Many of us want to know the science behind global warming.
It would be reasonable to assume that the international experts would tell us what we need to know. Problem is that, strangely, they don’t make it easy for honest seekers after truth.
The UNFCCC has a page on their web site called “The Science”. But stupidly for a page with such a title, there’s not a single statement that tells us how greenhouse gases warm the earth.
This is the governing body of the IPCC, yet it can’t tell us how global warming works.
The IPCC takes a different approach: it simply swamps us with documentation without saying what we’ll find in it. It has no link to anything resembling “the science simplified” or even “science”.
Of course, it’s all science, but who wants to wade through hundreds of pages of an Assessment Report for a summary of the greenhouse effect?
They’re either really thick or they’re not the slightest bit interested in helping us.
Or perhaps they’re hiding something?
Views: 473
Must be a worry to the warmistas that the weather here in NZ is so settled and comfortable.Another degree or two would be welcomed by me,getting cool at night.My garden is thriving.More veges this year.
Speaking of the really thick, Richard, which part of the following quote, from the page cited, do you not understand?
Or do you think they should have eschewed a simple description that all can understand, and instead offered a rigorous development of radiative physics via QFT?
If you want that, I can loan you a text.
Thanks.
I just don’t see it as describing the science of global warming. For one thing, global warming’s apparently a problem, but that sentence carries no hint of it. Your suggestion of an advanced course in physics goes too far, but there’s a lot of middle ground. Anyway, if you’re going to describe the radiative physics of the process, wouldn’t you have to mention that the energy intercepted by human emissions is relatively minute, and it couldn’t heat the ocean?
And there are these problems:
The thinking person would notice that it does not state the apparently obvious – that the concentration of greenhouse gases “causes” the temperature – and would wonder why not. They would acknowledge the equal possibility that the temperature actually “causes” the concentration of greenhouse gases, which is probably more likely. I’m not saying there’s no greenhouse effect.
This is plain wrong. Water vapour is by far the most abundant greenhouse gas, and in any case CO2 is produced naturally every year in quantities that completely overwhelm human emissions of it.
There is much fringe speculation set out in the remainder of this “science” page, presented either as fact or as uncontroversial, yet most of it is either highly controversial or the output of unverified computer models.
Little of it is science.
Ah yes, the water vapour. I’m still waiting for the elusive tropospheric hot spot to magically appear as predicted. Either that or an explanation as to how the AGW theory can function without the water vapour feedbacks associated with the hot spot. You’d think the AGW crowd would have that base covered, especially as it’s the major part of their hypothesis that fails without it.
Long-debunked but endlessly repeated cherry-pick, Gish Gallop, non sequitur, argumentum ad ignotantum, half-truth, magical thinking and outright lie – is that all you can come up with, guys?
http://quasar.as.utexas.edu/BillInfo/Quack.html
How about some actual climate science that isn’t risible, doesn’t assume what it pretends to prove, and isn’t paid for by fossil fuel interests and right-wing billionaires?
No, I don’t mean your new theory of thermodynamics, RC2…
“Long-debunked” by whom? Some citations would be helpful (or even just one).
[ad hom removed. Clever, but off-topic, RC. – RT]
Rob, you’re a complete joke – all mouth & no substance. Show us this debunking, I’m very interested. If it’s been debunked so definitively then it’ll be easy for you to show us your proof. Less dribble, more substance please.
If you actually believe the above, Richard, and are not merely propagandising for ideological reasons, then all you are demonstrating is your own ignorance of basic climate science.
I suggest you read an elementary text, say “Global Warming for Dummies”, before you embarrass yourself any further.
BTW, do you also do your own dentistry, accounting and law, or do you rely on qualified professionals? Why might that be, I wonder?
Easy to say. Prove it. But stick to what I actually said.
State of the science ? in fun quotes
Jo Nova says – I’ve got great news for you, all you have to do to avert a global catastrophe is to find peer reviewed papers that support the models. I’ve been asking for two years, three months and four days, and no one can find one that suggests CO2 will cause much more than 1 degree of warming at most. (not feedbacks)
Monckton – ‘We tell the computer models that there will be strong warming if we add CO2 to the air. The models show there will be a strong warming. Therefore the warming is our fault. This is the argumentum ad petitionem principii, the circular-argument fallacy, where a premise is also the conclusion.’
When you can measure the data accurately, do the math on the back of an envelope without playing statistical games and explain the science to your MP then we can stop being skeptical.
I’d be interested to know what Global Warmng for Dummies does to explain the case for high climate sensitivity due to positive feedbacks?
Rob Taylor,
You don’t just overlook some questions – you actually answer none at all.
Sorry, guys, but I do have a life and have little time for your cultish hall of mirrors, although I guess someone had to fill the void left by the demise of the Flat Earth Society… as practising pseudoscientists, do you also consult astrologers, take homeopathic “medicines” and have your auras read?
Briefly, David, the anthropogenic GHG, although only 2 – 3% of the natural atmospheric content, is cumulative, rather than cyclic. This is why atmospheric CO2 has increased by one third over pre-industrial levels, causing a temperature rise of about 1 C, with more “in the pipeline” owing to the long residence time of CO2 – which is measured in decades, rather than in days, as is the case with water vapour.
As anthro GHG warm the atmosphere, so, of course, the H2O content increases as a feedback, leading to higher rates of precipitation, flooding, etc.
All this is well documented, based on measurement and experiment, which is something you denialists never do, preferring to spend your time playing empty word games with concepts you patently do not understand.
This is all well documented. Probably true, Rob, and I am not really disputing any of this. As you know, the argument all depends on positive feedbacks due to water vapour. This is the argument that always gets sidestepped.
Except that the critical pressure level that is supposed to be warming, isn’t.
Great Rob, you almost understand the theory. All you have to do to prove the hypothesis is show the tropospheric hot spot that is supposed to prove the positive feedback of water vapour. A couple of quick questions:
If the tropospheric hot spot isn’t there, what does that tell you about the positive feedback of water vapour?
If the positive feedbacks are non existent, what ramifications does that have for the theory of AGW?
The popular myth, evangelised by the likes of Al Gore, is that extreme weather events (e.g. flooding) are becoming more frequent. To quote Gore himself, “the extreme climate events that the scientific community has been telling us are connected to global warming are getting worse. ”
In fact the scientific community is telling us:
Bouziotas, et al, European Geosciences Union, 2011
And then there’s this:
http://notrickszone.com/2012/05/25/comprehensive-alps-study-clearly-refutes-humans-are-causing-more-weather-variability-and-extremes/
And this:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682611000319
From the ‘Science’ page:
It is, true. But the concentration follows the temperature, lagging behind by hundreds of years. Oops.
The Industrial Revolution (1750 onwards) started after the climate started to warm up from 1650, the bottom of the LIA. The CO2 level increase at the start of the Industrial Revolution was extremely small, and could not possibly have influenced the global temperatures for hundreds of years, Hansen postulates 1960-onwards. Therefore the Industrial Revolution did not start the LIA recovery. Since the LIA recovery was entirely natural, we need proof of extraordinary warming over and above this base natural warming before we can even begin to postulate anthropogenic origins.
Wrong. As Richard T pointed out above, water vapour is far and away the most abundant greenhouse gas. Also, most carbon dioxide is not the product of burning fossil fuels, only about 3% is, over any year. The other 97% is natural.
Regarding sea levels, the recent rate of 1.7-1.8mm/year is nothing unusual, in fact it’s pretty lame. See here.
We know that during the previous interglacial (125,000 years ago), sea levels were 4-6m higher. So natural variations produce some pretty drastic changes. During “meltwater pulse 1B”, between 11,500-11,000 BC, the sea level jumped up by an estimated 28m! That’s 56mm/year. Several thousand years previously “meltwater pulse 1A” was responsible for a 16-24m rise over a thousand years, at over ten times our current rate. Ref: Fairbanks (1989)
This is interesting and relevant …
An internal study by the U.S. EPA completed by Dr. Alan Carlin and John Davidson concluded the IPCC was wrong about global warming. One statement in the executive summary stated that a 2009 paper found that the crucial assumption in the Greenhouse Climate Models (GCM) used by the IPCC concerning a strong positive feedback from water vapor is not supported by empirical evidence and that the feedback is actually negative. Water vapor in the atmosphere causes a cooling effect, not a warming one. Carbon dioxide also causes a slight cooling effect but it so small it could never be measured by man’s instrumentation.
EPA tried to bury the report. An email from Al McGartland, Office Director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), to Dr. Alan Carlin, Senior Operations Research Analyst at NCEE, forbade him from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues. In a March 17 email from McGartland to Carlin, stated that he will not forward Carlin’s study. “The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator (Lisa Jackson) and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. …. I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” A second email from McGartland stated “I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change.”
McGartland’s emails demonstrate that he was rejecting Dr. Carlin’s study because its conclusions ran counter to the EPA’s current position. Yet this study had its basis in three prior reports by Carlin (two in 2007 and one in 2008) that were accepted. Another government cover-up, just what the United States does not need.
Eliminate this regulation immediately. This is a scientific tragedy.
Oh dear, the Carlin report – another zombie argument, long-debunked, but reanimated for our amusement…
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/
[Rob, please give at least a brief summary of your understanding of this blog article. You can’t expect us to go away and faithfully read what we expect (from experience) will be a propaganda piece just because you told us to. This is not a conversation if we just hurl URLs at each other. We’ve already seen you don’t care much for the conversation, but now you’re confirming that you don’t know much, either (you can prove me wrong on that if you want). Thanks. – RT]
Rob, 2 points (probably more but can’t be bothered) about Gavin Schmidt’s Real Climate “debunk”.
1) The date was 26 June 2009. There has been some water under the bridge since then and science has moved on particularly in the case of Scafetta and West. Scafetta’s empirical model is tracking better than the IPCC’s simulations so the last laugh was not by Schmidt back in 2009, it could be that he will have to eat his words in the not too distant future.
2) The supposed “debunk” seems very heavy on the ad homs but light on the science e.g. Landsheidt. This was a guy who could run rings around the IPCC with his proven predictions, hence Schmidt’s puerility.
There’s probably more but I can’t be bothered, besides, the climate seems to making it’s own point.
I note too that Schmidt acknowledges “….the importance of natural variability on short time scales”. That was in 2009 and natural variability has continued to be the dominant climate driver since.
Question is: how long for natural variability to dominate before Schmidt has to concede that CO2 (and ACO2 in particular) is not the dominant climate driver he thinks it is and debunks himself?
Rob Taylor,
There’s another defect with the UNFCCC explanation you quote:
It’s factually incorrect (even if it is illustrated by an Al Gore cartoon).
The Greenhouse Effect is not about reflection of the Sun’s warmth, but the emission of infra-red radiation by the Earth.
The reflection of the Sun’s warmth is due to albedo, and the clouds play a major role in that. Lindzen gets ridiculed for pointing it out.
The CO2 “Keeling Curve” is as bogus as it gets to start with – 2 disparate datasets fudged to fit.
Then there’s the little problem back in the 40s that the CO2 forced models have so much difficulty with.
They (UNFCCC) could replace all those paragraphs with one word – parlous.
More magical thinking, Richard C, or do you have actual evidence that the Keeling curve is “bogus”?
NB: Denialosphere ranting doesn’t count – give me a reference from a scientific journal, preferably one whose publisher isn’t a conspiracy theorist who thinks the Queen is a drug trafficking alien lizard.
What parts of “disparate” and “fudged” do you not understand Rob?
We’re all still waiting for you to show that proof of the tropospheric hot spot Rob, either that or explain how the AGW theory works without it. I think perhaps you need to take your own advice and come up some proof yourself before you hypocritically demand it yourself. C’mon Rob, where’s this proof, hmmm?
Rob T, here’s the story of the CO2 record starting with Charles Keeling’s record from 1955 and then the fudged splice of a disparate dataset onto the beginning of it it:-
The lynching of innocent CO2
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
The scare science has been building up for quite a while. Over a hundred years ago, Arrhenius suggested that if our CO2 emissions built up, they could cause global warming. Interestingly, his grandson joined the same laboratory in the US as Roger Revelle, who later became Al Gore’s mentor. Revelle became concerned that our emissions could become a problem – but how to measure the CO2 levels well enough? So he set up a station at Mauna Loa in the Pacific, far from any land-borne influences, subject only to seasonal fluctuations, to measure CO2, and appointed Charles Keeling as record keeper.
[See plots demonstrating the actual curve vs Keeling’s]
Now the old, forgotten chemical CO2 records are being re-examined by Beck, Lansner and others. Keeling’s son would like to see this evidence suppressed. Yet Beck’s records have a very high level of accuracy. They are still effectively as accurate as Keeling’s system (with different issues) and were used, interestingly, for a short overlap period in Scandinavia when Keeling started. Therein lie some important observations that cast doubt on the “infallibility” of Mauna Loa. There is a problem of location, since winds from forests and industries can create huge daily differences. It is possible Beck’s records indicate higher CO2 levels that collapsed suddenly – this reflects the old Central England temperature record (below left).
[See plots, particularly these ones http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Images/primer/CO2hockeyStick.gif%5D
The ice core CO2 record (above centre) has been shifted forward, to splice neatly onto the start of Keeling’s record in 1955. But this is a highly suspect splice, not checked over a proper overlap period. Most suspiciously, it produces a “hockey stick” with a sudden, recent, alarming rise, like the temperature Hockey Stick. There are serious questions about the reliability of ice core CO2 records regarding past levels of greenhouse gases: the stomata proxy record (above right) suggests far more variability, and a higher level of CO2, than the ice core shows. Prof Jaworowski, top expert in ice core studies, describes all this and more. Jaworowski deserves proper study of his Atmospheric CO2 and Global Warming (pdf) that he co-authored with Prof Segalstad of Norsk Polarinstitutt.
From C3 Headlines (4th post down):-
Urban Heat Islands: Bursting the IPCC Myth That ‘UHI Isn’t Important’ In Global Warming Records
The 2007 IPCC report went out of its way to diminish the importance of the urban heat island (UHI) effect on global warming. In typical Climategate-style research, the IPCC had to strengthen its case that human CO2 was the primary cause of recent global warming, and the only way to accomplish this was to marginalize and reduce the impact of other factors, including UHI.
>>>>>>>>>
http://www.c3headlines.com/global-warming-urban-heat-island-bias/
But urban trees exhibit a different story:-
Trees lap up the city heat
http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/6871263/Trees-lap-up-the-city-heat
The urban location had average maximum temperatures 2.4 C warmer than the rural location, and minimum temperatures 4.6 C higher.
By the end of summer, the city trees had put on eight times more biomass than those raised outside the city mainly by putting out more leaves, the study, published in the journal Tree Physiology, found.
“the most abundant greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is the product of burning fossil fuels.”
“Wrong. As Richard T pointed out above, water vapour is far and away the most abundant greenhouse gas. Also, most carbon dioxide is not the product of burning fossil fuels, only about 3% is, over any year. The other 97% is natural.”
OMG- I really can’t believe Taylor did not know this . It is such a basic thing. He really does live in an echo chamber full of group think. How embarrassing for him that his knowledge is exposed as being so woeful.
Yes, it’s a stupid statement — two mistakes in it and pretty embarrassing, but not for Rob Taylor. Remember that the statement is published by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Which quintuples the embarrassment. They ought to be rushing right now to change their web site. But don’t hold your breath.
Here is a suitable primer (or should that be plimer) on AGW. Read it and learn (yeah, right!):
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/climate-change/understanding-climate-change/~/media/climate-change/prof-plimer-101-questions-response-pdf.pdf
As for the tropospheric hot spot, AGC, this is another well-debunked “God of the Gaps” straws-grasping meme. See, for example, http://www.skepticalscience.com/tropospheric-hot-spot-advanced.htm
in your closeted world, AGC, how do you interpret the incontrovertible signature of global warming, namely the observed stratospheric cooling?
Angels fluttering their wings, perhaps?
Section 26 Scientists have shown, beyond doubt, that the current warming of our climate is being driven by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation
Beyond doubt? So that’s a 100% chance then? There is zero percent chance that the warming, any of it is caused by any other activity?
Even the IPCC don’t ascribe this level of certainty to the 20th century warming.
Is this really the best that the Australian government can come up with? Pathetic.
No, the signature is the hotspot. The stratospheric cooling means nothing in the absence of the hotspot, you should know that Rob.
The hotspot results directly from GHG forcings and water feedbacks, and should occur at a rate of twice the surface warming. The stratospheric cooling is a direct result of the hotspot, in that the energy absorbed lower down (the hotspot) is no longer available to the higher levels 9the stratosphere).
However, stratospheric cooling can also come from ozone or solar forcing (see AR4), so it is definitely not a signature of GHG forcing on its own.
From AR4:
they both go together. Statospheric cooling in the absence of tropospheric heating denotes a solar or ozone forcing.
See here for the hotspot signature from AR4. Note that the timescale runs from 1890 to 1999, and the temperature change is expected to be of the order of 1°C. In other words, the hotspot should be clear and obvious by now. Yet it just isn’t there.
From the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) in 2006:
On the lack of warming:
Does this sound like the hotspot is irrelevant to the debate? Or that the stratospheric cooling is really the “fingerprint”
Rob Taylor:
Simple:
The quote is from Bob Guercio, writer of this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=468
You seem to like Skeptical Science a lot (and Wikipedia). Perhaps you will believe it if it comes from them.
Or, if you’d prefer Science Of Doom:
Thanks for playing.
Don’t tell us about cooling Rob, tell us about the warming i.e. where’s all that “trapped heat” in the upper troposphere? It seems very elusive without the imaginative aids of hallucinogens, cannabinoids, magic mushrooms etc.
Come on Rob, let us in on climate change’s big secret. I’m sure there’s a relevant chapter of your ‘Global Warming for Dummies’ with a pointer to the appropriate mind altering substance to help us “see the heat”.
Ah Rob, it’s you who don’t know what you’re talking about regarding the hot spot. Listen carefully and you might learn something:
A cooling stratosphere is only a signature in COMBINATION with a warming upper troposphere. A cooling stratosphere by itself can be attributed to ozone levels. Without the combination of a cooling stratosphere/warming UPPER troposphere there is no signature.
But that isn’t my main point about the troposphere, although people like you try to intentionally sidetrack it into that issue. The real point is, if there is no tropospheric hot spot what proof is there of a positive feedback from water vapour?
The answer is …. none. Without this feedback the theory of AGW is grossly exaggerated by around three times. Which is funny, because the temperature measurements compared to the failed model predictions show something similar. Perhaps you think that’s just a coincidence, so let’s recap:
No tropospheric hot spot from both satellite or radiosondes over a 40 year period.
No water vapour feedback as a result.
The actual temperature readings back up the strong probability the amplifying feedbacks don’t exist.
There you have it Rob, the spanner in the works of the AGW theory. BTW I’ve read all Cook’s writeups on the subject & I find it very interesting he doesn’t mention the papers debunking the papers he quotes, especially Sherwood:
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10/is-the-western-climate-establishment-corrupt-part-9-the-heart-of-the-matter-and-the-coloring-in-trick/
Educate yourself for once.
Bob could I add to “……absorbed lower down (the hotspot) is no longer available to the higher levels 9the stratosphere)”?
My understanding is that in addition, the top of the troposphere (100 – 200 hPa) is the “last stop” to intercept OLR and re-emit back to the layer immediately below (200 – 400 hPa) thereby warming it abnormally.
Richard C:
Yes, that’s correct, as I understand it. Above the tropopause CO2 becomes a net emitter of IR, and is optically “thin”, allowing the 15 micron radiation from the troposphere to pass straight through to space.
Bob D,
Why do the characteristics of CO2 change?
Richard T:
Because of pressure. At lower altitudes the air pressure is such that any energy absorbed by CO2 is immediately passed to other gases via collisions before it can be radiated away.
At higher altitudes (stratosphere) the opposite happens – CO2 receives energy, either from absorption from below, or from the O2 and O3 molecules via collisions, and radiates it away before encountering another molecule. The oxygen and ozone molecules absorb UV solar radiation, and get their energy that way (luckily for us – the incoming harmful solar UV radiation is blocked).
This is all “on average” you understand, hence the “net” in “net emitter”.
Regarding the optical “thinness”, it’s due to the low pressure again – fewer CO2 molecules to absorb the radiation. Not none, just fewer.
Frequently Asked Questions
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faqs.html
Nice! That’s what people want. I see it finally admits that water is more important than CO2: “Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas.”
But see how deeply it’s buried! There’s no sign of it on the front page, and to reach it you have to dive blindly into one among an interminable list of book covers. Also, it’s not the UNFCCC site, but the IPCC. It’s certainly there, but without even minimal signposting it’s not helping many people. Thanks.
i’ll try to keep this simple for your benefit, Richard.
Water vapour, although a GHG, does not drive global warming, as it precipitates out in days (think rain & snow).
CO2 does drive global warming, as human emissions are accumulating in the atmosphere far faster than they can be removed by natural processes – and those natural processes are also being degraded by humans, especially deforestation.
Warmer air holds more moisture, thus providing a positive feedback, as evidenced in the paleoclimate record.
See, for example, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha05510d.html
Have you read the paper, Rob? Not just the abstract, or the press release? Hansen says:
“…it is only the all fast-feedback climate sensitivity that can be derived precisely from paleoclimate records.” In other words, we cannot say what feedback is having what effect, and certainly it does nothing to prove water vapour is a positive feedback.
Basically, Hansen starts by making some sweeping assumptions.
In other words, he starts by assuming that water vapour is a positive feedback, he isn’t proving it.
What he’s doing in this paper is assuming that CO2 drives temperature, and from that point he’s trying to work out the magnitude of all the feedbacks, based on the temperature change.
There are some problems with his approach. First, he uses the Antarctic ice core data, which clearly show that in the period between the LGM and the Holocene that he’s using, temperature leads CO2. Instead of addressing this problem and explaining why he feels a lagging CO2 level can drive the temperature change that happened over a hundred years previously, he simply ignores it completely.
There is an even bigger problem with his theory. He doesn’t explain where the CO2 came from. The change between the LGM and the Holocene occurred over a very short period, relative to the geological CO2-producing processes he advocates in the first half of the paper – only 7,000 years. However, the change in CO2 makes perfect sense if it is driven by outgassing from the oceans (it is – we know this from the ice core record and basic physics), because that happens relatively quickly.
Then he ignores solar effects, simply based on TSI. He simply assumes that CO2 is the main driver of the climate, and surges ahead. He then shows a lovely correlation between Temperature and “GHG forcing + Albedo”.
Since GHG forcing equates to CO2 level in this case, it’s no surprise that Temp correlates well with GHG Forcing, since CO2 always lags temperature and follows it pretty exactly. It’s also no surprise that Temp correlates with Albedo – albedo is taken from sea level studies, and sea level again lags temperatures.
Bob D,
Nice analysis of Hansen, thanks.
And what is the absolute maximum CO2 can raise the temperature without the feedback of water vapour, Rob?
1.2C absolute maximum after a doubling of total (not just man’s) atmospheric CO2. Without the water vapour feedback to amplify the small effects of CO2 there is no problem, in fact it’s likely that it might be beneficial for both man & nature. If you’d like to prove the water vapour feedbacks then you’ll need to show a tropospheric hot spot, the problem for you is it doesn’t exist and over 40 yrs of looking for it proves it’s nowhere to be seen. Observation trumps models & theory every time Rob.
That’s one of the lamest posts I have ever read, cthulhu. Do you have a statement to make, or a question to pose?
FAQ 1.3 “What is the Greenhouse Effect” from the link above
Additional important feedback mechanisms involve clouds. Clouds are effective at absorbing infrared radiation and therefore exert a large greenhouse effect, thus warming the Earth. Clouds are also effective at reflecting away incoming solar radiation, thus cooling the Earth. A change in almost any aspect of clouds, such as their type, location, water content, cloud altitude, particle size and shape, or lifetimes, affects the degree to which clouds warm or cool the Earth. Some changes amplify warming while others diminish it. Much research is in progress to better understand how clouds change in response to climate warming, and how these changes affect climate through various feedback mechanisms.
(My emphasis)
This doesn’t sound like “settled science” to me!
My District Council takes the Global Warming very seriously. Over 100 pages are devoted to it under the sustainable futures hazard section. Most of it IPCC report stuff. Two pages are devoted to Northland’s exposure to tsunami.
This from Bookers recent article – ‘The result was that WWF “climate witnesses” contributed to two thirds of the 2007 report’s 44 chapters, including every one of the 20 chapters in the section on the impacts of climate change. A third of all the chapters in the report had WWF witnesses as co-ordinating lead authors, ultimately responsible for their contents. As Laframboise summed up, her analysis confirmed that, far from the report being the work of dispassionate scientists, “the IPCC has been infiltrated… wholly and entirely compromised”.
Wouldn’t it be nice if it were a few degrees warmer with a bit more co2 with taller greener grass and fatter cattle. It really would then be the winterless north. Just imagine all year jandals!
Fancy some dengue fever and Ross river virus with that, Peter?
The spread of Dengue fever is dominated by human travel and living conditions, not climate. Duane J. Grubler is professor and chair, Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawai’i. This 2008 interview of him reveals how to fight it:
Concerning Ross River virus, I cannot specifically eliminate climate as a factor. The spread of the virus seems highly dependent on air travel yet is still confined to Australia, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands, its traditional locus.
As a matter of interest, malaria seems wholly indifferent to climatic zones and flourishes as well in tropical as in sub-polar regions. It succumbs to better living conditions and DDT.
Really? Sub-polar malaria??
Don’t you mean sub-tropical?
No. See this map from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention showing the distribution of the Anopheles mosquito, about 100 species of which are alone capable of transmitting the Plasmodium parasite.
See also the map on page 2 of this Word Bank study showing the range of infection since about 1900. This reveals somewhat how modern improvements, rather than the climate, have controlled the parasite in some areas.
Malaria was once endemic in Britain (quite un-sub-tropical), as recently as the 19th century, and Siberia was famously the site of the deadliest-ever outbreak of malaria, in the 1920s. This article at Climate Audit quotes a submission to the House of Lords in 2005 which rebuts the IPCC notion that warming alone will spread malaria. Here’s a snippet:
That submission, by the way, also rebuts the myth that IPCC reports confine themselves to any so-called scientific consensus. They sometimes omit what suits their argument.
Rob
Ask a farmer who has farmed in the tropics and locally. Mosquitos are easily controlled with DDT.
Fancy some cancer with your DDT, Peter?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Effects_on_human_health
Fancy that! and there was me thinking only sunshine and smoking caused cancer.
DDT also appears to cause diabetes in humans, and resistance in mozzies, so I suggest you do some research before deciding that Northland will benefit from AGW.
Bit of a pity about the beaches, as well.
The blanket ban of DDT also resulted in the death of a few million people.
DDT is still only suspected of being capable of causing some cancers in humans, though it certainly kills malaria mosquitos.
DDT works. I was born in Africa and lived there for thirty years, and I know the damage that malaria does to communities. My own grandfather died of it.
Fortunately, South Africa didn’t bow to international pressure and continued using DDT. Now the WHO has belatedly admitted that it’s safe and reintroduced it.
http://www.southafrica.info/about/health/malaria-190906.htm
Mr. Treadgold, i’d be very interested in your comments on the following post:
https://theconversation.edu.au/are-heartland-billboards-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-climate-denial-6888
Define “climate denial”
Are you too lazy to say “Those who disagree with the thesis of high climate sensitivity to CO2 due to positive feedbacks from water vapour because of the lack of empirical evidence to support the theory”
I realise that the latter is a bit of a mouthful, and comparing sceptics with Holocaust Deniers is a useful marketing tool.
Its a simple enough test, Andy.
Sceptics genuinely seek the truth by questioning the evidence; deniers seek to avoid the truth, regardless of the evidence, for political / ideological reasons of their own.
Think tobacco, DDT, CFCs, AIDS and AGW:…
[Sorry chaps, way off topic. – RT]
Rob Taylor,
Ah, it’s a long way off topic. Sorry, I’ll read that in detail later. I want to post on the Heartland experiment because they make some important points so I’ll comment then. Thanks.
Just one brief comment for now: Lewandowsky says:
To show warming, you don’t need a consensus, you only need a thermometer. All the thermometer records I’ve seen show no warming for over a decade and precious little for 150 years before that.
I’ll get back to you later.
Then you must be looking at different records, Richard!
Even climate sceptic Richard Muller, once he’d crunched the numbers, agreed with the IPCC that warming was incontrovertible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth_Surface_Temperature
Funny that Muller gets called a “sceptic” when there is no evidence to suggest that he was ever one. Furthermore, Judith Curry (co-worker on BEST with Muller) picked him up on the statement that there had been no warming over the last decade. She thought that his statement was misleading.
BEST found 0.911°C over 50 years? The IPCC claims about 0.6° over 100 years, or thereabouts.
CORRECTION
I haven’t looked up the BEST study, just the IPCC.
In the newly-discovered IPCC FAQ, we read:
The AR4 was published in 2007 using even older data. Since 2005, average temperatures have further dropped about 0.3°C, so the 0.74°C 100-year warming has reduced to about 0.44°C.
Our CO2 isn’t doing a great deal yet.
[ad hominem remarks removed. – RT]
Good call RichardT. Taylor gets abusive at the drop of a hat rather than simply sticking to a polite on-topic conversation. Any casual observer would see the difference in tone between the debaters and draw appropriate conclusions regards ideologies. He therefore does his debate no service by way of his supercilious and derogatory ad-homs.
Some examples, just from this thread (in case he tries denial):
“[I] have little time for your cultish hall of mirrors…”
“Speaking of the really thick, Richard, which part of the following […] do you not understand?”
“i’ll try to keep this simple for your benefit, Richard.”
“Read it and learn (yeah, right!):”
“I suggest you read an elementary text, say “Global Warming for Dummies”, before you embarrass yourself any further.”
Richard, your patience with him is far more than I could muster if I was moderating.
Mike,
That’s really the whole point, right there, isn’t it? Thanks, Mike.
Hey, guys, where else can I express my inner Unabomber and act like a madman and terrorist, rather than the mild-mannered civil servant I really am?
All hail Gore and Soros! Death to the denier unbelievers!
(oops, gotta go feed the cat)
Thanks for playing too, Bob D, but you seem to be unaware that the contribution of ozone depletion to upper atmospheric cooling is localised to the 20-30 km “ozone layer”, whereas the AGW cooling effect is not:
http://www.wunderground.com/resources/climate/strato_cooling.asp
There is also far more CO2 in the atmosphere than ozone, by a factor of ~ 600, thus the thermal effects of CO2 overwhelm those of O3 overall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer
NB: Whilst not authoritative, Wikipedia is reasonably thorough and accessible to all.
Of course, if you have peer-reviewed papers from reputable journals establishling that strato cooling is mostly up to ozone, then let’s see them…
Your serve.
Rob Taylor,
The effect of ozone on the temperature gradient of the stratosphere is very obvious and powerful. It is the only reason the stratosphere increases in temperature with altitude. CO2 has a small effect at this altitude, but not nearly as much. If you have a peer-reviewed reference to show that CO2 dominates ozone in the stratosphere, please let me have it. On the other hand, I have a reference that confirms the strength of ozone over CO2 in this region (Ramaswamy et al. 1996):
Any ozone depletion automatically reduces the stratospheric temperature. Now if the lower stratosphere cools, what does that do to the higher stratosphere? It cools it too, simply because of the temperature gradient from the tropopause.
As for a peer-reviewed reference, Akmaev & Fomichev (2000) looked at mesospheric and lower thermospheric (MLT) cooling over the past 3-4 decades, checking observations against GHG models, and concluded:
Note: the ozone depletion lower down caused the cooling much higher up.
Forster & Shine advanced a water vapour theory too, to account for the cooling.
But none of this helps your case, since there is no tropospheric hotspot.
Bob I recall this report of the most recent CME event re thermosphere (not stratosphere):-
Makes a little ACO2 in the troposphere look tame by comparison. Strange too that the heat doesn’t get trapped (sceptic joke Rob T)
Here you go, Bob
Science 24 November 2006:
Vol. 314 no. 5803 pp. 1253-1254
DOI: 10.1126/science.1135134
Global Change in the Upper Atmosphere
J. Laštovička ,R. A. Akmaev, G. Beig, J. Bremer and J. T. Emmert
Life on Earth is affected more directly by climate change near the surface than in the upper atmosphere. However, as the story of Earth’s ozone layer illustrates, changes higher up in the atmosphere can also be important. In 1989, Roble and Dickinson (1) predicted that rising greenhouse gas concentrations should affect atmospheric climate in the highest reaches of the atmosphere. Since then, upper atmospheric data have been combed for evidence of long-term trends. A coherent pattern is now beginning to emerge.
…
The increase in global surface air temperature during the 20th century has been attributed mainly to the increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. In the upper atmosphere, the radiative effects of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, become more pronounced and produce a cooling rather than a warming effect (2, 3). This effect is demonstrated by the CO2-dominated atmosphere of Venus, where the troposphere is more than twice as warm as Earth’s and the thermosphere is 4 to 5 times as cold (4). The cooling should cause the upper atmosphere to contract; we may thus expect a substantial decline in thermospheric density, as well as a downward displacement of ionospheric layers (5).
…
Over the past three decades, the global temperature at Earth’s surface has increased by 0.2 to 0.4°C, compared with a 5 to 10°C decrease in the lower and middle mesosphere. Summer-winter differences of mid-latitude land-surface temperatures are comparable in magnitude to the seasonal and 11-year solar cycle variability of mid-latitude mesospheric temperatures. Thus, the signal-to-noise ratio of the trends is much higher in the mesosphere than at Earth’s surface.
No direct information on thermospheric temperature trends is available. However, estimated ion temperatures (7) at heights near 350 km reveal a negative trend of about −17 K per decade (8). Because ion temperature is strongly coupled to thermospheric temperature, these trends are qualitatively consistent with the expected thermospheric cooling.
Temperature directly affects atmospheric density. At altitudes between about 200 and 800 km, atmospheric drag causes measurable decay of the orbits of satellites and space debris. Routine satellite tracking data have been used to derive long-term changes in thermospheric density. The results (9, 10) indicate that thermospheric density has declined during the past several decades at an overall rate of 2 to 3% per decade; these density trends increase with height (9). This behavior is qualitatively consistent with model predictions (2). Model simulations also show that, in addition to the effects of greenhouse gas increases, the impact of long-term changes in stratospheric ozone and water vapor on atmospheric density may extend well into the thermosphere (11).
Thermal contraction of the upper atmosphere should result in a downward displacement of ionospheric layers (5). Laštovička and Bremer (12) reviewed long-term trends in the lower ionosphere and found a positive trend in electron density at fixed heights, consistent with downward displacement. The maximum electron density of the E-layer and the F1- layer increased slightly (see the figure), and the height of the electron density maximum of the E-region decreased slightly (13), in qualitative agreement with model predictions (2). These ionospheric trends accelerated after 1980, providing support for their anthropogenic origin (14).
The trends described above form a consistent pattern of global change in the upper atmosphere at heights above 50 km (see arrows in the figure). The upper atmosphere is generally cooling and contracting, and related changes in chemical composition are affecting the ionosphere. The dominant driver of these trends is increasing greenhouse forcing, although there may be contributions from anthropogenic changes of the ozone layer and long-term increase of geomagnetic activity throughout the 20th century. Thus, the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases influence the atmosphere at nearly all altitudes between ground and space, affecting not only life on the surface but also the spacebased technological systems on which we increasingly rely.
Rob Taylor:
The paper says exactly what my references say, apart from the speculating about anthropogenic causes.
Basically, we don’t measure temperature trends in the thermosphere, but based on ion estimates (?) and density measurements we think it may be cooling. All well and good.
Now, what does the cooling look like? Well, “this behavior is qualitatively consistent with model predictions.” But not quantitatively. This is exactly what Akmaev said:
A factor of 2-10 is not trivial by any means. So what is wrong?
From Laštovička:
Oops. So maybe the density change was caused by other factors after all. In fact, considering that model simulations show that the expected cooling from CO2 is up to an order of magnitude less than they measured, it can’t be the CO2 alone doing it.
Hence Akmaev’s conclusion:
Either that, or the models are hopelessly wrong. Again.
Akmaev’s conclusion is backed up by Ramaswamy:
And we know from both Akmaev and Laštovička that (in the words of Laštovička):
So the ozone- (and possibly water vapour-) driven cooling of the lower stratosphere extends all the way to the thermosphere. This cooling is too strong to be CO2 alone, by almost an order of magnitude.
Now Laštovička et al. come to different conclusions, but they are basing their conclusions on the qualitative assessment only. Note:
They can’t back up their statements with quantitative results.
They say:
without giving any evidence. In fact, they have to admit immediately:
So now there’s another contributor in the mix: geomagnetic activity.
So what do we see in all this? CO2 should cool the high altitudes, yes, as it is a net emitter up there. However, the actual cooling we’ve seen far exceeds CO2’s theoretical contribution. Therefore there must be other, much more powerful forces at work. These are given as: ozone depletion, water vapour and geomagnetic activity.
Therefore the high altitude cooling we’ve seen is not the fingerprint of CO2 increase. At best, the CO2 contribution is well hidden in the overall cooling.
One last comment: AR4 specifically mentions tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling. No mention is made of the mesosphere or thermosphere in Chapter 9.
Now, about that tropospheric hot spot that appears to have gone missing…
Don’t be ingenuous, Bob, your “missing tropospheric hot spot” is a straw man, a zombie meme that is yet another “God of the gaps” exercise in desperation, to be trotted out as real-world evidence for AGW become impossible to ignore.
This will help:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tropospheric-hot-spot.htm
and
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Dispelling-two-myths-about-the-tropospheric-hot-spot.html
Rob, this may come as a surprise to you, but I don’t regard John Cook as an authority on anything. You have already referred me to that source. I read it, and followed on to the Advanced section, which is where I found the quotes I gave you earlier. So simply referring me to it again doesn’t help your argument at all.
Earlier on, you said this:
Yet most of your quotes and references have come from an alarmist blog written by a non-climate scientist, and of course Wikipedia.
The reason John Cook is wrong is that in AR4 it says the following:
Fig. 9, which he kindly reproduces, shows this quite clearly.
The reason for the hot spot is warming of the surface by GHGs, amplified by increased water vapour in the tropics (water vapour feedback mechanism). Along with the hot spot, we expect to see stratospheric cooling. Why? According to Skeptical Science, this is due to a lack of upwelling IR radiation to be absorbed by stratospheric CO2. The two go together.
The fingerprint of GHG warming can’t be the stratosphere cooling alone, becuse, as I’ve already shown, stratospheric temperature is dominated by ozone, not CO2.
The lack of a hotspot tells us the feedback mechanism of water vapour isn’t positive.
Bob, here is a 2008 paper that assesses the relative contribution of GHG and ozone loss to stratospheric cooling; are you aware of any later work?
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2955.1
Rob, yes that looks about right, as it confims the lower bound of the Akmaev finding (2-10 times too low). In other words, ozone depletion is at least twice as powerful as CO2, as far as temperature is the stratospher is concerned. So a cooling stratosphere cannot of itself be a signature of GHG increase.
What I mean is this: if the stratosphere has cooled (it has), it could be due to GHGs or ozone depletion. Ozone is al least twice as powerful as GHG (or could be 10 times as powerful), so there is no way to determine what exactly is causing the cooling at this point. So John Cook cannot claim that stratospheric cooling on its own is the GHG fingerprint.
However, as they say, once more data comes in over the next decade or two it may be possible to separate the ozone from the GHG contributions.
The real issue at stake here, though, is not whether GHG concentration is increasing (it is) but what effect it has on the troposphere, which is where we live. The IPCC assumes water vapour feedbacks are positive, and have the mean effect of tripling the warming from CO2 alone (CO2 alone will only cause about 1°C per doubling).
A simple way to check this is to look for the predicted hot spot – remember the physics behind the hot spot are childishly simple: water vapour increases over the tropics because of the GHG warming, and water is a powerful greenhouse gas. Ergo, more GHG warming – a positive feedback.
The problem is, no hot spot.
Until this issue is addressed, the scientific evidence for CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) is non-existent.
Now the warmists have tried every trick in the book on this problem: they have tried to divert attention in numerous and ever-desperate ways (“The measurements are wrong!”; “It’s the stratospheric cooling that matters, not the hot spot!”; “It’s not important”; “Look, a bird!”) but I for one remain unconvinced.
Between 350 and 400 of the world’s leading climate scientists will descend upon Queenstown in 2014, for the general assembly of Stratospheric Processes and their Role in Climate [SPARC].
The SPARC conference’s four key topics of climate variability and change, ozone, atmospheric chemistry and aerosols, and polar processes, will be discussed over five and a-half days.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/queenstown-lakes/208794/international-climate-science-conference
1) Why don’t they just set up blog sessions like this one?
2) Does the stratosphere REALLY need 350 – 400 “leading” climate scientists (plus how many are following?) watching its every move?
This is like the global GCM supercomputing duplication of effort and expense although hopefully SPARC allows their participants a little more latitude than the IPCC’s ensemble-wide prescribed (and daft) simulation specifications (spin-up and RCP). Why don’t they just give model groups free rein to see what configuration models climate best in competition with the IPCC’s RF method?
But then that has the danger of being self defeating I suppose.
Is the conference in the ski season?
Weather balloons reach mid stratosphere above the ozone layer. Perhaps if they all went on a crash diet they could each hitch themselves to one and ride to their site of study.
Not sure where the balloons go after that but that would just make it more interesting for the rest of us.
At the very least, Las Vegas would have been a better venue. They could all have ridden the Stratosphere’s X-Scream Ride where with a bit of luck this might happen:-
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/4124918/tourists-stuck-on-las-vegas-stratospheres-x-scream-ride
Richard Treadgold – you must realise that the IPCC was not set up to advise the man in the street. It puts the science in front of governments. A different matter. probably explains why governments tend to be better informed on this subject than people like you.
However, if you are genuinely interested in understanding the mechanism of global warming you have to put in a bit of effort. It is silly to talk about “greenhouse gases warm the earth” – they don’t warm the earth – how could they? It is the sun that warms the earth. “Greenhouse ” gases get involved because of their absorption and re-radiation of IR emitted from the earth. Leading to a warming effect. Well understood by scientists.
So, clearly, Richard, you do have a lot to learn about the science of climate change – not just statistics.
Of course it would be nice for climate scientists to put more effort into educating the public, rather than just governments. Some do – and there is a wealth of information out there for those honestly looking for it.
But you seem to make a virtue out of ignorance. Declaring you don’t understand statistics you then declare that warming in NZ has halted – when your “evidence” cannot pick up the trend you refer to. You also don’t understand the role of “greenhouse” gases in determining climate.
Boy, are NIWA’s lawyers going to make you look silly at the High Court.
It puts the Summary for Policymakers in front of government. Very few if any in government read the science.
Does the SPM reflect the science? This is the question to ask.
“…..probably explains why governments tend to be better informed on this subject than people like you”
Yeah right.
If my communications with the Ministry for the Environment Climate Change Office are anything to go by our govt is one of the more ill advised on the planet by advisers that are unable to grasp the issues beyond what they regurigitate from the IPCC and favoured warmist papers of the most simplistic kind.
BTW Ken, could you explain for us anti-luddites (as I suppose you wish to characterize us) the GHG “warming effect” wrt the ocean?
I look forward to your quotes from the relevant AR4 passages (good luck with that) and some appropriate citations (good luck with that too Ken).
Our govt can never be well informed scientifically from MfE Climate Change if the science “evaluation” mgr is unaware that there is a paper-rebuttal-reply sequence and that the “state of the science” somehow froze at Santer 08.
I don’t see that GHG oceanic “warming effect” Ken – what’s the hold up? It should only take a couple of minutes if as you say it’s “Well understood by scientists”.
Oh, are they climate scientists too? Who’da thunk it?
It does happen Bob. Anthony (Tony) Cox, lawyer and secretary of The Climate Sceptics.has degrees in law and climatology.
Although I don’t think he will be representing NIWA.
BTW, if a judicial review is granted, will it be purely legal or will an independent scientific body be given the job?
Seems to me that GNS would be appropriate in the latter.
RC,
A judicial review is carried out by a judge and this one is in progress. We ask in our application for certain findings about what NIWA have done, not about their conclusions. Although, if a procedure done by NIWA is found to be unsound, we hope the court will issue an order for them to redo it.
There are standing rules protecting a court against having to determine scientific facts. This case is not directly about the science, and where scientific facts are relevant they must be established by reference to published papers, not arguments. The request for a review questions the procedures and actions performed by NIWA, it does not try to change scientific facts.
That’s broadly right, but I’m not a lawyer.
Certainly, the fevered discussion at Hot Topic about the stupidity of the Coalition in asking a court to “decide” global warming is uninformed chatter.
RT, thanks for this answer, this is very enlightening.
I take it then, that the Judge has the SOC and SOD in front of him and he is reviewing NIWA’s procedural basis in seclusion (in chambers) without hearing the respective sides put their cases i.e. no lawyers expanding on SOC and SOD and cross-examining witnesses in a court session.
This has the potential to make Ken Perrott sad.
Richard C,
Sorry, I overlooked confirming this. Yes, there are no verbal arguments. Mr Perrott could become very despondent.
Richard C:
Lol
It seems that Treadgold can’t even handle the Summary for Policy Makers, let alone the reviews.
He is effectively acknowledging he is in over his neck.
Ken,
So what’s the evidence for dangerous anthropogenic global warming, again? Just run it by me briefly.
Evidence:
/evidence
/sarc
Richard, you will never understand scientific knowledge unless you put in some effort. To be scared of the literature because “it simply swamps us with documentation without saying what we’ll find in it” is lumping for ignorance. To be scared of the literature summaries and reviews – or even their Summary for Policy makers because they are beyond you is again lumping for ignorance.
And then you cap it by attacking the experts. (What bright mind actually said – “Someone has to stand up to the experts!”)
Now I have explained to you that when you say that there was no statistical warming in NZ over the last 10 years you are actually saying that any warming trend is < 4.5 degree /century. Not at all inconsistent with that measured for the 100 years data (0.9 degree).
You pretend you don't understand.
I have explained to you why you are completely incorrect to assert the science CLAIMS “greenhouse gases warm the earth. IT DOESN’T.
And your childish response – “Just run it by me briefly.” Again?
Let me quote to you Richard Feynman- “Science is what we do to keep from lying to ourselves.”
It looks like you find the science too daunting and prefer to lie to yourself.
Glad we share an appreciation of Feynmann, Ken
He also made this famous quote :
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
and …
if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated
Ken,
Minor point: “And then you cap it by attacking the experts.”
What are you talking about?
Minor point: “you are completely incorrect to assert the science CLAIMS “greenhouse gases warm the earth.”
I made no such assertion of a scientific claim. I merely used “GHG warm the earth” as a convenient shorthand.
Major point: “Just run it by me briefly.” Again?
That’s what they all say. Just cite some evidence or go away.
Cheers.
Just to close off the hot spot issue, AR4 SPM confirms two things for us when it states:
The two things are:
1) the pattern is both tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling, NOT just stratospheric cooling.
2) the stratospheric cooling is ALSO due to stratospheric ozone depletion.
So when we see stratospheric cooling in the absence of a tropospheric warming hot spot, it basically tells us the theory isn’t working.
The stratospheric cooling is mostly due to ozone depletion, with possibly some CO2 influence, but we can’t tell how much yet, although we do know it’s significantly less than the ozone influence.
We know CO2 levels are increasing, we see some (very slight) warming of the troposphere, but no proportionately higher warming of the upper troposphere (no hot spot), which tells us that positive water vapour feedbacks aren’t happening.
This forces us to conclude that overall climate sensitivity to doubling of CO2 is about 1°C maximum, possibly less if water vapour feedbacks turn out to be negative.
Now according to Hansen et al., we’ve already had 0.6-0.7°C warming over the past century and a bit, so that leaves another 0.5°C or so by 2100, assuming we reach 560ppmv of CO2 by then. This is hardly a disaster, and is in fact more likely to be beneficial (longer growing seasons etc.).
Not so fast, Bob.
Stolarski et al is fatal to your original argument that stratospheric cooling due to GHG is overwhelmed by, or cannot be distinguished from, cooling due to ozone depletion.
In fact, we see 30 – 40% of observed cooling can already (2008) be attributed to GHG, a contribution expected to grow stronger with time.
Thus, we observe the distinctive AGW signature: steady warming of the troposphere and cooling of the stratosphere.
As for the missing “upper tropospheric hot spot” straw man you and AGC cling to, this is predicted by anti-AGW models as well, including solar forcing and Plimer’s magical undersea volcanoes. in essence, yours is a “God of the gaps’ argument that can be summarised as
“because AGW cannot fully explain everything, it must be wrong”
Invoking this logical fallacy, you claim that H2O feedbacks “aren’t happening” and move on to a Moncktonian low climate sensitivity – a classic Gish gallop into Panglossian territory.
So, Bob, what research can you cite that would invalidate the current consensus re climate sensitivity?
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n11/full/ngeo337.html
For a general review of the topic, see
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm
Rob, I think it was you earlier who claimed to have two honours degrees in physics and maths. Yet you seem to be woefully weak in analytic skills, I’m sorry to say. Apologies if it wasn’t you.
You say:
Firstly, the paper distinctly says it cannot yet be attributed, and it will take some years before it can.
Secondly, the effect of ozone is at least twice that of CO2 in the stratosphere. It could be up to ten times greater (Akmaev).
That means that stratospheric cooling is dominated by ozone – you can’t point at it and say “See? That’s the signature of GHG increase!” It’s the signature of (at the last count) four things (from the scientific literature):
1) ozone depletion (strongest)
2) GHG increase (2-10 times weaker)
3) water vapour
4) geomagnetic activity
As many people have pointed out ad nauseam, the signature of AGW is increased tropospheric warming AND stratospheric cooling. Together.
But you keep evading the issue. I can’t spell it out more clearly (I think). Let me try again.
AGW theory predicts that any initial warming by CO2 will create a positive feedback by water vapour. It works like this:
Warming at the surface causes increased evaporation (ie: more water vapour in the atmosphere). This water vapour increase will be largest in the tropics, in the upper troposphere. Water vapour is a powerful GHG itself, and so it will absorb IR, heating the atmosphere. This creates a “hot spot”, and it’s not a trivial one – the heating is expected to be at least double the surface heating from CO2 alone. See Fig. 9 of AR4. It is this addition positive feedback mechanism that amplifies the CO2 warming from 1°C to about 3°C per doubling of CO2. In other words, the positive water vapour feedback mechanism triples the warming from CO2 alone.
It is this hot spot that is missing. Stratospheric cooling is a side issue, and works on slightly different principles (net emission of CO2 in a thin atmosphere, together with reduced upwelling IR). You could still get some minor stratospheric cooling with increased GHGs, yes, but it’s the hot spot that proves or disproves the positive feedback from water vapour.
No hot spot, no positive feedback. Can I get any plainer? Everybody else gets it. Well, not Ken, but we don’t expect much of him. Richard Christie neither, now that I think of it. But you should. Ben Santer himself wrote a paper where he spelled out how problematic this was to AGW theory.
Now, regarding the solar forcing, yes, one gets a similar pattern of tropospheric warming, but the problem you face is that you need about a 2% variation in solar forcing for that to happen. Have we seen a 2% increase, Rob? No, we haven’t. Solar TSI varies by about 0.1%.
No Rob, this is science. Hypotheses are always tested. Predictions must be made, and checked against observations. When the predictions are proved false, the hypothesis is rejected. You should know this.
I’ll type slowly, so you can keep up: if AGW theory relies on positive water vapour feedbacks to achieve high climate sensitivities in the range 2-4.5°C, then the positive water vapour feedbacks must be seen to be occurring. If they are not seen to be occurring, the climate sensitivity must necessarily be lower.
At this point the science is telling us that 1°C is an upper bound.
Start with Lindzen & Choi (2011) “On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications”.
The “consensus” on climate sensitivity is not nearly as strong as you make out.
As James Hansen states in Hansen (2005): “A caveat accompanying our analysis concerns the uncertainty in climate forcings.”
The values used are inferred, using assumptions and models, but they are by no means “settled science”.
See here for a simplified discussion on climate uncertainties.
http://climate.nasa.gov/uncertainties/
Note the section on clouds.
Jo Nova has a nice collection of articles on the missing hot spot if anyone’s interested:
http://joannenova.com.au/tag/missing-hot-spot/
The temperature readings on the surface reinforce the fact that the positive feedbacks via water vapour aren’t happening, and the radiosondes and satellite readings reinforce this also through a missing hot spot in the upper troposphere. Even Sherwood’s 2008 paper shows no warming of the upper troposphere, if you examine the colour coded scale of his graph:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hot-spot/sherwood-08-hotspot.gif
AGW has terminal wounds and it’s just a matter of time until it bleeds to death. Juvenile attempts to try to hide the elephant in the room isn’t convincing either the general public, or an ever more skeptical scientific community. Every day the AGW crowd lose ground as the world wakes up to the fact that there is no evidence for problematic AGW whatsoever beyond the max. of 1.2C for every doubling of total atmospheric CO2. Only those who are too pig-headed to admit they’re mistaken, or are too ignorant of the facts continue to support this obviously failed hypothesis.
Sorry to rain on your parade, Bob / AGC, but the scientific consensus on climate sensitivity is validated by multiple independent lines of reasoning and evidence, including paleoclimate studies as previously cited in the review articles above.
If all you have is a “missing” tropical hot spot in a noisy nonlinear system, then you do not have sufficient evidence to claim this “wounds” AGW, unless you believe that one cherry picked from the tree magically disappears the entire tree.
As I’m sure you are aware, Lindzen & Choi 2011 was rejected by PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences); now that it has appeared in the mighty Asian Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, I expect a debunking will follow, perhaps along the lines of that accorded their 2009 paper – see
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/lindzen-and-choi-unraveled/
There is also the little problem of Lindzen’s misrepresentation of NASA GISS data in a presentation to the UK parliament, and subsequent weasel-worded apology:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/03/misrepresentation-from-lindzen/
and
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/03/misrepresentation-from-lindzen/comment-page-7/#comment-230500
Unsurprisingly, his is another “God of the Gaps” fallacy. Lindzen evidently hopes that an AGW refutation lies in the uncertainties about clouds and the tropics, but, unfortunately, after several decades of trying, he has failed convince his peers that his claims have anything to back them up but wishful thinking.
So, when you claim to believe
please cite the peer-reviewed climate science papers that back up your opinion on the matter.
PS: Joanne Codling, a.k.a. “Jo Nova” doesn’t count…
Rob Taylor:
So you’re back to argument from authority.
Very well, I’ve laid the evidence in front of you, and instead of addressing it directly, you skirt around the edges, claiming “debunking” of everybody who shows scientific evidence of the failures (yes there are many) of AGW. Believe me, we’ve all seen this behaviour before. It failed to work previously, and it fails now.
Until you address the evidence I’ve presented directly and in a scientific manner, I’m done trying to have an adult discussion with you.
Surely, Bob, you are not admitting that you can cite no scientific research to back up your opinion re climate sensitivity?
“At this point the science is telling us that 1°C is an upper bound.”
You cannot claim that I am misrepresenting what you said, and going off in a sulk does not seem particularly adult behaviour.
Come on, man, its a simple enough question – cite the peer-reviewed papers that you base your statement on, and we can then continue the debate.
Or is this your “Monckton moment”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZKzJwMOWAI
Rob, I have laid out the evidence multiple times above. Which part are you having trouble with? You said:
Both AGC and I then showed you that we not only understand all this, we understand it better than you do. When challenged on the lack of the water vapour feedback hotspot by AGC, you changed your tune, and said this:
So you claimed, in effect, that the hot spot isn’t, after all, a sign of AGW, and only the stratospheric cooling is (your point is immediately contradicted, of course, by the IPCC in AR4, and in a multitude of papers since, including Ben Santer’s).
Of course, the reason you claimed this was because you looked it up in Skeptical Science, which is a partisan alarmist blog. In turn, the only reason John Cook says the stratospheric cooling on its own is suddenly the AGW signature is because, unlike the hot spot, we have in fact seen some stratospheric cooling. Unfortunately for our friend John, that cooling is dominated by ozone depletion and other factors, rather than just a GHG increase, so the story gets even weaker.
I then showed you exactly why the hot spot is relevant to your point that water vapour feedbacks exist, and why they are important to measuring climate sensitivity.
You are still not addressing that point, and are now trying to divert the conversation once again into a paper-chasing exercise.
Previously most of your references were from Skeptical Science, or Wikipedia. Suddenly only peer-reviewed papers are good enough for you.
You asked for a peer-reviewed paper on climate sensitivity. When I gave you one, instead of reading and understanding it, and then discussing it in your own words as a scientist would, you simply run off to find some blog post that claims to have “debunked” it. In this case you’re getting so desperate you even attack the journal that published it, all standard alarmist behaviour, I’m afraid.
When the history of this sorry period is written, the word “debunk” will appear as the most common catch-phrase of a deluded generation.
These are the reasons I have given up on your nonsense, certainly not because I’m “going off in a sulk”.
Looking back over your attempts not to confront the truth, I’m reminded of something my old grandmother used to say: “There’s none as thick as them that wants to be.”
Well it seems that the data doesn’t quite agree with the ‘consensus’ on climate sensitivity, does it it Rob. Data from James Hansen & UAH:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/evans-david/hansen-1988-a-b-c-scenarios.gif
Facts (real data & observation) trump speculation (models) every time, especially when the models fail so miserably.
This paleoclimatic evidence of high climate sensitivity interests me. Is this evidence that doesn’t involve circular reasoning?
By circular reasoning, Andy, do you mean like the joke 2009 paper by “sceptics” McLean, de Freitas and Carter, who detrended the data and then found there was no trend?
http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=John_McLean
Please reference whatever paleoclimate papers you believe rise to these heights of absurdity, and outline your rebuttal for discussion.
I meant an argument that could explain high climate sensitivity to CO2 without assuming high climate sensitivity to CO2 in the paleoclimatic records.
I am sure it is there, but it’s difficult wading through the multiple debunkings and expungement of memes.
Have you even read the paper, Rob? Do you understand it? I’m sure you have and do, because only a prime idiot would review something negatively that they hadn’t even read.
Regarding the paleoclimate paper you referenced earlier, note my comment here that dealt with that. I notice you didn’t even respond to it.
Bob, the title of this thread is “The state of the Science”, so we are (presumably) discussing actual research that makes the cut of peer-reviewed publishing and then survives peer comment.
You seem to want to divert attention from the science to myself, but I do not pretend to be a climate scientist. Do you?
Fortunately, for laymen such as myself, there are ample resources, such as Sceptical Science and Real Climate who provide commentary and links to the published papers.
Your entire argument seems to come down to a claim regarding climate sensitivity, for which you appeal to the authority of Richard Lindzen, who has, thus far, failed to convince his colleagues that major negative feedbacks actually exist.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/lindzens-clouded-vision-part1.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/lindzen-clouded-vision-part2.html
As for strato. cooling, the AGW component appears to be both visible and increasing (Laštovička, Akmaev et al, 2008)
Can you, perhaps cite later research that disproves this?
As Richard Feynman once said, “”Science is what we do to keep from lying to ourselves”.
Fortunately, for laymen such as myself, there are ample resources, such as Sceptical Science and Real Climate…
Is anyone else losing the will to live, or is it just me?
Be my guest, Andy.
I don’t appeal to anyone. The Lindzen paper was simply the first for you to look at, since you wanted a paper dealing with climate sensitivities. Your response to that first paper was very weak, which is why I have no intention of helping you any further, if that’s all you’re going to do with papers I give you.
The physics speaks for itself – high climate sensitiviy comes from positive feedback. Positive feedback equals hot spot. No hot spot. No high climate sensitivity.
Do you have a substantive rebuttal to that argument? It’s simple enough, for heaven’s sake.
We could start with a simple question. Do you, Rob Taylor, believe (like the IPCC) that we should have experienced a hot spot over the tropics by now? And that the magnitude of this hot spot is at least twice the surface warming? Yes or no.
Something for you to mull over before you claim the science is settled:
Clouds and water vapour effects remain largely speculative.
“Clouds and water vapour effects remain largely speculative.”
Indeed they do, Bob, but here is an accessible precis of the state of play today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/science/earth/clouds-effect-on-climate-change-is-last-bastion-for-dissenters.html?_r=2
Clearly, the weight of the evidence is against Lindzen’s hypothesis that clouds provide a major negative feedback mechanism.
My extract from the IPCC faq on cloud feedback doesn’t suggest settled science to me
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2012/05/state-of-the-science/#comment-92992
There are two distinct issues here:
1) water vapour feedback
2) clouds
To date I have only been concentrating on 1). Based on the lack of a hot spot, the water vapour feedback mechanism isn’t positive. It may be negative, we don’t know yet.
Clouds are a whole new complexity. Svensmark’s theory looks interesting at this point, and there is ongoing research to investigate it. Lindzen may or may not be right, but this is how science progresses, rather than trying to silence critics.
Simplistically, an increase in cloud cover reduces incoming solar radiation, which of course cools the planet. If Svensmark is correct, then not only is the recent warming in the late 20th century explained, but so potentially are the ice ages.
And a reference from an obviously biased journalist from the NY Times? C’mon.
Bob D,
Do you mean an increase in cloud cover?
Oops, sorry yes. One can’t get anything past someone so well versed in wordsmithing. 🙂
[Further ad hominem remarks will be deleted. – RT]
I did read your comment on Hansen’s paper, Bob, and it was so self-evidently fatuous that I thought it could stand as its own rebuttal. I will return to it if you wish…
Oh wow. Pity, for a while there I thought you were vaguely interested in science.
Look Rob, it’s clear to me you have no real interest in understanding any of the issues we’ve raised – you seem only to be interested in insulting folk and trying to get everyone to read Real Climate and Skeptical Science. Your mind is made up and nothing whatsoever will change it. That’s fine and all, but don’t expect us then to play your games.
On the contrary, Bob, am very interested in the science, as researched and explained by practising climate scientists.
One can’t help noticing, however, that the leading “contrarian” climate scientists such as Christy, Soon and Lindzen have been remarkably prone to experimental and analytical errors that have eroded their credibility.
On the other (“warmist”) side of the climate science mainstream, we have Hansen, who has been vindicated time and again, and still leads the pack.
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/05/10/global-warming-an-exclusive-look-at-james-hansens-scary-new-math/
BTW, Bob, are you a climate scientist yourself, perchance?
“……am very interested in the science, as researched and explained by practising climate scientists”
So am I Rob, although these days the explanations are not forthcoming e.g. why the models in their current configuration are overshooting both atm temperatures (as plot supplied by AGC) and OHC?
You cannot escape the fact that a) neither the IPCC nor greater climate science has a physical explanation for anthropogenic oceanic heating, and b) climate science is in a tizzy trying to explain the models vs observations divergence.
My personal favourite is Hansen’s “‘Recent slowdown of ocean heat uptake was caused by a delayed rebound effect from Mount Pinatubo aerosols and a deep prolonged solar minimum”.
Great to see attribution to natural cause (“deep prolonged solar minimum” – brace yourself for more of that) but “delayed rebound effect from Mount Pinatubo aerosols” ?
b) climate science is in a tizzy trying to explain the models vs observations divergence.
Meanwhile Scafetta’s empirical model is tracking along quite satisfactorily. How do”practising climate scientists” explain that Rob?
From Wiki:-
Nicola Scafetta is a research scientist at Duke University Physics Department. His research interests are in theoretical and applied statistics and nonlinear models of complex processes. He has published peer-reviewed papers in journals covering a wide variety of disciplines, including astronomy, biology, climatology, economics, medicine, physics and sociology.
Rob,
Vindicated if you say so, but in my lay opinion his scientific credibility has declined disastrously along with that of Lucy Lawless with each of his adventures in activism and being arrested. No other scientist is acting like this in their field of study. Anyway, his degrees qualified him as an astrophysicist. I understand he is no climate scientist.
Hansen is responsible for supplying the figure of a maximum of 350 ppmv for atmospheric CO2, in his 2008 paper Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?, which revised his earlier estimate from only the year before from 450 ppm down to 350 ppm and leaves the door open for further reductions. The paper had 10 authors and only 20 pages, which doesn’t assign much writing to each author. The Summary reads like social activism, not the academic language one might expect. Like this (emphasis added):
I haven’t studied the paper well, but someone who has might comment. It’s certainly a stretch of imagination to expect the far past to “determine” climate sensitivity when we can’t even tell which, of temperature and CO2, led the other. Their approach transfers all the difficulties with current climate models into the high past, but adds further uncertainties and unknowns, which cannot lead to any better understanding of past climate processes than we have of today’s. In fact, it must produce a worse understanding than ever before.
On the 350.org web site Hansen is quoted as saying:
There are many people prepared to take this “analysis” (much of it mere speculation) as a reason for far-reaching changes in society. I’m not yet one of them.
Cheers.
That’s probably the difference between us. I like to understand the science myself, rather than have someone serve it up on a plate.
From SMH the Climate Commission’s latest report ‘The Critical Decade: NSW Impacts and Opportunities’
Federal climate commissioner Lesley Hughes:-
I assume that’s not simultaneously.
Richards, your tribal chants, nit-picking and word games are deeply unimpressive. Got any science?
That was the point of this thread, wasn’t it?
rob taylor,
My remarks on Hansen were hardly scientific, they were in fact entirely political. I wouldn’t vote for him because he’s incredible.
Please explain what you mean by “tribal chants, nit-picking and word games”. I think I’m all right with “deeply unimpressive”.
Science? Have you anything to say about my unanswered questions? Or perhaps an opinion about the global temperature facts I presented earlier? Any comments on Dengue fever, Ross River virus or malaria (even sub-polar)? You went quiet after those revelations, almost as though you were encountering information that contradicted something you thought you knew.
Don’t feel awkward about it, I understand what you’re going through. It happened to me when, encountering real climate facts, I was forced to confront (after so many years!) my belief that we were causing global warming. It’s a shock!
Richard, you and your coterie of true believers are profoundly deluded. As has been amply demonstrated, you have little understanding of the science, and no appreciation of the enormous changes we have set in motion.
As a straw in the wind (bad pun), yesterday’s NZ Herald provided instructions how best to shelter from tornadoes. In 60 years, I have never seen such a warning before, despite growing up on what is now dubbed NZ’s “tornado coast”.
Wake up, man!
We have little understanding of the science. We are True Believers.
Interesting thesis.
Rob, if you think tornadoes are a new phenomenon to NZ (or you came down in the last shower), I suggest you check out the Frankton tornado of 1948.
Quote:-
“Three people were killed, many more were injured and up to 150 houses were damaged or totally destroyed in the 10 minutes it took for the tornado to pass through Frankton.”
Also in the Waikato I have witnessed the aftermath of a tornado that cut a swath through high standing hedgerows on the farm I was brought up on and twisters were common, at times two, three and more at a time in action. Just because you have never seen a warning before does not mean there has never been the threat before as you concede yourself.
I suggest that it is you that needs to not so much “wake up” but to activate the long-term memory that must have atrophied over those 60 years i.e. use it or lose it.
Rob, you said:
I reminded you of my previous remarks and THIS is your reply? You got any science?
Deluded we may be, but if this is your version of helping, God help us all. If we take stories of alarming events in the NZ Herald as our whole reality we deserve everything that happens to us. It’s like being surprised that foxes go after chickens.
Previously I asked you: “Now would you care to say why NIWA’s data showing 10.5 years of no NZ warming in the face of rapidly rising CO2 concentrations is intellectually bankrupt?” That’s perhaps not strictly a matter of science, but you could ignore the intellectual bankruptcy if you tried very hard.
You say I have “little understanding of the science” but that is precisely why I discuss climate change with you and others.
Finally, are you seriously asserting now that tornadoes are caused by global warming? I’m aghast, but do you have a reference for that? More importantly, would you describe a plausible mechanism?
I think the general theory is that more energy in the system (via CO2 “forcing”) results in more extreme weather events, such as tornadoes.
In order to establish this, we have to take measurements over a period of time and establish whether there is a trend or not.
In Pielke Jr’s book “The Climate Fix”, he asserts that no such trend has been found
Evidently, the insurance industry understands the link between AGW and extreme weather events, according to that bastion of “alarmism”, the Wall Street Journal:
http://articles.marketwatch.com/2011-09-09/commentary/30750008_1_climate-change-climate-research-community-global-warming
Evidently, the insurance industry understands the link between AGW and extreme weather events
So it’s got nothing to do with the fact that (a) the insurance companies have a vested interest in hiking premiums and (b) there is more property of higher value that needs insurance than in previous decades?
Bill at Hot Topic would be astonished at this (he’s expressed considerable mirth at my belief in the exiistence of undersea volcanoes and hydrovents, hitherto ignored by climate science):-
Rise and fall of underwater volcano revealed
[See Flash animation]
The violent rise and collapse of an underwater volcano in the Pacific Ocean is captured in startling clarity for the first time.
Researchers studying the Monowai volcano, near Tonga, recorded huge changes in height in just two weeks.
The images, gathered by sonar from a research ship, shed new light on the turbulent fate of submarine mountains.
Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the findings were made during a seabed survey last year.
Lead author Tony Watts of Oxford University told the BBC that the revelation was “a wake-up call that the sea-floor may be more dynamic than we previously thought.”
“I’ve spent my career studying the seabed and have generally thought it pretty stable so it’s stunning to see so much change in such a short space of time.”
As many as 32,000 underwater mountains have been identified around the world and the majority are believed to be volcanic in origin. Several thousand of these may be active but a combination of ocean depth and remoteness means that very few have been studied.
>>>>>>>>
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18040658
Straw man, RC2.
No one disputes the existence of undersea volcanoes and hydrovents, but your actual claim was that they are responsible for the excess ocean heating of recent decades, which is risible.
rob,
How kind of you to take the trouble to explain that. But again you ignore my questions. You exhorted me to “wake up” because of the tornado advice in the Herald, yet fail to acknowledge that the Herald lives by both news of alarm and alarming news. It’s not a scientific peer-reviewed publication, sad to say, and you’re quite incautious to cite that straw (as you call it) right after demanding “science” from us.
If you’re serious about discussing the science, perhaps you could explain how the minuscule IR radiation from the anthropogenic portion of a minor atmospheric gas could dangerously heat the ocean. Because I’m fascinated by that.
RC2, you could begin your education in climate science here:
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/lectures.html
[You’re polluting the atmosphere, and anyway you’re a layman – you’re not qualified to give lessons in climate science. Your insolent bombast is tiresome. Cease your arrogant remarks or I’ll silence you. – RT]
Given your stated interest in science, RT, I am puzzled why you take offence at a link to courses taught by a highly-regarded climate scientist, David Archer?
I recognise that the clause “highly-regarded climate scientist” may appear oxymoronic to you, but that is your problem…
[Clever. I’m counting to three. You have two left. Talk about the science, man! – RT]
So I should embrace the doctrine of “highly-regarded climate scientist, David Archer” unquestionably Rob?
No heresy allowed?
David Archer plays a mean blues number too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3LZxsF9WQc
Well, I’ll leave you to judge the musical talent
I’d be interested to know not how CO2 causes “dangerous” warming in the deep oceans, but how it causes any warming in the deep oceans, without apparently heating the shallow oceans in the process.
Furthermore, I’d like to know why the currently detected warming is different from anything observed in previous decades, and where the measurements are to back that up.
“……but your actual claim was that they are responsible for the excess ocean heating of recent decades, which is risible”
There you go again Rob. Would you care to quote me? Or is it your reply that is risible?
My contention (as with the geo science) is that although the background flux of geo fission (0.087 W.m2) is accounted for, the energy introduced from sea floor by undersea volcanoes and hydrovents particularly in climate-critical zones e.g. tropical East Pacific, is not. These two minor forms of energy (the former fixed the latter variable) along with the major form of solar radiation (variable) are the only oceanic heat sources and it is the variations of same that result in OHC variations.
In lieu of an anthropogenic oceanic heating mechanism from climate science, this is the most credible explanation don’t you think Rob?
And as the article points out, the undersea activity is not understood, this is the state of the science.
Then here it is again, Andy – research courtesy of NZ’s own vessel, NIWA’s “Tangaroa”:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-Increasing-Carbon-Dioxide-Heats-The-Ocean.html
It’s a nice looking boat with dynamic positioning etc, but it doesn’t explain to me how they have found a baseline to compare against with previous decades.
Oh well, I expect it’s all in SkS..
It’s hard to disagree with the fact of slight surface warming. The article imagines a “cool skin” developing which forms an actual barrier to the thermal energy exiting the ocean. But it is incredible that the outgoing heat might be held back by a 0.1 mm – 1mm skin of cooler water. Does a boiled kettle cool down much more slowly in a hot room? It’s like imagining volleys of six-inch naval shells being troubled by incoming clouds of dandelion seeds. The heat energy emerging from the ocean is indomitable. Notice the only quantification in the article is of alleged atmospheric longevity of CO2. But if the thermal energies of the anthropogenic CO2 (about 0.0000011 of the atmosphere (0.00039 × 0.003)) and the top (say) 300 m of the ocean could be compared, the ocean would overwhelm the anthropogenic CO2. Come to that, it would overwhelm the atmosphere’s total quantity of CO2.
Rob you have failed to engage in previous discussion of the weakness in Minnet’s opinion piece at Real Climate (regurgitated at SkS) because I can only assume you were unable to grasp the intricacy of cool-skin warm-layer physics so I don’t expect you to be able to now.
Neither did you address the 3 internal contradictions I identified in his posited mechanism.
If you think it’s so a credible why don’t you inform the IPCC? I’m sure they would be interested.
Anyone notice how Rob Taylor has sidetracked the failure of the AGW hypothesis due to the lack of hot spot? Now it’s insurance and the deep ocean.
Where’s the hot spot Rob, and what evidence of positive feedback from atmospheric water vapour is there without it?
Without evidence of atmospheric water vapour amplifying the minuscule effects of CO2, how can the AGW hypothesis deliver the heat predicted in the models?
AGC, please provide citations to peer-reviewed papers that support your contention that the “AGW hypothesis” has “failed” due to the lack of some “hot spot’.
While you are about it, do you,or any of the [ad hom removed. – RT] have a coherent alternative theory to AGW?
Is it the sun, cosmic rays, undersea volcanoes, [ad hom removed. – RT] or all of the above?
If its not GHG, then what is your alternative theory of radiative physics to explain 150 years of experimental results?
[rant removed. – RT]
The hot spot has been shown to be missing Rob, and your reply is another attempt to side track the debate. Sorry Rob, the ball’s in your court. Now answer the questions below please:
Where’s the hot spot Rob, and what evidence of positive feedback from atmospheric water vapour is there without it?
Without evidence of atmospheric water vapour amplifying the minuscule effects of CO2, how can the AGW hypothesis deliver the heat predicted in the models?
The questions are perfectly reasonable. As far as offering an alternative theory, that’s not the point, my job, or my responsibility. Although I will say that the temperature measurements from the surface, ocean, & upper troposphere aren’t what the models predicted, which also backs up the lack of positive feedback.
In that case, Richard, you can either:
A. Email Prof. Minnett to inform him that you have uncovered basic errors in his work on first reading, and provide a few helpful tips as to how he might do better in future; I’m sure he will welcome your assistance.
B. Study hard and seek to understand the concepts therein. No one said climate science has to be easy…
http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/personal/pminnett/Recent_Publications/recent_publications.html
Rob,
A. Ease off, mate. Minnett? You didn’t cite him and neither did Skeptical Science. The link to his publications is nice. Is there a particular one that covers the skin effect?
B. That’s two. See, what happens on “three” is that you never comment on this site again without some abject apology.
I think Bob decided to stop replying to Rob, and the rest of us might as well too, because we are not going to get anywhere.
I tend to agree. But the door’s still open for the dear man just a crack.
A. There are indeed links to contributions by Peter Minnett in the article I cited to Andy, but you have to read it to find them.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-Increasing-Carbon-Dioxide-Heats-The-Ocean.html
[Less useless than the list of papers you gave me. But I’m familiar with it anyway; it’s unconvincing. – RT]
B. Horrors, RT, do you, of all people, not welcome scepticism? [I do. It’s the self-conceited “advice” I object to. – RT]
How sad. Oh well, at least I was able to learn that malaria’s range extends to Siberia.
TTFN
Minnett’s paper is unconvincing to whom, Richard?
If to yourself, then kindly share with us the extent and depth of your expertise in this field; if to peers of Prof. Minnett, then kindly provide a citation or two.
Otherwise, you run the risk of appearing to be absurdly pretentious.
Chew on this (again) Rob:-
The posited AGW cool-skin effect (could be real in the right conditions but negligible) from increasing LWIR leads to at least 3 internal contradictions that I can see when viewed in conjunction with ‘Cool-skin warm-layer effects on sea surface temperature’, Fairall et al 1996:-
Contradiction #1: The contention that reduced conduction within the cool-skin INCREASES ocean warming contradicts the core tenet of AGW that evaporation will increase which therefore DECREASES ocean warming.
Contradiction #2: Fairall Table 5 values contradict the contention that conduction (Hs) is significant when clearly evaporation (Hl) and radiation (Rnl) are the significant factors.
Contradiction #3: Over land, Gero and Turner did not find conclusive evidence of an LWIR increase but instead found a decrease as described here:-
Over sea, the following paper contradicts the contention that the downwelling flux has increased the required 6.1 W/m2 in heat flux from the Sun and ‘greenhouse gases’ to the oceans to maintain a linear trend in annual SST. Instead finding the heat flux from those sources decreased -3 W/m2.
Journal of Climate 2012 ; e-View
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00148.1
On the Observed Trends and Changes in Global Sea Surface Temperature and Air-Sea Heat Fluxes (1984-2006)
W. G. Large* and S. G. Yeager
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado
From the abstract:-
They rule out anthropogenic forcing as the dominate heat flux in their conclusion:
In short, AGW (if it exists and it hasn’t for the last decade or so)) is an atmosphere-only phenomenon that might melt a teensy bit more ice than normal allowing a few drops of water to trickle into the ocean – not something to produce a post 2100 6m SLR that Gareth Renowden is fretting about. The way sea level rise is decelerating, even a 0.6m rise looks remote. 0.06m might be realistic thoug
And to highlight the lax reporting at SkS, this subtitle from the article ‘How Increasing Carbon Dioxide Heats The Ocean’:-
Fairall page 4 para 2 describes the conditions when the cool-skin is NOT present.
Rob,
You said:
You’re confused. I didn’t mention Minnett’s paper, I was commenting on the Sceptical Science article which you cited.
RT the definitive treatment is ‘Cool-skin and warm-layer effects on sea surface temperatures’, Fairall et al 1996.
Unfortunately (for Rob) Minnet’s mechanism is a bit player.
The SkS article prattles on about “downward heat radiation” from clouds?
Since when do clouds radiate sensible heat down? Heat rises.
If they used the right terminology i.e. DLR we might be able do get somewhere.
No cognizance either of the miniscule penetration and absorbancy of DLR in the 4 – 16 micron WL.
Heat rises, you say, RC2?
Someone had better tell the borehole researchers…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_%28climate%29#Boreholes
From the article to which you link, “the effect of rising heat from inside the Earth…”
Uh…duh.
I think they already understand Rob “….the effect of rising heat from inside the Earth”
I like this quote from the Wiki page:
Hmm, so two periods in the last 2,000 years that were substantially warmer than now, confirming what we already knew from historical records. Yet CO2 levels were 30% lower. I wonder how that happened?
Delicious irony Bob. Rob’s own Wiki citing refutes Mann’s hockey stick.
He (Rob) must hate it when that happens.
Uh…Mike J. and Richard C., do you really not understand that the surface temperature signal propagates INTO the earth, which is why it has to be adjusted for the background temperature which increases with depth?
Here it is again – try harder his time:
“Borehole temperatures can be used as temperature proxies. Since heat transfer through the ground is slow, temperature measurements at a series of different depths down the borehole, adjusted for the effect of rising heat from inside the Earth, can be “inverted” (a mathematical formula to solve matrix equations) to produce a non-unique series of surface temperature values.”
Uh…Rob, ok I will try harder this time. Where in the quote you cite does it say that the surface temperature signal propagates INTO the earth? Clearly, it does not. What it does say is that the temperature measurements down the borehole have to be adjusted with depth because of the rising heat from inside the earth.
This might take a while Mike. Hopefully for your sake before the next cherry season.
Am currently pruning the pretty little darlings, RC. Which means I have plenty of time as I work my way through the orchard, to contemplate the nature of the universe. And on rainy days, once basic machinery maintenance is done, I have plenty of time to politely and calmly ask logical questions of the likes of Rob Taylor, in the midst of his whirling haughtiness.
So, maybe by next cherry harvest he and I will have reached a different level of understanding of both the science and the adversary. One hopes that the adversarial aspect will have disappeared altogether by then. If not, as the wise man said, “if I’m not back in 10 minutes, wait longer.”
BTW, (in fact mostly OT), being sponsored by Big Cherry as I am, I have a keen interest in the growth habits of these particular trees. Therefore, some of the comments at WUWT regarding Steve McIntyre’s demolition of Briffa’s Yamal methodology, particularly the more biological ones, align with my layman observations over 20-something years of orcharding. Trees respond to a wide range of environmental variables, and take months or years to do so. Temperature is one bit player in the mix. The thought that they can be reliable thermometres for 1000 years ago just runs against all my logic and experience.
I’m currently in the pay of Big Kiwi at the countries largest packhouse (all freaking night unfortunately). Three graders, lot’s of automation, robotic stackers, automated strappers etc and about 100 people per line plus another 100 overall.
These guys are KPI obsessed, being the profit driven enterprise that they are, squeezing out taxes (in spite of Psa) so that NZ climate science can squander $132m over the last few years according to NZ Climate Change’s digging. Couple of dozen KPI’s per line per shift per day. Each team, about 4 per grader, also has their own KPI’s. In the 5 packhouses I have worked in this is the first time I’ve come across this.
I tried to persuade NZ Ministry for the Environment Climate Change Office to implement 7 key climate metrics for accountability – too hard apparently.
Read the article again, Mike, and try to understand what the words actually mean: heat travels into the earth, which is why surface temperatures can be recovered from the depths of boreholes, once the background temperature gradient is compensated for.
if you cannot understand this simple concept, then it is no wonder you fail to grasp the basics of climate science!
This is of course nonsense. q = -Mg, where q is the heat flux, M is the thermal conductivity, and g is the thermal gradient. In the case of the earth, the thermal gradient is positive (about 20°C/km) with increasing depth. The heat flux is opposite in direction to the gradient, in other words points upwards. In this case heat flows from the centre of the earth to the surface.
The borehole measurements are all about tiny changes in the gradient, caused by flux changes brought about by surface temperature changes. The surface change (delta-T) causes a local sub-surface gradient change. This gradient change changes the underlying layers, which change the next lower layers, etc. Meanwhile, the surface temperature could have changed again, and another gradient ‘blip’ is generated.
But because the thermal conductivity of rock is so low, each local gradient change takes a long time to propagate down through the layers, and each layer doesn’t yet know about the next ‘blip’ it’ll see coming down.
You could think of it as small variations in heat flux, that propagate gently downwards. The heat flow is nevertheless always upwards.
The “heat rising” issue is something quite different – fluid flows and convection currents don’t really apply in solids. If the centre of the earth was “cold”, rather than hot, the heat flux would be the other way.
“Read the article again, Mike, and try to understand what the words actually mean: heat travels into the earth, which is why surface temperatures can be recovered from the depths of boreholes, once the background temperature gradient is compensated for.
if you cannot understand this simple concept, then it is no wonder you fail to grasp the basics of climate science!”
Read your comment again Rob and note the unsolicited haughtiness with which you deliver your message. We are all learning – myself included, and I am no geophysicist. However, I can follow logic. The logic of your post eluded me however because whereas you were initially challenging Richard C’s contention that heat travels upwards by showing that boreholes can measure a signal going downwards, you failed to show that the signal is the same as the heat Richard was talking about. Is the signal the same as heat?
Thank you very much Bob for explaining the concept – it was most helpful to my understanding. So, Bob, would it be fair to say that the rising heat from the core would proceed at a slow but predictable rate, but when the surface temperature varies over, say a couple of centuries, that predictable rate is affected (flux) and therefore the surface temperature of that ancient time can be calculated with reasonable certainty?
Mike:
Yes, but I believe the resolution is even better than century-level. It seems decadal level is possible, near the surface (I’m no expert, though, it’s just what I read).
However, as one would expect, the variations weaken with time (and therefore depth), so the amplitude of the oscillations decreases with depth, until they become enveloped in the noise.
Mike:
No, which is why I pulled him up on his statement that heat was travelling into the earth. If it was, the core would presumably have exploded by now. 😉
“……fluid flows and convection currents don’t really apply in solids”
Magma falls into the fluid category (just) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magma Roger Dewhurst could help here.
From what I can gather there are very long-term currents similar to the atmosphere and ocean, hence the disagreement between geo science and climate science as to what drives what.
Trenberth is of the opinion (I have it from him on email record) that the atmosphere drives seismicity (pressure creating friction on the earth’s surface apparently). Geo science on the other hand has papers out concluding seismicity modulates ENSO for example.
Rob, the value of the globally averaged flux from core geo fission used in the models is 0.087 W.m2 (they neglect other energy loss mechanisms) . What does this suggest to you?
Here’s a clue, the energy transfer sequence is: core => mantle (conduction/convection), mantle => ocean (conduction/convection), mantle => atm (conduction/radiation/evaporation/convection), ocean => atm (radiation/evaporation/conduction/convectionj), ocean => space (radiation), mantle => space (radiation), atm => space (radiation).
Where => is the direction from earth’s core to space, generally regarded as UP and RISING.
I hope this clue is not too vague for you.
Any propagation downward is a near-surface only diurnal solar effect in the case of land and ocean. Due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is not possible for heat to flow from a colder body [mantle] to a warmer body [core] without any work having been done to accomplish this flow. Energy will not flow spontaneously from a low temperature object to a higher temperature object.
Similarly, the ocean is on average about 3 C warmer than the atmosphere so energy transfer is ocean => atm. Minnet’s anthro mechanism therefore is an INSULATION effect, NOT a heating effect.
At last, Richard C, we agree on something, even if only basic thermodynamics.
You also appear to finally understand the AGW cool skin effect that retains solar heat in the ocean, thereby causing it to warm.
Please can you now explain it again to Richard T, who yesterday found it all too “unconvincing”….
Rob the insulation effect is so minor as to be negligible. Look at Fairall Table 5 (THE SCIENCE), Hs is the bit player.
Doesn’t it strike you intuitively if nothing else, that it is just a little bizarre that RC/Minnet and SkS/Painting ( NO PEER-REVIEWED PAPER) are asking us to believe that 10/1000’s of a millimetre of unproven (actually THE SCIENCE shows otherwise) supposedly increasing LWIR the penetration of which (much of same is from clouds) of minimal absorbancy is the anthopogenic mechanism that effectively insulates the surface of the ocean from heat loss?
You wonder why RT finds this unconvincing but consider a wind-whipped sea surface, Or the complete absence of the cool-skin in the tropics around noon when solar SW is overwhelming.
When climate science can prove experimentally and document the results in a report or paper that over the last 60 odd years the ocean has been effectively insulated, you will fail to concince any but the most gullible believers.
Then you have the little problem of post ARGO cessation of upper ocean heat gain to explain (good luck with that BTW).
RC and Bob, I suggest you return to first principles to better understand the physics of heat transfer. Put simply, heat = kinetic energy of molecules and is parametrised by the RMS of the molecular velocity, a.k.a. temperature.
Consider a conducting bar with a heat source at both ends – one large and constant (A), the other smaller and variable (B).
if you measure the temperature of the bar near source B, it will be that resulting from both energy fluxes; the variable signal will modulate the constant signal. Further along the bar, the signal from B will diffuse and be lost in the noise.
Note that the heat flux near B goes in both directions – think of a stream of people entering a mall as a crowd comes out. as you will have experienced, the smaller group can make progress for a short distance.
At the Earth’s surface, RC, the solar flux ~ 340 W/m2, whereas the geothermal flux (on land) ~ 55 mW/m 2.
Thus, seasonal solar heating and cooling on the surface, under the right conditions, modulates the geothermal gradient for up to a kilometre or more, which is how climate change can be measured from bore holes.
For reference, try “Borehole Climatology: a new method how to reconstruct Climate”, Bodri & Cermak, 2007.
“Under suitable conditions the geological factors affecting the
geothermal gradient can be taken into account, so the climate history can be inferred from small temperature anomalies along the depth of borehole. While part of the subsurface temperature field corresponding to the internal processes is steady state, the response to the surface conditions represents a transient perturbation that appears as a disturbance to the background temperature field…
It is the heat conduction that helps to preserve the recollection on the past climate change at depth. The deeper we go, the more remote past history can be studied, even if both the amplitude attenuation and the time delay of the surface event increase with depth. As a simple rule, temperature–depth profiles to depth of 200–300 m record surface temperature trends (climate) over the last two centuries or so; deeper holes may reveal climate history farther back but with sharply decreasing resolution. Under favorable conditions all Holocene climate can be evaluated if the precise temperature log is available to the depth of 1 to 2km.
Although high-frequency components of GST changes are suppressed by the heat diffusion, calculated temperature–depth profile contains a robust signal of more than three century long climatic history. Negative temperature anomalies and positive gradient in the depth range 50–300 m indicate generally cold conditions in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, while the noticeable curvature in the uppermost part of the calculated
temperature–depth profile and negative gradients correspond to the rapid warming of the twentieth century.
The temperature disturbances propagate downward and slowly fade away.”
Uh, thanks Rob. In summary: exactly what I said.
“At the Earth’s surface, RC, the solar flux ~ 340 W/m2”
At night?
“….whereas the geothermal flux (on land) ~ 55 mW/m 2”
Great to see your concession Rob. This is what I’ve been getting at for yonks both here and at HT, the globally averaged geo flux is misleading i.e. the geo flux is far greater where the mantle is exposed e.g. mid Atlantic ridge. Similarly, superheated water at 350+ C being pumped into the ocean from hydrovents originating from up to 5km below the sea surface and energy density about 3.3×10^6 more intense than solar radiation (someone’s rough calc), 83 MW energy producible from one hydrovent (nuther rough calc), see:-
Mining Hydrothermal Vents For Renewable Electricity
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/09/04/mining-hydrothermal-vents-for-renewable-electricity-drinking-water-valuable-minerals/
People are thinking about this obviously, problem being they (the vents) are in the wrong place.
Also note that the solar effect is overwhelmed by geo energy in these situations many times over (think Hawaii, Iceland, Japan (monkeys love it in winter), Rotorua/Taupo).
Ahem… you have forgotten about the Sun again, Richard.
What does that suggest to you?
“Ahem… you have forgotten about the Sun again, Richard.
What does that suggest to you?”
This upthread https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2012/05/state-of-the-science/#comment-94146
Borehole reconstructions appear to be quite interesting.
Huang and Pollack (1997) studied the last 20,000 years using the largest global dataset, and showed that the MWP was global and at least 0.5°C warmer than present. The LIA was also found to be global and about 0.7°C colder.
Dahl-Jensen et al. (1998) looked at just Greenland over 50,000 years, and found that the Holocene Maximum between 4,000 and 7,000 years ago was about 2.5°C warmer than now, while the MWP was about 1°C warmer. The LIA was between 0.5 and 0.7°C colder. After the LIA, temperatures peaked at around 1930, and have declined since.
Demezhko et al. (2001) examined a 5km deep borehole in the Urals to determine an 80,000 year temperature record, and found a clear MWP and LIA.
So the boreholes tell a familiar story: the MWP was warmer than now, while CO2 was low. How did that happen, considering that solar TSI varied by only 0.1%?
Also, the Little Ice Age existed, and was global, averaging about 0.7°C less than now. We have simply been recovering from this low point for a while, and we haven’t yet even reached the purely natural (but unexplained) peak of the MWP. Of course, we also know the MWP peak was lower than the Roman Warm Period, which in turn was lower than the Minoan Warm Period.
All this means that the “unprecedented” recent warming is somewhat weaker than some people would like to believe.
You give only half the story, Bob; Here’s the rest (emphasis mine):
“enormously high”, eh? Don’t make us laugh. The rate of warming was the same as the periods at the beginning of the 20th century and midway through, as confirmed by Phil Jones.
Don’t be ingenuous, Bob, the comparison is to the entire paleoclimate record.
Even the PETM temperature spike was at least an order of magnitude slower, or haven’t you heard of that?
Don’t be ridiculous, Rob. You’re talking about a 20 year increase from 1978 to 1998. Does the entire paleoclimate record have a resolution down to 20 years? These are short-term transient blips.
And of course, just this century we have two other examples of twenty year increases of the same magnitude. Check with your mate Phil Jones, even he had to admit that.
Therefore the increase is by no means unprecedented.
I doubt that no previous era has ever had a higher rate.
For example, I wrote this further up:
To achieve a sea level rise ten times our current rate would require some substantial sustained warming.
Bob, the quote clearly refers to the temperature increase from 1850 to present day.
You are just trying to hide in the short-term noise – a mediocre ploy, as I doubt you are unaware that the standard climatological period is 30 years.
Ah, so the man-made climate forcing has been active from 1850? Well, you’d better write a paper contradicting James Hansen then. He states quite clearly in Hansen (2005) that man-made emissions could only have had an effect from the 1960s onwards. The temperatures dropped from the 1960s to 1978.
Of course, that means that at least half that increase from 1850 was purely natural. Including the periods I mentioned previously – they both occurred prior to 1960.
So let’s recap: since 1850 we have had a slow increase. This increase of about 0.7°C/century was purely natural, and was simply a recovery from the LIA. During this slow recovery, there were three periods of multi-decadal steeper warming, all at roughly the same rate.
One of these periods has now been singled out as being indicative of man-made influence, but no good reason has been given to justify why it differs from the previous, natural periods, which were, after all, at the same rate, and were naturally-driven.
No, Bob, you ignored the strong insolation at the surface, which led you to unphysical nonsense such as:
For the benefit of general readers, consider a frozen August landscape that, 6 months later, is baking under the February sun – Central Otago, perhaps.
Question 1: Is the ground warmer in February than in it was in August?
Question 2; Why?
Now, Bob, Mike and RC2 – can you really say, with a straight face, that the answer is “heat from the Earth’s core”?
There’s little point in arguing with you Rob, you’re just trying to pretend that your example to show heat sinks by referring us to boreholes is not stupid.
It is stupid, for two reasons: first, heat does not “sink” down the borehole, the heat flux is upwards, and second, we were discussing fluid motion and convection currents in air and water, not heat transfer in solids. It’s just a red herring, and proves nothing either way.
By the way Rob, what about that hot spot question?
C3 Headlines are calling it a ‘coldspot’
http://www.c3headlines.com/2012/05/connect-the-dots-global-warming-tropical-hotspot-hansen.html
So, Bob, if the near-surface “heat flux is upwards,” how then does permafrost thaw?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120327093121.htm
Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rob. Nobody said the near-surface heat flux can’t vary! I even stated it several times, as did Richard C. Can you not understand complexity? Everything is not just black-and-white. The point is that it can’t vary very far, unless it’s sustained for years, or decades. You raised the issue of boreholes. We’re talking about boreholes, OK?
Once again, the local variations in the thermal gradient are caused by local near-surface variations at the surface. These variations propagate very slowly down into the earth (about 5cm/year, by a rough calc), and become superimposed on the steady-state geothermal gradient. None of this is difficult.
You’re arguing with yourself, everybody else understands how it works. You’ll still never convince anyone that heat flows the wrong way up a thermal gradient. Give it up.
But wait, there’s more:
“Another important question is how abrupt the future changes will be. Abrupt climate change generally refers to a large shift of climate that takes place so rapidly and unexpectedly (sometimes in the mere span of a decade) that human and/or natural ecosystems have difficulty to adapt…
The shifts from dominantly glacial to interglacial conditions were the most distinct abrupt change over the past half million years. These sudden transitions support the hypothesis that the relatively minor changes in climatic forcing may lead to dramatic
response of climate systems.
Studying the climate evolution over the last 100 000 years the researchers have discovered repeated examples of abrupt changes like, e.g. the Younger Dryas – the fast slide into and jump out of the last ice age. The termination of the Younger Dryas cold event, for example, is manifested in ice core records from Central Greenland as a near doubling of snow accumulation rate and a temperature shift of approximately 10 K occurring within a decade (Alley, 2000).
One of the more recent abrupt climate changes was the Dust Bowl drought, windblown dust, and agricultural decline of the 1930s that displaced hundreds of thousands of people in the American Great Plains.
Numerous sudden changes over widespread areas are
preserved in paleoclimatic archives and therefore could happen again in future”.
Get the picture, guys?
Oh well, then. That’s compelling evidence.
But then again, if severe swings have happened in the past, and could happen again in the future, isn’t that just climate-as-usual? Where’s the climate change?
By the way, you still haven’t answered our questions about the hot spot. They’re simple questions, and you’re spending a lot of time chasing down borehole arguments and anything else that crops up. So what about it, what’s your answer to the lack of hot spot? Simple physics will do, since we’re all a bit slow.
Yet again, Bob, you seem blithely unaware of the rigour of scientific discourse – only the ignorant and the devious profess complete certainty.
For example, John Banks was certain he barely knew Kim Dotcom…
Rob:
You mean like this:
Now, about that water vapour feedback, Rob. Did you know that if water vapour feedback is positive, you will get a large hot spot over the tropics, and its magnitude will be at least twice that of the surface warming? The IPCC told us that in AR4.
And did you know, Rob, that it isn’t there?
Not only get the picture but there’s even more.
Abrupt climate change (climate shift) is a two way street. It is just as likely that the shift from 90s regime to warmer 00s regime will be repeated in reverse in the near future depending on what ENSO does. A triple-dip La Nina (Hansen and Renowden’s worst nightmare) would do it.
Add to that the astrophysics prediction of cooling recently brought forward to circa 2013 and you have the makings of an abrupt climate shift but not for the warmer unfortunately.
Don’t sell your coat Rob.
Yes, Bob, boreholes are very interesting indeed:
“Globally averaged borehole data have indicated a climate warming in the Northern Hemisphere of about 1 K over the past five centuries, half of which has occurred in the twentieth century alone.
Results obtained by various research teams using slightly different techniques of
the GST reconstruction show general agreement. Detected warming coincides well also
with the climatic trend established by various proxies and in its last section by the instrumental
record.”
p. 306, “Borehole Climatology: a new method how to reconstruct Climate”, Bodri & Cermak, 2007.
Hey, that’s the Hockey Stick they’re talking about… quick, get out the silver crosses and garlic necklaces, guys!
Note that this is 1K from the bottom of the LIA. Our current temps are less than the MWP peak. So this result is entirely consistent with what we know from archeological, historical and proxy records.
“Our current temps are less than the MWP peak.”
Bob, please provide scientific citations for this claim.
Sorry, the failed meteorologist at WUWT doesn’t count…
Rob,
The IPCC used to agree. See the FAR, page 202, where Figure 7.1 shows the MWP significantly warmer than present temperatures. This was, of course, before the invention of the Hockey Stick. Oh – are the IPCC reports actually accepted as being peer-reviewed?
Look above, I provided several, just from borehole papers.
Richard C (NZ) says:
May 17, 2012 at 8:11 am
“At the Earth’s surface, RC, the solar flux ~ 340 W/m2″
At night?
“….whereas the geothermal flux (on land) ~ 55 mW/m 2″
Sorry to burst your bubble, Richard, but do you really not know what the little “m” in mW means? Its “milli”, Richard….
And yes, the average solar flux at the surface over a 24-hour period is 340 W/m2, being the solar constant divided by 4.
“Climate Change and Subsurface Temperature
…the thermal regime at the Earth’s surface and in the near-surface shallow depths is controlled entirely by the solar radiation, and the resultant mean surface temperature depends on the longterm budget of the incoming and reflecting radiation.
The average energy density of solar radiation just above the Earth’s atmosphere, in a plane perpendicular to the rays, is about 1367W/m2, a value called the solar constant (although it fluctuates by a few parts per thousand from day to day).
The Earth receives a total amount of radiation determined by its cross-section (R2), but as the planet rotates this energy is distributed across the entire surface area (4R2). Hence, the average incoming solar radiation (known as “insolation”) is 1/4th the solar constant or 342W/m2. At any given location and time, the amount received at the surface depends primarily on the state of the atmosphere and the latitude.”
op. cit, p.42
Rob is still unaware of the difference between steady state and transient thermal effects.
Imagine the earth was a perfect insulator, beneath a thin layer of sand (say 5cm thick). The sand would be heated daily by the sun, and cool at night. Anyone who has slept out in the open in a desert at night knows that the rocks and sand that were too hot to touch in the daytime are freezing cold by dawn.
This would go on year after year, and if you measured the sand temperature you would find it cycling around a mean value. In the middle of the day the top layer would be hot, the lower layers close to the mean. Which is why burying your feet in the sand at Muriwai beach stops them burning.
As a check, the heat flux through the insulator is what? Zero. The heat flux vertically through the sand? It depends on how deep you look. At the very surface, it will vary greatly, positive to negative, on a daily basis. Lower down, not so much. At the bottom (5cm down), not at all – it will be zero.
Now change the thermal properties of the insulator. Set the initial temperature to be the sand mean temperature, and increase the thermal conductivity until it’s the same as the current earth conductivity, and set the temperature 5km down to be 100°C higher than the mean temperature of the sand. Over time, the “insulator” will achieve a linear thermal gradient, from 100°C at the bottom to roughly the sand’s mean temperature at the top.
This is the steady state condiftion of the earth. Heat flows very gradually upwards, at a flux measured in milliWatts per metre squared. Assuming nothing changes in the solar daily cycle, what’s happening now at the top of the “insulator”, 5cm below the surface? Not much, it will have increased its heat flux from zero to the milliWatt-level flux coming from below. At the surface? Same thing, a little increase in mean temperature perhaps, but nothing dramatic.
This new state is the steady state condition. Now if the daily solar cycle changes, for example in summer, then the sub-surface layers will slowly increase their local temperatures, because the local pre-existing steady-state gradient has been disturbed. The temperature of the layer above has increased slightly, so the thermal gradient reduces slightly. This affects the layer below (very slowly though). And so on, layer by layer.
If the new warmer solar cycle remained for all time, then the geothermal gradient would slowly reduce over 100,000 years or so to a new linear gradient. But summer doesn’t last forever.
When the daily solar cycle returns to its original state (say, autumn), the deep layers don’t know about it yet, nor will they for some time. They remain slightly warmer, and continue to affect the local gradients lower down. But the near surface layers return to the mean temperature, and affect the local gradients just below them – they increase again. This new “signal” travels slowly downwards.
Note that the strong daily solar cycle has not directly affected the deeper layers – its flux through the atmosphere is irrelevant to the flux through the solid earth, it can only cycle the near-surface temperatures about a mean value. The mean value is the “fixed” upper temperature that determines the geothermal gradient, together with the “fixed” lower temperature 5km down. As long as the mean upper temperature is lower than the mean lower temperature, heat flows upwards over the 5km.
In the very thin “skin” right at the surface, of course the heat flux varies greatly day-to-day and season to season. Deep down, it only gets an “echo” of what happened on the surface a long time ago. The echo dies away gradually the deeper it travels.
Rob, how do you reconcile the milliwatts you quote with the megawatts available?
From Wiki Geothermal power in New Zealand:-
“Geothermal power in New Zealand is a small but significant part of the energy generation capacity of the country, providing approximately 10% of the country’s electricity[1] with installed capacity of over 700 MW.[2],”
Sure there are vast areas of land and ocean floor where the 0.087 W.m2 (or 87 mW/m 2 if you prefer) global average background geo flux used in the models is appropriate.
But where the crust is thin and even non-existent it’s a different story. At Omokoroa here in the BOP entrepreneurs are growing normally tropical vanilla commercially thanks to heat exchanged from geothermal source (and not milliwatts either) i.e. it has required the 24/7 availability of geothermal heat to provide the conditions because solar power in NZ is inadequate for the purpose.
Stick to the topic, Richard, which is climate change involving average temps across the earth, not point sources such as geothermal fields. You really have a thing about geothermal, don’t you?
Rob,
It’s mightily hypocritical of you to chastise him by saying “stick to the subject” because you keep changing it.
You ignore the missing hotspot.
Yes I do have a “thing” about geothermal Rob
I do understand your aversion (verging in anathema) to attention being directed at geo heat because that messes with the warmists nice simple scheme of things (the sun heats the earth and anthropogenic GHGs trap the heat making it even warmer).
So OK, point sources:
5700 K approx, inner core – Point source #1
230 – 300 K approx range, lithosphere surface – Point source #2 (obliquity, diurnal, seasonal etc)
0 K space
Temperature gradient ………….core => lithosphere => space
That pesky point source being taboo (but issues resolved hopefully – phew!) I now have to address the topic which according to you Rob is:-
“climate change involving average temps across the earth”
OK but you might find the news on that front a tad disappointing. Turns out that average temperatures across about 70% of the surface of the lithosphere have been falling since peaking 2005 (spikes excluded)
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/1-global-month.png?w=640&h=418
Is this the argument clinic? I’d like a 5 minute argument please.
Yes, you’re right. Sorry, but you’ll get no argument out of me until you’ve paid the £1 fee.
lol Andy – thanks for reminding me of this skit. Bloody funny. Now my mental picture of Rob Taylor is firebranded into my subconscious as John Cleese saying “No it isn’t”.
This is, of course, nonsense, Bob, as your frantic revisionism shows.
Frankly, I’m disappointed – you trot out the same old hackneyed denialist memes with a “thin skin” of scientific phraseology, but I’m willing to give you one more chance:
If AGW is not happening, Bob, why are nightime and winter temperatures rising faster than the corresponding daytime and summer temperatures?
I am genuinely interested in your explanation – provided it conforms to known physics, which somehow I doubt it will…
So we’ve now turned another corner. We’ve dropped the hotspot, the boreholes, and now we are on night/daytime temperatures.
Is there some data to back up your claims Rob?
Rob,
You depart from science to assert the heat flow is NOT upwards. You must provide evidence for this alarming claim.
You say of Bob D:
Enumerate and name them.
As any child or gardener knows, but you seem unable to grasp, the sun’s heat penetrates the the earth – see my example re Central Otago in winter and summer above, or the melting of permafrost.
Temperature parametrises heat; borehole temperatures are modulated by the slow flux of heat into the earth for some tens to hundreds of metres, depending on subsurface conditions.
Forget the gibberish from Bob, he’s clearly out of his depth, in more ways than one!
I’ve already dealt with this. Read carefully what I said.
Rob,
See – you must have forgotten – in science, you provide an explanation then let everyone pull it to bits. What’s yours?
As I clearly state, Richard, the evidence is that AGW is the cause of this phenomenon, but I would be interested in any alternative physical theories you can come up with.
You haven’t actually explained what the theory is and how it is supposed to work, so how can we hope to understand it?
You use “this phenomenon” in present tense but over the last decade or so and as of right now, “this phenomenon” is entirely natural variability.
Well now, that’s interesting, since, as I’ve shown below, the IPCC says the phenomenon isn’t happening! So tell me, Rob, exactly how is it that the evidence is that AGW is the cause of a phenomenon that isn’t happening?
And how exactly do we provide an alternative explanation for an imaginary phenomenon?
I await your reply with breathless anticipation.
Rob you are labouring under the AGW delusiion that “cool things make warm things warmer than they would otherwise be without the cool thing there”.
By your logic, the earth makes the sun warmer than it would be if the earth was not here. This is the upside down physics of AGW.
Now we have the equally nutcase notion from climate science that the atmosphere (via CO2) drives seismicity. Trenberth subscribes to this (yes I have email proof of that from him).
I refer you to your favourite scientific source (and one I resort to often I have to admit) Wikipediea:-
Geothermal gradient
Heat flow
Heat flows constantly from its sources within the Earth to the surface. Total heat loss from the earth is 44.2 TW (4.42 × 1013 watts).[12] Mean heat flow is 65 mW/m2 over continental crust and 101 mW/m2 over oceanic crust.[12] This is approximately 1/10 watt/square meter on average, (about 1/10,000 of solar irradiation,) but is much more concentrated in areas where thermal energy is transported toward the crust by convection such as along mid-ocean ridges and mantle plumes.[13] The Earth’s crust effectively acts as a thick insulating blanket which must be pierced by fluid conduits (of magma, water or other) in order to release the heat underneath. More of the heat in the Earth is lost through plate tectonics, by mantle upwelling associated with mid-ocean ridges. The final major mode of heat loss is by conduction through the lithosphere, the majority of which occurs in the oceans due to the crust there being much thinner and younger than under the continents.[12][14]
The heat of the earth is replenished by radioactive decay at a rate of 30 TW.[15] The global geothermal flow rates are more than twice the rate of human energy consumption from all primary sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient
If geo energy was only available “on average” there would be no geothermal energy sector.
“…as your frantic revisionism shows.”
Sigh. Yes Rob, you're right. I'm frantically revising my position.
Heat flows into the earth against the geothermal gradient, from the surface all the way down. I don't know what I was thinking…
/sarc
Cast your eyes upward to the post above yours, Bob, and you will see RC quoting Wikipedia;
Has the penny dropped yet?
And then rest of the sentence that Rob [ad hominem removed – RT] denies:-
He probably cannot bear to read further where we (the non-deniers) see:-
Deny that Rob [ad hominem removed – RT].
[Richard, we don’t like Rob to get supercilious and worse with us, so let’s not do it to him. 🙂 – RT]
Wairakei power station has harnessed the “approximately 1/10 watt/square meter on average, ( about 1/10,000 of solar irradiation ) ” since 1958:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wairakei_Power_Station
But I don’t see the landscape there festooned with solar panels.
Wairekei is due to be phased out but the 1/10 watt/square meter on average must be an attractive proposition because Contact are going ahead with Te Mihi:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Mihi_Power_Station
No word about a solar plant 10,000 times bigger though.
[Richard, we don’t like Rob to get supercilious and worse with us, so let’s not do it to him. 🙂 – RT]
Finding your line is tricky RT I keep overstepping it in my exuberance. My present time-challenged sleep-deprived state doesn’t help either.
[You hide it well, Rich. Look, you’re doing a great job and the rule against rudeness isn’t meant to be yet a further imposition, rather to keep everyone thinking freely. – RT]
No, Bob, it can’t flow all the way down, as you well know.
We are talking shallow effects here – perhaps even as shallow as your understanding of climate science…
Rob, simply quoting back to me what I said in the first place doesn’t win you any points at all. In fact it makes you look pretty silly. And the constant stream of insults does more to expose the type of people warmists are than anything we could ever say.
Thank you, you’re a wonderful human being.
Let’s start with the night/day temperatures. Are we discussing a non-event?
IPCC AR4 (WG1):
So during Hansen’s man-made warming period, DTR hasn’t decreased. Hmm.
Now you face a problem, Rob. Do you argue this, against the IPCC, or accept that you were wrong after all?
Does the IPCC use known physics, or not? Such a tricky choice…
While you’re answering those questions Rob, perhaps you’d like to answer some of the other ones you failed to answer. After all, the evidence is supposed to be ‘overwhelming’ apparently:
Where’s the hot spot, and what evidence of positive feedback from atmospheric water vapour is there without it?
Without evidence of atmospheric water vapour amplifying the minuscule effects of CO2, how can the AGW hypothesis deliver the heat predicted in the models?
“Miniscule effects of CO2”, AGC?
Clearly, you are ignorant of such major events as snowball Earth and the PETM. I suggest you educate yourself, if you can.
The ‘miniscule effects of CO2’ statement are based upon the scientifically accepted fact that a doubling of TOTAL atmospheric CO2 can only raise the temperature a maximum of 1.2C. Without the non existent positive water vapour feedbacks (which a missing hot spot proves), 1.2C would more than likely have positive consequences just as it has historically. Hardly catastrophic Rob.
AGC, I know the “missing hot spot’ is an icon of your denialist belief system, but have already provided links that put it in context:
1. the predicted equilibrium hot spot occurs in other warming models as well as AGW, and
2. short term effects and observational uncertainties make it difficult to detect at present.
Once there is sufficient data, however, I am sure the denialerati will quickly seize upon some other purported “missing evidence” to magically disappear 150 years of scientific knowledge and observation from their collective conscience.
As regards physical reality, however, I suggest that, the next time you are at Mt Cook village, you hike out onto what remains of the Tasman glacier and chant ‘AGW is a hoax!” as many times as it takes for the ice to stop melting.
I’m sure that will keep you occupied for quite a while…
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tropospheric-hot-spot-advanced.htm
I was at Mt Cook village recently. The Tasman glacier is certainly melting, as you’d expect since we are in an interglacial period
‘1. the predicted equilibrium hot spot occurs in other warming models as well as AGW, and
2. short term effects and observational uncertainties make it difficult to detect at present.’
The hot spot does appear in other warming models also, but the hot spot doesn’t exist anyway so it doesn’t matter what models it appears in, does it?
As far as the hot spot being difficult to detect, over 30 million radiosondes over a period of 40 yrs, & 2 satellites fail to find it. The surface temperatures fail to observe the warming that should be occurring as a result of the positive feedback, as evidenced by the comparison of observed temp vs. the predicted of the models.
You’ve avoided the other question that I asked Rob – if the hot spot doesn’t exist (which it doesn’t), what evidence is there for positive feedback from atmospheric water vapour?
I’ll add one other question Rob – If there is no positive feedback from water vapour (which the missing hot spot reinforces), how can the temperature rise beyond the maximum 1.2C attributed to a doubling of total atmospheric CO2?
Rob,
Perhaps John Cook might give you a hand with this?
Stuff are reporting that Australasia is the hottest for 1000 years
http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/6945133/Australasia-at-its-hottest-in-1000-years-report
The comments on the article are entirely negative so far
“The comments on the article are entirely negative so far”
Doh! Those pesky climate scientist got it wrong again, ‘cos Joe Sixpack says so!
Andy, you claim to have had an education – why not put it to some use, after all these years?
The comments reflect the level of contempt that the general public has with climate scientists. I can’t change that. They made their own bed now they have to lie in it.
Not so long ago, Andy, there would have been similar comments from the general public in Serbia, reflecting their level of contempt for Bosnian Muslims.
Further back, the German papers were no doubt full of contempt for Jews and Gypsies.
Would you tell a Muslim women raped by Serb soldiers – as so many were – that she had “made her own bed, and now had to lie in it?”
As you can indeed, fool some of the people all of the time, the fossil fuel industry will always be able to find “useful fools” to spread their self-interested and potentially genocidal message of complacency and disinformation.
Reality always has the stronger hand, however, and no lie lasts forever…
As an example closer to home, Andy, do you smoke tobacco?
If not, why not?
Reality always has the stronger hand, however, and no lie lasts forever…
As an example closer to home, Andy, do you smoke tobacco?
If not, why not?
What a ridiculous analogy.
Perhaps you’d like to give up fossil fuels for a week Rob. When I mean give up, I mean anything that is remotely derived from fossil fuels, including all iron and steel products:
Washing machine, microwave, knife, fork, car, bicycle, etc.
Let us know how you get on.
By the way, I enjoy your comparisons of sceptics with Nazi sympathisers like Quisling.
No one said it was going to be easy, Andy.
BTW, what brand of ciggies do you prefer?
Oh, I quite forgot, you don’t smoke because you understand the scientific evidence that shows, on balance, that it is a very risky practice…
BTW, would even you tell a Muslim women raped by Serb soldiers – as so many were – that she had “made her own bed, and now has to lie in it?”
Or a female climate scientist whose children have been threatened?
Or an elderly climate scientist who requires police protection when giving public lectures?
Know any history, Andy? If you do, kindly explain to us the essential difference between a Jew-baiter and a Delingpole.
You really are dredging the barrel now Rob.
You’ve taught me most of what I know about that, Andy…
Uh, Andy, do you suppose this “interglacial period” might just have a cause?
I’ll give you a clue – 3 letters, beginning with an “A” and ending with a “W”…
Uh, Andy, do you suppose this “interglacial period” might just have a cause?
So you are telling me that interglacials are caused by CO2 emissions?
Note the quotation marks, Andy – your “interglacial” excuse is meaningless, as the rising CO2 level has postponed the next glaciation for a very long time, given the residence time for CO2 emissions.
In fact, had it not been for humanity, we would likely now be well into another Ice Age…
http://www.acamedia.info/sciences/sciliterature/globalw/residence.htm
That’s a bummer. I was looking forward to the next Ice Age and the death and mayhem that would ensue
“…all the models were “irrelevant with reality” at the 30 year climate scale…”
Anagnostopoulos, G. G., D. Koutsoyiannis, A. Christofides, A. Efstratiadis, and N. Mamassis, (2010). A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data’, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 55: 7, 1094 — 1110
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/we-cant-predict-the-climate-on-a-local-regional-or-continental-scale/
“irrelevant with reality” but relevant to the alternative reality of Schmidt/Cook/Renowden perhaps.
That is: Real Climate, Skeptical Science and Hot Topic.
The Earth has been in the grip of an ice age for over two million years. The warm interglacials are nothing more than a snatch of breath that temporarily allowed life to recover.
Anyone attempting to recreate the impending ice age in haste by any means does not deserve to live by their own admission. After all, the very premise of killing everyone, starting with their own children is the only way to stop mankind “re-creating” CO2. The life giving trace gas.
The Earth will cool down and all the CO2 will be soaked back into the sea hence it came from.
I wonder who proposed treating “deniers” as untermenshen. It’s a bit like the “Serbian rapes”. Kosovan Muslims started the civil war with 100% backing from Albania. Who not only raped, murdered, sold body parts, took lands, burned down churches and have now removed every Christian from what was a Christian country. A part of Serbia as Kent is a part of England. Rob Taylor, go visit.
Facts are facts. Across the complete basket of all datasets, the Earth has had statistically zero globull warming for 14 years.
Moreover, I’ve included CO2 with 12 month smoothing. then de-trended it and magnified the variance. We see CO2 FOLLOWS temperature variations and does not increase heating. This is not modelled. IT IS FACT!
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1997/offset:-0.5/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997/normalise/mean:12/detrend:0.81/offset:0.42/scale:10/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997/normalise/mean:12/plot/wti/from:2000.83/offset:-0.5/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997/normalise/mean:12/detrend:0.81/offset:0.42/scale:1
rob taylor said:
May 18, 2012 at 10:58 am
“The comments on the article are entirely negative so far”
Doh! Those pesky climate scientist got it wrong again, ‘cos Joe Sixpack says so!
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/clip_image0025.jpg
102 failed climate models say so.