It’s not really time for another open thread but this topic was suggested on the Reader Background thread by Robert E Phelan.
Everyone knows my opinions on global warming, so that’s not very interesting.
CO2, capturing of warmth is real. The magnitude of the warmth captured is not known, the dangers from the warmth are not known and no ill effects of warming have been demonstrated.
My preferred solution to global warming is duct-tape………. for the mouths of the politicians and scientists who act like politicians.
Comic courtesy Chip Bok http://www.bokblusters.com
the Air Vent 
Freedom of speech is the most important thing there is. So applying duct-tape would not be my preferred solution.
What is needed is to REMOVE the duct tape from the real, independent, (boring) scientists, and let them do their job like they did last century.
And the politicians? They should do their job as well and focus on all the bigger problems in the world these days.
#1 you win, short thread
Click here for the fully substantiated summary of my position.
Today, I could use some AGW.
I awoke to three inches of fresh snow. More is on the way.
Click here for a screen shot of our local forecast for 4/29/10.
Click here (today only) to validate that screenshot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah…
It’s just “weather”. Remember that the next time we have a heat wave.
Cool. So here is my question. What verified information would convince the skeptics on this board that AGW is happening, at roughly the scale currently predicted, and that the solutions called for (reduction in CO2 emissions) are appropriate.
What verified information would convince pro-AGW on this board that AGW is not happening?
I am in the pro-AGW camp. The “bony markers” I am looking for are:
1)the global state of ice (volume). I view this as a reasonably strong proof of the purported warming (and the mechanism doesn’t matter too much – if happens because of wind or whatever, wind is another version of extra energy in the atmosphere, which is the prediction). If the volume isn’t shrinking, warming may or may not be happening, but it isn’t having a global effect.
2) Measurable movement of the oceans pH balance in the direction called for by AGW.
3) Continued climbing of the global temperature.
4) (already proved, but required for the above to matter) Continued increases in CO2.
If all 4 of those are happening, to my simple world view, we have AGW and the call for reduced CO2 is appropriate. If only 2 or 3 are happening, it is debatable. 1 or 2 – something is going on. Let’s study it.
How about others? What would it take for you to acknowledge the other side of the argument is correct (or more correct)?
From today’s issue of World Physics, we learn that there is now an official solution for any observations that do not fit official predictions:
“The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)”.
See “Melting ice amplifies Arctic warming” at http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/42499
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Thoughtful Tom April 29, 2010 at 12:33 pm,
Click here to comprehensively debunk ocean acidification hysteria.
Click here to address the rest of your arguments and challenges.
Please change 2nd sentence to:
An International “Re-Analysis Project” by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
Thoughtful Tom:
You need to separate GW from AGW. Most of the ice loss occurred prior to the start of AGW.
Remember that models suggest that prior to circa 1980, anthropogenic CO2 and sulfate emissions more or less balanced each other.
Oddly you leave out the strongest evidence for AGW, which is the radiative physics associated with GHGs. You need that in order for increases in CO2 to matter.
# 9
I was listing what I need to be convinced. I don’t need the radiative physics bit, as I , uh, believe in physics.
What hasn’t been proved (yet) is the extent (ie possibility of balancing forces we are not aware of or misunderstand) – thus my comments.
Regarding the balance of force(ings). I think I am willing to throw them a bone if the other things happen according to predictions, and radiative physics still holds true – there is such a thing as paralysis by analysis, and we are certainly close to that on AGW.
Thoughtful Tom:
Well it’s the radiative physics that gives rise to the GHG effect. Some people debate the validity of that because, well I guess they don’t believe in physics.
All I can say is you don’t get to invent your own version of AGW, or if you do, you need to be clear this is your own pet theory.
The balance of AGW sulfates (which cool) and CO2 (which warms of course) prior to 1980 is a ubiquitous feature of the models.
If you look at the summary for policy makers (SPM) for AR4, figure 4 shows that within the uncertainties there is no difference in the model output assuming natural versus anthropogenic forcings until circa 1980.
Again we can have a “Thoughtful Tom AGW Model” that says something different, but it would be contradicted prior to 1980, if you were to try and make the CO2 forcings substantially larger than then sulfate ones.
My position: I don’t believe the role of CO2 in the climate changes we’re seeing is as big as the IPCC says; I’m not convinced most of the climate changes we are seeing aren’t just naturally caused.
I will change my mind if:
– there is a climate model based on science that is reliable. In other words: a model that can explain current and past climates AND makes good predictions of future climate.
and
– the role of CO2 in that model is significant.
Currently, natural climate change is hardly understood. Without a good understanding of natural climate change a reliable climate model can not be created in my opinion.
Sadly, natural climate change is hardly taken serious (or even denied) by the IPCC. That’s a real shame.
It’ll probably take years to make a good model (don’t forget climate sciences is still a young science) and then it’ll probably take years to prove the model is reliable. Before that time, we just don’t know.
Therefore, the focus should not be on the causes of climate change, but on getting resilient against it. All that history has shown us is that climates do change. We’d better be prepared for it.
My position:
Warming is “real” in the sense that there has been a general average increase in Mean Temps, without any shadow of a doubt in the last thirty years, and also very very likely the last 150 years (since the “Little Ice Age”). There is some uncertainty in the extact amount but it’s there.
Humans have contributed some warming and cooling climate effects. The larger effects seem to be towards warming, so humans have contributed to this warming.
We can’t know how big the human effect is until we can fully account for natural variability. At present the only argument that it has been accounted for is that they can’t think of any natural varibility that they missed.
In terms of the “impacts” there are very few claimed effects which stand up to even the least bit of frequency. So it has not been demonstrated that the warming is a problem. Based on current observations, our projections of future warming appear to be too high at the moment, which suggests that our projections of impacts are also too high, even assuming that the linkages we assume exist do (the vast majority of links I’ve checked just don’t).
In terms of policy, the best thing to do is get the government out of the energy market, meaning no taxes/subsidies directed at the energy sector or certain segments of it, among other things. If we do that I think we can expect to see the energy sector move forward quickly in whatever direction we’ll be needing to go, whether it’s of oil or on more of it.
1) By NOAA’s own standards, the climate models used by the IPCC have been discredited.
2) ALL of the climate models falsely assume a positive water vapor feedback mechanism. NOAA’s own scientists (and others) have found a NEGATIVE water vapor feedback!
Without the false assumption of a positive water vapor feedback, CO2 alone is utterly incapable of producing anything even remotely resembling catastrophic climate change — this is PRECISELY why all the computer models blindly include the bogus assumption of a positive water vapor feedback mechanism.
3) The climate models — the SOLE basis for ALL of the hysteria mongering — are nothing more than a propaganda tool whose sole intent (by design) is to keep the government gravy train flowing (in an incestuous relationship between power crazed political tyrants and equally corrupt money grubbing political scientists).
First of all, stop the modelling.
The absolute first priority: get the data right!
Modelling with a dataset for learning/training and verifying the model, which dataset is not reliable is bunk, nonsense, worthless, whatever your superior understanding of physiscs may be. You are just making a fool of yourself, and wasting millions in research grant money.
Make sure the temperature and CO2 and the other data are reliable, well tended and curated and agreed upon. Provide a rich set of metadata. Archive properly. Have everything accessible free for everyone, do version control and back-ups at regular (weekly/daily) intervals. Dump the synthetic global averages of temperatures and CO2. They are absolutely worthless. Temperature is local, CO2 is local. Homogenization is the best way to get rid of useful information which was there all the time before the meatgrinder took over. Eliminate Moa Loa, get local CO2 measurements. One volcano does not fit the whole earth, CO2 is not well mixed.
Then the real science can start:
1. Determine if there is any local warming.
2. Determine local CO2.
3. Do the correlation analysis, taking care of all the pitfalls. (Unit roots, random walks, autocorrelation, saturation effects, whatever you can come up with).
4. Now you can start modelling….
When this has been done, then look at what measures humanity should take, if any.
Re: Thoughtful Tom (Apr 29 12:33),
That’s two questions. IMO, the first one is not important because the answer to the second question is that we simply won’t reduce CO2 emissions, at least not on the time scale the alarmists want. Short of a global plague as in King’s The Stand or global thermonuclear war, there is no way that CO2 emissions can be reduced, probably at all much less 80%, by 2050. It takes decades to do that sort of thing and we haven’t even begun to start. We can’t build nuclear power plants that fast even if we wanted to, and it appears that we don’t want to.
But we’ll talk about it a lot. Some people will try to take advantage of the situation to transfer money and power into their own hands. But don’t expect anything practical to happen even if you could prove beyond any doubt that the climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 was 6 C. The developed world will continue to improve its energy efficiency, but any savings will be more than made up by development in the rest of the world. Or at least I hope so.
14-“By NOAA’s own standards, the climate models used by the IPCC” This is incorrect. NOAA did say that models rule out 15 year periods with a trend equal to zero or less at a high confidence level. But the 15 year trend IS greater than zero, it’s just not sufficiently large to be distinguishable from zero. In order for NOAA to have to admit models were wrong, by their standards, you would need the OLS to actually BE zero or lower, not just indistinguishable from zero. This is a subtle point but it is the correct interpretation of what the statistics mean in this case.
It IS however true that recent trends have been very close to the low end confidence limit with respect to IPCC models (for some reason NOAA uses some DIFFERENT set of models).
Harry April 29, 2010 at 3:14 pm,
1) I largely agree with your local approach — primarily because we will NEVER have a global analysis which could possibly reach back far enough to provide ANY useful insight. Attempts to provide a global analysis reaching back even 12,000 years demonstrate utterly contradictory local trends and a mish mash of data which are all over the map. Constructing an average of this data is about as useful as any other fabricated data.
2) Any temperature trend analysis of less than 10,000 years is fundamentally useless. A 140,000 year analysis is strongly preferred (so as to compare current conditions against the previous interglacial warming period). Between 423,000 and 600,000 years is better — but only in the sense of demonstrating that EACH of the previous 4 to 6 interglacial warming periods have produced FAR higher temperatures than ANYTHING witnessed during the current interglacial warming period (which maxed out roughly 8,000 years ago).
3) In keeping with your preference for local analyses, we can clearly see that whatever NET amount of warming which human activity may or may not have contributed has DEMONSTRABLY FAILED to counteract the on-going, uninterrupted 10,000 year cooling trend in BOTH the Arctic AND the Antarctic.
The citation links and more details are found here and here.
Andrew April 29, 2010 at 3:40 pm,
Sorry…
When a trend lacks statistical significance, nobody can reasonably claim that the trend exists at all. Ergo, my assertion is correct.
Andrew April 29, 2010 at 3:40 pm,
Following up on my previous rebuttal…
Factor in the peer reviewed science demonstrating a warm bias of about 30% in the surface temperature measurements and tell me what that does to the allegations of a statistically insignificant warming trend over the last 15 years.
And, remember, this peer reviewed science is FAR from the only doubt many have in the credibility of the surface temperature data.
18-No, your assertion is not correct. The trend which “can’t be reasonably said to exist” lies within NOAA’s qouted confidence intervals. You can’t just say “The lower confidence limit of this observed trend lies outside the lower confidence limit of the model trends, so the model trends are inconsistent with the observations”-That’s nonsense. You could also say, Ah but the upper limit of the observed confidence interval lies well within the model confidence intervals, therefore the observations are consistent with models.”
It’s simple, you can compare the probability distribution of the models to the best estimate of the trend in observations, or the model mean with the probability distribution of observations. You can’t compare the lower tails of two probability distributions. That’s just wrong.
20-With regard to your statement-I can look at the satellites and the fifteen year trend lies within the qoute confidence intervals.
22 – Show me your substantiated statistical analysis. I’m betting you don’t.
Thoughtful Tom:
Nice pivot to Artic ice VOLUME.
A WUWT post today points out that there was essentially no mention of volume until October, 2008 as the ice extent and coverage began to rebound. Then the pivot to volume began.
Which metric will you select when volume heads back up towards normal? Can you tell us in advance or do we have to wait a couple of years to find out?
Just go into excel, and the OLS line for the last 12*15=180 months for this:
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt53a
is .0009805240902497 per month, or 0.117662890829964 per decade. The NOAA’s lower confidence limit for 15 years is, apparently, zero. 0.117662890829964>0. QED
The best analysis I’ve seen of the statistical significance of the tend is done by Lucia Liljegren.
It looks like if you go back to 1990, the trend is significant.
She’s done a more careful job than I of handling red-noise and other variation (e.g., .ENSO). I’m asking her if she has anything that goes further back in time.
26-SBVOR isn’t just saying that the trend in the last 15 years is insignificant, he is saying that, because some part of the confidence intervals of the model trends and the observed trends don’t overlap, they are significantly different. That’s an erroneous way to test if they are different.
Imagine I have two populations, the mean of one has a value of, say, five, with a confidence interval of plus or minus 2. The other population has a mean of seven, confidence intervals of plus or minus 2. If I want to ask, is the mean of one population something that would occur regularly in the other, I don’t say “No, because 3, the lower confidence limit of the former population is less than 5, the lower limit of the latter population” I say “Yes, because the mean of the former population, 5, lies with the confidence intervals of the latter population”.
#11 The widths in that figure are just the statistical variations among the model means. They’re not physical uncertainty limits and have no obvious physical meaning.
@All,
We again start discusing as if the data are written in granite, being the stone tables that Moses received.
They are not, they are soft and vary every day, even in retrospect.
First get the data verified, then we can see what the models do. Before that moment, any modelling is a waste of money and time.
Stop it!
Pat Franks:
The “uncertainties” tells you something about how much you can a parameter before your model output becomes inconsistent with data. So I wouldn’t say they have “no meaning”, just it’s a weak connection.
Data are never written in granite. You go with what you have available. Besides temperature data aren’t the only proxy, and even for that we have a pretty solid 30-year record now to go with (when you include sat data).
IMO, you’ve overstated your case. They have some probative value even if the temperature data were totally worthless. That’s obviously not true either, though.
Thoughtful Tom: your
1)the global state of ice (volume).
Global ice extent is currently at near normal levels. 4 times in the last 2 years, it has been ABOVE average.
2) Measurable movement of the oceans pH balance in the direction called for by AGW.
While there has been measurable movement since the mid-1800’s there has not been a significant change since, say, 1980.
3) Continued climbing of the global temperature.
Global temperatures, according to Phil Jones, has seen no significant rise since 1995. Depending on the data source, temperatures have seen a insignificant fall since 1997, or 2001.
4) (already proved, but required for the above to matter) Continued increases in CO2.
Correlation does not imply causation. Which also applies to your first 3 points.
Carrick,
Please do not try to tell me that building models based on flawed data is a good idea. Dat are never written in granite, but are tenderly cared of, with sufficient reports on how they have been treated.
Metadata!!!
Without the proper metadata, any dataset is as worthless as the numbers in a phonebook. I am sure you can get a HS from a phone book, or the Holy Bible. Or a Rohrschach image. Whatever.
Sorry that last quoted block was from Harry.
Andrew, I didn’t get that this was what SBVOR was talking about. In that case, the sort of statistical test that Lucia is doing would be the best approach, which compares models to data using the t-test.
Carrick,
Even with your satellite data, you can not do any useful modelling. What are you modelling? Local temperature with global volcanic CO2? Get a life. Local CO2 is the only thing useful for modelling. And this is only just available….
No modelling!
Get off your a@@@ and go collecting DATA!
And do not forget the metadata.
Harry, all data are “flawed”. Do we just stop now?
SRLY, the question is “how flawed”.
The answer seems to be “somewhat but not so badly that gross features will change much with refinement.” That’s why I don’t object to global temperature trend estimates, but don’t think that spending a lot of time fitting regional scale structure to modes is helpful. If you think a particular wart is important, well it can be tested. People have looked at UHI effects, and when you combine the range of effect of that with the GLOBAL data, it generates perhaps a 3% bias. Given that the uncertainty in the trend is around 10%, that’s not insignificant but not a game changer, even if it really turned out to be 3x bigger than we thought.
To address the issue you raised, we can build GCMs with ZERO global mean surface temperature values. Because the GCMs don’t use that as input in any case. It uses Newton’s second law (adapted for fluid mechanics=Navier-Stokes equation), ideal gas law, conservation of mass, stuff like that.
I think there are valuable things we’ve learned from the models, I’ve mentioned “where AGW warming started” is one. Another appears to be that anything over about 4°/doubling of CO2 is ruled out, even by wart-filled data.
Harry:
Oddly my boss told me this 10 minutes ago. LOL. Going to collect some more data.
Carrick,
I value your sense of humour beyond imagination. Even if we do not agree, we share something very precious.
I am sure you can build any model you want. It is only that you will not build models you do not like. (Which, by the way may be equally successful in describing current climate.)
And give my regards to your boss. He has just earned two Harry credits.
#30, Carrick, parameters are best guesses and vary from model to model. The fact that models with different suites of parameters nevertheless reproduce the 20th century temperature trend tells us that parameter sets in any give model are adjusted to give the right answer.
The “right” parameter value may merely be one that offsets the error caused by another parameter value.
So, knowing how much one can change one particular parameter value before a model deviates from measured trends tells one little or nothing about the physical accuracy of that parameter.
Models have invariably failed actual predictive tests. They also fail perfect model tests. No one has ever propagated the parameter uncertainties through model physics to determine a true physical uncertainty limit in model predictions.
This all falls under Dan Hughes’ continuing point that models have never been subjected to nor passed independent validation and verification tests.
On CA, Jerry Browning has several times made the further point that because climate models use an unphysical hyperviscous atmosphere to suppress sub-grid turbulence (and convection), the parameter sets are necessarily also unphysical.
Under these circumstances, climate model predictions have no physical validity, and the uncertainty limits published by the IPCC, such as in that figure, are little more than visual propaganda.
Pat Frank,
Have you seen this:
http://claesjohnson.blogspot.com/
It is a mathematical/physical dissection of GHG effects.
No models are needed.
thoughtful Tom …’What verified information would convince the skeptics on this board that AGW is happening, at roughly the scale currently predicted, and that the solutions called for (reduction in CO2 emissions) are appropriate.’
I haven’t read every reply, but a lot of the ‘skeptics on this board’ accept that AGW is happening, but wonder whether a) it’s all bad, which is the general presumption, and b) are very sceptical whether calls for CO2 reductions globally are desirable or likely. If I was Chinese or Indian, I know what I’d likely think.
@HotRod
The IPCC AR4 report is very clear about the effect of instantaneous reduction of CO2 emmission to zero: it will last for thousands of years before CO2 levels will be back to pristine, pre human levels.
You will not benefit from it, your children will not, your childrens’s children will not.
But this is only because the IPCC has decided that 21% of all released carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for ever.
IPCC 2007, WG1, chapter2, table 2.14 footnote a.
This formula can not be found how it is derived.
Ah, those pristine levels, how I yearn for them. They were heaven.
@Thoughtful Tom #5
Tom – I like your three points (“that AGW is happening, at roughly the scale currently predicted, and that the solutions called for (reduction in CO2 emissions) are appropriate”)
We get tied up in knots about the first. My training and experience is science, engineering and finally financial assessment (as in no corporation is going to give me money unless my idea is (a) commercially viable and (b) better than the current tech).
The trouble for me is the general lack of analysis of your second and particularly third points.
Lomborg once did an NPV calculation on proposed CO2 abatement policies and found them so bad they stank in the negative trillions, even at insanely low discount rates. (I can’t even start an R&D project without demonstrating a fairly chunky positive NPV). He proposed, and still proposes, that the money be instead spent on ameliorating poverty and things like malaria.
For his temerity I recall at the time he was flamed in absolutely nuclear proportions.
All proposed actions likewise absolutely stink economically, with the (possible) exception of some of the cheaper geoengineering options. Even then I doubt any economic analysis captures the positive aspects of warmer climate such as on world agriculture (I personally think the Russians secretly would like some warming as their agricultural acreage would rise and they’d have a nice cheap sea route to China).
Going back to your second point this is even more crucial. I have said before on this blog that I think the CO2/N2O/CH4 signal in the temperature anomaly data is roughly 0.3 C/century, with another 0.5 C/century or so from higher than expected UHI and balance from the cyclic PDO (etc) plus bias in selecting baselines due to satellite availability from (cool) 1978.
What very few people do is ask: how much CO2 mediated warming is dangerous?
The IPCC plucked a 2 C limit out of the air (well OK that will do for a starter). So on that basis we are talking over 600 years to reach that 2 C limit, assuming my 0.3 C/century.
600 years ago science didn’t exist. 600 years hence, or even only 100 years hence I don’t think we’d have a problem anymore – just given current rates of technological advance without special action.
So to go back to Lomborg, his recommendation is to spend moderately on R&D and wait and see. At 0.3 C/century, or even say 0.6 C/century we can afford to do this.
Given ETS and carbon credits are already being shown as ‘good in theory’ yet a magnet for corruption, in practice I see it safer go with Bjorn’s ‘modest proposal’ rather than Swift’s one.
#39, Harry, that’s a demonstration of the inferred greenhouse temperature of Earth, based on the disparity between the black body temperature of Earth as determined by the energy spectrum of emitted radiation at the top of the atmosphere and the measured surface temperature. No one disputes that. It’s a measure of the greenhouse (so-called, but inaccurately) effect; mostly due to water vapor.
What is in dispute is whether climate models can predict the effect on climate of moderately increased atmospheric CO2. They can’t. Any temperature effect of CO2 is buried deep within the uncertainty spread of current climate models.
@Bruce,
My personal feeling would be that every penny spend on malaria, would be worth 10 dollars in CO2. With CO2, we can not achieve disease control. We can only attack diseases by targeted approaches, and CO2 is not part of this. Stop this CO2 nonsense, invest into sanitation and hygenic environments.
No modelling!
Pat Frank,
You do not have to convince me of the lack capabilities of models.
I know.
I saw them.
I am still shocked.
I will never recover from this shock.
Harry April 29, 2010 at 7:25 pm,
1) Click here and ponder those “pristine, pre human levels” of atmospheric CO2.
2) Click here and ponder the abject folly of pretending we are actually capable of micromanaging climate change. Nobody but a government bureaucrat would consider that cost/benefit analysis to be worth a go. Worse still, the alleged “benefit” is actually a net negative (in so far as warmer temperatures are more beneficial).
Kyoto was bad enough. Now, the pinhead sleazebags want us to waste at LEAST $45 TRILLION MORE. In practice, it would — without a doubt — come to at least an order of magnitude more than that.
SVBOR,
I already knew about the pristine CO2 levels. I also knew abouthe lack of control. I am a skeptic. Sigh.
I hope I understand the meaning of open thread. I get to ask or discuss any AGW related issue? Well here it is…
Some time ago the Consensus started talking about ocean heat content as a metric for measuring global warming. It made sense to me. Recently I read Roy Spencer’s UHI analysis and something he said clicked with OHC concept. Air Heat Content.
If I remember correctly (correct me if I’m wrong, it happens often) surface temperatures are compiled by taking the daily high, the corresponding low and averaging them together. These are averaged into a month, and so on into a year, decade, etc.
Roy Spencer mentioned using four temperatures (12’s and 6’s) in his analysis of UHI vs Population. It got me thinking of how the average daily temperature is affected by high/low, 4-corner or 24 point average.
A random check of a handful of days in Environment Canada’s website it seems sometimes the average goes up and sometimes the average goes down when you do the three different methods of averaging. A more in-depth analysis may tease out something not noticed before.
So the question would be, “Wouldn’t the 24 hour average analysis give us a better idea of how warm the planet it is (ie heat content) vs a single high/low measurement that might just represent a warm wind/jet wash/AC exhaust/other warming influence/etc blowing past the thermometer?”
MrC
Harry April 29, 2010 at 8:39 pm,
And, I recognized you as a skeptic.
What you apparently missed was my effort to reinforce your argument. Sigh.
P.S.) It is spelled SBVOR.
49-I recall reading an analysis about what difference it makes to use Max+Min/2 versus hourly, four times a day, etc. The daily average is usually very close to the mean of the highest and lowest temp of the day.
If we want to look at “air heat content” what we want are bulk atmosphere readings form satellites (In My Arrogant Opinion) because the surface temps are really only telling you something about a very small part of the atmosphere. If you look at Max temps only, they are more representative, but the Min temps are just the shallow boundary layer.
?? I wasn’t saying you have to “believe” in volume. I stated what my objective measures were, and asked what other people’s were. So far very few responses (I think, charitably, 2 that actually state things that answer my question). BTW – no particular agenda, I am just curious where other folks draw the line.
And a few responses were very interesting, saying, in effect, even if AGW was 100% true it doesn’t matter because 1) We can’t afford to reduce CO2 or 2) Even if we address CO2 – we can’t stop the affect the warming.
Interesting opinions. I don’t yet share them.
Re: Thoughtful Tom (Apr 29 23:12),
It’s not so much that we can’t afford to reduce CO2 emissions drastically. It’s more like that very few really believe all the horror stories about the bad effects of GW. Hence most don’t think it’s worth beggaring ourselves now to make our ancestors slightly richer. Most of the IPCC SRES project global GDP in 2100 on the order of ten times what it is now. They can afford to adapt to any consequences of climate change whether anthropogenic in origin or not.
But if we could force India and China to stop building coal fired power plants so that their citizens don’t have to burn dung for heating and cooking and keep the vast majority of Africans in grinding poverty, then we might be able to reduce global emissions. But then global GDP won’t go up and the poor will remain poor. That cost looks far higher to me than anything in WGII.
I will put a twist on the convincing evidence discussion.
Here are the events that would convince me that the alarmists are really convinced that catastrophric AGW is real:
1) The alarmist start screaming that nuclear power is the right answer, right away.
2) Some one actually does the calculations that determines the upper limit on the sq. km of solar panels we can place on the surface of the earth before catatrosphhic global cooling becomes a major risk (equivalent to increasing the albedo of the atmosphere). I think they will find that the limit is far below what it will take to replace the current electrical needs of the world. (this calculation seems easy to me).
3) Some one actually does the calculations on the upper limits of the number of wind turbines in place before the disruptions of the convective currents cause a serious problem in climate. (not an easy calculation).
4) Al Gore sells a house.
Otherwise, all I see are people trying to take my money.
Oh yea and
5) Someone tells me what the optimal global temperature should be.
Re: kan (Apr 30 21:56),
The active part of a solar panel is a near perfect absorber of visible light, so the albedo would be lowered, not raised. Waste heat might be a problem rather than cooling, but I doubt it.
Dewitt,
absolutely, technically speaking you are correct, however at a 100% energy conversion rate (electricity out), the energy from the photon would be diverted from the warming of the earths surface, which leads to a reduction in the temperature of the earth, which leads to reduced blackbody emission… on down the old radiation food chain we go.
It has the same effect as increasing the albedo via aersols or the like.
Here is really funny discussion of a paper claiming high CO2 sensitivity:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2010/04/28/in-defense-of-humans/#more-425
It is funny because it claims the planet would be 3degC COOLER today if it was not for human activity.
IOW – we would all be freezing/starving to death.
I will keep this paper handy the next time some activist claims the economically successful societies owe a “carbon debt” to the societies which are economic failures.
SBVOR.
You dont engage people here by linking to your argument someplace else.
I guess I can say that Carrick and I are pretty close on matters. My very short view on things. I call it “mere agw’
( CS lewis fans will appreciate).
radiative physics works. we use it daily to do a host of things. It’s the best explaination of how energy in the form of radiation moves through an atmosphere. Every Skeptic should learn to say that they believe in radiative physics. I say this for the following reasons.
1. its true.
2. it confuses the hell out of AGW fanatics. Its a debate game changer.
3. you look incredibly stupid when you deny it. because you dont need to deny it.
The shortform of the importance of this. Dr. Roy spencer:
“Now, you might be surprised to learn that the amount of warming directly caused by the extra CO2 is, by itself, relatively weak. It has been calculated theoretically that, if there are no other changes in the climate system, a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration would cause less than 1 deg C of surface warming (about 1 deg. F). This is NOT a controversial statement…it is well understood by climate scientists. (As of 2008, we were about 40% to 45% of the way toward a doubling of atmospheric CO2.)”
So very simply. With the physics that NO ONE can or NEEDS to dispute we have the following: doubling C02 will cause an additional warming, warming over and above “natural cycles”
lets call this the ZERO feedback case.
Skeptics NEED NOT object to the zero feedback case. doubling C02 will cause ( all other things being equal) a warming of the planet. Let me put it this way. If you CONSTRAIN your beliefs, to those things that are well known, “proven science” then you have to, as Spencer suggests, accept the zero feedback case. All other things being equal, doubling C02 will cause the world to warm. From there its simple: man causes increases in C02, and we know that doubling C02 will cause increases in temperature, all other things being equal, so our best science ( the science that has been reduced to everyday engineering) predicts that there is an AGW effect. If man doubles C02 ( and we are adding it) all other things being equal, we will see a rise in temps.
If you accept radiative physics you are committed to the zero feedback case. You are a believer in AGW. That rather confuses the FANATICS of AGW, but “mere AGW” means simply that you accept the non controversial statements of Roy Spencer. Here is what you dont have to do:
1. you dont have to make stupid arguments about C02 only being a trace gas. Drop those silly arguments.
Anyways. Everything thinking person knows enough to accept the zero feedback case. Everything AFTER the zero feedback case is epistemologically LESS CERTAIN than the zero feedback case. That mean this.
If you argue for negative feedbacks, you are arguing that “in the end” more C02 will result in cooling. if you argu for positive feedbacks you are saying that in the end doubling C02 will result in more warming than the zero feedback cas permits. The uncertianty in our knowledge increases as you move away from the zero feedback case. if you dont like uncertainty, then just hold to the zero feedback estimate. Its your BEST estimate.. unless you want to branch out and accept modeling.
If you dont accept radiative physics you are a denialist. Nobody needs to adopt this position.
If you accept radiative physics and stand firm on the zero feedback position… congratulations! you are officially a
LUKEWARMER.
bare bones. the lukewarmer position says. If your constrain your statements to those that we can make based on known physics, working physics, you have to accept the zero feedback case as a starting point. everything you say after this is LESS certain. So one way to look at it is to say this. I believe in the zero feedback case, and all you people arm waving about negative feedback and armwaving about positive feedback can kiss my skeptical ass. I buy the zero feedback case because everyday science and everyday engineering commits me to it. beyond that? well beyond that you got arm waving and modelling.
Everybody should be a lukewarmer.. to start.
Re: steven Mosher (May 1 12:09),
I don’t think that’s correct. 100% negative feedback should be no change in temperature. Cooling would amount to negative gain, and I find that very hard to accept as being physically realistic.
DeWitt Payne @ Post #60:
I have not thought this through at this point but if clouds are a poorly understood and quantified part of the GHG feedbacks do we have any physical considerations (theoretical or observed) that would constrain the cloud feedback from producing a net cooling effect, i.e. cloud cooling outweighs GHG warming. Also as GHG levels increase do we understand what could happen with cloud feedback? Is there evidence from the inter-glactical and glactical eras with wide ranging CO2 levels that would help us understand cloud feedback or at least put some limits on what it could have been?
Re: Kenneth Fritsch (May 1 16:25),
If increased ghg’s cause cooling, why is the effect now about what is calculated assuming that an increase ghg’s will cause an increase in temperature? It seems unlikely that gain would become negative just where we are now. I can wrap my head around less warming than for zero feedback, small negative feedback, but not cooling or even no warming at all.
Re 60.. ya dewitt.. meant to say negative gain.. which I would rule out as well.
Ya Kenneth, I think my point is that accepting radiative physics does commit you to a warming.
Conceptually I was angling at an argument that looks like this.
If you stand there in 1850 are asked to predict the temperature in 2010. And you have to pick a known physics to predict the warming, you’d pick curve based on GHG radiative forcing, 0 feedback ( cause feedbacks are not computable from first principles ) and that prediction would not be all that bad. it would miss the hills and valleys but it would be broadly correct.
The bits and pieces above and below the line are: natural variation, order forcings ( volcanos, aerosol) feedbacks.
Thats kinda the sketch of something that is explanable to lay people. need to think
64-The would also have to know that CO2 would increase, and how much.
But surely you realize that such a result could be entirely serendipitous.
steven Mosher said
May 1, 2010 at 5:49 pm
It commits you to increased energy in the atmosphere that may or may not result in warming, depending upon other factors. If our atmosphere was a sealed glass jar in a lab isolated from other external inputs then yes, it would commit you to a warming.
Mark
64 – Steven Mosher
“If you stand there in 1850 are asked to predict the temperature in 2010. And you have to pick a known physics to predict the warming, you’d pick curve based on GHG radiative forcing, 0 feedback ( cause feedbacks are not computable from first principles ) and that prediction would not be all that bad. it would miss the hills and valleys but it would be broadly correct.”
Where can I find this sum? I’ve not been following closely but from a quick skim above I can’t see it – the closest seems to be a reference to Roy Spencer’s view. Apologies if I’ve missed it.
RE 65.
Of course anything and be sernedipity.
here is the challenge.
its 1850. I given you one physics equation to choose and one piece of data to choose. Your task is to predict temps in 2010.
Best guess wins.
an explanation that says : ” the climate always changes, or its natural variation, or its sun spots.. those explanations lose the bet. they dont explain. they dont predict very well.
sorry I tend toward instrumentalism
#59, Steven, I agree with everything you wrote. Radiation physics is correct, its predictions are sound, and no reasonable person can dispute it. But the thrust of your argument has to be modified by two considerations.
The first follows from your repeated caveats, “if there are no other changes” and “All other things being equal.” These are the correct caveats for a radiation physics argument.
They acknowledge that we’re not talking about a laboratory exercise where all other variables can be held constant. In the real Earth climate, there are feed backs and resonances. There are always other changes, and nothing ever stays equal.
It’s admitted everywhere that clouds are not well described by climate theory (neither are aerosols, but that’s another story). The problem with clouds admits of more than just down reflectance and albedo. It includes precipitation. Climate models are as bad at reproducing precipitation as they are temperature. When temperature trends are adjusted to be correct, temporal and spatial precipitation is wrong. When precipitation is adjusted to be correct, temperatures come out wrong.
The condensation leading to precipitation removes latent heat and facilitates radiation into space. So, when models fail at clouds, they fail at condensation, fail at precipitation, and thus fail at reproducing the thermal dynamics of the atmosphere.
The energy predicted by radiation physics will certainly cause other changes and cause all things to be not equal. If the energy delivered by extra CO2 goes into a small increase in tropical convection and precipitation, latent heat of condensation will likely be more efficiently radiated into space, and there may be no increase in sensible heat at all.
If you want to call this a ‘lukewarmer’ position, then I’m all for it. But that label implies more certainty than can be rationally asserted.
The second modifier is that there is zero evidence that any of the climate changes over the last 150 years are in any way unusual in magnitude or rate. That judgment is not just confined to atmospheric temperature, but also extends to strengths or number of cyclonic storms, droughts, floods, or any other climate related variable, including the size of polar ice fields, glacier sizes, and sea level rise. There’s just no evidence the extra CO2 has had any observable effect.
When I put those elements together in my mind, I end up with a ‘luke-what’s-the-big-deal?-er’ position; not lukewarmer.
Together, these considerations argue strongly against alarm and instead for a rational and deliberate conversion to other forms of cheap energy, as technology and economics allow.
Not to say that we shouldn’t look hard for ways to remove petrodollars from the middle east. I see achieving that as of paramount national importance.
Also, being a l-w-t-b-der, allows one to pay attention to actual environmental problems, which are unromantic and gritty and difficult to solve, such as poverty (the greatest eco-problem of all), over fishing, the radiowaste crud from the nuclear weapons program, acid strip mine effluents, and drinking water swarming with fecal bacteria.
Steven Mosher 68 – you appear to understand all this on a level way beyond me, so I’d appreciate a quick run through of the sum you would have done in 1860. One equation and one piece of data means I hope to be able to cope with it! Thanks
70 Typo correction: “…done in 1850…”
steven Mosher said
May 1, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Ya Kenneth, I think my point is that accepting radiative physics does commit you to a warming.
In a closed system maybe, possibly, given a lot of accepted measurements / assumptions,
but not in the real open system world.
Conceptually I was angling at an argument that looks like this.
If you stand there in 1850 are asked to predict the temperature in 2010. And you have to pick a known physics to predict the warming, you’d pick curve based on GHG radiative forcing, 0 feedback ( cause feedbacks are not computable from first principles ) and that prediction would not be all that bad. it would miss the hills and valleys but it would be broadly correct.
The bits and pieces above and below the line are: natural variation, order forcings ( volcanos, aerosol) feedbacks.
This sounds a lot like, only from my accepted (belief required), possibly wrong, but I won’t admit it view point.
Oh, and throw out anything “we” do not understand, particularly at previous sun spot / temperature correlations
– correlation is NOT causation, so therefore it is definately guff…..
If that is your view point / stance your welcome to it Steve,
it is way, way, way, toooooo inane, illogical, and blinkered for me.
You no doubt have “fun” explaining / thinking about Milankovich / ice ages……….
Good luck with your “approach” – you’ll need more than luck.
Blinkered, blinded, none sensical belief in bucket loads seems nearer the mark.
What we do not understand at present of “the physics” in the real atmosphere, sun spots, solar influences, oceanic phases, lunar / solar cycles,
etc, etc, etc, etc, is my preferred way to look at things, AND no it ain’t anything to develop political policies from either,
EXCEPT PLAN FOR THE POSSIBILITIES OF WARMING AND COOLING AS WE DO NOT KNOW WHICH WILL OCCUR NEXT.
Pat 69
While I don’t disagree with your post, I get the feeling that you and Steve (59) are talking past each other a bit. I though Steve was pretty clear in saying that the further you go beyond the basic radiative physics, you have much more uncertainty. Your first point seems to just offer up a number of these uncertainties. For your second point, again I don’t disagree, but it seems to me that arguing from an absence of evidence is pretty weak.
In the end Paul Durkin actually ended “this debate” several years ago now, “Knaves”.
I have watched it again today, and it seems to cover ALL the points “we” have since been discussing fruitlessly…
You may remember the documentary, it was called,
“The Great Global Warming Swindle”
Part 1 of 8.
From,
http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2010m3d15-Theory-of-CO2fueled-climate-change-challenged-by-experts
See, some environmentalists, can ACTUALLY be concerned about the environmental,
yet be skeptical of the present consensus climate science (and no doubt some “mainstream” climate skeptics…)
steven Mosher May 1, 2010 at 12:09 pm sez:
“SBVOR. You dont [sic] engage people here by linking to your argument someplace else.”>
Mosher then proceeds to lecture me — in his own willfully ignorant manner — on what I already know (and have previously linked to).
Hey, Steve — if you weren’t so backward in your refusal to step into the 21st century and make use of hyperlink technology you might not so easily make such a fool of yourself. If you prefer that I reinvent the wheel here rather than (far more efficiently and far more effectively) link to what already exists, you will have a very long wait.
Re: Pat Frank (May 2 02:00),
Isn’t that exactly the process that’s supposed to make the upper troposphere warm faster than the surface? To a first order, I would expect an increase in forcing to be split between increasing surface temperature and increasing convective heat transfer. If the surface temperature doesn’t go up, then it seems unlikely to me that convection would increase. To put it another way, what’s the mechanism that would cause convection to maintain a constant surface temperature in the presence of increased forcing? That isn’t to say that it can’t happen, but I can’t think of any reason why it should.
Steven Mosher May 1, 2010 at 12:09 pm falsely alleges:
“If you argue for negative feedbacks, you are arguing that ‘in the end’ more C02 will result in cooling.”
Uh, no…
Negative feedbacks — already well documented — simply mitigate (to one degree or another) against the logarithmic function of the tiny amount of direct warming produced by CO2. The net result may produce either warming OR cooling. The more likely outcome is that we will simply see less warming than we otherwise might.
The warming effect of CO2 in isolation is child’s play — any mere physicist can calculate the result. But, even there no consensus can be reached.
The climate system is far more complicated and there are all sorts of feedback mechanisms (both positive and negative). The water vapor feedback just happens to be the linchpin of the entire debate. Assuming a positive water vapor feedback is the ONLY WAY the climate modelers can whip up AGW hysteria. Unfortunately (for the hysteria mongers) direct observations are proving the assumption of a positive water vapor feedback to be not merely incorrect, but upside down.
So, Steven, any fool can see that the entire AGW debate revolves around how water vapor responds to the tiny direct warming effect of CO2. Clearly, if the assumption of a positive water vapor feedback held water (so to speak), the planet would have — long ago — reached the mythological “tipping point” of runaway catastrophic CO2 induced warming — it did not and will not.
I have no reasons to disagree with DeWitt, but I do like to conjecture on what we know well about climate change and what we do not know. The simple radiative model that shows increasing temperatures with increasing levels of GHG, given no other changes and feedbacks, seems almost axiomatic at this point.
Climate models appear to me to be less likely to provide an understanding of feedback then perhaps observations going back in time manifold years more than the millennium basis of recent temperature proxies. What concerns me most about those observations are the question of how unique they were to the time they occurred. What effect would plate tectonics and plate placement have on the climate change. Weathering of newly formed mountains? Volcanic activity? Are we in a unique situation currently?
Seeing SBVOR coming onto this blog and spamming it with links to his own blog (“blogwhoring”), and peppering it with personal attacks at anybody who he perceives disagrees with him, reminded me of this comment he left on his own blog, in response to the question of why he moderates comments:
So SBVOR has one set of rules for how people behave on his blog, a second set of rules for how he behaves on other people’s blogs.
I’ll point out that after he mischaracterized my views on another thread, he demonstrated that he virtually has no balls by refusing to admit to his error. In his own private Idaho, this is “advancing the discussion in an honest and substantiated manner” I suppose. >.<
#73 Banjoman0, arguing from lack of evidence isn’t weak when it’s said from some theory that there should be evidence.
#76, DeWitt Payne, I don’t know the answer to your question. Maybe upper tropospheric warmth also reduces thin upper cirrus, leading to more efficient radiation into space.
Extra CO2 does increase the atmospheric energy flux. RP is right about this. That energy will be delivered into available climate modes by some partitioning mechanism that we don’t yet know. If energy is delivered into tropical convection, then the observable might be more, or more vigorous, or taller, or more radially extensive, cumulus towers. The energy used to augment convection cells is no longer available to produce sensible surface heat.
But the real point is that no one knows what will happen because the climate is not understood. We can’t imagine a mechanism because the subject is presently opaque.
And let’s face it, all the money going into climate modeling has meant a lack of money for climate monitoring. And it’s experimental climate science that will produce the puzzling results that will demand and stimulate the novel insights leading to deeper understanding.
I recall reading Carl Wunsch about the frustrating efforts a group was having to put together experiments utilizing floating and neutral density buoys to track hypersaline flow. They were told the experiment wasn’t necessary because the world ocean was understood already, and they should spend their time modeling.
They eventually did the experiment on a smaller scale in the Atlantic off the coast of Brazil, and found no evidence for the hypersaline flow all the models said should be there (another absence of evidence result). And so it goes, these days.
Re: Pat Frank (May 2 15:56),
Hear, Hear!
As far as ocean models: If you think the kludges like hyperviscosity in atmospheric models is bad, you should see what they have to do for the ocean models. The time constants for ocean behavior tend to be orders of magnitude longer than for the atmosphere. So by rights, the coupled models should be spun up for tens of thousands of years, not a hundred years. To get around that problem they do a massive kludge for the deep ocean to make it think it’s running at least ten to 100 times faster than the rest of the model during the spin up phase.
IIRC, Wunsch is deeply unhappy with the ocean conveyor belt model for what’s called the thermohaline circulation.
#81 — DeWitt Payne, you’re right, I should have written thermohaline instead of hypersaline. My mistake.
I didn’t know that the ocean was made so asynchronous with the atmosphere during model spin up. Thanks for the info. I wonder how that affects the ocean-atmosphere coupling.
Re: Pat Frank (May 3 00:08),
It’s not so much asynchronous as it is distorted physics. The heat capacity of the deep ocean is reduced by a factor of 10 and something similar is done to the salinity. They run that for a while and then switch back to normal and run for another few decades. Based on what little I’ve read, I’m not sure that any of the coupled models are synchronously coupled all the time.
Pat Frank said
May 2, 2010 at 3:56 pm
But the real point is that no one knows what will happen because the climate is not understood.
We can’t imagine a mechanism because the subject is presently opaque.
And let’s face it, all the money going into climate modeling has meant a lack of money for climate monitoring.
I recall reading Carl Wunsch
Derek says, well put, fundamentally correct points they all are.
I also recall hearing Carl Wunsch on the Durkin documentary, and later reading David Dilley regarding lunar / solar variations to (constantly altering) tidal strength and (constantly altering) geographic location.
As Kenneth Fritsch said May 2, 2010 at 3:07 pm in Post 78,
” What concerns me most about those observations are the question of how unique they were to the time they occurred.
What effect would plate tectonics and plate placement have on the climate change.
Weathering of newly formed mountains? Volcanic activity?
Are we in a unique situation currently? ”
“We” are in a “unique” situation currently, but judging from past evidence,
I doubt nothing that the earth’s climate system can not easily handle.
At a plate tectonic level, Australia’s northward drift MUST be effecting the Pacific ocean currents and phases as it ever closes the “gap” to the Indian ocean north of it. Whether this has already, or is about to cause a major shift in the Pacific oceans currents and phases is an interesting question. Yet no one so far seems to have either considered it, or be prepared to try discussing it.
However, I do suggest Dilley (GWO – http://www.globalweathercycles.com/GWGCNCF/index.htm )is correct, in that, tides in strength and location vary at a very, very long time scale, and probably never exactly repeat themselves. This must have an effect, if not be a main control of the major oceanic currents and phases.
I would of thought that would lend itself to modelling quite well, yet no one seems to have done so. ?
DeWitt Payne,
Are you serious when you state:
It’s not so much asynchronous as it is distorted physics. The heat capacity of the deep ocean is reduced by a factor of 10 and something similar is done to the salinity. They run that for a while and then switch back to normal and run for another few decades. Based on what little I’ve read, I’m not sure that any of the coupled models are synchronously coupled all the time.
Do you have inside information (eg being involved in this type of modelling) that you can state this? References?
Re: Harry (May 3 18:38),
Kendall McGuffie, Ann Henderson-Sellers, A Climate Modelling Primer, 3rd edition;, John Wiley& Sons, Ltd, 2005, p 207:
Приветствую, видела очень реалистичные маски, маски старика, маски вампира, выглядят как настоящие, сайт к сожилению потеряла, но сайт был весь на русском и предоставленная информация о масках, если кто знает где приобрести силиконовую маску в России напишите