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.
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?