Spencer agreed that if Dessler's figures are correct, "then he is correct in his conclusion."
But, he cautioned, "the debate is how he got that number. He has a novel way of looking at the problem. We need to look into it."
Those are not the only problems scientists are finding with Spencer's research.
The Santer paper looked at Spencer's earlier claims - also oft-cited in arguments that climate science remains in flux - that climate models can't accurately recreate recent observed temperature trends. If the models can't create the present, the thinking goes, they aren't reliable at predicting the future.
That's wrong, Santer said.
In this case, Spencer "cherry picked" the data by using short, selective time-frames, he said.
"You wouldn't infer from minute-by-minute changes in the Dow (Jones Industrial Average) anything meaningful about the long-term, yearly behavior of the market," he added. "It's silly to look at an individual 10-year record and make inferences about the presence or absence of human impact on climate."
This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
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80 Comments
Add Comment"That's wrong, Santer said." ... and this is what is wrong with Mr. Santer's understanding of how the climate models are built and proof checked (ir this quote is indeed what he said and is not out of context). The n-dimensional models that are being used are exactly the same as are used for groundwater, oil and natural gas reservoir modeling and it is a FACT that the evidence of the validity of a model is a history match.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHistory matching is a basic tenant that is used to be sure that the model can be used to predict future behavior based upon mimicking past behavior. The simple fact is that whether it is a gridded climate model or a reservoir model there is no single 'correct solution' and since the natural systems that are being modeled are so complicated that they cannot be realistically parameterized the history matching is a way to try and set the 'knobs' (read coefficients, exponents and dependancies) within the model so that the model does in fact reproduce the historical data with some reasonable degree of accuracy. If a model is run that does not history match then it is incorrectly constructed and or parameterized.
Now the interesting thing is that Mr. Santer compares the proposed evidence to attempting to predict the stock market which is where we agree. The comparison between the time series data that is used to construct, and yes history match, the current climate models is woefully too short when compared against the Earth's climatic history.
Most people will probably call me a 'denier' (to which I usually rebut with 'fanatic' when they will not listen to reason) but what I am really attempting to point out is that poor science yields poor conclusions which yields poor policy decisions. We MUST take the emotion out of the debate and get down to brass tacks in terms of being realistic about what the climate models can and cannot do and the error in the results that they generate. I have yet to see a Monte Carlo Analysis of the climate models (although if there is a reference I would like it) and without such an analysis I will not accept any results that have been produced.
Your objection is irrelevant and wrong. There are projections that give a range of values. In fact, nearly every one I've seen has done this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, the climate models are accurate. The recent warming matches the predictions.
If anything, they might be understating it, since arctic ice is melting vastly faster than the models predicted.
OK.... so first CO2 "juiced up" water vapour's effects to magnify it's own puny contribution, so clouds were the biggest cause of heat trapping.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut now clouds are the wrong KIND of water vapour and don't matter. So what kind of water vapour is the RIGHT kind of water vapour?
Up is now down, black is now white..... and on and on it goes in AGW land. But don't worry, it is all consistent with the computer models, so it has to be right.
Anybody else getting a migraine from this stupidity?
Stupid me. I thought cloudy days were cooler than sunny days.... I'm glad that Dressler straightened me out on that one, good God!!! I could have been killed!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess Spenser and his buddy Lindzen are probably part of the 2% of climate "scientists" that disagree with the other 98% of ACTUAL climate scientists that climate change is a real problem and humans are causing most of it. Well, I think we can ignore that 2% even more than we did before!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo the deniers even have a scientific leg to stand on anymore, despite how shaky their arguements have been in the past?
"History matching is a basic tenant that is used..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisevosburgh clearly demonstrates why the vast majority have absolutely NO chance to correct the sputtering minority, and that is that they have the inability to grasp even the simplest truths. When someone replaces the word 'tenet' with 'tenant,' how could you possibly expect that an issue as complicated as climate would receive the understanding it requires?
How so? Do you have any knowledge or evidence that my objections are incorrect?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEach and every report that I have read have used errors as a linear (or semi-linear) regression through time series data, which is just wrong. I have seen nothing that shows the P1 through P99 range nor even a discussion of the standard deviation of the results.
The climate models can, in fact, be made to match but the problem is that the historical data cannot and therefore there is an issue.
Sorry for the typo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course there is no reason for you to actually address what I have stated. Rather just go ahead and grab on to the typo and use that in an attempt to dismiss the troubling issues that I have brought up.
I do in fact have expert level understanding of n-dimensional models in terms of their construction and application and you?
If you wish I can attempt to bore you to tears with the depth of my knowledge of the issues with such models but I am certain that as you are reading this you are looking for typos rather than the concepts that I have presented thus far.
Shoshin, clouds are NOT water vapor, they are collections of lots of very small droplets of liquid water... big difference. Water vapor is a gas, clouds are liquid water droplets too small to fall to earth due to gravity, until they get bigger and come down as rain. Water vapor is transparent to sunlight but absorbs infrared, a key characteristic of a greenhouse gas, similar to CO2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, you're WRONG:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.skepticalscience.com/A-detailed-look-at-Hansens-1988-projections.html
How come you ALWAYS ask for sources from other people yet NEVER provide your own? Could it be that you don't really have any sound sources to back up your
fossil-fueled propaganda?
2010 was tied for the hottest year on record.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe last decade was the hottest decade in recorded history.
Arctic ice set a record for least volume this year and is close to the area/extent record.
That the models don't predict the past is another irrelevant objection. They don't predict the past because the past was different, not because they can't. Today's combination of CO2, continental alignment and sun intensity is unique.
Post 9 is completely false. You should be embarrassed to post something that could be so easily refuted by 30 seconds of googling.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm
I like the "fossil-fueled propaganda" remark. It's nice to know there exist purists, such as yourself, who live entirely free of fossil fuel's nasty influence. Walking everywhere, eating from your own garden, eschewing electricity not made by solar panels, etc. My air feels cleaner even as I type these words. Thank you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting tone for this article. It didn't feel nearly as informative as it did just taking jabs. Kind of like:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Spencer's a dumb dumb because Dessler said so."
I'm honestly open to the science on this subject, but this kind of writing just feels silly to me.
Oh, and it could, in fact, be argued that Newton was wrong. I think it more accurate to say he was incomplete, but again, one might argue he was wrong. He based his models on assumptions that, as long as those assumptions remained intact, so to did his conclusions. But those assumptions ended not holding true (thanks Einstein).
Clouds are white because they reflect sunlight, the ocean absorbs most light so it appears dark blue. If ther Earth is cloudier, it will reflect more sunlight. The oceans absorb and emit heat on a multi-decade or multi-century timescale. It is obviously warmer on a cloudy night in the summer or colder on a clear night in the winter. There is essentially no observed correlation between CO2 and temperature. We do not have honest temperature data from NASA so the models are meaningless in any case. There is no such thing as "radiative forcing", so the models are all a bunch of garbage to begin with. Is there a seperate reality for physicists and climatologist? Of course not, climatologists are a bunch of fakers to begin with who don't know basic physics. The APS, the NAS, the AAAS, the IPCC have gotten away with this Rockefeller eugenical hoax for over a century. Arrhenius was debunked by R. W. Wood at Hopkins in 1908. It's time for the average person to stop believing anything a paid expert has to say, they obviously are doing it for the money. People like me who understand radiative transfer instinctively know that this is all a bunch of baloney. Clearly, the notion of educated opinion of the editors of this magazine is absurd. I'm am sick and tired of people thinking they can trust experts instead of thinking for themselves from first principles. The entire New World Order is crashing a burning over this hoax. The new standard for rational debate has to be based on basic physical principles, not he said, she said. People like Ben Santer are going to be discovered for the frauds they have always been, even if I have to prove the truth of this assertion myself. I believe I was personally thrown out of the fusion program because the bi-partisan corporate fascists in power purged anyone like me who could have called BS sooner on all of this a decade ago. Only after the hoaxsters are in prison will the World begin to heal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for the demonstration that 97.2% of all statistics are made up on the spur of the moment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...and in winter, cloudy days are warmer than clear days. Would you care to venture a hypothesis why that is?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is interesting, evo, that this article is about a study done by Dessler. It mentions "Dessler's findings are the third blow in less than a week to the research of University of Alabama, Huntsville, climatologist Roy Spencer."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe other two blows were the resignation of the editor at the journal that published Spencer's paper on Friday, stating that the paper "should ... not have been published," And, on Thursday, a separate study led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Benjamin Santer purported to disprove earlier Spencer claims that climate models overstate observed warming and thus are unreliable predictors of the future.
Yet, you go on to discredit Santer who only got an aside in this article. So, why aren't you discussing this article?
And, you know, I don't really care what you know or don't know about n-dimensional anything. If you're not a climatologist, then your points are moot. I have a terrific mathematics and computer background, but when I speak on the origins of the universe, no one listens. Why? I'm not an astronomer.
Likewise, it doesn't sound like you're a climatologist. It's great that you have expert knowledge on n-dimensional models. Big deal. It's not applicable if you're not a climate scientist.
Even if you are a climatologist, I have 98% of climate scientists saying that humans are causing climate change. That trumps you right out of the argument. I could side with you and the 2% of naysayers, or I could believe the 98% who are right. I bet many of those are as emotionless as you.
If the percentages were 60% to 40%, I could see some room for disagreement. But 98% to 2%! Sure, I'm supposed to believe that every climate scientist is wrong but you, and Spencer. (And you're not even a climate scientist.)
(Those percentages might be close to the numbers of people who think the earth is flat compared to those who think it's round, or the number of those who think the moon landing was staged compared to those who think it happened, or those who believe in ghosts to those who don't, etc.)
Climatologists are not scientists at all, since they don't know physics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've been wondering: How long have we actually been taking temperature measurement over the oceans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause, i don't no if YOU will agree with this but, the CO2 that comes out of tailpipes is not hot enough (in above 20 degree temperatures at lease) to actually rise in the high atmosphere.
By such it just keeps piling up, all the while mixing with the water and dirt in the atmosphere.
Becoming what used to be called smog but is now called heat dome.
In other words a dense damp murky atmosphere too pressurized to allow for rain clouds to collapse over it.
This then absorbs heat like crazy making temperature of cities, not only even 24 h a day (which didn't use to be the case in the pre-motorised/industrialized world), but actually hotter, since a big molecule combining water and CO2 and dust or dirt is far more powerful at heat absorption than the sum of each of these individuals.
But this, because this pressurized atmosphere doesn't really move at all, does not affect the atmosphere over the oceans.
The temperature records for the past couples of decades doesn't come, as that of the far past, from ice core sampling, which does somewhat provide for an average Global weather estimation, but from the mean average of the measured temperatures within the cities.
As such this Data can't be considered accurate since it doesn't include, as ice cores do, oceanic atmosphere temperatures (except maybe for the past decade, which once again renders it non accurate).
The main ingredients in oceanic water evaporation are photons, not heat nor wind, and the same is true for Pan Water Evaporation.
The fact that the Pan Evaporation Rate as been decreasing directly implies that less sunlight reaches the ground inside cities.
The increase in tornadoes implies that more sunlight reaches the surfaces of the oceans.
We have a cause to affect here that is directly measurable.
The sun’s activity has increased and more photon reaches the oceans causing more tornadoes.
All the while less photon reaches the grounds in cities lowering the P.E.R..
Those photons must be absorbed within the lower atmosphere, which is where our emissions of Cold Tailpipe CO2 accumulate.
Part II
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe increase in Cold Tailpipe CO2 emissions over the past thirty years is also a reality.
The perfect match up of the mean average recorded weather within cities and the car sales increase and the oil production increase and the oil sales increase and the smog incidence and levels increase is also a reality.
As far as the sun its increased activity over the past decades also matches up quite nicely with the decreased in observed cloud coverage and increase in tornadoes and the decrease in cosmic rays and that is also a reality.
In other words the sun remains the main engine and force driving our planets overall climates.
But we are responsible for the dense damp murky hard to breath atmospheres trapped within our cities due to our continuously increasing emissions of Cold TailPipe CO2.
And since the continents almost form a complete circle around the Atlantic, global warming is then a phenomenon fairly localized.
Smoke stack emissions are very hot they rise quickly in the high atmosphere and then dissipate throughout the entire planet to become part of this small incident gas, even at 400 ppm it’s still nothing compared to the amount of water contained within the atmosphere, and water is much better at absorbing and propagating heat.
As you pointed out three factors are at play here, and none of them should be denied just because of an over affectation of the emotional nature of the debate.
This debate is NOT A DEBATE!
It’s a bunch of people wanting to be told that they are right no matter the cost.
As you can see right here on this SciAM site the same three or four people post the same retorics over and over again at every weather articles.
Quoting this one and that one, yet never actually describing concrete points of view!
If 97% of climatologist agree with themselves, which by the way is far from being a reality, not even half the scientific community agrees with this.
And if someone want to talk about the behaviours of gases in a closed system i’ll go to a specialist in thermodynamics long before i consult a climatologist whose arguments all stem from computer simulations whose variables are pre set to the point of view of that particular climatologist.
And any first grade thermodynamic specialist will state it again and again, “Such a vast environment is almost impossible to simulate in a free algorithmic format.”
In other words, their simulations are not worth the bits they use!
Steph Vincent
You have some valid points, Cervenec, but who do you supposed derived the climate models? I bet you it wasn't a climate scientist. I bet it was the kind of expertise evo has mixed with data from the kinds expertise climate scientists have. So I would think his opinion has value.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, I don't really like your 2% to 98% argument. Consensus may equal what is, but not necessarily. I wonder what the percentage of physicists was who thought time and space were unchanging prior to 1916. Or even prior to being proved in 1919. Not that the 98% of climate scientists are wrong, just that the argument of consensus isn't, necessarily, strong.
So, esentially just because I am not an official 'climate scientist' I cannot possibly be able to understand the models which they use even though they are exactly the same as the ones that I run every day. If you are so smart regarding computers and mathematics then why are you not questioning their results?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObviously you are attempting to dismiss my objections by undermining my credentials without addressing the points that I have made.
The climate models are multidimensional grid models (hence n-dimensional) that are so upscaled that they cannot even accurately model a cloud so how is it that if they cannot model a cloud then how can they be expected to accurately model the entire atmosphere accurately (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_model)? The reason that the models are so coarse is due to computational limitations of the computers that are used. Even supercomputers are unable to perform the number of computations in any reasonable time frame on models with more grid cells.
So, just because I am not a climate scientist does not mean that I cannot be well versed in the methodologies that they apply and know, in great detail, the issues inherent in those methodologies.
Thanks for making my point. Clouds affect temperature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut Dressler just published a paper that says they don't. So you and I have evidence (not computer models) that already refute his paper.
I concur that just because there is a consensus that they are correct. This is my management by majority and in my experience this never ends well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother interesting discussion that lead to a major paradigm shift was the discussion of plate tectonics that was finally solved with data. In that case the data proved what the 'consensus of scientists' said was wrong. Interestingly, the level of pure distain for the view opposing tectonics was very evident in the articles written by the main stream which is a lot like what is going on now. In the end data prevailed. I am undecided on relative impact of mankind on the Earth's climate system and I would like to see a scientific debate that does not include the current level of emotion that appears to be prevailing.
I will stipulate that this is true. Now.... What is the alleged driver that links CO2 and water vapour?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI haven't seen one outside of the speculative fury of a black box computer program. Experiments don't show one. How can you prove (not believe, but prove) this linkage is real?
It seems to me that the cosmic ray theory has actually proved something here, that solar cycles at least opartially control cloud formation. It seems to me that Dressler is now a Denier; he denies the self-evident role of clouds in surface temperatures.
Sorry, Dressler just pulled a Fonzie and Jumped The Shark.
I'd be curious about the peer review process for this journal. I'm not sure if Remote Sensing publishes many articles on climate modeling and whether they have enough knowedgeable reviewers for this topic. From my own experience I know that peer-review can be vigorous or it can be lax, and it sounds like it was very lax in this case.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm confused by this comment "energy trapped by clouds can only explain a small part of the temperature changes seen from 2000 to 2010". What temperature changes. All data that I look at (eg RSS, Hadcrut, UHA) show no change in temperature in recent years. 1998 temperature is yet to be exceeded (except for GISS, but I note from their correspondence, that they claim that they don't focus on global temperature, but rather, the US so they can test their models. They actually recommend Hadcrut).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe models certainly don't match the real data. Either they are wrong, or we have to wait longer to see if temperature will take notice of them. I haven't seen any model that predicted no warming over the past 12 years.
With regards to the question "The climate models are multidimensional grid models (hence n-dimensional) that are so upscaled that they cannot even accurately model a cloud so how is it that if they cannot model a cloud then how can they be expected to accurately model the entire atmosphere accurately."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyone who has studied statistics to any degree will easily understand that it is often far easier to predict the behavior of larger numbers than it is to predict the behavior of individuals. It is not necessary to know how each single cloud will behave in order to model the net effect of clouds in the atmosphere.
Almost all climate scientists accept AGW. The real scientific debate is about CO2 sensitivity. It has a wide range for doubling of CO2 from 1.5C to 4.5C.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClouds do not drive temp. because it is a feedback not a forcing. But clouds provide a big negative feedback of 18 W/m^2. Doubling of CO2 has a radiative forcing of 3.7 W/m^2. So clouds can have a big impact on driving the CO2 sensitivity to the lower range. We need to study clouds because that is the biggest source of uncertainty in climate models.
Dr. Strangelove - that's exactly how I see it, though I hear of a slightly wider range for doubling CO2 - more like 1.2 degC direct effect, up to 5 degC with positive feedback.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe IPCC admitted that cloud influence is poorly understood. I maintain that the whole hypotheses of catastrophic AGW assumes positive feedback (eg increased water vapour) will dominate negative feedback (eg increased cloud). I can find no real data to back this assumption, but as you point out, there is good reason to believe negative feedback will dominate.
Matching history is the easiest thing in the world. I could make a "model" that matches temp history exactly, for example, by just spitting out the historical temperature records.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe gold standard for models is how well they work going forward.
I like to use the first half of the data to develop a model, then see if it predicts the last half of data. Provided the data isn't linear over the full range, this is a reasonable test. (provided enough data over a reasonable time span is available - for climate, I expect at least 60 years is needed for this.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course, the real test is matching data as it develops over time.
The predictions in fact stopped just short of coconut palms growing in the arctic by now. Not enough ice for your whisky glass. Instead, only this year does it look likely to be as low as 2007. The intervening years have all had higher concentrations of ice than 2007. Did the Co2 levels go down during this period? How come?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow can anyone claim the predictions have been valid.
Ive read many comments, many papers, and some people are arguing on the same points but using them in opposing views.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLets take clouds, clouds are an effect and not a cause, therefore any discussion on clouds is moot. Without the causes that form clouds you would have no clouds, so arguing on clouds when you should be arguing on the causes is not constructive. All I can see people doing is going round in circles and getting lost in the details.
Any cloud effect should be subsumed into a broader "natural" effect and argued as such.
We are here to assign "blame" to sides to find out the definitive argument if you like.
How many of those clouds did humans prevent from being formed, by draining marshes across all land masses, how many floods are humans responsible for after building on flood lands?
Personally I think the 33% of species are threatened with extinction in this inter-glacial warming period, instead of the species explosions in all previous inter-glacials as more than enough evidence to assign blame to humans.
Personally looking at global average temperature data, I see the sun and natural effects being about 20%, and human+other the remaining 80%, with humans amounting to about 60-80% of this.
What data are you looking at? Arctic ROOS http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic shows this year as having higher area and extent than 2007. NSIDC show this year and 2007 to be much the same. However, we also know that the Northwest passage has been open many times in the past - it's nothing new. Any claims that Arctic ice is at historical lows are wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Lets take clouds, clouds are an effect and not a cause, therefore any discussion on clouds is moot. Without the causes that form clouds you would have no clouds"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- hopefully, most of us realise that this is a foolish assumption. Millions of dollars are being spent on the CERN CLOUD experiment to further our understanding of cloud formation. It's far too early to make such a statement.
"The intervening years have all had higher concentrations of ice than 2007. Did the Co2 levels go down during this period? How come?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow can anyone claim the predictions have been valid."
Is your grasp of the theory so poor that you really believe you have invalidated it?
Since you won't red this!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGoes against your warmist/anti-warmist religion!
But i'll still state it, yet again!
Really?
only 20% for the sun?
Have any Data to back that up?
Cause i got an entire planet and the sum of all the statistics gathered upon it to prove you wrong on that one.
I have all the Stats of every single element involved in the climate of our planet!
And as i have mentioned way too many times to all you stubborn narrow minded warmist and anti-warmist, they speak reality not some cockamamie computer simulations of an un simulatable concept.
I wander what all you people hope to gain in this mockery of a debate?
Made any grounds lately?
Anything as changed during your false argumentations?
You all keep throwing the models of this one and that one, but non of you are willing to do anything else than go BLAH BLAH BLAH!
You are just denyin the true complexity of the problem with all your non-sense!
And all this useless waste of time prevents people from understanding the true nature of the problem!
Which simply states as:
1) the sun is and remains the main engine driving our climate, and the proof of it is everywhere in nature.
2) Our Cold TailPipe CO2 remains trapped within the confines of our cities and nations creating a giant heat trapping dome of murky muddy dense atmosphere.
I know all you warmist and anti-warmist don't want to ear anything else than what you personally believe without foundation, simply because some self proclaim climatologist say's it is so!
You all want either to deny the real nature of the state of our planet.
Or seek to blame everyone else than your own selves.
I am forced to ask, again:
Who forced you to buy an Iwhatever made in china.
Who forces you to buy produces that have to be flown in?
Why don't you, instead of blaming everyone or denying everything, start demanding that the products that you purchase are made locally?
Why don't you, as a matter of fact, start buying only locally produced things?
Cause you won't be up to date with the latest ICrap that will come out?
Why don't you just take the bus once or twice a week, at lease?
Too important are you?
I do understand that admitting that you are as guilty as everybody else removes from you the right to complain senselessly all the while re aching the ill conceived theories of this one and that one.
But in the mean while...!!!???
Why don't you accept the word of thermodynamic here?
Even cosmologist won't accept a theory unless it complies fully with the laws of thermodynamic, which this debate (and all the computer models) does not!
I believe that you are very knowledgeable in mathematical models,maybe too knowledgeable! You forget the basic premise that models are not meant to represent exactly complex realities. They are simplifications used to study the effects of the variations of the main drivers (you are certainly aware of the fable about the emperor that wanted a map of his empire such detailed that the map ended up as big as the empire and proved useless).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen you can tweak the drivers of the system under study it is easy to fit the model to the response of the system. In case of weather and climate it is not possible to tweak the drivers. So arguing that the models cannot exactly predict this or that is a self defeating argument that puts you in the chair of the fabled emperor.
Dude why do you waste your time talking sense to people who only want to be told:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYOUR RIGHT! WE APPOLOGIZE! YOUR THE SMARTEST! WE SHOULD ALWAYS LISTEN TO YOU AND YOUR INCREDIBLE WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE.
There's a dude on this site that actually stated a rules that applies to the concept of human future foretelling.
That the destiny of an individual is far harder that the destiny of a species to predict, due to the fact that a simple even can alter the destiny of an individual but it takes enormous events to alter the destiny of an entire species.
The problem here is that he has obviously never heard of the butterfly effect.
Cause if he had he would understand that for a System such as an atmosphere it's actually the opposite
I guess he doesn't understand the thermodynamic nature of the event, which does state that a minute event can alter the entire state of any given thermodynamically stable, or pseudo-stable (as our atmosphere) system, hence the butterfly effect.
Therefor NOT A SINGLE PIECE OF DATA CAN BE PRESET TO ANY VALUES WITHIN ANY MODELS OR IT BECOMES BIASED AND USELESS.
They rightfully call it forcing cause that exactly what their equations and models do!
They force the warming effect of CO2 to effect the planet according to their theory not according to the thermodynamic nature of the system!
But no ones want to ear that!
So just shut up and let them have their fake debate!
Cause no matter what anyone says they won't stop driving their cars to work nor will they start purchasing locally!
They just want to wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine and wine!
So go on warmist and anti warmist!
Keep trying to convince one another that YOUR SIDE IS RIGHT!
In the mean times some of use will keep trying to get people to understand reality and take the appropriate actions all the while removing all your useless brain washing bullcrap on the subject!
Well, my household probably uses 80% less energy than the average household, so I think I've done pretty well in walking the walk. Just because I still use that 20% doesn't mean I have to agree with all the lies the fossil fuel companies put out there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo wonder the climate change debate has devolved to this level. The sheer amount of scientific ignorance shown by some of the comments left here is staggering. What don't you guys understand, that CO2 traps heat or that humans have INCREASED its concentration in the atmosphere by 40%? That extra 40% has a certain spectral "insulating" effect that is well documented and well understood. That insulating effect (greenhouse effect) has a certain forcing on the Earth's climate in the form of extra heat being retained therein.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany lines of evidence from ice and sediment cores to oxygen isotopes in rocks and all the credible climate models show that the forcing associated with a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will eventually increase the average temperature by around 3C (climate sensitivity) once all the feedbacks are taken into account. This whole cloud controversy was the ONLY strong negative feedback the climate change deniers could find to support their idea that climate sensitivity was too low to worry about. I'll be the first to admit that we don't know exactly what that 3C change will cause, but the estimates of its impact range from troubling to catastrophe. Even if climate sensitivity is on the low end of the probable values, the small cost to start cleaning up our act is probably an order of magnitude or two less than the potential costs of the increased hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, water scarcity, geopolitical instability and economic hardship we will STILL see.
Reducing our carbon emissions is really just an insurance policy against the worst effects of climate change. Besides, when we finally get going towards a more sustainable economy, we'll also get to enjoy cleaner air and water, we'll have lower healthcare costs because of lower pollution, and we'll get to tell the Oil Sheiks in the Middle East where they can shove their imported oil.
I would disagree that models are not meant to represent complex realities as that is exactly why we construct them. The issue is that we know that there are inherent errors in the models that we build precisely because we cannot accurately parameterize the model due to the size involved. My real issue is that the results of the climate models seem to be held up as fact without a discussion of the inherent error within the results.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also know that what is published in peer reviewed journals is far from scientific fact and requires verification in the form of others performing the same experiments and getting the same results. In my opinion there does not seem to be a lot of that going on in the current climate debate. For example: look at the wqarming projections from 8 different climate models (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Warming_Predictions.png) in terms of predicted warming. What you find is that the average value is 3.4 degC at 2100. The range within those estimates is +1.6/-1.2 degC which works out to around a 50% difference (from the average value) in results. Take the fact that these are single reported values with no error bars around them, but let's assume that the difference in the modeled results are indicative of the actual error in a single model (which is not at all true but for the sake of the argument go with me). If you make this assumption then the probable range of temperature increase is between 1 and 6.6 degC.
Now my question is: how do I judge which results are better? My answer is: you look at the relative error in the models and use that as a quality indicator. I have not yet seen a probablistic assessment of the error in the models and until that is available and repeatable then the models and results are suspect in my mind.
Finally, I come to the following thoughts: (1) I build these types of model and the results are used to base investment decisions upon, (2) implicit in my results is the probable range of error so that range can be factored into the economic risk assessment of a given investment, (3) armed with that information an informed decision can be made and (4) if this is the bar that I have to reach in private industry then why is that not the case for climate modles and the resulting policy decisions (which by the way have much larger global economic implications than the work that I am doing)?
I'm glad you walk the walk. Let's just leave the blanket, biased statements out of it. Of course there are going to be some energy (fossil fuel) companies that lie, but I'm sure there are those in the green movement that would just as handily lie to propagate their agenda. It's as ignorant to blanket all oil companies with the liar moniker as it is to blanket all environmental groups with the same. I would love to see us move away from dirtier energy sources to cleaner ones, but I am not so myopic to think we can just wave a wand and change our oil/ fossil fuel-based economy. Again, good for you for trying to do your part, but realize it's on the backs of those using the much more efficient/readily available fossil fuels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, and one more thing. To what lies do you refer? Specifically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr Dessler appears to have struck a nerve.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn models and their ability to forecast, we know that GCMs are not perfect, even ones coupled to an ocean model and factoring in such things as albedo changes as the pattern of plant growth changes; that does not mean they aren't useful. However, another way to predict what the earth will do in the future is to examine what it has done in the past. These are paleoclimate studies, and they generally come in within the sensitivity range of 3.0 to 3.5 K for a doubling of CO2 under conditions similar to the present (fast feedbacks). Since we can calculate the direct sensitivity of CO2 using well-understood laws of thermodynamics at around 1.2 K, it is inaccurate to say that it is an assumption that feedbacks are generally positive. Our understanding of the physical sciences (the consensus is based on the science; the science is not based on the consensus) and the earth's own history agree that they are.
Some of the commenters should try a little harder to understand that this site is a secondary source; it is a news outlet, a side show. It serves a useful purpose, but if you really want to argue the science, you'll have to become a peer in the reviewed literature. In the meantime, CO2 will go about its business of absorbing and re-emitting photons.
So, I'm curious. You say you write models for investments; how many of these models factor in things like convection, condensation, albedo, and radiative energy exchanges? I'm guessing not many.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou think this is an economics problem. Has it occurred to you that it might be more than that?
Post 34 is a blatant lie. Post 36 is also incorrect. I've already shown this, but I'll repeat myself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe official IPCC forecast was for arctic ice not to melt before 2100. The ice is on pace to melt vastly faster, possibly in as soon as 5-20 years.
This year is a historic year for ice melt. It has already broken the all-time area and volume records. 2011 volume is far lower than 2007 volume. There is still a chance that this year will break the extent record also.
It never ceases to amaze me how wildly ignorant the average global warming denier is. You'd think they'd at least do a basic google search before going off on their rants.
Denier is too mild a word! Idiot is more appropriate. If you don't understand the science, crawl back under your rock.!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFossil-fueled lies:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Funding the API and other front groups to cast doubt on climate science. They totally misrepresent the state of the actual scientific debate which has moved beyond determining humanity's culpability in climate change and is now zeroing in on how much warming we can expect from human activity.
2. Perpetuating the myth that the U.S. could become energy independent if all we did was get rid of all environmental regulations and drill everywhere. U.S. peak oil production occurred in 1970 and it has declined since because of geologic factors. We use 20 - 25% of the world's oil but we have only 5% of the reserves. And most of that 5% is expensive and harder to get than the light sweet crude from the Middle East. Even an aggressive drilling scenario would decrease gas prices by only $0.03/gallon...by 2030 according to the EIA.
3. Spreading the lie that drilling is way safer than it actually is. They want us to forget how awful the Deepwater Horizon disaster was and how it was caused by the combined negligence of BP, Haliburton, Transocean and the inept regulators tasked with preventing drilling rig blowouts. They also try to make people think that there are too many government regulations when it was the lack of regulations and enforcement on the Deepwater Horizon that led to the blowout in the first place.
4. Spreading the falsehood that reducing our carbon emissions would destroy the economy. Their paid-for mouthpiece, The Heartland Institute, somehow determined that the recent cap and trade bill before congress would cost American households $1,700 per year. Their analysis was deeply flawed and most other groups determined the cost would be closer to $100 per year. This also ignores increasing energy efficiency and long-term energy price stability that renewable energy would provide.
These are just a few of the most blatant lies they've come up with.
"Also, the climate models are accurate."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh really, so you are saying the models will always be accurate? Come now, that has to be one of the worst sweeping conclusions I've ever seen.
http://climateprediction.net/content/modelling-climate
A quote from that page goes thus..
The atmospheric part of the model used by climateprediction.net is the UK Met Office's state-of-the-art Unified Model; the same model that is used to produce every weather forecast you see on British terrestrial television."
I happen to live in the UK and you may know that the UK Met Office is infamous for it's failure to forecast accurately much beyond 48 hours ahead. It is unbelievably bad for it's long term forecasts, yet their model is is hailed as "state-of-the-art" ?
Have a look at this huge GAFF of theirs...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6731609.ece
They were totally inaccurate trying to forecast the summer from April of the SAME year.
So in conclusion I take with a planet sized dose of salt that your comment of "Also, the climate models are accurate." as a statement of a fantatist.
To Sault! To Justanobody To Carlyle! To pokerplyer! To M! To RJ! To ShavaUVM! To Strangelove! To Santaidm! To Evosburgh! To Shoshin! And all the rest of the usuals on these global warming articles!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis will be my last so: it might be a bit long!
But do take the time it will be worth your while i promise!
Now!
I offer you all my deepest apologies for meddling in this extremely beautiful thing that all of you are creating together with this extremely productive and evolving debates of your.
But as a human being, living on planet earth, who has spent the past 25 years of his live studying:
Thermodynamics!
Statistic analysis!
Computer programming and analysis!
And Astrophysics!
I must declare the following as more than a personal belief!
If you were to take all the processors ever created on earth since the ENIAC, from the smallest pic to the biggest super computer, and got them all to work together.
They couldn’t come up with a years worth of conclusive data after a hundred years worth of computing if you were to include each and every variables and allowed them to interact freely!
So to circumvent this, these pseudo-scientist who call themselves CLIMATOLOGIST preset almost all the data to their beliefs.
Then they preset their interactions according to their beliefs!
This is not science!
This is biased computer modelling, nothing more!
For a computer model to carry any kind of weight in any debate:
IT MUST BE BASED IN FREEWILL!
Wow! What a strange statement, don’t you think?
I’m not explaining it!
You all smart enough to understand the image here!
But i will address the article above for a moment because these people suffer from the blindness imposed by confusion and denial!
I’ll use what i call the good cholesterol of pollution, in other words contrails!
Why?
Imagine photons coming from the sun.
Now put a cloud of your choice of shape and form in front of it.
That cloud, you will all admit (i certainly hope), will reflect an amount of photons proportional to its exposed areas, right?
No math required, if you absolutely want them i’l give them to you, but honestly wasted time it would be (let’s be nerds and reread that with the voice of Yodda, i know i did but that’s just cause i’m a self proclaimed idiot).
Knowing as a scientist that the photons that will hit the cloud from the sun will be far more numerous and far more energetic than those reflected by the planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can immediately see that they will reflect back to space more energy than they will reflect back to earth and therefor during the day clouds will prevent more energy from entering the system than they will keep in!
As i said no math required here!
Now that’s a simple assertion which is obvious to any first year scientist of almost any field!
But at night their beneficial influence is no more!
What does that have to do with contrails right?
Remember 9/11 when all the planes where grounded?
Did you know that two very interesting atmospheric climate phenomenon almost went un noticed, and have certainly gone untold?
What might that be oh you grate oracle of bullshit you say?
Well!
The Pan Evaporation Rate shot strait up for the entire duration.
And then it returned to their habitual decreasing rate as soon as air traffic was resumed.
Not only that but, and you can go and look that up anywhere you can find actual real time temperature measurement over the state for the time period, the temperature difference between day and night actually increased during the same period of time.
And it decreased back to it habitual very low variation as soon as air traffic was resuming!
In other words the temperatures in cities is always somewhat the same at night than in the day (in summer temps/climat), except during the post 9/11 grounding where they diverted just a bit more than usual.
If like me you look at things from their nature and nothing else you will not be able to not notice a direct cause to effect here!
And to me causality rules!
What this data set tells me is that contrails diffract energy during the day but at night they become part of the heat circulation system.
Contrails are very similar to clouds in many aspects, and enough of those qualify the relation between the two!
Yes it is true that cloud collect the energy of infrared photons.
But clouds are located 5000 feet and up.
Heat travels upwards not downwards!
So their contribution at night is in preventing the heat from below to radiate freely back to space not by reradiating their absorbed heat back to earth, thermodynamics rules here also.
Now my last act upon you will be to give you a way to personally attest to everything i have posted on these climate articles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll you got to do is get on a boat and go to the ocean.
If the pseudo-scientist who call themselves climatologist are right about global warming and i’m wrong about local warming the proof is right there over the oceans water!
Do understand that you have to agree with yourselves in any and every statement that you make.
If A then B is the definition of causality and the soul of thermodynamics!
As i said THEY RULE not climatology!
If the entire earth is suffering from the impact of our stupidity than what goes for cities must go for every part of a country and for every part of every continent and for the oceans.
If you say it don’t apply to this part or that part then you invalidate your own theory!
You must remain consistent with yourselves!
If A then B, otherwise it’s meaningless!
It’s either global and therefor the same all over or it’s local and it varies from one point of the globe to the next.
Can’t have both here!
It’s one or the other!
Causality rules!
If A then B will remain far beyond your personal belief systems!
Why the boat?
Take notice of the temperature during the day and that during the night.
Now go see the eldest person you know.
I mean OLD, REALLY OLD!
Above 80 preferable!
Now ask that person about the difference of the temperature between day and night in that person’s childhood.
Again you’re gonna see a cause to effect here.
Because over the oceans you will notice that the temperatures at night fall of some 10 degrees and up just like it did in that elderly person’s youth!
Now back in your city what are the temperature differences between day and night!
No more than a couple of degrees if any?
Does winter settle in as soon as it used to?
Of course not!
But why?
They say it’s GLOOBAAL WAARMIING BE AFRAID BE VEEEERYYYY AAAAFRAAAIIID!
As we begin to get less and less photon not only in duration but in angle of incidence, which means less energy, the CO2/H2O/DIRT compound begins to slowly dissipate through the atmosphere.
But since we keep pumping more of it into that murky dome it takes a lot longer for it to dissipate enough to actually allow for the heat trapped within the earth to dissipate.
Causing our cities winters to settle in a lot latter than it used to!
This is in accordance with thermodynamics!
There will never be more than one conclusion to be reached at any point of this debate.
THIS PLANET BELONGS TO US, ALL OF US, AND YOUR RIGHT TO POLLUTE IS NON EXISTENT!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAND THEREFOR IT’S OUR RESPONSIBILITY, EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US, TO REMOVE THE POLLUTING COMPANIES BY NOT PURCHASING FROM THEM.
If you expect them or your politicians to act your in for a very long wait!
And as long has these pseudo-doomsday-scientists will persist in this prostitution and mockery of science:
AIN’T NOTHING GONNA HAPPEN, PERIOD!
1)Buy locally
2)Find out about the pollution foot print of those who sale you the product you consume
3)From there select carefully and follow your selection with notification to the ones who pollute too much and to the one you selected, this will have far more impact than any debat based in false science!
4)Tell the world once you have it, i’ll be far more productive than this useless debate!
5)Decrease your emissions of CO2 to their strict minimal; the results will be almost instantaneous.
6)The world is in no danger!
7)The same can’t be said about us!
8)The future of our stay on this world will not be determined or defined by futile debates based in pseudo-doomsday-science but by concrete actions.
From the apocalypse to Nostradamus to the 2012 dooms day allegedly predicted by the Mayas (according to people who can’t count properly), to the great destructions and cataclysm cause by the great alignment (according to people who have absolutely no understanding of physics and even les of cosmology) to global warming (according to people who don’t seem to understand thermodynamics) all you fear mongers are becoming a real nuisance.
As you can see, if you had the balls to read all my post over the past couple of weeks, i haven’t, not even once, quote this one or that one in this.
Nop!
I only used the actual facts of reality that all these warmist and anti-warmist don’t talk about!
I told which data to look for and analyse for your own self to obtain the truth, you can get it all from the net don’t espect me to put them up somewhere for you to get them without any work.
Time to stop talking and reading this one or that one’s pseudo science!
Time to go look at the data for yourselves!
Time to take concrete actions and champion those concrete actions!
Or to quote Miss Gareth:
“Time to get messy and take chances!”
God i’m such a child aren’t i?
I told you of all the ways to test everything i have told you!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI DID MY PART NOW DO YOURS!
The truth is not that hard to understand once you actually put all the required data side by side!
But it can’t be modeled or simulated within any acceptable degree for an actual scientific mind!
Yes our brains are still a million time more powerful than all the computing power of all the computing devices ever created on earth working together for one simple reason:
We have a strong and powerful imagination that can actually be control by knowledge!
This gives us the ability to see the events, analyse them with their inter-actions, in real time.
Computers need to create an artificial environment and than manipulate all the molecules and atoms individually.
Since they can’t they analyse by cells.
But the cells are too big to be meaningful!
And this renders them, with their preset variables, useless and meaningless!
And no matter how many times a half truth is attested to be an absolute:
IT WILL REMAIN NOTHING MORE THAN AN HALF TRUTH PERIOD!
Now!
I swear won’t meddle in your debate no more:
I’m just not constructive or knowledgeable enough for it!
I truly wish you all peaceful but event filled lives
Steph Vincent
Tintinmilou,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will do my best to explain how clouds affect the weather (at local & regional scales).
For the full spectrum of insolation / EMR penetrating to the troposphere, clouds (liquid water in aerosol form) are quite amazing and efficient absorbers, emitters and reflectors of EMR. To my students I liken clouds to a fan-clutch on automobile (especially as it relates to the Arizona summer-time thunderstorms aka “The Monsoon”). The land heats up thermally lifting the air that creates clouds (as long as enough moisture is present) the clouds in turn cool the land either by shade or rain.
Specifically, to your question clouds are an excellent reflector of shorter wavelength EMR (λ = ~0.2+ μm to 1.3 μm). Cloud’s albeto can approach 0.8 which is about the best reflector our natural world can produce. This is why cloud tops are seen by folks as a brilliant white, and because they reflect those wavelengths so well the bottoms of thicker (stratus and cumulus) clouds are usually dark. Because clouds can do this, we in Arizona, really appreciate cloud shade during the summer.
At longer wavelengths, (λ = ~10 μm to 100 μm) clouds are excellent absorbers. The aforementioned range also happens to the exact range of EMR emitted by the earth as thermal radiation (think of the heat waves that distort the horizon on a hot road in the summer). As clouds absorb this EMR they also emit much of it back to the earth. That is why calm cloudy nights are usually warmer for an area than calm clear nights. In this respect, clouds are literally blankets.
In terms of clouds makeup, they are simply and literally a battery in the form of latent energy. The energy input to evaporate liquid water into vapor gas, and then keep it aloft after it condensates into an aerosol is rather great to say the least. The stored latent energy is released as clouds precipitate, that’s why the air will warm up as snow storm begins, and although the same latent energy is released in rain storms, the temperature increase will be offset by evaporation of liquid water.
Hope this helps, Cheers!
Beer4Life…
Benchmarks in Clima-theology.
1960’s Population Bomb & Silent Spring
1970’s Global Cooling
1980’s & 1990’s Deforestation, Desertification & Ozone Depletion
2000’s Global Warming & The Inconvenient Truth
2010 Climate Change
Tintinmilou,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will do my best to explain how clouds affect the weather (at local & regional scales).
For the full spectrum of insolation / EMR penetrating to the troposphere, clouds (liquid water in aerosol form) are quite amazing and efficient absorbers, emitters and reflectors of EMR. To my students I liken clouds to a fan-clutch on automobile (especially as it relates to the Arizona summer-time thunderstorms aka “The Monsoon”). The land heats up thermally lifting the air that creates clouds (as long as enough moisture is present) the clouds in turn cool the land either by shade or rain.
Specifically, to your question clouds are an excellent reflector of shorter wavelength EMR (λ = ~0.2+ μm to 1.3 μm). Cloud’s albeto can approach 0.8 which is about the best reflector our natural world can produce. This is why cloud tops are seen by folks as a brilliant white, and because they reflect those wavelengths so well the bottoms of thicker (stratus and cumulus) clouds are usually dark. Because clouds can do this, we in Arizona, really appreciate cloud shade during the summer.
At longer wavelengths, (λ = ~10 μm to 100 μm) clouds are excellent absorbers. The aforementioned range also happens to the exact range of EMR emitted by the earth as thermal radiation (think of the heat waves that distort the horizon on a hot road in the summer). As clouds absorb this EMR they also emit much of it back to the earth. That is why calm cloudy nights are usually warmer for an area than calm clear nights. In this respect, clouds are literally blankets.
In terms of clouds makeup, they are simply and literally a battery in the form of latent energy. The energy input to evaporate liquid water into vapor gas, and then keep it aloft after it condensates into an aerosol is rather great to say the least. The stored latent energy is released as clouds precipitate, that’s why the air will warm up as snow storm begins, and although the same latent energy is released in rain storms, the temperature increase will be offset by evaporation of liquid water.
Hope this helps, Cheers!
Beer4Life…
Benchmarks in Clima-theology.
1960’s Population Bomb & Silent Spring
1970’s Global Cooling
1980’s & 1990’s Deforestation, Desertification & Ozone Depletion
2000’s Global Warming & The Inconvenient Truth
2010 Climate Change
For a bit of light relief..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou made 81 typos in your post, "wine" should be "whine"
:O)
What I said is that I write models that are used to make investment decisions. My models actually determine the composition and distribution of fluids in subsurface reservoirs and then determine how they will move and produce given different conditions. This is basically exactly what the climate models do. In fact the 3d grid models (4 dimensions if you include time) have many of the same operations occuring within them and are called n-dimensional due to the fact that there are manyt simultaneous (n) equations that are interdependant upon each other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo has it occured to you to read my posts and stop trying to undermine my credentials.
My question remains: if the results of the models that I build are used to make reasonably large investment decisions are subject to scrutiny in terms of uncertainty then why it that not the case for cliumate models. I can assure you that the decisions made off of my work is orders of magnitude smaller than the decisions being made from the current climate models and therefore the consquences are orders of magnitude higer. Sure I could kill a project and cost the corporation that I work for a bunch of cash but I defintely cannot crater the world economy. If you think that the current mess is bad try doubling the cost of energy and make that decision based upon results which have not been properly vetted.
Oh Jeez i'm sorry i just realized that i forgot something important.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA lot of you talk about the ice melting levels.
You might remember from some of my first posts when i described the birth of a tropic storm over the oceans?
How when photons hit the water molecules at the surface of the oceans they transfer energy to that particular molecule, which allows it to rise.
But as it does so it looses its energy and falls back.
This is a self driven thermodynamic events those molecules create tiny little wakes through which the next can more easily travel.
So as the rise and fall they begin to generate a vortex that will grow if fed enough energy.
So more photons more tornadoes and such!
But as i have said if A then B>
Therefor when photons hit ice water molecules they turn to water.
More photons means more ice melting.
And because of the way glaciers melt more ice melting means
Oh Jeez i'm sorry i just realized that i forgot something important.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA lot of you talk about the ice melting levels.
You might remember from some of my first posts when i described the birth of a tropical storm over the oceans?
How when photons hit the water molecules at the surface of the oceans they transfer energy to that particular molecule, which allows it to rise.
But as it does so, it looses its energy and falls back.
This is a self driven thermodynamic events those molecules create tiny little wakes through which the next can more easily travel.
So as they rise and fall they begin to generate a vortex that will grow if fed enough energy.
So more photons means more tornadoes and such!
But as i have said: if A then B.
Therefor when photons hit ice water molecules they turn to water.
More photons means more ice melting.
And because of the way glaciers melt more ice melting means A LOT MORE ICE MELTING!
Now i will admit i don't have the actual statistics on the ice melting issue but i bet you anything that not only do they follow precisely the solar activity and the cosmic ray activity and the cloud activity but they also follow the tornado activity!
Thermodynamic RULES because it is causal to the bones!
Have a grate rest of your life trying to get people to believe in Global Warming!
I'll content myself with continuing to try to find the solutions and promoting the right step to take withOUT pretending to one or the other for two simple reasons:
YOUR RIGHT TO POLLUTE IS NON EXISTENT!
And Climatology is a science as much as MMe Irma and her esoteric buddies are scientists!
Sorry again!
Steph
That cause i'm french sorry!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is simple: if you want to believe the models and what the people that construct say then have at it. As for me I have a very inimate knowledge of the way that the models are constructed and work as well as what they can and cannot do and therefore I am going to question the modeled results until they reach the quality that I expect of my own work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUntil such time as the climate scientists can prove that they understand how the climate system works (meaning you have to know the basics to build reliable models) I personally believe that the models that they produce are nothing more that noise that is putting the cart in front of the horse.
We do NOT know what effect our actions have upon the climate system because we: (1) do not have a full understanding of how the system works and (2) we do not have enough temporal data to test models against anyhow (I could go on for hours about the issues inherent in evaluating temporal data sets that are not properly time shifted but that is another discussion all together). I personally think that it is kind of reckless to keep on going as we are but I also know that the effects of our actions are not understood. I actually think that we should be cutting down on emissions not because they will cause climate chaqnge but rather because they could.
Water is the main driver of the Earth's climate. Water in the form of oceans (with a salty character), water in the form of vapor (gassy character), water as fresh (green character because it interacts with the forests), water in aquifers (underworld character because it interacts with the lithosphere), and water as ice (cool character). All of these characteristics make up the complexity of our climate because of the different behavior that will come out of each of these as these reacts to solar radiation and the interactions with the elements of the planet Earth and with the biosphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with the debate is that scientists are claiming that atmospheric CO2 at 1/3 % is the driver or knob by which humans have altered the climate of the Earth. What science can help explain that an element that is less than one percent can alter the character and behavior of the 99.66%. The so called 98% of scientists have to be thorough in explaining how this can possibly happen. I read back my books in physics on the topics relating to thermodynamics and heat transfer I cannot find any. The 2% scientists who claim it is the clouds, I could not also accept it, because visible clouds do not make up the totally of atmospheric water.
It seems that scientists are looking for a single switch to turn climate on and off. The debate is ignoring the fact that the Earth's climate is jointly governed by many variables. Let me list some:
1. The sun and the planets, in combination create varying conditions that affect gravity and radiation (sunspots and related phenomenon).
2. The Earth's wobble that constantly changes the position of Earth's exposure to the Sun.
3. The swings from Ice Age to Thermal Maximum (I still do not know what really drives it), what I know from the reading of science books is that the last Ice Age is behind us for some 10,000 years, therefore, we are heading towards a Thermal Maximum, or that the Earth is into a long term warming process towards the heat build up maximum.
4. The biosphere is a complex system that interacts with water, CO2 and other elements.
5. Water with a changing character, who delivers disasters and catastrophes every time it changes its behavior character.
7. The Earth's solid sphere, as it erupts its volcanoes, fill up the atmosphere with dust and ash, shakes and shapes the land and oceans with quakes, and makes deserts with the changing wind patterns.
So kindly CO2 advocates how does the .3% of CO2 from human activity alter those patterns an cause the heat build up?
Water is the main driver of the Earth's climate. Water in the form of oceans (with a salty character), water in the form of vapor (gassy character), water as fresh (green character because it interacts with the forests), water in aquifers (underworld character because it interacts with the lithosphere), and water as ice (cool character). All of these characteristics make up the complexity of our climate because of the different behavior that will come out of each of these as these reacts to solar radiation and the interactions with the elements of the planet Earth and with the biosphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with the debate is that scientists are claiming that atmospheric CO2 at 1/3 % is the driver or knob by which humans have altered the climate of the Earth. What science can help explain that an element that is less than one percent can alter the character and behavior of the 99.66%. The so called 98% of scientists have to be thorough in explaining how this can possibly happen. I read back my books in physics on the topics relating to thermodynamics and heat transfer I cannot find any. The 2% scientists who claim it is the clouds, I could not also accept it, because visible clouds do not make up the totally of atmospheric water.
It seems that scientists are looking for a single switch to turn climate on and off. The debate is ignoring the fact that the Earth's climate is jointly governed by many variables. Let me list some:
1. The sun and the planets, in combination create varying conditions that affect gravity and radiation (sunspots and related phenomenon).
2. The Earth's wobble that constantly changes the position of Earth's exposure to the Sun.
3. The swings from Ice Age to Thermal Maximum (I still do not know what really drives it), what I know from the reading of science books is that the last Ice Age is behind us for some 10,000 years, therefore, we are heading towards a Thermal Maximum, or that the Earth is into a long term warming process towards the heat build up maximum.
4. The biosphere is a complex system that interacts with water, CO2 and other elements.
5. Water with a changing character, who delivers disasters and catastrophes every time it changes its behavior character.
7. The Earth's solid sphere, as it erupts its volcanoes, fill up the atmosphere with dust and ash, shakes and shapes the land and oceans with quakes, and makes deserts with the changing wind patterns.
So kindly CO2 advocates how does the .3% of CO2 from human activity alter those patterns an cause the heat build up?
RJ, there is no good evidence that negative feedback will dominate. If that were the case, the observed CO2 sensitivity in the 20th century should be less than the computed 1.2C no feedback CO2 sensitivity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExtrapolating the observed warming 0.5C and 74 ppm increase in CO2 will give you a CO2 sensitivity of 1.8C. This is higher than 1.2C no feedback CO2 sensitivity. It means the positive feedbacks dominated. Of course without the negative feedback of clouds, global temp. would be higher. The amount of water vapor in the air increased 4% in the last 40 yrs. That's equivalent to tripling CO2. Water vapor is still the dominant greenhouse gas.
A greenhouse gas like CO2 at 390ppm CAN alter the energy balance of the atmosphere a great deal BECAUSE around 99% of the rest of the atmosphere is transparent to the IR that the Earth emits. Then, when you take into account the positive feedbacks that Dr. Strangelove highlighted that WE ARE ALREADY SEEING, the effect CO2 is having on our climate is to destabilize a system that had been in relative balance for almost 10,000 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease see these articles for clarification:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas-intermediate.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions-intermediate.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect-advanced.htm
And the final nail in the coffin:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/CO2_is_a_trace_gas.html
If you don't trust the website, look through the peer-reviewed science that supports ALL of the information presented there.
Evosburgh, I wondered if that was the case, but I thought I would challenge you and find out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisApparently you do know something about modeling, but I think it is just wishful thinking on your part to believe that climate models have not received much scrutiny. Someone doing research receives better funding if they can prove that they understand the topic better than the next person; that creates an environment where they tend to scrutinize each other's work. Climate models are put through hindcasting tests; the parameters of the past are plugged in and the fit with observed history is evaluated. There are many models which fail this test; the ones that pass incorporate CO2 as a dominant forcing.
It will cost money to switch to alternatives, the sooner we start the transition, the less it will cost. The climate will continue to change rapidly until we quit burning fossil fuels.
But, you are like a carpenter who sees every problem as nail. Our primary understanding that more CO2 causes the earth to retain more heat is not based on models.
Gabriel, how did you get the figure 0.3% from the 287 ppm pre-industrial level of CO2 and the 393 ppm that it is now? I get about a 37% increase out of those figures. Also, you might consider that the vast majority of the atmosphere does not interact with longwave radiation, that water precipitates on earth and CO2 does not, and that the ppm of water vapor declines rapidly with altitude, and CO2 ppm does not. Also, you are kidding yourself if you think that researchers think only CO2 affects climate; it just happens to be the only thing changing in recent history.
Stephen, it is beyond my capacity to disentangle the things you have gotten right from the things you have gotten wrong.
From your first comment:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I have yet to see a Monte Carlo Analysis of the climate models (although if there is a reference I would like it) and without such an analysis I will not accept any results that have been produced."
There does not seem to be a shortage of these types of simulations:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=%2B%22Monte+Carlo%22+%2B%22climate+model%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
4,300 hits.
Undoubtedly there are some duplicates and mis-hits, but the first couple of pages worth looked like mostly valid hits to me. Finding a specific hit that would address your concerns is left as an exercise for the reader.
Clouds are NOT water vapor, they are collections of lots of very small droplets of liquid water... big difference. Water vapor is a gas, clouds are liquid water droplets too small to fall to earth due to gravity, until they get bigger and come down as rain. Water vapor is transparent to sunlight but absorbs infrared, a key characteristic of a greenhouse gas, similar to CO2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGetting back to the CLOUD experiment -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is an excellent discussion of the experiment, it's results (and their implications) at:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110824/full/news.2011.504.html
Be sure to read the comments following the article.
This may have been mentioned earlier here, so sorry if this is a repeat, but there is further discussion of CLOUD at:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/08/the-cerncloud-results-are-surprisingly-interesting/
This is in reply to sault and evosburgh.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe weight of elements is a factor. CO2 is heavier than air while water vapor is lighter than air. CO2 also sinks to the level of the ground to be used by plants and bacteria. While water vapor fall as rain, not all places have rain; that means not all water vapor fall with the rain. Over the last 10,000 years there was hardly any equilibrium as the retreat of the ice sheets from the last Ice Age was still continuing. If there was any equilibrium at all, it occurred possibly just before the 1800's. But then, the Earth was continually warming as the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere from the last Ice Age was increasing. It has to be considered that the atmosphere during the last Ice Age was dry as in Antarctica. As the amount of ice on the land decreases, the amount of moisture in the atmosphere is increased. And this moisture increase is continuing. Ice when melted is fresh water, it does not mix with the salty oceans, it stays as a thin layer on top of the salt water. It is the fresh water on top of the oceans that receives the radiation, and reacts by evaporating. All of the fresh water all go up to the atmosphere eventually. While there is precipitation, not all of the water that go up fall down again. The capacity of the atmosphere to hold waters is practically infinite (check the atmosphere of Venus). Moisture will stay up and get dispersed by the upper winds. It will fall only when it is collected in cloud build up caused by wind turbulence, and places of turbulence is not all over the surface of the planet, these are in convergence zones and in high mountains.
At 350 to 400 ppm, CO2 is still insignificant. It is not something that cannot be handled by a reversal of deforestation. If we bring back the forests all the concern over CO2 will be absorbed by the forests. Even if it is argued that the levels of CO2 have increased over the last century, but the primary event that is connected to this is the lost of the forests that has impaired the absorption side of the carbon cycle.
390 ppm of CO2 is not insignificant. The 0.5C warming in the last century is attributed to the increase in atmospheric CO2 which is accompanied by 4% increase in water vapor as positive feedback. This positive feedback is equivalent to 2.4 times increase in CO2 on a molar basis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReforestation cannot absorb all the 5.5 gigatons of CO2 that man emits every year. While plants absorb 121.8 gigatons of CO2 a year, soil and plant decay also release 121.6 gigatons. The net absorption is only 0.2 gigaton a year. You need to increase forest cover by 27 times to absorb 5.5 gigatons. That's more than the total land area of the earth since the present forest cover is about 40 million sq. km.
Correction: 121.6 gigatons include deforestation. The net CO2 absorption excluding deforestation is 1.8 gigatons a year. You need to increase forest cover by 3 times. Still unrealistic because that will cover 80% of total land area. You cannot reforest the urban centers, ice sheets, deserts, swamps and rocky mountains.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGabriel,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere do you get your (mis)information? As you go from sea level to the top of the atmosphere, CO2 concentration changes by as much as ~8 ppmv. That is not much change considering that the base level is approaching 400 ppmv. That information is not hard to find; please do some basic fact checking before broadcasting your opinion.
The rest is pretty laughable.
A thin layer of fresh water on the surface of the oceans?
Please walk down to the nearest sea shore, stick your tongue on the surface, and let us know if it tastes salty or not. Everyone who has every swum in the ocean is laughing at you.
Speaking of laughable...
What is the molecular weight of a CFC molecule?
Let's take a CFC-11, CCl3F; its molecular weight is 137. Compare that to CO2 at 48, and N2 at 28. Now, if gravity were enough to keep CO2 near the surface, how is it that a CFC molecule released at ground level can find its way to the ozone layer?
"It's like someone saying Newton is wrong," Dessler said. "ENSO is not caused by clouds." Well, if memory serves me correctly I believe that none other than Albert Einstein said that Newton was wrong, for example, the advance of the perihelion of Mercury and for that matter in the use of absolute and universal time. I don't know if Dessler is in error on the matter of ENSO but his metaphor is certainly poorly chosen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDessler has some things to answer. Criticisms of his methods have been raised by his cobbling together of two separate data sets. Apparently, each data set in it's entirety sshows nothing. Only when you take half of one and stitch it together to half of the other does his thesis pop out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd where have we heard that one before Michael (Hide the Decline) Mann?
Personally, I'll wait the five years that the CERN scientists say it will take to confirm their findings.
Oddly enough, I thnik the CERN researchers deserve a Nobel Prize on this one. In economics. They may have stopped the world from committing economic suicide.
And they deserve the prize far more for doing that than Al Gore did for his flim mockumentary, or President Obama did for appearing in "Being Barack Obama".
Having just finished reading the comments on this article and noting the extent to which egos and pride directed the debate, I (not a "climate scientist" nor a physical scientist or mathematician of any ilk) can only say, "We are so screwed."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are so many climate models being produced by climate scientists with such a large range of predictions, that 1 of them is always going to be right at 1 point in time. None of them, so far, have been able to completely match, however, apart from those that were produced yesterday, of course. It's easy to produce a model with enough variables and applying weighting factors which mirrors known data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course having lots of models and lots of predictions, you can always claim that you were right. It's like the magicians trick where he films himself correctly predicted 6 horses to win 6 races, only to reveal that he actually filmed himself saying all horses in all races had won, and then selectively edited.
The 2 best known models are the IPCC models and Hansen's 1988 model. None of these have managed to predict the future, which means these models are demonstrably incorrect. Without a working model, you don't have a feasible theory. This is why, climate scientists resort to personal abuse and cyber bullying.