities. Worse, the one they wanted to demonize was, at the start in the 1980s, less than 4% of the total. Water vapour was 95% of the total and humans added it to the atmosphere. The IPCC acknowledged the human production, but then said the amount was so small relative to the total volume they excluded it from their calculations. They did what early computer models did with evaporation from the oceans. They had no measures so assumed what was called a swamp approach that evaporation was 100 percent all the time.
With CO2 they assumed, incorrectly as the OCO2 satellite later disclosed, that it is evenly distributed throughout the atmosphere. Water vapour varies more in volume and distribution throughout the atmosphere than any other gas. That is why meteorology developed four different measures, mixing ratio, specific humidity, absolute humidity, and relative humidity, to try and understand water vapour and its role in the atmosphere. The last is the best known, but the most meaningless from a scientific perspective. The amount of water vapour in the air can vary from almost zero to about 4%. This raises the question, how much water is in the atmosphere and how does it vary over time?
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has a Water Science School. They say
One estimate of the volume of water in the atmosphere at any one time is about 3,100 cubic miles (mi3) or 12,900 cubic kilometers (km3). That may sound like a lot, but it is only about 0.001 percent of the total Earth’s water volume of about 332,500,000 mi3 (1,385,000,000 km3), as shown in the table below. If all of the water in the atmosphere rained down at once, it would only cover the globe to a depth of 2.5 centimeters, about 1 inch.
Notice how they downplay its atmospheric significance by comparing it to the total water volume on the planet. They are talking about water in its liquid phase, but it is as important as a gas and a solid from a weather perspective. What percentage of water in the atmosphere is in each of the three phases and how does that vary over time? The answer is nobody knows or even has a crude estimate, as the failure of the computer models to simulate clouds and their effect proves. Not only that, but phase changes can occur in large volumes in a matter of seconds.
The IPCC set water vapour aside as a GHG variable assuming it remained constant. They had to do this because they don’t know how much it varies over time. They concentrated on CO2 but soon discovered that there was an upper limit to the warming effect with a CO2 increase. I called this the ‘black paint’ problem. If you want to block light passing through a window apply a layer of paint. It will block most of the light. A second layer only reduces light fractionally. The current level of CO2 is like the one layer of paint. Doubling the level has a fractional effect. A measure of how little is understood about this effect is reflected in the different estimates of the effect (Figure 1). The problem continues as evidenced by the ongoing decline of CO2 climate sensitivity.
Figure 1
The response to this problem was to create a positive feedback. This claimed that a CO2 increase causes a temperature increase, which increases evaporation and more water vapour in the atmosphere. This keeps temperature rising beyond the capability of CO2. I accept the argument that this sounds theoretically sound, but it is not supported by empirical evidence. It does not allow for negative feedback, for example, as more clouds form changing the albedo. Regardless, there is no empirical data and the only data they have is generated in a computer model. The outcome is determined by the data used to construct the model but there is no meaningful data or even good estimates. The sequence then is data is produced using models for which there is no data and the outcome is then used in models for which there is no data. The amount of water vapor increase suddenly becomes important in their narrative. But how much increased evaporation was necessary to create appositive feedback. How can they determine the amount If you don’t know what the original volume was or how it changes over time? Let me put a number on my opening claim. It is probable that even a 1% variation in atmospheric water vapor equals or exceeds all the effects of human sourced CO2.
So, not only have Sherlock and Watson lost their tent, but they are now exposed to precipitation. Unfortunately, the IPCC and their models will not know what form it will take. Sherlock would know why. It is because they have no data and are theorizing and speculating.
Well said , Dr Ball .
Huh. Just because something is said well doesn’t make it true or reasonable.
“It is likely that every year annual variance in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere exceeds the warming effects of human CO2. SO WHAT? EVEN IF THIS WERE TRUE, IT’S NORMAL BACKGROUND VARIATION OVERLAID BY AGW I can’t prove it, but nobody can disprove it with any reasonable measure of evidence because there is insufficient data or understanding of natural processes. However, it is likely true, CAN’T PROVE IT, BUT IT’S LIKELY? WELL, THIS IS OPINION, AFTER ALL! and alone destroys the human-caused global warming (AGW) narrative. UH-UH. SORRY, TIM! This is one reason why AGW is the biggest, most pervasive, and longest lasting ‘fake news’ story to date. YEAH, ABOUT 125 YEARS OF FAKE NEWS. It is also a ‘deep state’ story created and perpetuated by and through the bureaucracies. I SEE. THE DEEP STATE INFILTRATED EXXON RESEARCH LABS WAY BACK IN THE 1970s, EH? AND HAS REACHED EVERY SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION IN THE WORLD? THAT’S A PRETTY WELL-ORGANIZED CAMPAIGN! UM, HATE TO ASK, BUT IS THERE ANY EVIDENCE TO BACK UP THIS CLAIM? ANYTHING AT ALL?
Oh, but Dr. Ball is a SCIENTIST!
“However, there are problems on both sides of the debate that preclude, or at least seriously limit, the possibility of clear understanding and explanation. It is the lack of data.”
Wait! But you are a scientist, Dr. Ball! Why aren’t you award of the tremendous amount of data supporting AGW?
Hmm. Maybe this sheds some light…
““It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
I’m afraid Dr. Tim has gotten science mixed up with fictional detective work! That explains a lot. Poor Dr. Ball forgot that experimental design means having a hypothesis to test before getting (or assembling) the data. Having data and trying to read something from it is NOT good science.
“Why are the IPCC and proponents of AGW ignoring and even deliberately omitting major variables in the complexity that is weather and climate? ”
Well, this is a silly questions, since they are not.
I think Dr. Ball may have to do a little more research before he writes the next article. He doesn’t seem to have a handle on the science. Better luck next time, Dr. Ball!
(I know, this post is catty and not at all nice, but I get really sick of this BS being promoted here. It’s assumptions, assertions, blame, vilification, and no evidence. Pure prop’ganda. This is the kind of crap that got us in this mess, the kind of stuff that has misled millions of intelligent, reasonable people. How much was Ball paid for this, I wonder? —Do you think that’s an insult? Unreasonable? I wish it were. Please, be skeptical! Of what I say, what Ball says, what everyone says! Demand evidence!)
“I know, this post is catty and not at all nice, but I get really sick of this BS being promoted here.”
and From Kristi Silber
May 5, 2018 at 2:15 pm
” It’s not a competition for who can do the most good, it’s a battle of who’s most self-righteous.”
OK. You ‘Win’. Again.
A catty series of comments indeed. A case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Kristi I cant prove that a pink elephant doesnt exist. If you say that there is a pink elephant in the room that could crush us all, it is up to you to prove that the pink elephant exists. I cant prove that a pink elephant doesnt exist. All Dr, Ball was saying is that there is no evidence for CAGW and extremely flimsy evidence that there is AGW. You are arguing to impose thousands of dollars on each family (in Canada this is happening along with many other countries) in carbon taxes and carbon trading. All these taxes will put the price of everything especially the price of energy to heat homes and thus you will be forcing the poor people to choose between food or heat. Already some older pensioners have died in places like England and Scotland becuse of this forced choice. We skeptics are saying that because the evidence is not there then you alarmists are in effect murderers.
dr ball is a hero. he’s been at this about as long as it’s been going on
you, kristi, are a noob. you may like to play but you are completely unqualified.
maybe you should start your acquaintance with the topic of CAGW by reading the climategate emails – all of them.
First gather the data. After that make your hypotheses. Then test them. you’ve got things out of order.
imagine if i encouraged you to persist in your foolishness.
that’s something one does to enemies. it’s how you can tell you need some real friends.
” … I know, this post is catty and not at all nice, … ”
—-
It’s ok Kristi, we’re slowly getting used to your humor, and I for one think you’re absolutely hillarious, but you may need to use /s, or many people won’t get you. Good job, cheers.
Please let Griff back. He was funny.
Want some evidence of the solar cycle influence on climate, on CO2? Want to understand the how’s and why’s of where water vapor (WV) comes from? All you have to do is see with your own eyes that ocean heat content (OHC) is very responsive to total solar irradiance (TSI) throughout the solar cycle, and the rest of the climate follows OHC. The ocean temperature rises incrementally via the very small changes in TSI.
?dl=0
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The most recent top of solar cycle TSI accumulation driven 2015/16 El Nino:
The last four solar cycles including from Fig 17, with climate data record TSI in thick dark red:
CO2 doesn’t drive the climate, the sun drives the climate.
Ah yes, the old:
He’s wrong because all the guys I consider to be right, disagree with him.
That CO2 can trap heat is not controversial. That it can trap enough heat to cause problems to the environment or to man, is. Outside the GCM’s, which can’t accurately hindcast, there is no evidence that CO2 is a problem.
The fact remains that in the past CO2 levels have been well above 5000ppm, and the earth not only survived, it thrived.
Kristi, you’re quite infuriating. Dr. Ball is merely pointing out who has the burden of proof, so to speak, that AGW (and also CAGW, if you assert that is happening) is due more to CO2 than to H2O, and CO2 more than aerosols, and CO2 more than albedo, and perhaps most unsettling (for you) CO2 more than unknown factors or combined influences.
The ice core data suggests that CO2 does not drive glacial to inter-glacial warming and cooling, but merely follows some natural cause. The science on THAT natural cause is mostly thought related to Milankovic cycles and their attendant albedo shifts. There is actual evidence that shows cooling begins and then CO2 peaks. That shouldn’t happen with the AGW hypothesis. So your “consensus” must explain this obvious AGW contradiction in the ice core data. And you are also now faced with disproving that the CAGW consensus is anything more than an engineered exercise in rent-seeking.
I demand evidence in the form of empirical data. I ignore the data supporting the AGW claim because it is all the product of computer models.
It’s called projection!
You accuse Dr. Ball of everything you just spouted in your impolite internet shouting.
Your post is not just catty, it is egregiously wrong.
You are correct, your post is not nice at all. In fact it is very far from nice; especially as you use false accusations for your false outrage.
Propaganda, is that willful blindness and utter CAGW religious belief you impose on everybody else.
Nor is anyone, let alone Earth in any sort of “mess”; except for those CAGW religion advocates who accept every ridiculous AGW claim and prophecy while demonizing legitimate questions, criticisms and skeptics.
Thirty years have passed since Hansen made his emotional CO2 doom predictions and claims. Claims, busted!
Since then, every possible result, doom, absurd claim has been attributed to CO2; all busted or well on their way to busted.
No proofs have been offered for demonizing CO2.
Every observable effect of increased CO2 is positive.
And Dr. Ball didn’t even raise the issue that water, H₂O, is infra red active in all three physical states.
Water, H₂O, is the proverbial whale in the atmosphere where CO2 is a flea.
It’s assumptions, assertions, blame, vilification, and no evidence. Pure prop’ganda. This is the kind of crap that got us in this mess, the kind of stuff that has misled millions of intelligent, reasonable people.
Gee Kristi–I think you just (unintentionally) described the entire warmist side of the debate.
“Oh, but Dr. Ball is a SCIENTIST!”
“We’ve got 25 years invested in this data. Why should I give it to you when your aim is to find something wrong with it?” – Dr. Phil Jones, CRU UEA
I’d say Dr. Ball is much more of a scientist than Phil Jones and all his pals will ever be.
You were reading the statement too shallowly, K.
The statement was NOT merely referring to the structural composition and flow of language, but to the content of its reasonable nature, as well. Something can be “well said” as a reasonable statement, but a total grammatical mess. Something also can be well said grammatically AND be “well said” reasonably. THIS is the deeper reading of what the statement says, and your attempt at childish linguistic kung fu is vapid.
The whole reason I don’t give evidence is because it’s futile. There’s always some argument about scientists being corrupt, the data are invalid, on and on.
There can be no discussion or debate if one side refuses to believe the evidence. The fact that many of you claim the only evidence is from models is illustrative of the fact that you simply deny any other evidence. That’s why people call you deniers. It’s nothing to do with the Holocaust.
Perhaps some of you genuinely don’t know that there is ample evidence apart from models. Could that be? I suppose you’ve been led to believe that’s all there is.
If any of you is interested in knowing my views about global warming and science, they are well-represented here. It is quite long, and very informal: it’s an interview of “potholer54” by “Academic Agent,” a conservative who asks many questions passed on by skeptics. It’s the kind of thing you can listen to while doing the chores.
If you want some evidence for AGW, this is very good,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBF6F4Bi6Sg
The references are given at the end. Potholer is a science journalist, and all about tracking down original research
ALAN TOMALTY:
“You are arguing to impose thousands of dollars on each family (in Canada this is happening along with many other countries) in carbon taxes and carbon trading.”
You are apparently confusing me with someone else – or making an erroneous assumption about me. This is something that happens constantly around here. When people make so many errors about me, they can make errors about anything, since it shows they have no qualms about judging from ignorance.
MICKEY RENO
“The ice core data suggests that CO2 does not drive glacial to inter-glacial warming and cooling, but merely follows some natural cause. The science on THAT natural cause is mostly thought related to Milankovic cycles and their attendant albedo shifts. There is actual evidence that shows cooling begins and then CO2 peaks. That shouldn’t happen with the AGW hypothesis.”
Watch this
TIM BALL
“I demand evidence in the form of empirical data. I ignore the data supporting the AGW claim because it is all the product of computer models.”
I honestly don’t understand how you could believe that the only evidence is from models, because that clearly isn’t the case, and you should know better. If you ignore all data supporting AGW, then you have no basis for deciding what is true. That’s not skepticism. It’s not rational. And it’s certainly not scientific.
“Evidence for climate change without models or IPCC ” (Pretty basic. There’s even a little bit of you in here.)
MALFEER,
“First gather the data. After that make your hypotheses. Then test them. you’ve got things out of order.” No, you have it wrong. That makes no sense at all, at least for classic experimental method.. One has to have a hypothesis in order to design one’s experiment. Based on that design it is determined what data are needed. Then you get the data. How would you know what data you needed without a hypothesis?
BOB WEBER
The sun is a factor, but doesn’t account for the current warming. If you really want evidence, I’ll provide it.
Whoops. Got the links wrong. The first one was supposed to be this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNt2nbgRTQc
And I posted one twice. Sorry.
[SNIP Fake name to hide banned commenter Warren L. Beeton -mod]
Kristi, you are truly bizarre. Back several years ago I was asked to attend several public hearings in our state being held by Congress and our state Legislature. They brought along one of the climate modelers from Boulder, Colorado. After some basic discussion and his telling us we were all going to die the chairperson opened the floor to question. It ended in a debate between myself and the modeler. I dealt with models though not specifically climate models the last half of my career. He finally admitted after some stammering all of what Dr. Ball stated above. The modeler stated that the models did not model water vapor well at all, nor the interface between the oceans and the atmosphere. Why? Primarily due to the lack of data and the extreme complexity of the processes involved, most of which were/ are unknown. You obviously no nothing about climate, computer models being used, and most of all the extreme complexity of the system. As the modeler stated, we have never attempted to model a system with more complexity, not even nuclear and hydrogen explosions which is why supercomputers were originally invented.
Edwin,
And it’s why NCAR is in Boulder, which is where the first Cray supercomputers were located.
The US should never, ever have given “climate scientists” access to supercomputers. GIGO modeling with “parameterization” and pretend assumptions is a lot easier than actually collecting data and trying to understand complex natural processes.
Kristi doesn’t bother giving data because every time she does, somebody finds problems with it.
Which also fits in with her belief that it is dangerous to show your data to non-believers.
Kristi, I’ve always known that your grasp of science was weak, but if CO2 doesn’t lead temperature, then it is impossible for CO2 to be the cause of the temperature rise.
ERGO, you have just proven that there is nothing to worry about regarding increases in CO2 levels.
Thank you for playing.
I listened to parts of the battery speech. If true then it will be a game changer and will save solar and winds’ bacon. BUT WHERE IS THIS BATTERY? Is it in production yet? However the solar and wind part of the green equation should not have been started until the battery was ready. Billions of dollars have been spent needlessly because of that. The greenies forgot that you need to take the word “intermittent ” out of the picture before things make sense economically. If the battery works then the word “intermittent” is taken out but not unless / before it works. However this has got nothing to do with CAGW. Kristi If you are still claiming that CAGW is valid then I pity you and all the other CAGW alarmists.
@ Kristi,
” … There can be no discussion or debate if one side refuses to believe the evidence. …”
—-
Kristi, the beauty of actual evidence is that your avid “belief” is not needed, not necessary, nor justified, or desirable.
Only religions and fakery requires belief.
This is why actual SCIENCE, as an imperfect cognitive process of comprehension of actuality, does not approximate to a belief system, nor promote “world-views”, nor try to ‘convert’ people to belief in ideas, nor utilise crass propaganda theme to promote BELIEF, instead of that on-going cognitive process, that specifically rejects beliefs, and instead relies on the OBSERVATION, to speak for itself.
Whatever you are trained as Kristi you exhibit no commitment at all to observational evidence and its implications.
But you do display a quite childish ‘commitment’ to BELIEF in entirely imaginary mental figments, that you’ve mostly adopted secondhand from others, as a preferred quasi-religious world-view of some unobserved fantasy-planet.
Evidence and Belief are at opposing ends of a spectrum that spans from:
Observable Repeatable Physical Actualities
VERSES
Never Observed Non-Producablle Nebulous Conceptual Fantasies ⬅ (Kristi-you are here)
But you think you’ll come in here to school actual scientists via advocating belief? 🌈
Grow up, Kristi.
One word for Kristi — intransigent.
‘Why aren’t you award of the tremendous amount of data supporting AGW?’
Gee, Kristi – did Dr. Ball say something that contradicted your press releases?
See, the thing is, environmentalism WAS in fact a lever to push globalist political agenda as far back as the sixties and seventies – a guy named Maurice Strong at the UN openly said so… AND he recruited guys like James Hanson (remember that name?), and Al Gore (how ’bout THAT one). This has been a culture that has been growing and metastasizing for generations (that’s how we get to people like you).
And believe me, WE here are every bit as sick of YOUR by-rote BS, with your standardized pseudo self-righteousness, with apparently not even a whiff of historical context, but loaded down with pre-determined opinions, an absolute inability to learn, and too blindly pig-headed to even question your viewpoints.
‘How much was Ball paid for this?’
Kristi – why don’t you try and follow the money pushing the AGW crap. That’s BILLIONS. It’s an entire industry.
But you are right about one thing – it IS a catty post.
I think we’re finally reaching your core personality.
Felix:
“GIGO modeling with “parameterization” and pretend assumptions is a lot easier than actually collecting data and trying to understand complex natural processes”
What would you then do with the data to try to understand it? How do you represent the interaction of processes, since that is key to understanding them?
Climate is about multiple interactions at once. For example, most climate scientists think that the Sun, CO2 and aerosols are all important drivers of climate change, but it’s very hard to represent all the ways they interact on a graph. Then, of course, there’s the Earth to think of, with its oceans and clouds and feedbacks and so forth. So, when we have all this data, as we now do, about present and past TSI, atmospheric composition, temperature, pressure and humidity; oceanic temperature, chemistry and patterns of flow; cryosphere variables; land variables… apparently we will soon have satellite imaging to estimate rates of tree growth.
So, it seems to me they did in fact get some data, and are always getting more. What data do you think they need, Felix? And what should they do with it?
Anyone else? If scientists are concerned about the future, how should they try to understand climate and get an idea of where it’s headed?
Of course, the other way is to look at the past, and indeed that has been thoroughly examined, too. Again, the sun, CO2 and aerosol levels seem to together explain much of the past temperature record, as long as it’s taken into account that, above and beyond the solar cycles, the sun has been slowly warming, which is why the past CO2 levels could be in the 1000s without everything burning to a crisp. But in any case it involves taking multiple variables into account, so what do you do with it?
From dictionary.com: ‘model. (mŏd’l) A systematic description of an object or phenomenon that shares important characteristics with the object or phenomenon. Scientific models can be material, visual, mathematical, or computational and are often used in the construction of scientific theories.”
Every mathematical representation of data sampling a physical metric is a model (as is math representing theoretical systems). Common multivariate analytical tools are often called “models” in the literature.
It becomes rather a problem: how do we make use of data we have if modeling is not valid?
Maybe we don’t. Maybe we just wait and see what happens. That’s another option. Doing nothing “is a lot easier than actually collecting data and trying to understand complex natural processes”
He has written extensively on all of your criticisms. And, he is a veteran historical climatologists, probably one of the few who has actually been involved in academia through the evolution of “climate change” activism, which includes the global cooling alarm and warming alarm.
“failure of skeptics to explain the scientific problems with the AGW claim in a way people can understand” How true. Consider what the alarmist have -TELEVISION! Scenes of flood and hurricane devastation, It’s practically a daily occurrence (on TV) – how can you not believe that global warming is not upon us? The skeptics argument against such alarmism is graphs and other arcane scientific arguments (nobody understands). They should come up with what Dr. William Harper did with one of his talks on carbon dioxide – he had an instrument that measured the carbon dioxide in the room where he gave his talk. It showed, I think, 1,700 ppm. Such demonstration easily wins over ordinary folks to an argument on safe levels of CO2.
Office environments of CO2 have levels of 600ppm to 800ppm. A crowded auditorium may range from 900ppm to 1200ppm or higher depending on the amount of fresh air circulation. Dangerous levels are upwards of 15000 ppm.
Good point Alan
It is why we can grow low light plants in our offices
Gums sends….
I attempted to clarify some of the climate argument with this plain language essay. Be warned, it does not deny human-caused climate change. It does deny the existence of serious consequences to date and the likelihood of disaster in the future. It also expresses skepticism about the role of CO2.
https://goo.gl/9Ns3ux
“A crowded auditorium may range from 900ppm to 1200ppm or higher depending on the amount of fresh air circulation.”
Or on the level of hot air bloviation by the speaker(s).
A very good point. Arrhenius discarded the effects of water in his study because those data didn’t support his conclusion. Everyone seems to forget that the combustion of hydrocarbons release oxides of carbons and of hydrogen. Here we are 130 years later and no one yet seems to know what to do with the water.
That’s not true. His consideration and analysis of water vapor was very methodical but of course he had to make assumptions. http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
No.
He discounted the effects of water in his study because he thought that this oceanic planet was already saturated and water vapour changes would have no further effects )it’s exponential).
Now, I happen to disagree with him. I think that the water vapour is transient in its presence but not its magnitude. Lots can get up there.
Still, his argument was reasonable.
Do not disparage the great scientist.
Those are all good points.
However, I have found that those that drink the kool-aid do not really want to listen. Even when you present the facts they ignore them.
Another significant consideration is that the AGW proponents control most of the institutions and ignore any concerns their members have,
In Manitoba both the U of Manitoba and the U of Winnipeg anything to do with climate is controlled by the CAGW proponents. We see an endless spewing out of nonsense being sent out to the media.
I agree with your assessment. The Global warming crowd are leftists/democrats for the most part. For the most part the media supports all things leftist/democrat, education system supports all things leftist/democrat, and Hollywood supports all things leftist/democrat. They also try to destroy anything that is conservative. If you are not educated and do not have an inquisitive mind it will never matter what the skeptics come up with as an argument. It will never be treated as anything but conspiratorial and non main stream by the above sources. Dismissed out of hand. Conservative messages will always be considered out of main stream thinking and most will never argue with that. Conservatism is not cool, liberalism is.
You’re so right. Why is the left considered so chic and hip? I’ve never understood why lefties carry about themselves an air of superiority when many of them have poor aptitudes in the STEM areas. Instead they spout a Marxist Philosophy as their intellectual attainment, making themselves so much more erudite than those to the right of them … and of course those to the right do little to support their much more rational philosophies — except for a few radio talk-show hosts.
Conservatism has always been identified with the past and therefore given ownership of the structure and actions that created our present. Once the present is determined to be problematic, those who created it are guilty. The path forward is then open to the progressives.
The flaw in this reasoning is that progressivism has been in the ascendant since at least the 1960’s. This is not the world that conservatism built. It is the world that progressivism built.
There were certainly things that needed changing in the 60’s but in many respects the solutions just created different problems.
The idea, in particular, that government employed professionals could convert vast sums of money into meaningful help for individual people in need and eliminate the need for people to help their friends, family and neighbours was insidious and wrong headed.
Too few act locally now. Too many say, “the government should do something about that”.
Lord Tim…”someone has stolen our tent”…now how to get the coffee off the computer keyboard before it.,m09-5-027560984u
Never mind.
Mike
Excellent article and it makes the mind boggle.
Didn’t NASA measure water vapour in the atmosphere for 20 years and couldnt find any increase so Hansen then shut the program down in 2009?
No. You keep saying this in various forms, with various dates, but never any specifics. It is true that NASA NVAP started in 2008, and continues.
Nick…..rather than just making a “drive-by” comment, can u help and outline the specifics for all of us here, please? I haven’t seen much change, if any, in the weather (or the climate) since I was a kid but most objective folks seem to think it’s getting better for humans. And that can only be a good thing, don’t you think?
“can u help and outline the specifics “
I can’t outline the specifics of this one. I don’t know of any. I don’t believe Hansen was ever in charge of a water vapor measurement project. NVAP has had other phases, but new instrumentation became available in 2008. People who want to make accusations (“shut down the program”) should provide such specifics.
Nick if you bothered to read the page where you sent me to, You will see that the last year that data is available is 2009. Shame on you Nick Shame Shame Shame. The real facts are that Hansen after not getting any readings of increases in world wide water vapour data, decided to commission a study as to why .
https://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/GUIDE/campaign_documents/nvap_project.html
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2012GL052094
So he had some top PhDs do an expensive study of the non problem . The study findings were they couldnt say one way or the other whether water vapour was increasing or not. This was actually a good result for Hansen because it left the door open for alarmists to suppose that water vapour coul be increasing. In any case Hansen wasnt taking any chances that a null result would bring down his house of cards. He renamed the program to NVAP and shut down the satellite data collection as of 2009. Worse than that
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/vapor_warming.html
NASA tried to say that the above study was proof of increased water vapour. However if you read the abstract carefully you will soon realize that what they did was take single time measurements of the water vapour and then using computer models ran simulations that tried to prove a feedback. Hansen has to be the sleaziest scientist in the history of mankind even sleazier than Mann.
It seems that Hansens successor Mr Gavin (Search for Aliens) Schmidt hasnt given up on the search for increased water vapour.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/nasa-university-saskatchewan-water-vapour-1.4208059
“Its mission? To test — alongside the Canadian Space Agency, York University, a private company, ABB, and none other than NASA — the prototype of a satellite device that could one day be launched into space to measure the presence of water vapours in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.”
I predict that if this new satallite ever gets off the ground, the results will eventually get qietly shelved when they realize that they cant show an increase OR Mr Gavin (Search for Aliens) Schmidt might decide to fake the data like he has with ground temperatures and claim victory over that stubborn adversary Mr WATER VAPOUR.
Alan,
“The real facts are that Hansen after not getting any readings of increases in world wide water vapour data, decided to commission a study as to why .”
Neither of the links you give mentions Hansen. They describe NVAP at NASA Langley, in Virginia. Hansen was at NASA GISS, in NYC, and had no responsibility for any programs like this.
Your second link is a 2012 paper. It says in the abstract
“Under the NASA Making Earth Science Data Records for Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program, NVAP is being reprocessed and extended, increasing its 14 year coverage to include 22 years of data. The NVAP MEaSUREs (NVAP‐M) dataset is geared towards varied user needs, and biases in the original dataset caused by algorithm and input changes were removed. “
This is not saying that the program has been closed. It’s saying that it takes time to process the data, and they are increasing their efforts.
And your third link, which is supposed to say something about Gavin Schmidt, doesn’t mention him either. In fact, despite all your insinuation, you haven’t shown a single link of anyone at GISS to these wv programs.
Read. The results were not good for alarm, so they’re still trying to justify adjustments that would make it so.
One minor problem, water vapour is not the same as “Cloud Cover”, which has a far larger affect than simple absorption of outgoing radiation, as it involves the much higher energy Solar Radiation.
Nick, are there any studies showing that the feedback loop via water vapor is happening? Ie that water vapor is rising?
See above. Also Anthony Watts had a post article a couple of years ago about NO increase
michel,
“Nick, are there any studies showing that the feedback loop via water vapor is happening? Ie that water vapor is rising?”
Yes. The AR5 deals with this in Sec 2.5. In 2.5.4 they say:
“In good agreement with previous analysis from Dai (2006), Willett et al. (2008) show widespread increasing specific humidity across the globe from the homogenized gridded monthly mean anomaly product Had- CRUH (1973–2003). Both Dai and HadCRUH products that are blended land and ocean data products end in 2003 but HadISDH (1973–2012) (Willett et al., 2013) and the NOCS product (Berry and Kent, 2009) are available over the land and ocean respectively through 2012. There are some small isolated but coherent areas of drying over some of the more arid land regions (Figure 2.30a). Moistening is largest in the tropics and in the extratropics during summer over both land and ocean. Large uncertainty remains over the SH where data are sparse. Global specific humidity is sensitive to large-scale phenomena such as ENSO (Figure 2.30b; Box 2.5). It is strongly correlated with land surface temperature averages over the 23 Giorgi and Francisco (2000) regions for the period 1973–1999 and exhibits increases mostly at or above the increase expected from the Clausius–Clapeyron relation (about 7% °C–1; Annex III: Glossary) with high confidence (Willett et al., 2010). Land surface humidity trends are similar in ERA-Interim to observed estimates of homogeneity-adjusted data sets (Simmons et al., 2010; Figure 2.30b).”
And Sec 2.5.5 on Troposphere humidity, from the summary (after much detail):
“In summary, radiosonde, GPS and satellite observations of tropospheric water vapour indicate very likely increases at near global scales since the 1970s occurring at a rate that is generally consistent with the Clausius-Clapeyron relation (about 7% per degree Celsius) and the observed increase in atmospheric temperature. Significant trends in tropospheric relative humidity at large spatial scales have not been observed, with the exception of near-surface air over land where relative humidity has decreased in recent years (Section 2.5.5).”
Nick relayed this
“In summary, radiosonde, GPS and satellite observations of tropospheric water vapour indicate very likely increases at near global scales since the 1970s”
This is a farce sentence. When you use the words “very likely” then that means you dont know. What they are actually saying is that the computer models think they know. And the observations they are taking about and that are fed into the computer models are not water vapour observations in the atmosphere. They are soil moisture guesstimates from the ERA reanalysis project which provides fake data to the computer models. I use the term fake data because there are no world wide measurements of soil moisture. The ERA reanalysis site gives 3 BIG caveats about using their data. Reanalysis data is exactly that. Homogenized data that is so pasturized as to be in reality junk data.
This is an interesting thread for me as it shows how scientists can get it wrong on the “Where is my tent ? theme.
Anyone looking at their kettle knows that when you turn up the heat it boils faster. So too with the Hydro/Rankine Cycle. It does not need to use more water. In fact steam plants recirculate the same water in their systems. Hence best not to look for an increase in atmospheric water content. Best look at increases in precipitation/evaporation rates.
OK. If this is done there will be leads and lags and a great deal of noise in it and I expect the CO2 signal will be lost in its insignificance; but that is just my sceptical opinion. The point being, however, is that NASA should have known better.
There have been no increases in precipitation rates that I am aware of.
Alan: This is probably true as the large energy transfers ( circa 680 WattHrs per Kilogram of water) would flood out any minor variations in energy inputs such as the purported CO2 greenhouse Effect etc.
Incidentally, while still on the missing tent theme I wonder whether the IPCC has noticed that gaseous water is lighter than dry air. The implications of this are considerable where the climate is concerned; but of course, doesn’t fit very well in a purely radiative scenario.
Alan,
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MYDAL2_M_SKY_WV
““In summary, radiosonde, GPS and satellite observations of tropospheric water vapour indicate very likely increases at near global scales since the 1970s”
“This is a farce sentence. When you use the words “very likely” then that means you dont know. What they are actually saying is that the computer models think they know. And the observations they are taking about and that are fed into the computer models are not water vapour observations in the atmosphere. ”
Science “talks” in terms of probabilities, not “proof.” “Very likely” in the IPCC is assigned a specific probability. Does that make the sentence make more sense? There is nothing wrong with it in scientific terms.
Where did you hear that data for atmospheric water vapor used in models is actually soil moisture content? I’m just curious, it’s kind of interesting, and I’d like to follow up on it.
Nick the fact remains that there is no water vapour data after 2009. I sure would like to see some. One would think that if they have a working program to measure water vapour data, that they would say so and give data for the years between 2009 and now. However my last link proves that they have no data after 2009.
Excellent post. Since “[the ubiquitous] they don’t know what the natural variability is,” there is no way of knowing whether CO2 feedback is positive or negative. Efforts to refine climate sensitivity is …just not scientific. With much respect, I give Dr. Judith Curry’s papers on climate sensitivity a pass. As a ”lukewarmer,” if she doesn’t play the game she doesn’t get a seat at the table and she is an important and respected player.
Dr. Ball, I look forward to your posts…I truly enjoy reading them….thank you
Dittos!
Likewise.
Water and Ice are controlling the temperature at their air interface. At the interface the air is saturated when either evaporating or condensing. Most of the earth’s surface is covered by water and ice. Therefore, one can conclude that the temperature at the interface will be very near any measured atmospheric dew point or frost point. Farmers know that when they spray their oranges before a chilling night time frost. The rate of change in a measured dew point on a cloudless, no wind, night is probably our best indicator of energy radiating to space at any one point in both time and space. Global averaging monthly or annual temperature changes will never see this.
I was inclined to believe the CAGW fear campaign until I saw Dr. Ball speak at our little town, maybe six years ago. I was astonished when he mentioned water vapour as an important GHG because I had never ever heard it mentioned in the MSM. I did a lot more reading thanks to Dr. Ball’s talk and now I am firmly skeptical.
Keep fighting the good fight Dr. Ball!
[SNIP Fake name to hide banned commenter Warren L. Beeton -mod]
Dr. Tim –
“It is likely that every year annual variance in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere exceeds the warming effects of human CO2. I can’t prove it, but nobody can disprove it with any reasonable measure of evidence..”
I presume you are thinking about the globe as a whole. But both temporally and spatially it CAN be proven. Indeed it is a trite observation that, sometimes and some places, WV effects overwhelm the CO2 effects. It is often overlooked in theoretical discussions that the ‘climate action’ of both CO2 and water vapour across the globe is the sum of all the local, seasonal and daily actions. I am not alone in believing that the global temperature is controlled by a water vapour ‘thermostat’ that reacts to any warming, whether caused by CO2 or by anything else – but that doesn’t exclude the possibility that a background CO2 rise, acting primarily in the cold, dry regions at high latitudes, cannot reset that thermostat at least in those localised conditions, and that therefore the global average may rise. Likely nothing to worry about (indeed, maybe something to welcome) but we do have to get away from treating the globe as a uniform whole.
What no one has talked about is since at any one time there are 2000 thunderstorms taking place in the world all day every day of the year all over the world and countless other raining and snowing events,how come there isnt runaway global warming taking place with all of that latent heat being released on the condensation? No scientist has the physics of this down pat. If even 50 % the latent heat is re;leased downward that would be enough to cause runaway global warming. Since this doesnt happen then obviously the latent heat escapes to space. If that happens then there cannot be positive forcing created by water vapour. In any case since NASA couldnt prove any increase in water vapour in 20 years of measuring then there is no such thing as water vapour forcing. If that is true then the CAGW house is blown apart from the next hurricane that hits us.
Precipitation also scrubs CO2.
Alan
With respect to the thunderstorms – The thunderstorms only transfer heat from one location to another. In this case it is from the lower to the upper atmosphere. Energy from the ocean’s surface is used first to evaporate the water into water vapor which is now in a high energy state. When the water vapor condenses into cloud at higher altitudes or a different location the latent heat is released.
Energy from the earth is lost to space mainly by long wave radiation from the earth’s surface through clear skies in general balancing the short wave solar radiation heating the earth’s surface.
So you are in effect agreeing with me then. The latent heat that is released upon condensation gets lost to space. I dont see how it could be otherwise unless it gets sent back to the oceans where it hides in a 1000 year Nick Stokes cubbyhole and then comes back to bite us. Ohhhhhhhhhhh the clock is ticking we only have 999 years and 364 days before that heat gets us. Or wait Maybe Nick had the digits wrong. It only takes a 100 years. The whole nonsense of this is that the earth has had condensation for most of its 4.6 billion years.
Energy that is released at the top of thunderstorms is above 99% of the green house gases, making it easy for it to escape to space.
I’ve seen reports with 6 digit conclusions, based on 2 digit approximations and 3 digit guesses. Just because the math doesn’t conveniently round to the correct number of digits is no reason to try and present a conclusion that implies great accuracy where none exists.
It is like trying to calculate pi from a wagon wheel, using a meter stick with no graduations. One might get the first or even second digit right, but the rest is all meaningless. Yet, the other digits are faithfully reported by climatologists.
Here is a secret of science. The last digit is a guess.
In base 10 they have a 1 in 10 chance of randomly guessing the last digit correctly; so go to base 2 where you have more “digits” of accuracy for the same number and a 1 in 2 chance of guessing the last digit correctly!
@jim Leek
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with climate science, where often the first digit is a guess. And sometimes the sign.
Worse than that they promote statistics to 2 sigma instead of the science standard of 5 sigma.
Alan,
Two sigma is the standard in most science, corresponding to a p<0.05. 5 sigma is a chance of 1 in 3.5 million that the result is due to chance alone, and that makes the potential for false negatives too high.
“The IPCC set water vapour aside as a GHG variable assuming it remained constant. They had to do this because they don’t know how much it varies over time. ”
So a graph or something showing them wrong would be useful here.
[SNIP Fake name to hide banned commenter Warren L. Beeton -mod]
Interesting that CO2 is the demon molecule for the CAGW-ists, yet when you burn natural gas, you make two water molecules for every molecule of CO2 produced. Water is the more powerful GHG so why ignore it? For propane, the ratio is 4 H2O for 3 CO2, and for gasoline the ratio is about 1:1. Only coal produces significantly more CO2 than water when burned. Some types of coal like anthracite are close to pure carbon, while the soft brown coals have a significant amount of hydrogen in them. Wood makes 5 H2O per 6 CO2 if you assume most of the wood is cellulose or a similar material. Conventional boiler-to-steam-to-turbine power plants also produce a great deal of water from evaporation in the cooling tower. A 500 MW coal-fired power plant at 38% thermodynamic efficiency actually produces about 500/.38 = 1300 MW of heat per second, with 500 MW of power being extracted, and the rest going to heat. Sorry, folks, you can’t convert all the heat to power. Carnot demonstrated that about 200 years ago. While some heat is lost directly to the atmosphere from the boiler and flue gas, most of that heat is lost as the steam from the turbine is condensed back into water in the cooling towers. This heat goes into evaporating the cooling water and is emitted as the large cloud coming out of the cooling tower. For the above example, water is being evaporated at a rate of approximately 340 kg per second to provide the cooling capacity needed to condenser the boiler water again. Of course, a lot of the water vapor recondenses close to the top of the cooling tower as it encounters the cooler air. Hence the cloud above the cooling tower.
“Despite this, the IPCC included a category “sun” in their list of “forcing” variables. Why? Humans don’t and can’t vary solar insolation. “
Forcing doesn’t mean only anthropogenic. It is any change that is not itself part of the climate system. The reason water vapor isn’t a forcing is that there is an effectively infinite source of it readily available – the sea. The only thing that determines how much of that water can stay in the atmosphere is temperature (Clausius-Clapeyron etc). Just putting water in the air only lasts a few days before it gets rained out, unless temperature rises. And drying the air would only lead to more evaporation from the sea.
NS,
You said, “The reason water vapor isn’t a forcing is that there is an effectively infinite source of it readily available – the sea.” That is true over the oceans, but not over land, particularly arid land. So, water vapor continuously injected over land, through human activities, should be considered an anthropogenic forcing.
You also said, “And drying the air would only lead to more evaporation from the sea.” That won’t happen over the interior of a continent. The dry air mass won’t be available for replenishment until it leaves land.
Clyde,
“So, water vapor continuously injected over land, through human activities, should be considered an anthropogenic forcing.”
But it stays there for only a few days. You can’t get anywhere that way. CO2 when injected stays there for many decades. Same with drying. Within a few days that air will be over a sea somewhere. This is the effect of mixing with an adjacent source.
***Clyde,
“So, water vapor continuously injected over land, through human activities, should be considered an anthropogenic forcing.”
But it stays there for only a few days. You can’t get anywhere that way. CO2 when injected stays there for many decades. Same with drying. Within a few days that air will be over a sea somewhere. This is the effect of mixing with an adjacent source.***
CO2 does not stay for many decades. A good number of papers show it is less than 10 years on average.
With respect to water vapor staying for a few days – a nonsense statement. That is a cop out. It does not matter how long it stays. There is a lot more water vapor in the atmosphere than CO2. The AGW proponents are afraid what they would find if they did a real scientific analysis of the effects of water vapor. Maybe more cloud with warming which would reflect solar radiation and balance any heating. balancing has been going on for centuries as show by the fact our temperatures have not varied much.
Consider all the anthropogenic damming of rivers and reservoirs (at least here in northwest U.S.), whose waters irrigate 1 to 2 million acres during late spring to early fall. That’s more than just a few days.
Are there historical records for daily humidity in areas such as the Columbia Basin in Washington State covering the years before and after it became so heavily irrigated?
NOAA,
Since average humidity for the reference interval of 1961-90 exists for, say, Yakima, then the annual average data must also be archived somewhere in NOAA or WA States’ records.
We know that in very dry regions, such as Egypt, irrigation has indeed increased humidity, to such an extent that ancient wall paintings are threatened.
NS youre completely forgetting wind speed
Nick says ** The reason water vapor isn’t a forcing is that there is an effectively infinite source of it readily available – the sea.**
Make it up as you go along.
No, they are afraid to see what H2O does so they ignore it and come up with a bunch of theoretical forcings in order to continue the exaggerated warming forecasts which are not happening.
Gerald, do you really believe that they ignore it? Really??? Why is it you don’t know that this is widely acknowledged and discussed and debated and researched? The role of water vapor and clouds is the largest remaining hurdle for modelers. Ignoring them is not an option!
So if you don’t know this, there is probably other stuff you don’t know about the science. LOTS of stuff, just like there is LOTS of stuff I don’t know. Laymen cannot evaluate the science, and that’s where trust comes in. Not faith, but trust. That trust was eroded by both the right and the left – by skeptics and alarmists, by the Patrick Michaels and the Al Gores of the world. Scientists don’t know how to regain that trust, and haven’t done a good job of it, but it’s an uphill battle and not part of their job description.
Kristi
Quote “The role of water vapor and clouds is the largest remaining hurdle for modelers”
Pull the other one.
About once every month or so we find out something new about the climate that we didn’t know beforehand.
and what does it matter to a man who can read if he holds the book upside down?
C’mon nick, that really was a masterpiece of pseudo scientific BULLpoo.
You don’t understand what a driver is, or what feedback is.
Fortunately we can cut through all the waffle with a simple piece of evidence: Co2 increase has been more or less constant and monotonic.
Temperature rise has not been. Cf ‘the pause’.
Ergo whatever ‘drives’ climate has not been CO2, Something else is at work. That explains the Pause.But it also negates the Rise as well, since the Rise and the Pause are arguably caused by the same thing.
In short CO2 is a bit player.
By the way Nick, I’ve got this amazing energy saving kettle to sell you. it comes in a glass dome, and its just an open pan of water. You put a match under it, and hey presto!, the heat from the match creates water vapours which release back radiation that boils the kettle! Simples!
I call it the Green Emperors.
Its only $500!
Of course it only works if you believe in the science.
But I cant give you your money back if you lack the faith.
After all, unbelievers deserve to get ripped off its only moral.
Leo,
“Fortunately we can cut through all the waffle with a simple piece of evidence: Co2 increase has been more or less constant and monotonic. NOT REALLY. EXPONENTIAL.
Temperature rise has not been. Cf ‘the pause’.
Ergo whatever ‘drives’ climate has not been CO2, Something else is at work. That explains the Pause.But it also negates the Rise as well, since the Rise and the Pause are arguably caused by the same thing.” NO.
I’m afraid you aren’t understanding the theory of AGW.
Natural variation happens and will always happen. AGW is what is “added” to the natural variation. There will always be El Ninos and variation in the intensity of solar radiation and volcanoes and so forth. Climate will always vary, but on average the Earth will warm through time, on the scale of decades and centuries.
Interesting.
‘Upside down’ is just a perspective. The only downside of reading upside down better, is you’ll have harder either with street signs or your neck.
Kristi, you are young, so you lack historical perspective.
A few decades ago we were told that it was OK for the models to ignore natural cycles because CO2 was so strong it completely swamped all natural cycles.
Regardless, current fluctuations are still within historical norms. IE, it has been hotter than it is now many times during the last 10K years.
Until we can accurately demonstrate what caused the earlier warmings, it is the height of arrogance to proclaim that the current warming must be caused by CO2.
That is why natural cycles matter.
MarkW,
I suggest you watch the video I posted above, “Does CO2 lag or lead global temperature”
If CO2 is lagging temperature, than that is proof that CO2 doesn’t control temperature.
Thank you for proving that CO2 is not a problem.
MarkW- “If CO2 is lagging temperature, than that is proof that CO2 doesn’t control temperature.”
I thought the data showed that CO2 was released due to higher temperatures and then more CO2 was the most likely cause of much higher temperatures.
@ meteorologist in research
” … and then more CO2 was the most likely cause of much higher temperatures. ”
—-
Really? … more likely than the original warming process?
If so why a Holocene Optimum, given more CO2 would prevent stabilisation of T from peak, and on-going rises and excursions above typical inter-glacial T level would occur? And the net cooling into the next glacial maximum, if CO2 warms to make more CO2, then more heat, them more CO2?
So clearly CO2 can not be a ‘climate driver’, it’s just a lagged response, irrelevant to the warming and cooling mechanism itself—wrong scale.
Even if there were no falsifying CO2 rise lag involved, correlation is not causation, anyway, so how would CO2 be, ” … more likely than the original warming process.”?
Clearly not.
WXcycles, since I’ve been reading the alternative explanations by people here, I’ve been thinking that CO2 is not as important as I once thought. As it increases it’s only one of the warming mechanisms.
I’ve assumed that the carbon cycle keeps the amounts of CO2 cycling in a delicate balance over the course of many centuries. The cycles in the orbit and the axis of rotation reinforce each other to cause planetary warming. This increases the available CO2 for further insulating of the planet. All things being equal there’s an acceleration in the warming. According to what little I’ve reviewed, this was repeated many times in the ice core data and CO2 was the only forcer which was consistently increasing at those times. But there’s so many other complicating factors.
I don’t know what the resolution is in the ice cores and/or whether they’re representative of only their local regions.
If we have more decades with no cooling trend in global temperatures, humans will be the culprits unless something else convincing is found. What do you think?
WXcycles,
I suggest you, too, watch the video about CO2 and lag or lead.
Meteorologist in research,
“WXcycles, since I’ve been reading the alternative explanations by people here, I’ve been thinking that CO2 is not as important as I once thought. ”
I caution you to be skeptical of the alternative explanations. It’s significant that the “explanations” is plural – that’s because there is no alternative that fully accounts for what we are seeing, nothing the skepticism movement can get behind. People tend to assign cause to one (or occasionally two) drivers, and that doesn’t explain things well enough to account for the patterns in the past or present.
There is plenty of scientific evidence out there people here don’t generally know about (or acknowledge, anyway). I’ve lately discovered potholer54 on youtube. He was a geologist, now he’s a (science) journalist, and he sticks to the science (using the peer-reviewed literature) and not politics. He debunks myths, so may not be popular with the skeptic crowd.
He also demonstrates (often with actual video coverage) that Christopher Monckton is either extremely forgetful when corrected or a liar. I appreciate that because I think it part of the problem that skeptics are being “educated” by people who have no educational or profession background in science, rather than learning what the scientists themselves say.
Kristi – yes, just listening to a few minutes of C. Monckton talking cautions me against his assertions. He sounds like a political opportunist. That sounds harsh, but he surely doesn’t talk like a scientist.
But that was years ago now. Maybe he’s much ‘improved’.
Nick Stokes
“Forcing doesn’t mean only anthropogenic. It is any change that is not itself part of the climate system. The reason water vapor isn’t a forcing is that there is an effectively infinite source of it readily available – the sea. The only thing that determines how much of that water can stay in the atmosphere is temperature (Clausius-Clapeyron etc). Just putting water in the air only lasts a few days before it gets rained out, unless temperature rises. And drying the air would only lead to more evaporation from the sea.”
Well Nick you just have come over to the skeptic side of the argument Congratulations.
well water makes the clouds. As I show in my papers it is geomagnetic field intensity ( and not gcr’s) that is responsible for electrons escape to the atmosphere and cloud formation. And as I show solar wind variations drive ground level geomagnetic field intensity variations. ( http://dimispoulos.wixsite.com/dimis )
People usually look at solar activity decreasing since 1950, and still the world becoming warmer. As I have pointed out we have to account for solar wind variations too, to make the complete picture.
The essence of Dr. Ball’s post is, “They don’t know but they claim they do.”
I might add that besides that they slather on a thick layer of good old fashioned bullshit, which brings me to a recent nugget for my tag line and smart remark file; a good definition of “Bullshit” is, “Carefully worded nonsense.”
And then there’s the adjustments to data. Here’s a blinky that compares GISSTMP’s LOTI (Land Ocean Temperature Index) over time. After over 50,000 changes to the monthly data an obvious pattern emerges – What did LOTI look like in 2002, and what does it look like compared to today:
[Let’s see if wordpress will display a blinky]
http://oi66.tinypic.com/4pzfar.jpg
The 2002 data is gleaned from the Internet Archives’s WayBack Machine, which brings up the topic of transparency. All of the data should be readily available to the public. Policy based on information that isn’t publicly available should be forbidden.
“The 2002 data is gleaned from the Internet Archives’s WayBack Machine, which brings up the topic of transparencyAll of the data should be readily available to the public. Policy based on information that isn’t publicly available should be forbidden.”
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/history/
Thanks for the link, I have seen that before, and my comment is the same as it was then, pastel colors that I can barely see (are they trying to hide something?), and no comparison of linear trends.
I followed the links you provided to the 2002 data and it pretty much agrees. Still no trend comparison but the data is there. Doesn’t explain the obvious pattern of why the past is lowered and the present is adjusted upwards. Also doesn’t explain all the changes. The latest release of LOTI, data from March 2018, made 458 changes when compared to the February release.
GISS Frequently asked Questions (FAQ)
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/faq/
says:
Since 2002 there have likely been over 50,000 changes to the individual monthly entries of the LOTI tables which adds up to the “Blinky” in my post above.
My point is that the ever increasing trend looks suspicious. When I apply the “Duck Test” it looks like data is being manipulated in order to comply with the narrative.
Thanks for your reply.
“Since 2002 there have likely been over 50,000 changes to the individual monthly entries of the LOTI tables which adds up to the “Blinky” in my post above.”
No. What your blinky is showing is mainly the effect on trend of the warm years since 2002.
The GISS history gadget lets you choose the years you want to see. Then the pastel becomes full color.
“pastel colors that I can barely see (are they trying to hide something?)”
The page has interactive graphs, you can select any years and zoom in. You can also download all the data, which was what you were asking for when you complained of lack of transparency.
“Since 2002 there have likely been over 50,000 changes to the individual monthly entries of the LOTI tables which adds up to the “Blinky” in my post above.”
I’m not sure what you are trying to say with your “blinky”. The part that blinks is just the difference in trend when you add years since 2002. That isn’t surprising when you are showing the trend since 1880.
It isnt the blinky that is important. It is the difference in the 2 sets of raw data. THEY HAVE BEEN CHANGED UP UNTIL 2002.
“THEY HAVE BEEN CHANGED UP UNTIL 2002.”
Of course they’ve changed, it’s a new version. Everyone tries to improve their data over time. Do you think UAH 6 is bad because it changed from UAH 5?
I also have a number of different GISS data sets, downloaded some years apart and none of them match. Of course the 1880’s anomalies keep going down while the more recent years keep increasing. My source is WFT, so I am wondering if the data gets modified within WFT, as I would expect that they would download on a monthly basis rather than a full refresh?
Data that are wrong should not be available to the public.
Please define “wrong”
We have always been at war with Oceana.
To be more serious, no series of observations subject to these continuing levels of alteration can reasonably be used to regulate public policy. And the history refutes any claims that the science is settled. If it were so, we would not be continually changing the observations.
One can understand if some definite discovery is made, that a series of observations should be made uncertain. One can understand that in this case proposals should be made for corrections. But the level of changes that have happened, as documented by the charts, is so great as to make any conclusions from them unjustifiable. The only conclusion that you can come to from this is that we simply do not know what the temperature trends have been.
Who gets to decide what data is wrong?
In climate science, “wrong” is defined as anything that doesn’t support the next research grant.
So Kristi, are you volunteering for the important job of deciding what the public gets to see? Is there some reason why a caveat regarding the quality of the data wouldn’t suffice? Are we general population types too stupid to be trusted with “tricky facts”?
KS, this is why your argument just doesn’t make sense. Data should never be altered to “fit” a theory. The 1930’s were the warmest temperatures in recorded history. If your data doesn’t back your theory, you rerun the experiment and gather more data. In the warming case you have to rework your model. Why aren’t both sides of this argument working together to determine the answer? Because your theory can’t be proved at this time (I’m sorry but your point of view was raised first so you have the burden of proof). If you have data that backs your theory, I’m sure Dr. Ball and everyone else that reads this would be open for discussion. It would definitely change some minds. Until then raise that wind turbine and install those solar panels on your house. Walk to work and by all means sequester that CO2 you keep exhaling.
Wrong data = inaccurate, biased, missing observations that are now available, etc.
Data are usually adjusted when it is discovered that there is some systematic bias, such as satellite drift or UHI or two methods of recording temps show slightly (but predictably) different results. Some UAH satellite data were wrong until they realized there was a wrong sign in their calculations. It happens, but science has a way of shedding mistakes.
I don’t see a point in having faulty data available to the public. What use would that serve?
It’s common to assume that data are altered for nefarious purposes, but in fact it would be scientifically remiss not to correct problems.
Deception is a survival strategy, it is ingrained.
Don’t have to like it, but there it is.
enjoyed the essay. the problem is not that the 85% of scientifically illiterate people find the arguments arcane,it is they don’t care and are not interested.talk to people about it and most just shrug their shoulders and the only phrase they know is global warming. they usually mention it with a chuckle when speaking to people in scotland.
the best way to get anyone interested is to try and intimate how much it is hitting them in the pocket, interest levels pick up a bit then,especially in scotland.it i think most people just accept it is another ruse by politicians to raise taxesand there is nothing they can do about it. i have to agree.insidious slow creep is the way to affect any change that will steal increasing amounts of money from the tax payer in any country, and the utter bastards that have a grip on politics all over the world today are very, very good at it.
the science battle may well be won, the fight against those with an insidious “common purpose” may be impossible to win.
“the science battle may well be won, the fight against those with an insidious “common purpose” may be impossible to win.”
There is no science battle. The science is conclusive and well-supported. Some choose to dismiss it, but that doesn’t change the conclusions.
I don’t think the fight is against anyone with insidious purpose, but the special interest angle is hard to ignore: the fossil fuel industry is very big, wealthy and powerful, and it doesn’t want to lose any of that.
You are missing the point. The observations, in the view of the field itself, are so uncertain that they require continual adjustment, a process which is evidently still ongoing and has not yielded any certainty after many decades of effort. Let us accept that this is a genuine scientific effort to get to the truth.
The detached observer will conclude that if it has not yielded a definite and agreed set of observations yet, it is never going to.
Personally I do not see any justification for any of the changes. The observations are what they were, and we have to deal with that and accept the uncertainties in our subsequent reasoning from them.
But if you accept the science of adjustments is in good faith and people doing their best and is a rational response to how uncertain and wrong they may have been in the first place, well, its called being hoist with your own petard. If they were that bad to start with, nothing can be concluded from either the originals or the adjusted values.
The fossil fuel industry doesnt fund any skeptic now. The industry has capitulated to the alarmists. Kristi with all the tampered with data sets and all the evidence stacked up against CAGW, I am astonished by your groupthink.
The inconvenient questions that the IPCC can’t answer.
1) Why did sea level rise faster in early 2Oth century than now and even now is not accelerating?
2) Why do only rural land temperature data sets show no warming?
3) Why did climate scientists in the climategate emails worry about no warming trends? They are supposed to be unbiased either way.
4) Why do some local temperature land based datasets show no warming Ex: Augusta Georgia for last 83 years? There must be 1000’s of other places like this.
5) Why do 10 of the 13 weather stations in Antarctica show no warming in last 60 years? The 3 that do are near undersea volcanic ridges.
6) Why does the lower troposphere satellite data of UAH show very little warming and in fact showed cooling from 1978 to 1997?
7) Why is there only a 21% increase in net atmosphere CO2 ppm since 1980 but yet mankind increased fossil fuel emissions CO2 by 75%?
8) Why did National Academy of Sciences in 1975 show warming in the 30’s and 40’s and NASA in 1998 and 2008 not show nearly as much warming for those time periods?
9) Why has no one been able to disprove Lord Monckton’s finding of the basic flaw in the climate sensitivity equations after doubling CO2?
10) Why has there never been even 1 accurate prediction by a climate model. Even if one climate model is less wrong than another one it is still wrong.
11) Why do most climate scientists not understand the difference between accuracy and precision?
12) Why have many scientists resigned from the IPCC in protest?
13) Why do many politicians, media and climate scientists continue to lie about CO2 causing extreme weather events? Every data set in the world shows there are no more extreme weather events than there ever were
14) Why do clmate scientists call skeptics deniers as if we were denying the holocaust?
!5) Why did Michael Mann refuse to hand over his data when he sued Tim Ball for defamation and why did Mann subsequently drop the suit?
16) Why have every climate scientist that has ever debated the science of global warming lost every debate that has ever occurred?
17) Why does every climate scientist now absolutely refuse to debate anymore?
18) Why do careers get ruined when scientists dare to doubt global warming in public?
19) Why do most of the scientists that retire come out against global warming?
20) Why is it next to impossible to obtain a PhD in Atmospheric science if one has doubts about global warming?
21) Why is it very very difficult to get funding for any study that casts doubt on global warming?
22) Why has the earth greened by 18% in the last 30 years?
23) Why do clmate scientists want to starve plants by limiting their access to CO2? Optimum levels are 1200 ppm not 410ppm.
24) Why do most climate scientists refuse to release their data to skeptics?
25) Why should the rest of the world ruin their economies when China and India have refused to stop increasing their emmissions of CO2 till 2030?
26) Why have the alarmist scientists like Michael Mann called Dr. Judith Curry an anti scientist?
27) Why does the IPCC not admit that under their own calculations a business as usual policy would have the CO2 levels hit 590ppm in 2100 which is exactly twice the CO2 level since 1850.?
28) Why do the climate modellers not admit that the error factor for clouds makes their models worthless?
29) Why did NASA show no increase in atmospheric water vapour for 20 years before James Hansen shut the project down in 2009?
30) Why did Ben Santer change the text to result in an opposite conclusion in the IPCC report of 1996 and did this without consulting the scientists that had made the original report?
31) Why does the IPCC say with 90% confidence that anthropogenic CO2 is causing warming when they have no evidence to back this up except computer model predictions which are coded to produce results that CO2 causes warming?
32) How can we believe climate forecasts when 4 day weather forecasts are very iffy?.
33) Why do all climate models show the tropical troposhere hotspot when no hotspot has actually been found in nature?
34) Why does the extreme range of the climate models increase as the number of runs increases on the same simulation?
35) Why is the normal greenhouse effect not observed for SST?
36) Why is SST net warming increase close to 0?
37) Why is the ocean ph level steady over the lifetime of the measurements?
38) what results has anyone ever seen from global warming if it exists? I have been waiting for it for 40 years and havent seen it yet?
39) If there were times in the past when CO2 was 20 times higher than today why wasnt there runaway global warming then?
40) Why was there a pause in the satellite data warming in the early 2000’s?
41) Why did CO2 rise after WW2 and temperatures fall?
42) For the last 10000 years over half of those years showed more warmung than today Why?
43) Why does the IPCC refuse to put an exact % on the AGW and the natural GW?
44) Why do the alarmists still say that there is a 97% consensus when everyone knows that figure was madeup?
45) The latest polls show that 33% do not believe in global warming and that figure is increasing poll by poll ? why?
46) If CO2 is supposed to cause more evaporation how can there ever be more droughts with CO2 forcing?
47) Why are there 4 times the number of polar bears as in 1960?
48) Why did the oceans never become acidic even with CO2 levels 15-20 times higher than today?
49) Why does Antarctica sea ice extent show no decrease in 25 years?
50) Why do alarmists resent skeptics getting funding from fossil fuel companies ( when alarmists get billions from the government and leftest think tanks) and skeptics get next to nothing from governments for climate research?
51) If in the spring the Bloomberg carbon clock is only growing .00000001 every 6 seconds and therefore at that rate in 1 year it is only increasing .05ppm and then in the fall and winter it increases at a rate of only 2ppm per year; then why do we have to worry about carbon increases?
52) Why arent the alarmists concerned with actual human lives. In England every winter there are old people who succumb to the cold because they cant afford the increased heating bills caused by green subsidies.
53) Why did Phil Jones a climategate conspirator, admit in 2010 that there was no statistically meaningful difference in 4 different period temperature data that used both atmospheric temperature and sea surface temperature?
54) Why does the IPCC still say that the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is a 100 years when over 80 studies have concluded it is more like 5 years?
Kristi Silber
The constant refrain that ‘it’s the oil companies wot dunnit really is the most pathetic argument one can imagine.
The oil business needs customers. What possible future would there be for their business if they were knowingly killing their customers?
On the other hand, it is projected that thanks to localised biofuel combustion (timber and dung etc.) mortality directly attributed to those processes will likely reach 200,000,000 by 2050 in developing nations.
This could be, if not completely avoided, certainly it could be substantially reduced by helping these nations get access to cheap, fossil fuel derived electricity.
Meanwhile, the ‘inevitable’ increase in catastrophic weather events over the last 40 years manifested itself in a 12 year period when a major hurricaine don’t make landfall in N. America, to date, I understand Oklahoma has seen 2 tornados this year when 200 is the norm and that the only empirical manifestation of increased atmospheric CO2 is that the planet has greened over the last 30 years by 14%.
The real problem with AGW alarmists is that they are so engrossed in the theory, they ignore life’s realities. Sea level rise isn’t accelerating as we were assured they would, and the western world is more peaceful and prosperous 0lace thanks to fossil fuels and the tremendous technology that brings.
The mere fact you are tapping away on a PC confirms you’re not interested in giving up your privileged lifestyle for the cause of AGW, yet it seems you are happy to impose a life of poverty and death on others.
How long does it actually take to conclusively prove GW, never mind AGW, is bad for mankind? So far, you have taken 40 years or so and yet non of the catastrophic events predicted over that time have manifested themselves. How much longer do you need Kristi? How many millions need to die unnecessarily?
One has to remember that Kristi has been trained to believe that anything that disagrees with what her professors taught her isn’t science. That’s how she can claim with a straight face that all the science available agrees with her.
Alan, “the oil companies” is even more pathetic an argument when you remember that Kristi and those like her aren’t able to provide a smidgen of proof to prove this claim.
They just take it on faith that something evil is opposing them, otherwise they would have won already.
Kristi, go look in your fridge and scream about how awful energy and Capitalism are.
“6) Why does the lower troposphere satellite data of UAH show very little warming and in fact showed cooling from 1978 to 1997?”
Not true. UAH warmed at the rate of 0.86°C / century between 1978 and 1997.
“7) Why is there only a 21% increase in net atmosphere CO2 ppm since 1980 but yet mankind increased fossil fuel emissions CO2 by 75%?”
Because that’s how the carbon cycle works.
“8) Why did National Academy of Sciences in 1975 show warming in the 30’s and 40’s and NASA in 1998 and 2008 not show nearly as much warming for those time periods?”
Things improve. In 1975 it was a rare event for someone to estimate global temperatures. The NSA didn’t, they relied on a single Russian paper. Modern temperature data relies on vastly more data than was available in the mid-70s.
Alan Tomalty: Expanding on Bellman’s reply regarding your question #7, see a href=”https://skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions-intermediate.htm”>”How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?”
“23) Why do clmate scientists want to starve plants by limiting their access to CO2? Optimum levels are 1200 ppm not 410ppm.”
People want to limit increases in CO2 because of the greenhouse effect. No one wants to starve plants, but it’s difficult to believe plants are starving at 400ppm when they’ve survived well enough at 270ppm.
“24) Why do most climate scientists refuse to release their data to skeptics?”
What data are you after? I’m not a scientist but I seem to be able to find the data I want online.
“41) Why did CO2 rise after WW2 and temperatures fall?”
One theory is that an increase in pollution caused a cooling effect.
However, those that proclaim that increased pollution caused the cooling then turn around and tell us that removing that pollution during the 70’s had no impact on warming.
Of course the fossil fuel industry is rich, I finally turned my heating off on Wednesday just gone! Its been the coldest ‘spring’ I can ever remember here in the midlands of England. Just exactly where is all the warming hiding because I don’t see any of it out here in the real world.
You keep saying that but I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Can you give me 3 pieces of empirical evidence that, in the actual environment, CO2 drives more warming than a trivial 1.2 degrees per doubling?
Frazier, to date the evidence is of two types.
1) It has warmed and CO2 has increased. This proves that CO2 caused either all, or almost all of the warming.
2) The models that were written to prove that CO2 is a problem have all found that CO2 is a problem.
Bellman look at the graph. You are wrong.
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/
Tony Heller has proved in dozens of videos that both NASA and NOAA have fudged and faked the data. Simply Google Tony Heller youtube .
I know I was catty and not nice before. I don’t ask for sympathy, but please understand that it’s not an easy position for me, and I do get very tired of being condescended to and insulted, and all the false assumptions about the way I think. I don’t know why I stick around sometimes, but it is interesting and I’ve learned a lot. I love to learn, and believe it or not, I can think for myself. I probably have less of idea what most “warmists” think than some of you. And MarkW, I am 48 and I can barely remember discussing climate change in school. I really haven’t discussed it with anyone except skeptics. I wanted to learn what they thought and what their arguments were. Then I went to the literature to see if they held up.
It is the arguments from skeptics that makes me think their case is very weak. There is no alternative to AGW that the skeptics support – everyone seems to have his own idea, and believes he can “prove” it. Then there are the assertions of scientific misconduct, conspiracy, fraud, etc. I’ve looked into those, given them due consideration, and I don’t agree. I don’t argue that there was some unprofessional behavior. Perhaps a law was broken, but that never went to court, and I’m not going to convict someone on suspicion. I believe people saw in many of the climategate emails what they wanted to see (or what they were told to see by Dr. Ball and others), and didn’t take the context into account or didn’t know about it. These emails were stolen and posted with the express purpose of discrediting CRU (and perhaps science as a whole) – and that should automatically make one skeptical, make one question what was beyond the superficial. A whistleblower – someone genuinely concerned about scientific integrity – would not have committed a crime to do so.
There seem to be many here who think that they know all there is to know about the scientific evidence for climate change…and it doesn’t seem to be true, at all. If people really want to find out the truth, they need to educate themselves and do so with an open mind. I could post all kinds of links to evidence, but I have very little confidence that others will give them due consideration (I hope a few will at least watch the videos I posted). I’m not here to convince others of AGW, anyway. That would be a losing battle. I’m here to try to prod people into questioning, being skeptical, and to point out that sites like this are going to feed you your news with bias, and to try to convince people that science is trustworthy. I’m doing very poorly on all counts.
I am not here to advocate policy!!! I don’t at all believe we should do away with all fossil fuels – that’s absurd. I will, however, point out the fallacy of expecting developing countries to follow in our footsteps – that’s equally absurd.
There are plenty of comments here I could address, but I’m tired of defending myself and tired of arguing.
Just one thing I want to address because I think it’s important – the level of knowledge of oil companies, and the propaganda they spread.
Alan: “The oil business needs customers. What possible future would there be for their business if they were knowingly killing their customers?” What? I don’t understand where this came from, or what you refer to. But if you don’t think that’s possible, you’ve forgotten what the tobacco industry did.
MarkW”
“Alan, “the oil companies” is even more pathetic an argument when you remember that Kristi and those like her aren’t able to provide a smidgen of proof to prove this claim.
They just take it on faith that something evil is opposing them, otherwise they would have won already.”
No, I just assumed that people here would be aware of the propaganda campaigns and the evidence for them.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/784572-api-global-climate-science-communications-plan.html
http://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/ice-campaign-plan/
Summary of a 1988 Shell document:
“A thorough review of climate science literature, including acknowledgement of fossil fuels’ dominant role in driving greenhouse gas emissions. More importantly, Shell quantifies its own products’ contribution to global CO2 emissions.
A detailed analysis of potential climate impacts, including rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and human migration.
A discussion of the potential impacts to the fossil fuel sector itself, including legislation, changing public sentiment, and infrastructure vulnerabilities. Shell concludes that active engagement from the energy sector is desirable.
A cautious response to uncertainty in scientific models, pressing for sincere consideration of solutions even in the face of existing debates.
A warning to take policy action early, even before major changes are observed to the climate.”
Shell was saying to take policy action early, and 40 years later much of America thinks it’s all a product of leftist conspiracy. Bizarre.
http://www.climatefiles.com/shell/1988-shell-report-greenhouse/
“This fax and memorandum dated February 6, 2001 from Exxon lobbyist Randy Randol to John Howard at the White House Center for Environmental Quality makes recommendations for changing the U.S. team working on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment and Synthesis Report and delaying IPCC proceedings.”
http://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/2001-memo-from-exxonmobil-lobbyist-randy-randol-to-white-house-on-ipcc-team/
Alan Tomalty
“Bellman look at the graph. You are wrong.”
Looked at it, I’m not wrong Trend up to 1997 is positive.
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/uah6/plot/uah6/to:1997/trend
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/plot/uah6/to:1997/trend
Kristi S.,
If you are comfortably living at this moment, then it is because of fossil fuel and everything that has resulted from fossil-fuel use to get you to the level of comfort you now experience, where your mind is unoccupied enough on matters of survival that you can bash the very source of your comfort.
My understanding is that computer models are dictating the climate projections that are driving policy decisions.
What other things do you think are driving these climate projections? Of course real-world data is pumped into the models, but built-in assumptions are also in there which are dictating HOW this data is synthesized to produce the projections being produced, AND there is NOT enough data in some areas to provide a fair synthesis, and so the built-in assumptions are synthesizing the incomplete data as though enough information was being handled properly to justify action.
Can you put aside the narratives of others for just a moment, and think for yourself? Really look at the basic claims. Really look at the facts regarding those claims.
State your own claims in an ordered list. State your understanding of the facts that support your claims, and then we can go from there.
I should not have said the science is conclusive, as if all were decided. There are some conclusive findings, though:
– Humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere and it is making global average temperature rise. This is what I meat was conclusively demonstrated. The theory, observational and experimental evidence all support it – even the paleoclimatic record supports the theory that it is CO2, the sun and aerosols that are the primary drivers of climate change; things like ocean currents, the cryosphere and land use are also important
Successfully predicted by models:
– Precipitation events have become more intense
– There is a net loss of ice caps
– Oceans are warming, sea level rising, water more acidic (less alkaline) in some areas
– I haven’t seen the literature on this, but some say there is indication that hurricanes are becoming less frequent but longer lasting, and more liable to hit land, a prediction based on the slowing of oceanic currents. The net economic effect is estimated to be a 30% increase (but since when, I don’t know. Something we can all follow up!)
– Spring is coming earler in the NH (note that more snow is not a sign of cooling, since it also depends on precipitation)
– Animal and plant ranges are changing
Note that none of these is quantified. The rate of change is very important, since it will allow both humans and non-human organisms to adapt. This is, I believe, a better way to look at it: Temperature is going to increase by 3 C if we don’t do anything to prevent it. Maybe it will be in 2070, maybe in 2150. I don’t know, and no one else does, either. But we have the power to move it to a later date. For example, we can give the millions of South Floridians a decade or two to move once they finally realize that rebuilding after a storm makes no sense.
I’m sure there are other predicted outcomes I’m not thinking of. I’m not going to provide links unless someone can’t find evidence they want; I’d think it’s common knowledge. It’s not up to me to prove anything to you, and it’s not why I’m here. The onus is on you to educate yourselves if you want to find the truth. That means venturing beyond the blogosphere to the peer-reviewed science. If that is beyond you, go to the informational areas on NASA and NOAA sites, or watch the potholer54 videos on youtube. It’s not for those to decide that the scientists are wrong who don’t understand and know about the evidence,
(If not CO2, what explains all this? The science has weighed in, and provided evidence from many angles. It is upon the skeptics to disprove it, and they haven’t. Simple as that.)
Alan,
I could not answer all your 54 questions in a post. I’ll take a shot at the first ten, off the top of my head. But perhaps if you have so many questions, you could find answers to some of them yourself? It didn’t take more than a minute to find the water vapor data you said had been missing since 2009.
“1) Why did sea level rise faster in early 2Oth century than now and even now is not accelerating?
You will have to give evidence that this is true before it can be answered – and in doing so, maybe you will find the explanation.
2) Why do only rural land temperature data sets show no warming?
This is not true.
3) Why did climate scientists in the climategate emails worry about no warming trends? They are supposed to be unbiased either way.
I have no idea what you mean and have never heard that.
4) Why do some local temperature land based datasets show no warming Ex: Augusta Georgia for last 83 years? There must be 1000’s of other places like this.
Some regions get cooler (at least for now…really only some of Antarctic and the “Southern Ocean,” part of the remains of a general cooling trend, I hear) some stay the same, some warmer. The “warming” is a global average.
5) Why do 10 of the 13 weather stations in Antarctica show no warming in last 60 years? The 3 that do are near undersea volcanic ridges.
Not sure where you got your statistics.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/index.php?idp=599
6) Why does the lower troposphere satellite data of UAH show very little warming and in fact showed cooling from 1978 to 1997?
They made a calculation error when doing an adjustment for satellite drift, which is now fixed.
7) Why is there only a 21% increase in net atmosphere CO2 ppm since 1980 but yet mankind increased fossil fuel emissions CO2 by 75%?
The two are percentages of different carbon “compartments.” Say the 75% increase in emissions represents 19 billion tons. If there are already 2985 billion tons in the atm. it will be a small additional percent. If there are only 19 billion tons, it will represent a doubling. In either case, it is still 75% of the emissions. (Numbers here are complete fabrications)
8) Why did National Academy of Sciences in 1975 show warming in the 30’s and 40’s and NASA in 1998 and 2008 not show nearly as much warming for those time periods?
No idea. Sure you’re comparing
9) Why has no one been able to disprove Lord Monckton’s finding of the basic flaw in the climate sensitivity equations after doubling CO2?
Monckton’s never proved it was an error, so how is one to disprove it? His whole argument was founded on a theoretical impossibility – that temperature is an input, something physical. It’s like saying I’ll give you a dime for your milimeter. Hard to understand how his co-authors could put their names to such a thing.
10) Why has there never been even 1 accurate prediction by a climate model. Even if one climate model is less wrong than another one it is still wrong.”
See above. Also keep in mind that they (especially the earlier ones) were design to project long-term trends. It is only the earlier models that have been around long enough to see how well they’ve performed, and they aren’t expected to be as accurate. That does not mean they are precise. The models are not precise, they are estimates, trends.
Many of the rest of your questions are based on faulty premises.
You are engaging in an ad ignorantium argument, that as no one can demonstrate otherwise, it must be CO2. A bit of a conclusion too far, as the only thing that has been shown is that no one really knows what affects climate to a degree that allows for predictions.
“I will focus on water vapour because it is the least measured, least understood, and yet critical to the entire basis of the warming due to human interference in the greenhouse gas theory.”
My assertion is that such is due to heat transfer via radiation being the most difficult to measure, improperly measured and fundamentally misunderstood force.
Even people who should know better have fallen for the ludicrous lie perpetrated by shameless charlatans and an uncritical, colluding media that 97% of all scientists “believe in climate change”, where that term means “dangerous global warming and/or weirding caused by human activity”. Or something.
It doesn’t matter to the media in cahoots with trough-feeding government and academic “scientists” that there has never been a survey of “all scientists” or a representative sample thereof asking these three questions:
1) Has Earth warmed since c. AD 1850? Most would answer yes.
2) Have greenhouse gases released by humans significantly contributed to this warming, where “significant” means more than 50%? IMO the majority would say no, except for those whose careers depend upon believing that human activity predominates.
3) Are such warming as may have occurred, whether man-made or not, and other effects of more plant food in the air, good or bad for humanity and the planet in general, and what about the future? Again, except for those dependent on keeping up the scare, IMO most of the ~10 million scientists in the world would say so far so good. (Adding doctors and engineers would boost the skeptical total even more.)
Felix,
The data are not based on your opinion, they are based on multiple studies. You can’t opine all you want, and if that means ignoring the data, you’ll have to be OK with being wrong. It’s up to you.
It’s very convenient to decide whatever statistic doesn’t suit one’s views much be based on corrupt research. But once one begins to do so, where does it end? People create the world as they want to see it, not as it is. It’s hiding from reality.
Dear Kristi
I hope you won’t be offended if I point out that so many of your posts are’emotional’ not mathematical or technical. Maybe, like me, you struggle to understand the maths, which with such a complex issue as AGW means that relying on feelings and hopes won’t do. It does deep that the money stream in the great debate is all on the alarmists.
Kristi, the “data” just shows that it has warmed. Not what caused the warming.
Please try to learn a little basic science.
Oh the irony….
Ever tried looking in a mirror?
Giles,
“I hope you won’t be offended if I point out that so many of your posts are’emotional’ not mathematical or technical. Maybe, like me, you struggle to understand the maths, which with such a complex issue as AGW means that relying on feelings and hopes won’t do. It does deep that the money stream in the great debate is all on the alarmists.”
Oh, I don’t rely on feelings and hopes in terms of AGW, my hopes are that one day the good name and capability of the scientific community is no longer questioned by half the populace. That it the greater fundamental problem.
Regardless of my proficiency with maths, the models are much too complex for any of us to really understand. However, my understanding of scientific methodology is quite good. My field is ecology, which is also complex and dynamic, with lots of feedbacks, and models are common – I spent a couple summer gathering data for a model of forest dynamics that included dozens of parameters. I took multivariate statistics in grad school; that was a while ago, but at least I know path analysis from a PCA. I also have a pretty clear though basic idea of model creation, tuning, testing, comparison and uses – apparently better than some others here, judging by the assertions they make.
I’m not here to argue about AGW itself. I’m trying to point out errors in reason rather than fact, and sources of bias. Facts can simply be denied – it’s all a conspiracy, haven’t you heard? It’s ideas like this that get repeated so much they take on the ring of truth, when it is truly completely impossible. How could so many be convinced of such an obvious fabrication? That’s the real question. What happened to turn half of America – and conservatives in particular – on the false track?
Well, we know some of what happened, but it’s not easy for anyone to identify and admit ways we’ve been conditioned. There are some conservative values I think it would have been good to grow up with, having them instilled early.
Kristi I wish you would just go away. With all your rambling posts you have proven nothing apart from the fact that you show a slight narcissistic streak.
Another excellent essay by Dr. Ball. It needs to be widely published. Sums up much of the deception within the global warming debate.
eyesonyu,
“Another excellent essay by Dr. Ball. It needs to be widely published. Sums up much of the deception within the global warming debate.”
No, it’s telling a story. There is no evidence provided whatsoever, it’s just opinion, as the title says. OPINION. It”s a narrative that bears little relation to reality.
This is the kind of opinion-passed-off-as-fact that does, unfortunately, get widely “published” (circulated in the blogosphere for everyone to echo).
Kristi
And the utter nonsense published in the Guardian and the NYT supporting AGW is any better? Most of it opinion pieces from journalists with no scientific background. Whatever you say about Tim Ball, he has studied climate change for most of his scientific career and his opinions are worthy of consideration.
Of course it’s better. She agrees with what the Guardian and the NYT publishes, which proves that they are correct.
“There is a strong linear correlation between North- ern-Hemisphere spring snow cover extent and annual mean surface air temperature in the models, consistent with available observations”
The AMO signal shows up strongest in Spring. I bet the models didn’t see the increase in N Hem winter snow cover since 1995.
“It is also a ‘deep state’ story created and perpetuated by and through the bureaucracies.” Ain’t that the truth. But why is the question. Why do “deep state” and bureaucrat want to us to believe in “Fake News”? There is no “Hot Spot”.
“warming effects of human CO2”
The empirical evidence for the warming effect of human CO2 is presented two ways. These are climate sensitivity (ECS) and transient climate response to cumulative emissions (TCRE). Both of the measures in the data rely on spurious correlations. Therefore the empirical evidence for human cause does not exist. Please see
https://chaamjamal.wordpress.com/human-caused-global-warming/
Chaamjamal You should submit one of your papers to Anthony Watts for approval as a guest essay on WUWT
Square of wet-bulb temperature presents the precipitable water in the atmosphere at any given location, season. By presenting average annual temperature and square of wet-bulb temperature provide the necessary clue on precipitable water increase or decrease with the time.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Its the C.P. Snow effect: our lettered and learned Intelligentsia are experts in words and narrative, but as scientifically illiterate as our neolithic ancestors. You cannot discuss science with them because they don’t seem to know any.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures
Ha ha thanks for that, I couldn’t stop smiling after Boyle’s law… 🙂
Yeah, for a couple of conscie commies, they were funny guys. Unfortunately, their Lefty legacy lives on in Flanders’ daughters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Boyle,_Baron_Boyle_of_Handsworth
Notanist
I think the opposite is the greater problem: people think they know so much science that they are smarter than the scientists and don’t need to listen to them.
It’s easier to discuss sciende with someone who doesn’t know any than to do it with someone who’s convinced it’s corrupt.
Science? Corrupt? Who in the world would think such as thing? Then I dreamed one night I was walking along a deserted beach and a giant wave of propagandas swept over me roaring a-swine-flu-pandemic-is-coming-flu-shots-will-save-you-pregnant-women-children-get-theirs-first-co2-is-burning-up-the-earth-vaccines-are-safe-we-don’t-know-what-causes-autism-genetically-modified-food-is-equivalent-to-natural-food-gmoed-low-sperm-count-won’t-sterilize-grow-tumors-affect-your-organs-gulf-war-syndrome-is-ptsd-is-mental-illness-those-are-contrails-you-see-in-the-sky-we-don’t-know-what’s-causing-droughts-stop-h.a.a.r.p.ing-about-weather-ebola-will bleed-you-out-rockefeller’s-zika-skeeters-will-shrink-your-head. Suddenly, I awoke wondering how our scientists would handle all this. Then, it dawned on me . . .
Kristi,
Sorry, but you are pathetically naive. Please heed the wise words of US President Eisenhower regards the corruption of government “science” almost sixty years ago:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/eisenhower-warned-of-government-science-corruption-in-1960/
I don’t know about that. You don’t know any – and it is very hard to discuss anything with someone that runs away screaming “Settled Science!” “Evil Oil Companies!” “AAAGH!”
” people think they know so much science ”
Projection, it’s the only mental skill your average alarmist has mastered.
I used to track the water vapour numbers every month.
It was increasing as proposed but only about one-third of the rate that was built into climate models.
But the emprical data means nothing to the debate. The warmers just change it or completely ignore it while continuing to prophesize the coming apacolypse.
I don’t see a way to stop these guys other than cutting off ALL the money they get. People need to email Trump and explain to him like this and eventually he will get it done. He doesn’t believe the hoax either.
Didn’t Lindzen suggest a 90% reduction in “climate change” “research” spending?
I second that.
It’ll do for a start. Until the field returns to real science and sanity. Every nickel is wasted. Bad science is overwhelming good and taking us backwards.
“There is virtually no real weather or climate data”..
I’d have to disagree with the no real weather data. Meteorologists frequently refer to prior episodes of weather on a specific date. No tornadoes this year in Oklahoma, up to (so far) April 30? Weather records for this time period for Oklahoma show how far back and how many times tornadoes cranked up in Oklahoma for January 1 through April 30.
You want records? I keep track of my local weather. 71% humidity at 5:45AM this morning is normal for this time of year. But 29% humidity by 12:30PM is NOT normal. The air is too dry. No dew on the side of my house or the grass means something is wrong.
We’re to have thunderstorms (again) by next Tuesday. Does the last T-storm’s hail mixed with rain mean a regular occurrence of this kind of thing? I don’t know. Likely not, but possible.
Is anyone paying attention to these things besides me? I don’t know, or care. I’m paying attention to it. My records show that last year and the year before the humidity levels were dropping just slightly from the prior year, for the same time period.
Significance? You tell me. It is, after all, JUST WEATHER,,,. right?
Sara
Years ago l did keep a daily record of my local weather for 3 years and ended up having a better understanding of weather because of it.
The only long term weather record l have is the recording of the first snowfall of the season since 1977.
Which was born from my love of snow as a child. The record has shown that there has been little change in the trend in the timing of the first snow over the last 40 years. Which suggests any warming of the winters here in England have been due to less colder weather turning up recent winters. Rather then been due to the winters starting later.
My weather watching is now across the globe with the help of nullschool and jet stream maps. As my interest in recent years has been in understanding the important role the weather play’s in climate change and ice age formation.
…in a hundred years…
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/4e235261-e458-4b21-ada2-0ddf99b3c5cd
Having good records for one spot is not evidence that we have good records for the entire world. Which is what Dr. Ball was talking about.
The confusion stems from Water Vapour’s role as a ‘greenhouse gas’ and the primary ‘cooling’ agent in the atmosphere.
The Warmist model relies entirely on ‘radiative’ transfer. Water Vapour ‘physically’ transports heat through the atmosphere as enthalpy; high into the atmosphere…to winter polar regions…to desert regions…and mountains.
lts good to see there has been studies into snow cover extent and that changes to its extent during the springtime are when it matters the most. A point l have been trying to get across for a number of weeks now.
This spring has been a real insight for me on how changes to the jet stream patterning can lead to cooling over the northern most land masses and thus risk extending the spring snow extent.
This years NH spring snow extent looking like it will be higher then last spring. lf that it the case then it suggests to me that the recent warming of the NH during the springtime, has now for the time been at least come to a halt.
I have had tremendous success in waking up the layman with this impossibly simple graph that I made.
http://www.maxphoton.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/CO2.png
Purple = Nitrogen
Dark blue = Oxygen
Light blue = Argon
Green = Various trace gases, and water vapor
Orange = Carbon dioxide prior to year 1800 and the industrial revolution
Red = Increase in carbon dioxide after year 1800 (assumed to be man-made)
Please add average water vapor.
As a separate category, then a second graph showing relative concentration and GHG strength of H2O v CO2.
Thanks.
Max you dont have enough green dots for the water vapour H20 on average is 50 times the amount of CO2.
Almost without exception, even the most dug-in believe is SHOCKED.
Here is a video of their belief system …
* most dug-in believer …
No fuel or ammo onboard ?
There was a minor secondary explosion, but once her back was broken, that was it. Sayonara. See you on the bottom.
@ Felix,
I assume it was a ship emptied of all volatiles, and a veteran sub captain just had to let loose a torpedo.
Who could blame him ?, all those years of patrolling the oceans, with nothing to sink.
UK,
A sitting duck target, solely to test a torpedo exploder mechanism, IMO.
The Japanese were able to overrun the Philippines only because the USN never tested its torpedoes before the war. It took nearly the whole war to get the navy to fix the problems with its torpedoes.
We should have been able to sink all the Japanese troop transport ships. There were enough USN subs in the region to do so, had our torpedoes worked.
But instead of being shot at dawn, the admirals responsible for this crime against humanity were promoted.
Be that as it may.
“No operation extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main body of the enemy.”
UK,
AKA, “No plan survives contact with the enemy”. Moltke the Elder. If his idiot nephew had grasped this simple truth and grokked the Schlieffen Plan, WWI wouldn’t have been such a catastrophe for the West.
Instead of keeping the right strong, the moron strengthened the left, so that instead of luring the French farther into Alsace-Lorraine, they were able to swing back to their left and help defend Paris.
Machine guns…..there was no defense, certainly no offense.
UK,
But France and Britain were deficient in MGs in 1914. The Schlieffen Plan would have worked 1) had First Army been motorized, which was possible then, 2) the right been strengthened rather than the left, and 3) two divisions not been transferred to the Eastern Front, where they weren’t needed, at a critical juncture.
Later, countermeasures against MGs were devised, to include mortars and hand grenades. Plus mobile squad automatics like the Lewis gun.
It is people like you, that…..that….that…. keep me coming to WUWT.
A couple of grams of arsenic can kill a grown man.
Just because the amount is small is not evidence that it can have no impact.
But CO2 is harmless to a grown man, in small concentrations, as opposed to arsenic, or plutonium, or other harmful substances. I really like this graphic, but actual atmospheric percentages should/might be shown next to the:
“Purple = Nitrogen – 78.09%
Dark blue = Oxygen – 20.95%
Light blue = Argon – 0.93%
Green = Various trace gases, and water vapor – 1% at sea level, and 0.4% over the entire atmosphere
Orange = Carbon dioxide prior to year 1800 and the industrial revolution – 0.04%
Red = Increase in carbon dioxide after year 1800 (assumed to be man-made) – ?%”
And how many small squares are shown?
By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains a variable amount of water vapor, on average around 1% at sea level, and 0.4% over the entire atmosphere.
We are not talking poisons. We are talking about small quantities being able to influence.
CO2 doesn’t have to be poisonous to man in order to impact the climate.
The magic of my CO2 graph is that it is not labeled. I just show it to people, and say, “Check this out.”
They’ll ask what it is. This means that they’re defenses are down; they are open. (Let’s face it: it is impossible to communicate when someone’s defenses are up, so why even attempt it?)
I say that it’s the earth’s atmosphere — this is nitrogen (they are always greatly surprised), this is oxygen (more surprise), this is argon (what’s that?), this is the trace gases, …
Then the fun begins.
People are absolutely stunned when they learn the orange is the CO2 level of 200 years ago.
But the grand finale is explaining that microscopic red dot. People. Are. Floored!
Then they get angry when they realize they’ve been lied to and deceived to believe CO2 is, like, 80% of the atmosphere.
You guys should try it; I doubt there is a better way to cut through to the layman. Let me know if you find one!
(Pardon my typos.)
Max Did you ask your cousins all those Photons to which you are related to : How many does it take to raise the earths temp by 1C?
I really like this graphic – (+ 10,000).
How many small squares are in this graph? I failed to count them.
The graph is 100 x 100 = 10,000 squares, which is exceptionally convenient!
Each row and each column = 1%.
So each square = 1/100th of 1%, or 100 ppm.
This scaling makes it super easy to talk to the layman about CO2 going from, say, 300 to 400 ppm, using a crystal clear visual. Without the graphic, those numbers mean absolutely nothing to people.
Incidentally, I have found that the average person thinks CO2 makes up somewhere between 50 – 80% of the atmosphere!
Note that nitrogen and oxygen are off by a few squares, and I should correct that, but for casual discussion it is more than adequate.
Again, I strongly suggest you guys show it to people. It’s profound to watch the impact it has on them.
We cannot expect the layman to understand anything more complicated than that graphic. Fortunately, we don’t need to! 🙂
+97% 😂
“People are absolutely stunned when they learn the orange is the CO2 level of 200 years ago.
But the grand finale is explaining that microscopic red dot. People. Are. Floored!”
“I called this the ‘black paint’ problem. If you want to block light passing through a window apply a layer of paint. It will block most of the light. A second layer only reduces light fractionally. The current level of CO2 is like the one layer of paint. ”
These hand-wavy arguments are amusing. Either there’s too little CO2 in the atmosphere to cause any harm, or there’s so much CO2 in the atmosphere that adding any more cannot cause much additional warming.
Bellman, you are pretending to be dense (or are you)? CO2 does at least two things, one is acting as a greenhouse gas, and the other is as plant food. The effect as a GHG is on a log curve, so additional CO2 is minimal. C3 plants grow better with a level of CO2 at about three times current levels, so the level is too low.
Tony Hella
“C3 plants grow better with a level of CO2 at about three times current levels, so the level is too low.”
I’m assuming this is in response to my comment in response to a comment asking why scientists wanted to starve plants by reducing CO2.
I think your suggestion that C3 plants are currentyl starving at a mere 400ppm of CO2 is strange. According to Wikipedia C3 plants thrive at 200 ppm or better and currently make up around 95% of all plant live, so it’s difficult to see how they were being disadvantaged by the lower pre-industrial levels, let alone the current levels.
That’s a good graph Max. A sense of proporportion makes many questions answer themselves.
“proportion” Fingers stuttered.
Exactly, CKMoore. The graph provides the layman with a sense of proportion that ALL of the climate alarmism denies them.
Watson got one thing wrong: Humans can only see a few thousand stars at night with the unaided eye, not millions.
Dr Ball
Insightful as usual, and given the number of articles and calculations on the warming effects of CO2 this year alone, very timely.
To monopolise your opponent you make a claim, in this case the warming effects of CO2, and leave it up to them to prove you wrong. The answer is never provable in absolute terms, but acts as a major distraction of all resources. Skeptic’s usually agree with the lowest calculation. But in issuing that calculation you are also by default agreeing that CO2 has warming effects. Then only question is how much. Imediately you are in their camp.
A small point, there is a longer standing issue, CFCs and the so called ozone hole. NASA the primary source of data and comment, report ozone in the hemispheres differently. In the NH three values are reported, over 40N minimum and maximum, and NHPC over 63N to two decimal points. In the SH only the SH minimum over 40S, and the ozone hole, both loss figures.
Additionally they use the colour blue in the images to cover 220DU down to 115DU. It is a numerical and visual deception.
With regards
The Ozone hole theory is another big scam. There always was an ozone hole over the Antarctic. They only started measuring in 1979.
Let me start by saying I love this site and all you guys out there who actually enjoy thinking, sharing your knowledge and thoughts freely and in a straightforward and often humorous manner… and if there is to be a fight back…you guys are the brains behind the effort, but……!?
As usual none of you have the slightest idea about a political message. Its all very well to correct the lies of the insane warmist assholes…but it will get you precisely no-where if the object is to enlighten the average Joe and destroy the warmists Chicken Little narrative. Even this article…do you really think a single undecided person will read this and suddenly wake up to themselves? Zero chance of that. Far too many words for Joe and Boooorrrringggg! The sensational lie will continue to be played over the media, your thoughtful rebuff will not.
You must come up with a simple unarguable point that the layperson can understand, take to heart as an obvious truth and can repeat to others without them glazing over as well, and that cannot be covered over or be lied about…by the professional liars.
One simple point that anyone can understand and I believe should be spread far and wide by the non-lamestream media, meaning YOU guys to begin with…is this: The record of CO2 concentrations over the geological timeframe. As I am sure you all understand we are at 400PPM CO2 concentrations…roughly the equal LOWEST concentrations in 600,000,000 years of complex life since the Cambrian. The only other time in the history of life on planet Earth we were at such dangerously low CO2 concentrations was during the Carboniferous-Permian border. We have been above 8,000PPM, and the average CO2 level over the 600,000,000 years is above 2,000PPM and the whole of the Cambrian, the greatest evolutionary period of life in the planets history was between 8,000PPM and 5,000PPM. So how the FH can 400PPM be considered likely to plunge the planet into catastrophic holocaustic run away global warming, when that did not happen over the 200,000,000 years of the Cambrian when CO2 concentrations were as much as 20 times current levels? In fact its quite obvious that the opposite happened, hence the expression “The Cambrian Explosion.”. Debate over, Joe will take that on board and will see the obvious common sence in it, and Joe will repeat it, and laugh at the same idiots we all laugh at. And scoff at their obvious insane lies.
Give them a printed chart, I have begun printing these things from graphs I found on-line, laminating them and sending them to very many different sources such as radio station hosts etc. I intend to bombard politicians with this stuff and seek replies…which I wont get…but if they get 50? Or 500? Or if this truth gets about widely? I’m going to send one to Trump and see what happens there. I bet he replies.
Laminating is cheap, I bought an Aldi laminator and a bunch of plastic sleeves and intend to use them all up and repeat. I urge you to become a bit more active than enjoying your daily browse of sanity here and fight back. This will do it if we can get the reality of the near record low CO2 levels into the minds of the voting public. We can also tell them about the polar bears, the history of corals, the benefits to agriculture et al…we can easily crush them if we just get bloody organized!
Hope this all makes sense, don’t have time to correct it, cheers guys, keep on kicking.
Excellent idea, Bill5150.
There is no doubt that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were much larger in the past than today, and there has never been a Runaway Greenhouse Effect” in all of Earth’s history and the Alarmists cannot refute either fact.
Putting this information in a simple graph and passing it around to people you want to influence is a great idea.
It is easy for some to just know what is true without data.
https://youtu.be/uyS1cXrsgIg
When a student is given a question s/he thinks it’s solvable from the information given. If one of the answers is “there’s not enough information” then that changes the whole response I would think. Is this so difficult to understand about students who are tested all the time?
The science is 100% irrelevant because the perpetrators can lie with impunity and they do. This isn’t. Global warming is an oil industry/banking scam.
James Hansen in the Guardian.
Governments today, instead, talk of “cap-and-trade with offsets”, a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/26/james-hansen-climate-change
OK we get, big business bad, big government will save us all.
James Hansen was the Director of GISS a division of NASA who once made a prediction that NewYork city would be under 6 feet of water by the year 2000. He also made many other doomsday predictions none of which came true. The guy is a crackpot and really is just plain evil for his opposition to fossil fuels . Because of people like him some people have died from the cold cause they had to make a choice between food and heat.
And yapped about Catastrophic Global Cooling before that.
I’ve got a hundred plus of these papers etc. circulating and zero explanations as to why I am wrong.
If K-T’s 333 W/m^2 GHG energy loop doesn’t work the entire man-caused climate change shenanigans fall apart.
http://www.writerbeat.com/articles/21036-S-B-amp-GHG-amp-LWIR-amp-RGHE-amp-CAGW
Nick go back to algebra 101. You can solve for any single equation if you have only 1 unknown. Your talk of substituting .7/,7 for emissivity is just nonsense.
“Part of the reason the deception persists is because of the failure of skeptics to explain the scientific problems with the AGW claim in a way people can understand.”
Part of the problem is when you put in the AGW acronym in your quote/pronouncement, 99% (my guess) of the general population have no idea what you are talking about. Even if you say anthropological global warming, they still don’t know. You somehow have to say “human caused global warming” or maybe something better and “to the point” that they understand.
Just sayin…
Ask 100+ or so what people on the street say what AGW stands for, and you will see my point.
The logarithmic effect of CO2 shown in the chart Figure 1 above is usually ignore or not shown by any AGW types as they are afraid of its contents and that it distinctly show the limits of greenhouse gas warming. Most of the warming is done by the first 20 parts.
“Most of the warming is done by the first 20 parts.”
How is that relevant. We started the century at ~290ppm. The logarithmic effect just means there will be a certain rise for a doubling of CO2. Looked at over the actual rise in CO2 there isn’t much difference between logarithmic and linear.
And the Junk Science graph is just showing three estimates of sensitivity that happen to be on the low side. Whether they are correct or not, pointing to the graph of evidence of this is just a circular argument. If sensitivity is low there will be less warming, if it’s higher there will be more – the graph proves nothing.
The problem for skeptics, we don’t use enough pictures. Pictures are the universal language. Emotional pictures speak to the heart, not the head, and the heart will trump the head every time. The alarmist beat us because they are better at pictures.
Dr. Deanster,
The problem for skeptics is that you don’t use enough evidence to back up your claims.
Kristi,
All the evidence in the world supports the skeptical position.
Alarmists, OTOH, have nothing, no evidence, no reason, nada, zilch, nothing.
The burden of proof is not on skeptics.
From Kristi Silber
May 5, 2018 at 4:01 pm
“I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts. Not just insults about some ill-defined group, though,”
Hmmmmm…… Then you attack Dr. Deanster’s thoughts and insult some ill-defined ‘skeptics’ group. Are your contradictory statements ‘enough evidence’ of why people question your judgement.. and your honesty?
From Kristi Silber
May 5, 2018 at 2:15 pm
“It’s not a competition for who can do the most good, it’s a battle of who’s most self-righteous.”
OK. You ‘Win’. Again. And Again.
Kristie …. (not that you will respond), yep, the evidence is not conclusive on either side regarding short term fluctuations (ie, 100-500 year intervals) in climate. Thus, as I said, the CAGW crowd masters the use of pictures to appeal to the heart. One picture of a starving polar bear or a bear floating on an iceberg, with an unsubstantiated claim that the bear is starving due to climate change is more impactful than papers on the truth. Pictures of hurricane damage with captions of due to global warming, burnt forest, pictures of people living in a drought.,a picture of a flood, a heat wave, you name it, any catastrophe, …. tag on due to global warming, and wallah, you score a point.
Pictures of lush forest, fat people who eat to much, healthy polar bears, etc …. just don’t have the same impact.
“The burden of proof is not on skeptics”
Let’s reemphasize that for Kristi. It’s not up to skeptics to prove anything.
Kristi, what skeptics do is point out that the other side has no evidence. It is up to the other side to prove their claims.
I know you think they have already proven their claims, but the truth is they have not. That’s why they don’t want to argue with skeptics because they can’t make the case, and the temperatures are not cooperating with them.
Their only hope is that the Earth’s temperatures start climbing again. Currently, they are just fudging the temperature record to make it appear that temperatures are going up, up, up. One notable thing is we haven’t heard “Hottest Year Evah!” lately. Yet CO2 atmospheric concentrations continue to increase. No correlation between CO2 and temperatures, despite the Alarmist’s best efforts at bastardizing the temperature record.
Kristi, I think you are sincere in trying to understand this climate change situation. Where I think you are going wrong is you already have your mind made up that the science is settled. So instead of trying to understand the technical reasons for skeptic arguments, you focus on the psychological aspects. Which is ok, skeptics do that, too, but you are missing a lot of the arguments by the narrow focus.
Keep searching, Kristi. We’ll turn you into a skeptic yet! 🙂
You guys forget, that Kristi is part of the new wave of college grads with fake degrees, who have been taught that science is defined as whatever they agree with.
That’s why it’s only “data” when it supports them. That’s how Kristi ca say with a straight face that skeptics have no data.
Kristi what specific piece of evidence do you have that proves CO2 is the climate control knob?
mkelly: A lay person’s summary in is in a Time magazine article . After you read that, read the Science paper by Lacis et al. (2010, with the 2011 correction) that the Time article summarizes: “Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature.”. Then watch the excellent lecture by Richard Alley at the AGU conference: “The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History.”
mkelly: Sorry, I broke the link to the Time article in my previous comment. Here it is: http://science.time.com/2010/10/14/climate-why-co2-is-the-control-knob-for-global-climate-change/
mkelly: Jeff Masters summarized Alley’s lecture.
Here’s a clear and simple fact for you , Kristi. Except for the Arctic, nowhere in the world is the weather distinguishable from 1970. The Arctic is warm , with plenty of evidence that it has also been warm in the fairly recent past.
@ Tom Dayton May 6, 2018 at 12:10 pm
Sorry Tom. There is no physical evidence for an increase in water vapor in the real world.
Also, CO2 increase in known to lag temperature increase on all time scales.
It was a great theory but the data does not bear it out.
Also, CO2 does not last for hundreds of years in the atmosphere. IIRC it’s half-life is on the order of 7-1/2 years.
Also, the very fact that water vapor condenses is what drives heat transfer to TOA where it can be radiated. Vapor is created by absorbing tremendous amounts of latent heat during the phase change. It then convectively rises to the upper atmosphere where it dumps all of that latent as it condenses and the heat is mostly radiated to space.
My personal favourite Sherlockism: “Data, data, data, I can’t make bricks without clay!”.
The following is not really on topic, but not really off topic either.
I was admiring my nice argon filled, double glazed windows (low-emissivity, no less!!). And a thought arose, unbidden yet fully formed, in my mind. The thought went like this:
“If CO2 is so good at trapping heat, why don’t manufacturers of double glazed windows put CO2 between the panes, instead of moldy old (and inert) argon? Wouldn’t it make solar-heated buildings even more efficient?”
I can think of two possible explanations:
No. 1 – CO2 actually isn’t that good at trapping heat.
No. 2 – I’m too ignorant to think of the next potential explanation
Can someone enlighten me, insolate me, or something? The question is not intended to be frivolous. I think it’s a rather good question, although I modestly and generously admit that I may not be the first to ask it. Answers in the form of “This is what a warmist would say, but of course that’s a load of twaddle” are welcomed. Answers invoking a 97% consensus would be met with blistering invective. Thank you all.
“CO2 actually isn’t that good at trapping heat”
It just depends on how much you have. There are 10 tons of air above every square meter, and so about 6 kg/sq m CO₂ (allowing for extra density) that lies in the pathway of radiation. The 15 mm gap between glass would put 0.03 kg/sq m in the IR path through the window.
“Nick Stokes May 5, 2018 at 11:29 pm
It just depends on how much you have.”
How much would we need for CO2 to become a good insulator and good at trapping heat? There has been no concentration of CO2 on earth that would insulate and/or trap heat. CO2 does not trap heat anywhere in the known universe, not even on Venus.
CO2 has a peak absorbance at 15 microns in the IR spectrum which corresponds to -80°C. There is only one molecule in 2500 in the atmosphere. CO2 absorbs and re-radiates only about .002 of the radiation incident upon it. That does not seem to produce much warming except in Antarctica.
“It is probable that even a 1% variation in atmospheric water vapor equals or exceeds all the effects of human sourced CO2.”
Dr. Ball
IPCC put the radiative forcing of anthropogenic CO2 at 1.7 W/m^2. Calculations based on radiative transfer equations put the radiative forcing of water vapor at 75 W/m^2. A 1% change in water vapor equals 0.75 W/m^2. Or less than the CO2 forcing. But any increase in GHE can be compensated by evaporation and convective cooling. Radiative heat transfer is the easy part. Fluid dynamics is the hard part. We cannot predict the climate simply because we understand the GHE
https://scienceofdoom.com/2010/02/10/co2-%e2%80%93-an-insignificant-trace-gas-part-five/
If I may I’d like to aim another curve-ball at the radiative forcing of anthropogenic carbon dioxide argument.
At any one time there are lots of clouds in the sky. Each cloud contains quite a lot of liquid water. Now I know if one were to put all the water-drops in a typical cloud together you probably wouldn’t get very much water in your bucket. However, where one to take all the CO2 in the volume in the cloud and condense that into a liquid I don’t think you’d get very much of that either.
Now back to the water.
If one were to regard each water droplet as a giant molecule (not a big stretch if one takes into account that water molecules each have a charge which helps them stick together) then one could regard water droplets in clouds as molecules mixed in with all the other molecules in the air.
If my hunch is correct I think you will find that water droplets are radiatively active in almost all the frequencies of light that carbon dioxide is. Furthermore, water droplets in clouds are probably a tad bigger than carbon dioxide molecules so each droplet would probably absorb and re-radiate rather more than 0.002 of the radiation incident upon it.
To me this explains why if you’ve ever slept out on a windless night under a starry, cloudless sky you would most certainly notice a difference compared with doing so when it’s overcast.
To me the big question, when it comes to carbon dioxide, is: “What difference does it make?”
Clouds (water droplets) have a net cooling effect of negative 21 W/m^2 because it reflects solar radiation. Better than your hunch, read climate dynamics of clouds
https://atmos.washington.edu/~dargan/587/587_6.pdf
“What difference does it (CO2) make?”
300 ppm CO2 contributes 24 to 32 W/m^2 to the GHE. Double it to 600 ppm, it adds 3.7 W/m^2 or about 1 C without feedback. The effect is nonlinear. Negative feedback will decrease the effect. Positive feedback will increase the effect. It is uncertain but my bet is negative due to absence of the “tropical hot spot”
There are no calculations of radiative forcing of water vapour. Your 75W/m^2 is plucked from thin air. You are a charlatan who runs a website that copies and pastes gobblydook from alarmist sites. You always talk about radiative transfer equations but never give the equations. Michael Modest does in his book and he says they are unsolveable. I suggest you read his book 1st before spewing any more junk on your site.
I’m not a charlatan. You’re just ignorant of atmospheric physics.
http://slideplayer.com/slide/7448281/24/images/38/Solution+to+the+Radiative+Transfer+Equation.jpg
Discussion of radiative transfer equation (also called Schwarzchild’s equation)
https://scienceofdoom.com/2011/02/07/understanding-atmospheric-radiation-and-the-%e2%80%9cgreenhouse%e2%80%9d-effect-%e2%80%93-part-six-the-equations/
75 W/m^2 came from numerical solution of RTE using computer (Kiehl and Trenberth, 1997)
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0477%281997%29078%3C0197%3AEAGMEB%3E2.0.CO%3B2
This is a good approximation since they are not forecasting future climate states. The parameters are constrained by satellite observations of SW and LW fluxes and environmental lapse rate. In short, it’s a complex curve fitting of RTE and empirical data. In contrast, forecasting is extrapolation beyond known data points.
Your radiative heat transfer equations are equivalent to a kindergarten school primer on heat transfer. Read a real text book on radiative heat transfer. You know nothing about the subject. I suggest you get the text book written by Michael F. Modest (the world authority on radiative heat transfer who you never even heard about until I told you). The title of the book is Radiative Heat Transfer 3rd edtion. Read the chapters on gaseous heat transfer and then you will understand why nobody can calculate it.
Yeah radiative transfer equations are for kindergarten and you don’t understand it. BTW I also teach quantum electrodynamics (QED) in my kindergarten class. Modest (Radiative Heat Transfer,3rd edition) devoted seven chapters to RTE solutions including four radiative transfer calculations for gases (Chapter 11), exact solutions (Chapter 14) and approximate solutions (Chapter 15) Just a kindergarten book you don’t understand. She will teach you how to solve RTE and QED
Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is plenty of scientific reasoning to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is really zero. It is all a matter of science.
I think Karl Popper has stated what is required to be scientific by his Falsification imperative. Only if repeated, seriously and systamatically conducted falsifications all fail, we ca conclude that a temporary truth (nota bene: until the next Falsification holds). I have asked several resaerch institutions to infom me about such Falsification tests – with no avail! Once again: how has the CO2 hypothesis been fared by such falsifications? I am still waiting for an answer
Rolf – All you need is one credible falsification to disprove a hypothesis.
I suggest that global warming alarmism has never been credibly demonstrated to be correct and has repeatedly been falsified.
The argument is about one parameter – the sensitivity of climate to increasing CO2. Let’s call that TCS.
There is ample Earth-scale evidence that TCS is less than or equal to about 1C/(2xCO2).
There is no credible evidence that it is much higher than that.
At this magnitude of TCS, the global warming crisis does not exist.
Examples:
1. Prehistoric CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were many times today levels, and there was no runaway or catastrophic warming.
2. Fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric CO2 strongly accelerated after about 1940, but Earth cooled significantly from ~1940 to ~1977.
3. Atmospheric CO2 increased after ~1940 , but the warming rates that occurred pre-1940 and post-1977 were about equal.
4. Even if you attribute ALL the warming that occurred in the modern era to increasing atmospheric CO2, you only calculate a TCS of about 1C/(2xCO2). [Christy and McNider (1994 & 2017), Lewis and Curry (2018).]
There are many more lines of argument that TCS is low – these are a few.
Regards, Allan
“Part of the reason the deception persists is because of the failure of skeptics to explain the scientific problems with the AGW claim in a way people can understand.”
Dr. Ball, it strikes me that what is needed — and it could be a project of WUWT — is a very simple sheet of incontrovertible, indisputable facts, presented devoid of emotional and political rhetoric and adjectives as well as arcane three letter acronyms and abbreviations. Pretend you are explaining it to a sixth grader of average intellectual abilities but who needs to have this important information.
It could start out something like this:
1. Carbon dioxide — CO2 — is NOT a pollutant. It is an essential plant food. If there were no CO2 in the air, all plants would die, followed quickly by all animals and people.
2. There have been at least X (number) of times in the earth’s history when CO2 was at much higher levels in the air, yet the earth was virtually covered with ice and snow. This shows that CO2 is not the primary cause of the warming of the earth.
3. No one knows exactly why the earth warms and cools, but it has done so for hundreds of millions of years, including when there were no people on the earth.
. . . and so forth
Good idea?
Thanks for this exercise on logic regarding AGW. I used to believe in AGW until I helped my son with a science project about 8 years ago and stumbled upon Watts Up With That. My eyes were opened and I became an official “denier” after that encounter with non-political skepticism. Keep up the good work!!
Dr. Tim Ball wrote in this article:
“It is likely that every year annual variance in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere exceeds the warming effects of human CO2. I can’t prove it, but…”
Hello Tim, (Cc via email)
Here is a relationship between UAH LT Global Temperatures and Equatorial Atmospheric Water Concentrations – this may provide the proof you need.
Best, Allan
UAH Lower Troposphere: Anomalies
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0beta5.txt
NOAA Precipitable Water Monolevel +/-20 N, 0-360W
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1665255773551978&set=a.1012901982120697.1073741826.100002027142240&type=3&theater
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/30/game-over/comment-page-1/#comment-2778422
The correct mechanism is described as follows (approx.):
Equatorial Pacific Sea Surface Temperature up –> Equatorial Atmospheric Water Vapor up 3 months later –> Equatorial Temperature up -> Global Temperature up one month later -> Global Atmospheric dCO2/dt up (contemporaneous with Global Temperature) -> Atmospheric CO2 trends up 9 months later
What drives Equatorial Pacific Sea Surface Temperature? In sub-decadal timeframes, El Nino and La Nina (ENSO); longer term, probably the Integral of Solar Activity.
The base CO2 increase of ~2ppm/year could have many causes, including fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc, but it has a minor or insignificant impact on global temperatures.
For those who are interested, here are a few more points to tie this together – note the graph:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/28/the-end-of-the-end-of-winter/comment-page-1/#comment-2702794
[excerpted]
You may recall our conversation of November 11, 2017, excerpted below.
The atmospheric cooling that I originally predicted (4 months in advance) using the Nino34 anomaly has started to materialize in November 2017 – more global cooling should follow. I can only predict 4 months in the future using the Nino34 temperature anomaly, and 6 months using the Equatorial Upper Ocean temperature anomaly.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1527601687317388&set=a.1012901982120697.1073741826.100002027142240&type=3&theater
Global atmospheric temperatures have reacted a bit later than usual to the drop in Nino34 temperatures, but are slowly returning to their “typical relationship”. This delay in the typical relationship is probably due to the large magnitude of the latest El Nino, such that the excess heat is taking longer-than-usual to dissipate from the ocean through the atmosphere and into space. See the email conversation with John Christy (Nov.4, 2017), located just above on the same page of wattsup.
The sharp decline in the UAHLT global atmospheric temperature anomaly in November 2017 should be followed by even more cooling, down to about 0.0C as I predicted on November 12. I would really like to be wrong about this further cooling, because we are all freezing in most of North America, Prescient people are taking their brass lawn ornaments indoors, such that the extremities do not freeze off.
In the longer term, I expect moderate global cooling, as was experienced from ~1940 to ~1975, to resume. I predicted in 2002 that this moderate multi-decadal global cooling would re-commence by ~2020 to 2030, and this prediction is looking increasingly probable, since solar activity has crashed in SC 24 (and will probably also be very low in SC25).
I hope to be wrong about this last prediction – both humanity and the environment suffer in a cooling world. This human suffering will be exacerbated by the actions of our corrupt/imbecilic politicians, who have greatly compromised our electrical grids due to their over-reliance on intermittent wind and solar energy systems.
Best personal regards, Allan in Calgary
__________________________________
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/11/noaa-la-nina-is-officially-back/#comment-2663851
Allan M R MacRae November 12, 2017 at 1:32 pm
My further analysis suggests the UAH LT temperature anomaly will cool to about 0.0C within about 6 months.
__________________________________
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/11/noaa-la-nina-is-officially-back/#comment-2663875
AndyG55 November 12, 2017 at 1:51 pm
WOW, Allan, you reckon that far, that quickly.
That’ll make things interesting, especially if it continues to drop after that.
_________________________________
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/11/noaa-la-nina-is-officially-back/#comment-2663837
From: John Christy
Date: November 4, 2017 at 7:28:22 PM GMT+7
To: Allan MacRae
Cc: Anthony Watts, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Joe D’Aleo, Joe Bastardi
Subject: Re: Sorted – atmospheric cooling will resume soon
Allan
Yes. We’ve seen this correlation since our first paper about it in Nature back in 1994. The Pacific gave up a lot of heat between July and October – and some of it is making its way through the atmosphere. We think the anomalies will drop soon too.
John C.
The following is in support of the above article.
Quote from the above article.
Systems that have positive feedback are unstable. Almost all, natural physical systems have negative feedback. Negative feedback resists change.
The standard method to determine whether a system has positive or negative feed is to determine how the system responses to a step input change, in this case a change in the energy that is heating the earth.
We know when there are very, very, large volcanic eruptions (volcanic eruptions create sulfur dioxide which reflects sunlight and cools the planet) that we have a year without summer which indicates a very strong step change in amount of energy that is reaching the earth.
There is not, however, decades of widely oscillating temperature after a volcanic eruption.
The system response to a volcanic eruption shows the planet strong resists (negative feedback) forcing changes.
The following paper analyzes eight independent step changes in forcing that occur naturally on the earth to determine how the atmosphere responses to a step change in forcing.
In all of the eight independent cases, the analyze supports the assertion that the earth’s response to a change in forcing is strongly negative.
Idso Skeptics View of Global Warming
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/idso98.pdf
The following is another paper that analyzes how the planet actually responses to forcing changes and compares the actual response of the atmosphere to what is predicted by 11 different climate models. In all cases the climate models are incorrect.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
It is not that difficult to articulate a cogent rebuttal to the absurd theory of man-made global warming.
1. The Medieval Warn Period and Little Ice Age, supported by literally hundreds of scientific studies, prove beyond doubt that Earth’s climate changes spontaneously and chaotically, without regard to the human species.
2. Over geologic time – hundreds of millions of years- the amount of atmospheric CO2 has been 10-15 times what it is today. The earth did not burn up and disappear.
3. The Vostok ice cores and numerous other studies demonstrate that atmospheric CO2 rises AFTER the Earth warms, NOT before. It is impossible to prove that an effect precedes a cause. When caught in the lie that a rise in CO2 precedes global warming, as featured in Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”, the woman responsible for the graph ADMITTED the error but dismissed it as “minor”. Really? More like a blatant deception.
4. CO2 is essential for life on Earth. The Earth was not formed with oxygen. It took hundreds of millions of years for the miracle of photosynthesis – the chemical reaction between CO2 and water and other minerals – to form the plants which emit oxygen. No CO2, – no plants – no oxygen – no life on earth.
5. The theory of man made global warming is rife with fraud: Climategate, the Hockey Stick, IPCC and NASA data manipulation, etc.
So:
1) Climate change is natural and variable
2) Atmospheric CO2 has been 10-15x what it is today
3) CO2 rises after global warming, not before
4) CO2 is essential for creating oxygen
5).The theory of man-made global warming is riddled with fraud and deception.
QED
A very good post Terry. Here is more supporting information:
PRESENTATION OF EVIDENCE SUGGESTING TEMPERATURE DRIVES ATMOSPHERIC CO2 MORE THAN CO2 DRIVES TEMPERATURE
Allan MacRae. P.Eng. / June 13, 2015
Observations and Conclusions:
1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah5/from:1979/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
4. CO2 is the feedstock for carbon-based life on Earth, and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient. CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
5. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
6. Recent global warming was natural and irregularly cyclical – the next climate phase following the ~20 year pause will probably be global cooling, starting by ~2020 or sooner.
7. Adaptation is clearly the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling experienced in recent centuries.
8. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates. There are about 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths every year in the USA and about 10,000 in Canada.
9. Green energy schemes have needlessly driven up energy costs, reduced electrical grid reliability and contributed to increased winter mortality, which especially targets the elderly and the poor.
10. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society. When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.
Allan MacRae, Calgary, June 12, 2015
________________________________________________________________________
RE POINT #1 ABOVE:
Humlum et al reached similar conclusions in 2013 here:
“Highlights:
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
– Changes in ocean temperatures explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.
– Changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.”
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1551019291642294&set=a.1012901982120697.1073741826.100002027142240&type=3&theater
I suggest that the global warming alarmists could not be more wrong. These are the true facts, which are opposite to their alarmist claims:
1. CO2 is plant food, and greater atmospheric CO2 is good for natural plants and also for agriculture.
2. Earth’s atmosphere is clearly CO2-deficient and the current increase in CO2 (whatever the causes) is beneficial.
3. Increased atmospheric CO2 does not cause significant global warming – regrettable because the world is too cold and about to get colder, imo.
Regards to all, Allan
References:
PRESENTATION OF EVIDENCE SUGGESTING TEMPERATURE DRIVES ATMOSPHERIC CO2 MORE THAN CO2 DRIVES TEMPERATURE
Allan MacRae. P.Eng. / June 13, 2015
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/
Humlum et al reached similar conclusions in 2013 here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658
1) Climate change can be natural, but that doesn’t prove artificial change is impossible.
2) The world will not vaporize is CO2 increases 15 fold. Good to know, though nobody said it would, and in any event CO2 cannot possibly increase by that much. (strictly speaking though you haven’t proven that as it also depend on the conditions on earth at the time)
3) Tells us nothing about the current rise in CO2. Usually CO2 levels only change in response to changes in temperature as there is no natural mechanism to increase the amount of carbon in the cycle. This changed when humans started burning fossil fuels.
4) This is a) nonsense, there’s far more oxygen in the atmosphere than CO2, and if all the carbon were to vanish life on earth would be extinct long before the oxygen ran out. And b) irrelevant, as no one is suggesting we remove all CO2 from the atmosphere. I doubt any ones even come up with a plan to put CO2 levels back to pre-industrial levels, when life and oxygen were both doing fine.
5) Fraud is a pretty serious claim, and something I’ve never seen backed up with anything other than wishful thinking, but even if you could find examples of fraud it does not prove theory of man-made global warming is wrong.
QED, I don’t think you know what that means.
Bellman – it appears you are trying to refute Terry Johnson’s above post.
If so, you are doing a very poor job – setting up strawman arguments that are different from Terry’s claims, and then trying to shoot them down. This is a dishonest tactic that is often used in debate – all it does is dishonor those who use it.
Allan MacRae
I was disagreeing with Terry Johnson’s 5 points, I’m not sure if I refuted any of them. I hope I didn’t use any strawman arguments, could you point to a specific instance?
Bellman wrote (in lower case)
MY RESPONSES ARE IN CAPS.
1) Climate change can be natural, but that doesn’t prove artificial change is impossible.
A STRAWMAN ARGUMENT- TERRY DID NOT SAY ARTIFICIAL CHANGE IS IMPOSSIBLE – THE ISSUE IS ONE OF MAGNITUDE – IS ARTIFICIAL (MAN-MADE) CHANGE LARGE AND DANGEROUS? TH E ANSWER IS NO.
2) The world will not vaporize is CO2 increases 15 fold. Good to know, though nobody said it would, and in any event CO2 cannot possibly increase by that much. (strictly speaking though you haven’t proven that as it also depend on the conditions on earth at the time).
AGAIN THE ISSUE IS HOW MUCH MAN-MADE WARMING, AND THE ANSWER IS NOT MUCH.
3) Tells us nothing about the current rise in CO2. Usually CO2 levels only change in response to changes in temperature as there is no natural mechanism to increase the amount of carbon in the cycle. This changed when humans started burning fossil fuels.
IT IS PROBABLE THAT FOSSIL FUEL COMBUSTION, DEFORESTATION, ETC. CAUSED MUCH OF THE MODERN INCREASE IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2, BUT THE EVIDENCE TO DATE SUGGESTS THAT THIS INCREASE IS BENEFICIAL TO HUMANITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT. FURTHERMORE, CO2 TRENDS ALSO LAG TEMPERATURE TRENDS IN THE MODERN DATA RECORD, BY ABOUT 9 MONTHS.
4) This is a) nonsense, there’s far more oxygen in the atmosphere than CO2, and if all the carbon were to vanish life on earth would be extinct long before the oxygen ran out. And b) irrelevant, as no one is suggesting we remove all CO2 from the atmosphere. I doubt any ones even come up with a plan to put CO2 levels back to pre-industrial levels, when life and oxygen were both doing fine.
THAT IS NOT WHAT TERRY IS SAYING. NOT EVEN CLOSE. YOURS IS A PURE STRAWMAN ARGUMENT – UTTER NONSENSE.
5) Fraud is a pretty serious claim, and something I’ve never seen backed up with anything other than wishful thinking, but even if you could find examples of fraud it does not prove theory of man-made global warming is wrong.
FRAUD IS PROVEN BY THE CLIMATEGATE EMAILS, THE MANN HOCKEY STICK, THE RIDICULOUS CLIMATE MODELS THAT GREATLY OVERSTATE WARMING, ETC.
Allan MacRae,
Terry Johnson’s comment was described as “a cogent rebuttal to the absurd theory of man-made global warming.” I responded on the assumption he was suggesting that man-made global warming was an absurd theory, you call this a straw man argument and say instead that he was only saying man made climate change is not a serious problem.
Johnson’s claim was that “climate change is natural and variable”. He says that past periods of climate change “prove beyond doubt that Earth’s climate changes spontaneously and chaotically, without regard to the human species.”
It’s true that he does not say artificial change is impossible, not does my response say he does. If as you claim Johnson did not intend to make such a false conclusion, there’s no harm in me pointing it out. If as you say he was trying to say that man-made change would not be large or dangerous, he should have given some evidence to support that claim, as it doesn’t follow from the evidence he gives.
I was being a little sarcastic here in treating Johnson’s words literally. He said CO2 had been up to 15 times higher in the past and “The earth did not burn up and disappear.” That argument is a straw man, as nobody has suggested the earth will disappear, but I assume it was just intended as exaggerated language.
The trouble though is I don’t know what point was intended, and I cannot follow how pointing out that there was 15 times as much CO2 in the past leads anyone to conclude that there is not much man-made global warming, which in tern is still a long way from proving the absurdity of the theory of man-made global warming.
Johnson’s remark was that “CO2 rises after global warming, not before”. I interpreted the words “not before” as suggesting he thought CO2 never rose before warming. You interpret his claim as saying the human caused rise in CO2 has been beneficial. I suspect in this case you might be reading your own views into the words used.
Johnson’s exact words are “It took hundreds of millions of years for the miracle of photosynthesis – the chemical reaction between CO2 and water and other minerals – to form the plants which emit oxygen. No CO2, – no plants – no oxygen – no life on earth.”
I interpreted that as saying without CO2 there would be no oxygen. I’d accept that might only be referring to the past, so my comment about removing all CO2 leading to the end of ocygen might not be answering his point, but I hardly think it’s a straw man.
The main point I was addressing is that it’s irrelevant to the theory of global warming. Johnson’s point is that CO2 is essential for life and I and everyone else agrees. But it’s irrelevant to the theory that increasing CO2 will cause warming.
You simply repeat Johnson’s list of alleged frauds without backing up the claim. But my point was that even if you can find examples of actual fraud, this does not disprove the theory of man-made global warming. That would be like saying that Piltdown Man disproved the theory of evolution.
Everything Dr. Ball says is true in spades. One thing more: My current and limited refrain in this debating society has been the rejection of what is the actual temperature at which CO2 traps “heat.” The Einstein-Planck formula and Wilhelm Wien’s displacement law, both well established and tested physics, set the radiative temperature for gases interacting at the 15 μm wavelength at 193°K, or -80°C (minus). How dangerous is eighty Celsius degrees below zero to ECS? And that is for true black-body radiation. GHGs are gray bodies and they would radiate less. This matters at least as much as the overlap of water vapor on CO2’s radiation range and the inverse logarithmic influence of additional CO2. And that is just one observed fact omitted. It is probably past time we dug up and used the prior and well established greenhouse physics.
In 1872, 24 years before Arrhenius’s GHG hypothesis, the 19th Century physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, provided a rational physical explanation for the Earth’s greenhouse effect. His atmospheric mass-gravity-height theory, built upon standard and tested physical principles of Newton’s second law of motion, the ideal gas law, conservation of energy, and the second law of thermodynamics provides a complete explanation of why the Earth basks in what must be the most hospitable of environments in the universe. GHGs don’t come into it, aren’t needed.
Maxwell’s theory has been replicated many times, over the intervening near century and a half. It has been tested and validated by millions of radiosonde balloon observations and space shots for the U.S. space program, and well finalized in the “U.S. Standard Atmosphere” (1976). It explains the entire 33°C temperature rise from 255°K tp 288°K, without any resort to that imaginative but dubious supposition by the Swedish electrochemist. Arrhenius’s discipline was agriculture not climate. His idea has never, to my knowledge at least, been validated by observable evidence.
By having turned our back on the established atmospheric-greenhouse effect and wasting time debating a hypothesis with no factual underpinning and pretty shaky precepts, skeptics have let themselves be hornswoggled by a bunch of snake oil hucksters.
Maxwell’s mass-gravity-height physics of atmosphere is not as easy to grasp as the current calamity show, but it very logically develops the effective radiation level and temperature from the surface to the tropopause, as well as the wet and dry adiabatic lapse rates – not only for the earth but for any other planet in the solar system with an atmosphere. This theory works. Sorry it doesn’t have the simplicity or fear coefficient of runaway warming, but that is what reality is, and who is there to promote if not this body of quarreling skeptics?
I suggest another attempt at a popular treatise like “Slaying the sky dragon,” but as clear as reality and honesty permit. Is that a oxymoron?
Sorry, “an oxymoron.”
Are you aware of the work of Ned Nikolov PhD, who basically agrees the GHE is a nonsense and unnecessary to account for the warming effect. I have not looked hard at his detailed theory, but it was based on the science from other planetary atmospheres. says gravitational pressure on the mass of gas is what matters, and sounds a lot like yours in principle, if not in detail, which I am too thick to understand, Mr Maxwell and I struggled to find an understanding. I would also like to know how much gravitational pressure accounts for the sustained temperature of our visco elastic rock sauce planet beneath its wafer thin crust, in addition to the 25TW of radioactive decay estimated to be present. They reckon their is around 50TW of heat emitted from the surface from internal heat. Where did it all the heat come from to start with? How ere all the Earthly rocks so hot, etc. etc.
brianrlcatt: Nikolov’s speculation is nonsense. Here are just three of many explanations, by Roy Spencer, by And Then There’s Physics, and by Eli Rabbett.
I know at least one of those characters does not deal in absolute science , also I am a physicist and chartered engineer so I know Nikolov’s approach has merit, and also that the current climate models are so full of holes and assumptions a credible alternative is something to be studied as an alternative explanation. GHE may well be the new Phlogiston. Where is the gravitational pressure related heating in GHE thoery. Where is the measurement of 340W/m^2 of back IR from the upper atmosphere – that’s a serious question BTW.
I have been reading Dr. Murry L. Salby’s undergraduate textbook on the physics of the atmosphere and climate, and I can unreservedly confirm that it is extremely difficult. The best quick introduction to the process appeared on this site in three papers by Drs. Michael and Ronan Connolly. It was a rare and enlightening performance, especially since most physicists I have read seem to be purposely opaque about their science. (“Physics is science, all the rest is stamp collecting.”) They don’t help their popularity or their subject’s perspecuity, and it damages public understanding of the issue.
The most accessible treatment I ever saw on line was a series of posts on the “Hockey Schtick” in late 2015. I downloaded them and recently returned to working through the formulas and principles. After determining how Newton’s second law of motion, the ideal gas law, and the first and second laws of thermodynamics explained gravitational heating of a column of the atmosphere (a square yard of earthly surface is under about 9.7 tons of atmospheric pressure) i was working up to determining the height of the effective or equilibrium radiation level, when it seemed like a step was missing. Don’t worry, I am still looking for it and will settle that score.
But what you have heard is based on solid reliable development of fundamental physical laws, principles and processes. For as far as I got, it definitely worked. And it is true that it works for any planet in the solar system with a thick atmosphere, no matter what the mixture of gases is.
Sorry to drone on at such great length. The starting point is the Connolly and Connolly piece. They start with a bicycle or basketball pump. You work to inflate and the gas gets hot, then it radiates away. If it was a leaky tire or ball, your work would keep heating the air. The sun provides the the energy for our compressed atmosphere, and convectional overturning raises and cools the hot air in adiabats that join all the rest of terrestrial climate drivers like water, advection, ocean currents, solar heat, and the rest. The important take away is physics doesn’t contradict what we know, it amplifies, and rationalizes it. Whew! ‘Nuff said.
I suppose I will have to check what the gravitational pressuure on the atmosphere would produce in the way of increased global surface temperature. Or read Nikolov. I’d also like to see the results of such a calculation applied to the amount of heat generated by pressure on the Earths visco elastic rocks, inside it’s wafer thin rock foil, undulating in the daily gravitational tide by a metre or so. Who knew? (A: George Darwin). The maths is way beyond me, and there are so many theoretical modellers, as they don’t have to prove anything, just make their models correlate the chosen cause with the problem du jour for their grants. Easy career. I imagine a computer modeller’s version of the Accountant’s answer. When asked whether he can determine what causes climate change, the modeller’s first answer is “what would you like to cause it”.
See below, I replied to the wrong link.
Tom Dayton: Your comment seems like a variation on the usual unwillingness to deal with “boring facts.” My impression of all three citations is that they either specialize in not looking over their own fences or trade in straw men. Readers can, on your advice, huddle within their ignorance or look beyond and consider the existing viable and experimentally validated alternatives.
Hi brianricatt. I clicked the wrong “Reply” link. What I wrote is a bit farther down. My apologies.
Glad of any response from a rational carbon based sentient! I struggle with WordPress as I am only at Masters level, so not clever enough to understand the logic of the designers of the UI 😉
That is extremely well put, water vapour dominates, CO2 effects tiny and decreasing rapidly within it, and more H2O may just as likelt y, more likely, cause lower temperatures through clouds = no tipping point. In fact water vapour has been the supposed thermostat of the planet since it had oceans, until climate models came along with renewable energy to justify by framing CO2 in a partial Kangaroo court created by buying climate science departments with political funding using our taxes. To lend fraudulent support to the renewable subsidy scam that makes CO2 expensively worse than gas then nuclear for most. Renewables add no value to any climate change or sustainability measurement
I would add two other absolute criteria, to annoy the delusional irrationality of the Kristi person, if she is still allowed access to a keyboard
1. The lack of any sustained correlation between CO2 and temperature within or without the industrial era. Temperatures can go down as well as up.
2. The way the planet’s temperature has changed a whole 0.8 degrees overall while we have been measuring, up and down, while CO2 rose steadily from 280ppm to 400ppm, proves the sensitivity assumptions in models are simply wrong on the natural data.
3.Reality Check: We should prefer real data to the predictions of models, misrepresented by the words of inherently dishonest politicians for their lobbyists, in the same way I prefer to plan for my retirement while being told several ways the world will end in a human lifetime by charlatans and i the simple minded who can’t do the maths and science for themselves, , and why I should pay someone telling me this to avoid it happening to me (the religious approach I was educated to detect at first base).
Planet has been here 4 Billion years and we had been here for only a Million of that, through 9 short interglacials when we thrive in the warmth, and only civilised a bit during the last one, which is nearly over now. Natural climate things are going on as they have, and most likely will, as planetary and solar orbital controls are so much more powerful than human effects in fact, and turning to bogus amplifications of any small effect while hiding the reality of much larger natuaral effects simply doesn’t wash. The people should be told Tim Ball’s truth about water vapour.
5. Nothing has ever changed in human lifetimes so far, in spite of catastrophic super volcanos and asteroid impacts, we are OK, planet is fine…nothing to see here except same old ssientific and political corruption of hucksters scamming up grants and subsidies on the basis of bogus fears. Anothe thing the people shopuld be told, along with what we know REAL natural variation is, and its track record..
I have a different take about the issue of whether or not CO2 contributes to global warming or not. IDM. When I was an employee at a large corporation that was failing, we employees all had a standard response to business questions. IDM. IT DOESN’T MATTER. The same response would work for the issue of the role of CO2 in global warming. IDM. Here’s why.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 in Rio produced the Rio Declaration Principle 15 (now Precautionary Principle), which states: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” This means that if the EPA can hypothesize a one percent chance of CAGW, climate science can be by-passed when implementing environmental policies. The cost-effective part of the Principle is ignored.
How can anyone argue with that logic? The CAGW train has left the station. Science doesn’t matter. However, the fallacy of such an application of the Principle is that the probability of irreversible environmental damage associated with a warming earth may be no greater than the probability of irreversible environmental damage associated with a cooling earth. Policies that might be appropriate for the warming case would be diametrically opposite to those appropriate for the cooling case. Under this reality, a skewed application of the Precautionary Principle makes no sense whatsoever.
Solution to quandary: Take no regulatory actions until the science is right.
You argue against it using the facts.
First there is no evidence of serious harm.
There is no evidence that if the world did warm up it would be a bad thing, much less irreversible.
None of the solutions being proposed are cost effective.
I made this myself from wood for tress site. So I rather like it as the most telling re correlation, crisis and tipping point. Mauna Loa CO2 measurements vs global temp on same scale expansions, with suppressed zero only. Nothing to see here. The other point is that this is actually BS as well, as all the fake hysteriafor easy money is about a period well within any natural global climate periodicity, as distinct from regional weather, so effectively noise.
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PS Modelling is so much easier than science, as it doesn’t need to be provable if it can force correlation in a statistical approximation numerical model. As with the well known accountant’s answer to the question “What are my profits (or losses)?”, when asked whether he can determine what causes climate change, or whatever natural and ultimately unprovable natural phenomenum, by someone with grant money to spend, the modeller’s first answer is the same “what would you like to cause it”.
Dr. Ball, thanks for posting. I always look forwarding to hearing from you.
Hi – my first time posting to WUWT. Just wanted to say I appreciate the articles and it has been fun reading the comments. As a social scientist, I am interested in human behavior, and I have observed alarmists engage in what I would characterize as used car salesman tactics, which caused me to become increasingly skeptical. The theory seems to boil down to a single-variable driving climate without accounting for vast system complexity. Though I try to learn what I can in my odd moments, for those of us (and the vast majority of the public) not trained in this area, I do think it would help to have the skeptical perspective represented in analogies and digestible points. No one can be an expert in all things.
I suspect there are a lot more readers like me who are quietly absorbing and analyzing what we can from this community, trolls and all!
Welcome! It does take a while to absorb the subject, but sometimes learning the topic by following a fairly high level discussion is a good thing. Many of the commenters will respond to direct “dumb” questions, so sometimes it is productive to ask. There is much too much dumbing down in science education, and sometimes what it comes down to is picking through the jargon like learning a foreign laguage.
Thanks Tom Halla – I appreciate the welcome and the advance “forgiveness” for noob questions that I know I’ll ask at some point. I listen for logic. To Felix’s point, we seem to be seeing the falsification of many so-called broad predictions. Anyone familiar with research (regardless of field) recognizes that theories need to be operationalized, and I’ve found the operational mechanisms lacking in the alarmist materials, and I’m quite skeptical about the hard emotional sell. Alarmists seem to lay claim to any catastrophe after the fact but rarely provide the operative logic sufficient for more specific hypotheses and for establishing causal links. An example was the suggestion of never-ending drought in California and then the next year over-topping reservoirs and dam breaches. Personally, I have wondered about the role of gigantic earthquakes (Chile, Japan etc) for affecting climate and weather systems, especially if there is a shift in earth axis or change in rotation speed.
Lizzie – it’s probable that it’s the same mechanisms and changes (shifts) which result in drought in California AND flooding in California. This sounds counterintuitive, I know. You could read a little bit about basic dynamic meteorology. It’s a very interesting subject.
While Earth’s climate system is vastly complex and understanding it is far from settled, indeed climatology is still in its infancy and has been retarded for decades by “consensus climate science”, the key issue is IMO “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS), which is easily understood (although it might not even exist in reality).
What effect does doubling CO2 have on average global temperature? Is it high, ie three to four degrees C, as believed, without evidence, by alarmists, or low, ie one to two degrees C, as supported by actual observations? If the latter, then, no worries. More plant food in the air is all good, with no downside from worrisome warming.
The original IPCC range of possible ECS was 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C, with a central “canonical” value of 3.0, which was derived by Charney in 1979 from two pure guesses of 2.0 and 4.0 (Hansen’s), with an arbitrary 0.5 degree margin of error attached. After almost 40 years, this wild guess hasn’t changed. GIGO models (GCMs) return an average around 3.3 degrees C, but they clearly run way too hot, when compared to actual observations.
So far warming since the end of the Little Ice Age Cool Period in the 19th century has been well withing normal historical bounds, so the null hypothesis, ie that nothing unusual is happening in Earth’s climate system, can’t be rejected.
“The theory seems to boil down to a single-variable driving climate without accounting for vast system complexity.”
Hi Lizzie. Welcome! It’s a pleasure to have you.
Your comment indicates you are a smart cookie. (I got in from a three hour bike ride, so I’m thinking of cookies.)
So one aspect — or vulnerability — of human behavior being deliberately exploited by alarmists is the tendency of people to want to reduce impossibly complex phenomena into emotionally-potent over-simplifications.
Another being exploited is the desire to fit in.
Another still is the tendency to compensate for feeling so puny in the face of The Vastness by imagining we control everything.
I think the human behavior dimension of the climate change hysteria is at least as interesting as the science (or lack thereof).
Oh oh … Max-‘splaining.
Some feminists just pulled into my driveway, and they look angry(er).
I agree, but what works for one doesn’t for another, and there is a threshold level of numerical and physical principles, otherwise you simply argue one belief against another, that is politics and lawyers, winning doesn’t mean you are decent, honest and truthful. In hard science only the facts count, but you have to know how to determine what is fact, using scientific method/approach. Another test is do the forecasts match the facts , or the actual history – the real data. One way to do this in public forums is to askthose in the audience from a technical bent to provide the facts, basic physics and check the maths – indepednent validation by the audience, which usually works for me.
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On that basis, the ability to interpret simple graphs, I offer two collations it is easy to check the data sources for. And too many words, as usual. I hope the graphs do the job on their own. You will need to magnify them on screen. I can provide all the originals which make the sources clear. Not a lot of people know this. Most believe the Earth now stays the same after all the change in the past, and change is unnatural. The opposite of the facts we know. Public conception of science fact is a problem, never mind the validity of hypotheses. Or maybe they’re just scared of thinking. Reality is that nothing changes in a human lifetime, on a global basis, Regionally, possibly, but that’s weather. Nothing to justify counter measures, especially when they make the things they claim to be a problem worse for a fast buck by law.
Long term a lot changes, as regularly as the 100,000 year variation in our orbit round the sun, a blink of an eye in Earth time.
1, One simply plots CO2 variation over a number of time scales within our short 10,000 year interglacial to show how insensitive the global temperature is to CO2, hardly at all. In particular I used the data plotting system on the wood for trees web site to show the recent 70 year reality, but in this presentation without distorting the axes by using different scale expansion as is usually done to exaggerate the temperature change relative to the CO2 change. to show how tiny is the sensitivity of the absolute temperature of 288 degrees Kelvin relative to the change of CO2 in ppm, almost unaffected by the CO2 change. In fact all the graphs show how little temperature has changed over several human lifetimes since the 1600’s, while the CO2 levels went up steadily with industrialisation, with no detectable effect on the rate of temperature change, which went down as well as up similar amounts during industrialisation and before it. CO2 is not dominant.
None of this supports the runaway catastrophe claimed, which is simply a prediction PUT INTO MODELS BY MODELLERS, not a science fact, not evidence based. Because CO2 warming and AGW was tiny versus water vapour effect, less than 1 W/m^2 versus c.340W/m^2 “back radiation” from water vapour, modellers invented the supposed effect of CO2 warming increasing water evaporation which is now claimed to accelerates warming further and causes disaster, at 1.6W/m^2?
There is no science that supports this, it is almost certainly false, and the OPPOSITE of what the role of water vapour has always been believed to be in the global climate, a negative feedback to counter increased solar insolation, where oceanic evaporation and clouds transport heat energy from the equator and so REDUCE temperatures by transporting more heat to space by convection and latent heat release at altitude, etc, while also reducing direct solar surface heating by increased albedo of the clouds, reflection of the sun’s energy. The models are made up of many such deviant assumptions by “climate scientists”, who have no proven science to base them upon, so make their own guesses, mainly to prove CO2 is the problem because that is what the UN grants are limited to proving in this new sort of science for reward, not to discover the truth, but to work in a narrow space to support a belief. It ain’t necessarilly so. Yes, the directives actually exclude real effects as insignificant by assertion, so the models must account for them by attributing them to something else ………….. like CO2.
But the real test of true science is does reality support their assumptions. Not really. LIttle change, obvious negative correlation between CO2 and temperature at many times. Lagging effect very clear at interglacials, for provable science reasons of desorption from the oceans. See graphs.
Ask any audience, does it look like CO2 is causing a catastrophic event over the last 140 years? Is the modellers catastrophe imminent, or credible, and is the end of the world that can support humans more likely a few million years further away, as we are driven towards the remaining warm places as Earth’s long term internal cooling continues, or maybe when tectonic activity ceases, and the plates lock up? A long way away.
Modellers predictions of disaster were based on dishonest or very flaky assumptions to make CO2 seem to be a problem, and even change its established natural role from an effect of warming to a cause. Their models have been increasingly proven wrong, on the facts of their assumptions and the actual results. Unsurprisingly, these flawed models don’t match history or predict the future with any degree of accuracy. Their rumours of imminent catstrophe are premature fir a reason, Their science was never based in fact or proven laws, just a computer forecast using large scal numerical approximations in non linear stochastic models that regularly break and need “adjusting”, so a prophesy based on unproven “science” , not deterministic, simply extrapolating statistical correlation into an unknown future, rather akin to bookmaking, that must be believed.
FACT: Before humans produced more of it atmospheric CO2 increases were always a lagging effect of ocean warming, in particular after ice ages, as well demonstrated in the Vostok ice cores, and others, using actual proxy data. The oceans are where most CO2 in fact.
So what should we believe, a religious prediction supported by made up pseudo science that cannot be proven and doesn’t predict reality, or the facts we have measured and the science we knew before modellers changed it to fit the political narrative, for money?
2. The second collage places where we are in the longer term 1 million year ice age cycle, which followed a earlier less extreme oscillation and net warmer period of 41,000 year ice age cycles, somehow created by the variation in our solar orbit, the eccentricity, tilt and the precession of the axis of our rotation relative to the average tilt.
The graphs show the established data on the ice age cycle, then show where we are in the short interglacial warm peak, then expands the short warm interglacial peak to cover known history.
POINT: It will get colder, the glaciers will return, and the seas will again fall 100 metres, as the have before. Our effect on this is puny..
ANOTHER POINT: The Earth may seem like a steady state to short lived humans, for whom nothing much changes, but our whole interglacial is a tiny fraction of Earth time, within a predominantly ice age world, quite widely varying but between very repeatable extremes, and this is the only interglacial in which short lived frail humans have developed a civilisation of any sophistication. A blink of the Earthly eye.
Note that the very “rapid’ 12 degree warming of an interglacial takes 7,000 years to change +12 degrees at the poles, the subsequent decline we are in takes tens of thousands of years.
Humans have time to move,
Can we do this and maintain technological civilisation is the real issue, It is not can we make the planet stop changing. Answer to that is NO..
I do talks on this to lay audiences, but ordinary people can’t prevent or change the laws that channel billions in every year to the lobbyists feeding on this climate change protection racket and the academic boondoggle that is the driver for much of this, both the taxpayers money channelled to Universities by the UN IPCC , and the much larger private gain that flows from the $BIllions pa in subsidies enforced by the laws “a climate change catastrophe” supposedly justifies (which in engineering fact make most of the supposed problems expensively worse vs. gas and b nuclear future, including the CO2 in most cases, but that’s another story – I can also tell.
Hope there were some take aways in that. Brian CEng, CPhys
Kristi wrote:
“There is no science battle. The science is conclusive and well-supported. Some choose to dismiss it, but that doesn’t change the conclusions.”
Here is Micah looking at “the science”.
It’s a lot harder to asses taxes, or to develop global wealth transfer schemes based on water vapor. You’re not going to scare someone if water vapor is your bogeyman, and people will question increased regulatory burden. Nobody is afraid of clouds.
“The response to this problem was to create a positive feedback. This claimed that a CO2 increase causes a temperature increase, which increases evaporation and more water vapour in the atmosphere. This keeps temperature rising beyond the capability of CO2. … ”
I’m an engineer who has been working with closed loop control systems for 30 years. The Positive Feedback aspect of global warming is what persuaded me that it was scam many years ago. Nobody disputes temperatures were, at times, much higher in the distant past. So in this case the tipping point would have been reached and the planet would have become unlivable long ago. The fact that we are here worrying about this supposed positive feedback disproves it’s existence. 😉
One related also “the Biggest Deception in the Human Caused Global Warming Deception” has also been measuring only global temperature when the long term trend in water vapor influences its change.
Global temperatures can rise or fall, but only if the water vapor has been shown to stay stable, can there be any scientific evidence that the energy content has actually changed.
Satellite data detected an decline in water vapor opposite to what the theory should show and therefore the rise in global temperatures had only been because water vapor levels had declined. Less water vapor in the atmosphere, the less energy is needed to reach the same temperature as before, so it appears a body is warming when it actually isn’t.
The theory of AGW being dangerous is falsified by this fact.
Dr. Ball writes:
Well, we DO have the data to tell us whether the warming was/is caused by Man or the Sun.
‘The Sun (+ASR; not TSI. A-S-R!) did it. The “GHE” (–OLR) didn’t.’
https://okulaer.wordpress.com/2018/03/24/the-data-sun-not-man-is-what-caused-and-causes-global-warming/
Summary and conclusion:
Now, having more or less confirmed the validity of our two merged ERBS+CERES curves in Figure 22:
and Figure 23:
and thus of the general evolution of the All-Sky LW flux at the ToA, the OLR, Earth’s final heat loss to space, over the last 32-33 years, in the tropics and near-globally, we are pretty much ready to conclude. At the start of this discussion, after having looked at NOAA/NCEI’s global OHC data covering the 1977-2017 period, we posed the following (big) question (‘The only question worth asking, really …’):
What CAUSED the opening of Earth’s positive ToA imbalance in 1988-89? And what kept (and, even today, keeps) it open?
We are now able, with confidence, to answer these two questions, and the answer is of course the same in both cases:
# A positive feedback to warming naturally needs for warming to occur. No initial warming, no response, no loop to enter.
# With no increase in system energy content observed over an extended period of time, the system in question can be said to be in a steady state of dynamic equilibrium between its heat input and its heat output – in the case of the Earth system, those heat inputs/outputs are the ASR and the OLR at the ToA, respectively, and a dynamic balance between them means the NET ToA FLUX is fluctuating around zero. There occurs no warming.
# The Earth system IS observed – in the official global OHC data – to have lingered in such a state between early 1977 and mid-1988.
# We have high-quality observational data of ToA radiative fluxes from 1985 onwards (ERBS Ed3_Rev1, CERES EBAF Ed4), neatly covering the last 3-4 years of the 1977-88 plateau of dynamically balanced conditions within the Earth system, and the rather abrupt 1988-89 transition into an imbalanced state of net accumulation of energy and general warming.
# OLR is observed, in these datasets, to have increased with tropospheric temps, as a direct radiative effect of those temps, all the way from 1985, its mean level today about 1 W/m^2 higher than back then, both in the tropics and near-globally, corresponding to an overall rise in the mean temperature level since then of somewhere between 0.25 and 0.27 °C. (Bear in mind, now, we’re referring to MEAN LEVELS here, not ENSO (or volcanic) peaks and troughs.)
# This means that the reduction of OLR over time was never a positively contributing factor to the opening and sustainment of Earth’s positive ToA imbalance from 1988-89 onwards. Since that simply never happened …
# So, if the Net flux at the ToA, ASR – OLR, Q_in – Q_out, after having bounced around neutral in a 12-year relative lull, in 1988-89 became significantly positive and has stayed like that, in that mode, to a larger or lesser degree, ever since, based on the official OHC data, and if the OLR at the same time has grown in intensity (+Q_out), this really can only mean one thing: The ASR must have grown in intensity as well (+Q_in), only even more so than the OLR, thoroughly outweighing the, after all, cooling contribution of an increasing outgoing heat flux.
# WHAT WE SEE, WHAT THE OBSERVATIONAL DATA UNEQUIVOCALLY TELLS US, IS THE FOLLOWING:
– The ASR (the solar heat input) increases significantly (starting in 1988-89).
– Temperatures (troposphere, surface, ocean) start rising as a response.
– The OLR (Earth’s heat loss to space) increases as a direct radiative effect of (mainly) the (tropospheric) temperature rise.
In short: +ASR → +T → +OLR;
root cause → primary effect → secondary effect / negative feedback.
# This is what we actually SEE, folks! This is what the DATA is actually telling us! Forget about all kinds of theoretical considerations and people’s mere opinions! Science isn’t about the words of “experts”. Science isn’t about pondering and hypothesizing your way to enlightenment. Science is about OBSERVING your way to knowledge. You observe the world to know the world.
# If you claim that ‘global warming’ since 1977 is because of us, the result of an “anthropogenically enhanced GHE”, you do not know the world. It’s that simple. All you have then is your opinion. Because there are no observations from the real Earth system that bear out your claim.
# ‘Global warming’ since 1977 was NOT (!!) caused by human CO2 emissions. It was caused by the Sun.
Supplementary discussions:
https://okulaer.wordpress.com/2018/03/24/the-data-supplementary-discussions/
The proponents of anthropogenic-caused global warming invariably, and ironically, DENY that the Medieval Warming Period (MWP, 1,000 years ago) was global and likely warmer than it is now. These folks acknowledge only that Europe experienced the MWP. They likely take this unjustifiable position because their computer models cannot explain a global, warmer MWP. Why? Because their models require on increasing co2 level, plus depend even more on the built-in ASSUMPTION that water vapor feedback, the actual culprit, causes 2 to 3 times the temperature increase as brought on by the increase in co2. However, co2 did not begin increasing until the 1800s, long after the MWP.
With no co2 increase there is obviously also no further temperature increase provided by water vapor feedback. The MWP global temperature increase must have therefore been nothing more than natural climate variation. It becomes plausible that our current warming (such as it is) may also be due to NATURAL climate variation. But that, of course, conflicts with the UN’s IPCC (and other alarmists’) claim that our current warming is mostly due to the human-caused increase in co2 level.
It’s easy to show that the MWP was indeed both global and at least as warm as now. While that says nothing about the cause of our current warming (such as it is) it speaks loudly about the credibility of the folks who deny that the MWP was global and at least as warm as now. A large subset of this group also claims that the “science is settled”. A brief meta-analysis follows to demonstrate that the MWP was indeed global and at least as warm as it is now.
First, the MWP trend is conclusively shown to be global by borehole temperature data. The 6,000 boreholes scattered around the globe are not constrained to just those locals required to obtain ice core data. A good discussion of the borehole data can be found at Joanne Nova’s website.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/11/the-message-from-boreholes/
Next, the receding Alaskan Mendenhall glacier recently exposed a 1,000-year-old shattered forest, still in its original position. No trees (let alone a forest) have grown at that latitude anywhere near that site since the MWP. It was obviously warmer in that part of Alaska than it is now, and Alaska is quite distant from Europe.
Finally, there have been hundreds of peer-reviewed MWP studies, and the earlier results (showing a global, warmer MWP) were reflected in earlier IPCC reports. These studies were carried out around the globe by investigators and organizations representing numerous countries. It’s curious that Mann and his cohort did not give more consideration to those study results before presenting their conflicting “hockey stick” claim. One of their own players, Phil Jones, admitted publicly that if the MWP was global and as warm as now then it was a different “ballgame”. More important, studies continue to regularly show up confirming that the MWP was warmer than now.
The Greenland Temperature (gisp2) study, for example, shows, among other things, that Greenland was warmer during the MWP than it is now. Greenland is distant from both Europe and Alaska.
These numerous MWP studies have been cataloged at the co2science.org website. Dr. Idso, the proprietor of that website, is a known skeptic. However, the peer-reviewed studies were independently performed by numerous researchers using various temperature proxy techniques and representing many different countries. These studies also now span several decades.
Interested readers should satisfy themselves by going to co2science.org and choosing (say) a half-dozen regions (all should be remote from Alaska, Greenland, and Europe). Focus on the subset of the MWP studies which directly address temperature estimates. Choose at least one temperature study from each selected region. (Idso provides brief summaries but feel free to review the study in its original format.) You will find that each of the selected sites were warmer during the MWP than now. These study results are consistent with the temperature trend exhibited by borehole data.
There are also other confirming observations which include such things as antique vineyards found at latitudes where grapes cannot be grown today, old burial sites found below the perma-frost, and Viking maps of most of Greenland’s coastline.
The MWP studies as well as various other data are all consistent with the borehole data results. This meta-study consists of straightforward activities. The studies can be replicated and the research results do NOT require the use of controversial “models”, or dubious statistical machinations.
One of the “talking points” posed by alarmists, to “rebut” the claim of a global, warmer MWP is that warming in all regions during the MWP must be synchronous. Obviously the MWP studies sited herein were generally performed independently, so start and end dates of each study during the MWP will vary. However, anyone foolish enough to accept that “synchronous” constraint must also admit that our current warming would also not qualify as a global event.
For example, many alarmists go back into the 1800s when making their claims about the total global warming temperature increase. However, that ignores a three-decade GLOBAL cooling period from about 1945 to 1975. That globally non-synchronous period is much more significant than just a region or two being “out of synch”.
There are also other reasons to exclude consideration of temperature increases during the 1800s. There was a significant NATURAL warming beginning around 1630 (the first low temperature experienced during the LIA) and that period of increasing temperatures ran at least until 1830 (perhaps until 1850) before co2 began increasing. However, it would have taken many decades, possibly more than a century, for co2 increase following 1830, at an average 2 ppmv per year, to accrue sufficiently before having ANY impact on thermometer measurements. Neither is there any reason to expect that the 200 years of natural and significant warming beginning in 1630 ended abruptly, after 2 centuries, merely because co2 level began increasing in 1830 at a miniscule 2ppmv per year. How much, and for how long was the temperature increase after 1830 due to the continuing natural climate warming beginning in 1630?
Any current considerations about global warming must therefore be constrained to a starting point no earlier than 1975. The global temperature began increasing in 1975 and that increase basically terminated during the 1997/98 el Nino. Even the IPCC (a bureaucracy which cannot justify its mission if current warming is NATURAL) has acknowledged another GLOBAL “hiatus” in temperature increase following 1998. NASA, in comparing recent candidate years for “hottest” was wringing its hands about differences of a few hundredths of one degree. It’s clear that the uncertainty error is at least one tenth of a degree. Some argue that the uncertainty error is as much as one degree.
So, all this current controversy involves just two decades, and that warming has been followed by almost another two decades of no further statistically significant increase in temperature. But wait … ! It turns out that even the period from 1975 to 1998 apparently does not qualify as a global warming period because there were numerous “out of synch” regions and/or countries which have experienced no additional warming over durations which include the 1975-1998 span.
http://notrickszone.com/2018/02/18/greenland-antarctica-and-dozens-of-areas-worldwide-have-not-seen-any-warming-in-60-years-and-more/#sthash.5Hq7Xqdh.JsV4juVL.dpbs
Another alarmist rebuttal attempt is that the MWP studies cataloged by co2science.org have been cherry-picked. Readers should satisfy themselves by searching for conflicting credible peer-reviewed MWP temperature studies which have not been cataloged by co2science.org. But, keep in mind that a few stray conflicting studies will not likely have much impact, because, as the previous link demonstrates, there is no shortage of regions showing no increasing warming during the supposedly 1975-1998 global warming period.
While this may not prove that the CAGW theory isn’t credible, it does indicate that the proponents of CAGW are not credible.
gofigure560 – what’s the latest thinking on what caused the MWP?