General AGW discussion thread

[PraedSt]

The US produces 2X (or more) CO2 per person then the major European or Asian economic/industrial powers. If CO2 added as much cost as your seem to be claiming this would not be possible.
0.5* the CO2 output of the US is not negative.

Two of the most extreme examples in Europe, France and Switzerland, produce huge amounts of CO2. Europe, as a whole, produces millions of tonnes annually.

Moving to a carbon zero economy requires replacing all fossil fuels within an effective time span. Moving to a carbon negative economy also requires removing all the carbon we've put into the atmosphere; again within an effective time span.

You think this will be cheap?

[Demigrog]

You are quite simply mistaken.

There are multiple lines of evidence, independent of climate models, that show that manmade emissions are causing global warming. (http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm)


Interesting link. It states "There are multiple lines of evidence independent of climate models", and immediate follows that with a section with studies that estimate CO2 forcing using climate models. That is not empirical evidence. :)

The temperature record alone only supports at most a 1.5C/doubling CO2 forcing; that much is simple math. Climate models predict about 3C/doubling. The delay in the feedback mechanisms that account for the missing heat are entirely estimated by computer models--there is no empirical data involved.

In fact, looking at correlations between reconstructed solar irradiance and temperatures (http://www.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/image/Climate.gif), clearly there is only a 10-20 year lag between solar forcing and temperature response. Why would the response to CO2 forcing be any slower? Either climate models are over-estimating the time-response of CO2 forcing, or there is a big difference in the way solar and CO2 forcing affect feedbacks.

Anyway, I don't feel confident in the 3C consensus for CO2 forcing. I suspect it is closer to 1.5C. (which would mean CO2 is still a significant problem, but not require as aggressive emissions targets).

I think this is the crux of the political problem as well; AGW deniers won't admit that CO2 is a problem at all when it clearly is, and AGW evangelists (to make up a term) won't admit it isn't as bad as the worst-case scenarios they like to scare us with. :)

Anyway, I've got to get back to work (writing windfarm management software, ironically).

[PraedSt]

Correction...

He was asked for a scientific body...

I completely agree you: Stroller did not comply exactly with the request. But you were making an appeal to specific authority, and though he failed, he did do his best to comply. Please give him a break!

It's relatively easy to argue the case for AGW, I really don't see the need for such semantic one-up-manship.

"Show me a US climatologist who graduated from the University of Wisconsin on a Tuesady, who doesn't believe in AGW. Incidently, he mustn't have a criminal background."

"Er..."

"Can't can you? Ha!"

We've released miilions of tonnes of CO2 a year for many a year- CO2 that would not have been released otherwise. Fact.

CO2 is building up in the atmosphere. Fact.

You can't do something on that scale, that rapidly, and not expect repercussions and adjustments. Common sense.

Many of our best and brightest believe that this increase in CO2 will eventually lead to significant climate changes in the near future, including higher temperatures, higher sea levels, etc. You could call it a guess, but it's a highly educated guess. Good enough for me!

Case closed. :)

[lomiller1]

The temperature record alone only supports at most a 1.5C/doubling CO2 forcing; that much is simple math.


Actually, paleoclimate studies seem to be zeroing in at a number higher then 3 deg/doubling. Perhaps you are confusing the climate data with the warming effect of CO2 without any feedbacks, which is in the 1.0-1.5 deg range.



clearly there is only a 10-20 year lag between solar forcing and temperature response.

You can’t simply assume that solar forcing is the only thing occurring. Volcanic activity, CO2 and aerosol forcing all play a significant role in the period you are atrributing to solar activity.

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/publications/meehl_additivity.pdf


The delay in the feedback mechanisms that account for the missing heat are entirely estimated by computer models--there is no empirical data involved..

The heat capacity of the worlds oceans are a consequence of the specific heat of water and are does not depend on climate models in any way. Nor is there any “heat missing”, the oceans have been warming in exactly the way climate models predict.

[PraedSt]

I think this is the crux of the political problem as well; AGW deniers won't admit that CO2 is a problem at all when it clearly is, and AGW evangelists (to make up a term) won't admit it isn't as bad as the worst-case scenarios they like to scare us with. :)
You've hit the nail on the head for me. The middle ground seems to have been lost.

AGW deniers seem to lack common sense, as well as insist on 100% surety from scientists (not possible about the future), and unequivocal evidence (a bit difficult when the process has just begun).

On the other hand, I'm getting sick of AGW evangelists (good term!) who blame anything and everything on global warming, and insist that overturning the very thing that runs our economy will be easy-peasy.

"I saw a chipmunk poop on our lawn today. They never do that! Global warming!" :rolleyes:

[lomiller1]

I completely agree you: Stroller did not comply exactly with the request. But you were making an appeal to specific authority, and though he failed, he did do his best to comply.

Not me personally, but that's beside the point. Appeal to legitimate authority is a valid argument form. Indeed, for people without significant personal experience in the field in question, it’s one of the most important argument forms. The fact that there is a very long list of prestigious science organizations who have explicitly said climate is changing due to human activity and few if any who disagree is a significant detail in this discussion.

[Trakar]

I'm not sure I'd go that far. Lindzen was a fairly prominent climatologist, but he hasn’t published much in this century. His Iris hypothesis would fit with radiative physics, but it’s got some serious problems, not the least of which is that it’s predictions have not stood up to testing.


"Was" being the operative word in your opening sentence. And prior "prominence" is a poor substitute for proficient and rigorous in his application of knowledge and understanding. His failings and flawed exhibitions scientific contortionism are, as stated previously, "legendary" in some circles. I'd be happy to direct you to some deconstructions of some of the more eggregious examples if you like, but a quick search of his name at RealClimate, Open Mind, or any of the more respectable physics and climate science blogs will quickly turn up the multiple examples of what I'm talking about.

More to the point, however, when several of these types of proposals (Lindzen's Iris theory and Spencer's modifications) were first brought up, they existed largely within the deficit of knowledge and understanding at that time, and were thus plausible and reasonable avenues of further exploration and discussion. Long since, however, they have failed the test of peer-review. Subsequent evidences and understandings have highlighted their failings, and yet they continue to be trotted out in quick and often self-cotradictory succession by those who seemingly don't understand or care what these people are proposing so long as they have a degree and are disagreeing with the Mainstream scientific perspective.

Its like shooting ducks in a carnival, no matter how many you knock down, they will be cycled around, reset and run through again and again, regardless of whether they all disagree with each other as much or more than they disagree with the Mainstream Scientific perspective, regardless of how many times the flaws and errors are pointed out, its a matter of flailing at those you disagree with until they tire of facing the same discredited and disprooven arguments again and again, and simply quit responding.

I'm perfectly willing to discuss any aspect of this topic, but once I recognize the above type behaviors in a poster, I most often lose interest in any further interaction with them.

[PraedSt]

Sorry if this is the wrong thread, but what's the consensus on biomass? I came across this today:

Wood is the new coal (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a8qIgRjqKhWY&refer=exclusive)

Wood is becoming a hot commodity in a new low-carbon world.

Power companies are burning more trees because the renewable fuel can be cheaper than coal and ignited without needing permits to release carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

Are these trees already dead? If not, do they account for the CO2 that they would have removed in they hadn't been cut down? I presume so...

So yeah, I know, the numbers sort of make sense, but somehow burning trees just seems a bit daft to me. :wall:

[PraedSt]

Okay. After investing in energy efficiency at home and personal transport and zero emission electrical generation, instead of using the money from their energy savings to go carbon negative at home, the family start to use it at work. Insulating the office building, putting solar cells on the roof, buying zero emission green energy, installing a cogeneration heat and electricity fuel cell to power industrial processes on the factory floor, purchasing fuel efficient hybrids for companies or plug in hybrids. Buying a teleconferencing system instead of taking business flights and so on. Of course people will have to make a lot of these purchases as a group. Another way to go about it would be to give every worker $10,000 with the promise they use it to work towards making their workplace carbon negative.

Now the whole spiel about giving people $10,000 to work towards going carbon negative was just to show that it doesn't take a huge investment to dramatically cut carbon emissions over time. It's not some kind of serious suggestion. But seriously, it does not take a huge amount of money per person to reduce carbon emissions by over 80% over a period of two decades. Generally economic studies estimate it will cost around a tenth of a percent of GDP. If average US economic growth is 2.7% then that will be enough to slow it to 2.6%. Current US GDP per capita is about $45,800. If real returns are five percent then an investment of $1,000 per American should be enough to pay for the United States to be gradually decarbonized. Now that's not cheap, that's 300 billion dollars. You could go to mars with that sort of money. But considering what will be gained in return, a more stable climate, it's a pretty good deal. And the money doesn't have to be paid up front. $50 a year should be fine. (Note that cutting carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 appears to be what's required to keep global warming below 2 degrees. It won't protect us from all harm from global warming, but if we cut by less than that things will be worse.)
Oops! Sorry, didn't see this.

Not what I meant. I was trying to show you that 100% of production and distribution requires energy, and a good proportion of that requires high power outputs.

Pretty much everything can be traced back to heat engine, and most of those are run on fossil fuels.

Building a home or an office? You need a furnace. I'd like to see someone make a glass plate with a fuel cell.

Wind turbines? Fossil fuels to melt the steel.

Solar panels? How do you make the wafers? Fossil fuels to melt silicon.

Eating out at McDonalds? Gas powered cooking!

Chemical, industrial or otherwise? Fossil fuels to boil water.

Teleconferencing? Fossil fuels for electricity.

All the goods in your local Walmart? Arrived with the help of petrol engines and huge gas turbines.

Face it: Hybrids, solar panels on your roof, teleconferencing, wind farms, wave farms, etc- don't cut the mustard.


As for your second para:

1. Money circulates. Spending $10,000 on X means spending $10,000 less on Y. Fact of life!

2. The reason growth will decline is not that it will cost money to shift from fossil fuels to other sources (see 1). Growth is growth in output per head. It will decline (initially, and for how long I don't know) because you are substituting an efficient process for an inefficient process (at current technology). You will produce less output per head, or at the very least less output than you would have done if you'd carried on using coal plants, gas plants, turbines, petrol engines, etc....

And that's my last word on this topic. Phew! :)

[Demigrog]

Actually, paleoclimate studies seem to be zeroing in at a number higher then 3 deg/doubling. Perhaps you are confusing the climate data with the warming effect of CO2 without any feedbacks, which is in the 1.0-1.5 deg range.

Like I said, simple math here. Mean temperatures have only risen 0.5C-0.7C while CO2 rose from around 280ppm to around 380 ppm; that corresponds to a CO2 forcing of around 1.5C. For that to be all CO2, there has to be very little forcing from solar variance, other greenhouse gasses, direct warming by human activity, land use changes, and local weather pattern changes--or at least a combination of negative forcing like aerosol pollution to offset these other forcings.




You can’t simply assume that solar forcing is the only thing occurring. Volcanic activity, CO2 and aerosol forcing all play a significant role in the period you are atrributing to solar activity.

Clearly there is high correlation between solar forcing and temperature, excluding the period since 1970. The fact that the correlation is so strong even with all of the other factors makes it more compelling, not less. So, only the warming since 1970 is anomalous--which is logical, when you consider the combination of rising CO2 and reductions in aerosols. So, prior to then the correlation between solar forcing and temperature aught to be very instructive in estimating the temperature response to CO2 forcing.



The heat capacity of the worlds oceans are a consequence of the specific heat of water and are does not depend on climate models in any way. Nor is there any “heat missing”, the oceans have been warming in exactly the way climate models predict.
The question is how long it takes for the ocean temperature to reach a new equilibrium. The 3C+ forcing predictions require that time constant to be very long--many decades. If the time constant is short (at least for the major components, it is really a combination of many feedbacks), then we've already seen the bulk of the temperature increases for the existing CO2, and only have to worry about future CO2 increases.

So, now we have to consider how accurate our ocean temperature models with huge thermal inertia time constants are. Certainly I'm an amateur, but I can look at data like the solar irradiance / surface temperature graph I linked earlier and reasonably observe that A) solar irradiance changes caused temperature changes with a good degree of correlation, and B) it took about 15 years for temperatures to catch up with irradiance changes.

In fact, it should be possible to constrain the thermal inertia time constant from this kind of data. There is some peer reviewed research in this area. Dr. Stephen Schwartz et al (http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/abstracts/HeatCapacity.html) is particularly interesting, though they made a calculation mistake that hurt their credibility. The correction (http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/abstracts/HeatCapacityResponse.html) brought their CO2 forcing estimate more in line with the IPCC (1.9 +- 1.0K), but their time constant calculation (8.5 +- 2.5 years) is way shorter than others (Hansen for example) use to establish their much higher CO2 forcing numbers. To quote from the correction, "The conclusion that global mean surface temperature is in near equilibrium with the applied forcing continues to hold."

Edit to add: I don't want to misrepresent Dr. Schwartz' position, of course. His primary research is in Aerosol forcing, and he has publicly stated his concerns about AGW, especially in light of aerosols ability to mask the CO2 forcing signal. He has stated his support of the IPCC report's range of 2C-4.5C for CO2 forcing, even if some of his research points to the lower end.

[Trakar]

Interesting link. It states "There are multiple lines of evidence independent of climate models", and immediate follows that with a section with studies that estimate CO2 forcing using climate models. That is not empirical evidence. :)


Empirical evidence - 1 : originating in or based on observation or experience <empirical data> 2 : relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory <an empirical basis for the theory> 3 : capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment

Evidences consisting of results that are capable of being verified through independent reprodcution/replication and are demonstraded to have direct relevence and connection to the issue of concern/study are Empirical.

The section immediately following the linked statement does not refer to models of climate, it refers to hard data collected from over 300 reporting stations in 66 countries (http://gaw2.kishou.go.jp/wdcgg.html) indicating a rise in CO2 levels in our atmosphere, and a specific study (http://www.bgc.mpg.de/service/iso_gas_lab/publications/PG_WB_IJMS.pdf)which demonstrates how the ratios and volumes of isotopic CO2 in our atmosphere are precisely correlated to the open-cycle combustion of carbon fuels.

It then goes on to discuss how CO2 causes warming and verifies this through a series of studies that display model-independent assessments:



Annan 2006 (http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/GRL_sensitivity.pdf)uses a variety of independent methods and results from many studies to narrow climate sensitivity to around 2.5 to 3.5°C.
Tung 2007 (http://www.amath.washington.edu/research/articles/Tung/journals/solar-jgr.pdf)calculates climate sensitivity to between 2.3 to 4.1°C using a model-independent analysis of observations.
These studies, using a variety of independent methods studying different datasets, estimate a climate sensitivity around 3.0 degrees. More on climate sensitivity... (http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=115)


(rest at site)

So I'm not sure where you are deriving this interpretation form?



The temperature record alone only supports at most a 1.5C/doubling CO2 forcing; that much is simple math.


This presumes much, and you offer no support for that conclusion.
For instance one of the assumptions it relies upon is that it assumes CO2 is the only postive forcing factor involved, that there are no negative forcing factors and that all other variables in the climate equations are steady and without fluctuation or variance over the period of consideration. This set of assumptions is demonstrably false.

[Stroller]

PraedSt, thankyou for your measured and intelligent contribution to this thread.

[Stroller]

Like I said, simple math here. Mean temperatures have only risen 0.5C-0.7C while CO2 rose from around 280ppm to around 380 ppm; that corresponds to a CO2 forcing of around 1.5C. For that to be all CO2, there has to be very little forcing from solar variance, other greenhouse gasses, direct warming by human activity, land use changes, and local weather pattern changes--or at least a combination of negative forcing like aerosol pollution to offset these other forcings.



Clearly there is high correlation between solar forcing and temperature, excluding the period since 1970. The fact that the correlation is so strong even with all of the other factors makes it more compelling, not less. So, only the warming since 1970 is anomalous--which is logical, when you consider the combination of rising CO2 and reductions in aerosols. So, prior to then the correlation between solar forcing and temperature aught to be very instructive in estimating the temperature response to CO2 forcing.


The question is how long it takes for the ocean temperature to reach a new equilibrium. The 3C+ forcing predictions require that time constant to be very long--many decades. If the time constant is short (at least for the major components, it is really a combination of many feedbacks), then we've already seen the bulk of the temperature increases for the existing CO2, and only have to worry about future CO2 increases.

So, now we have to consider how accurate our ocean temperature models with huge thermal inertia time constants are. Certainly I'm an amateur, but I can look at data like the solar irradiance / surface temperature graph I linked earlier and reasonably observe that A) solar irradiance changes caused temperature changes with a good degree of correlation, and B) it took about 15 years for temperatures to catch up with irradiance changes.

In fact, it should be possible to constrain the thermal inertia time constant from this kind of data. There is some peer reviewed research in this area. Dr. Stephen Schwartz et al (http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/abstracts/HeatCapacity.html) is particularly interesting, though they made a calculation mistake that hurt their credibility. The correction (http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/abstracts/HeatCapacityResponse.html) brought their CO2 forcing estimate more in line with the IPCC (1.9 +- 1.0K), but their time constant calculation (8.5 +- 2.5 years) is way shorter than others (Hansen for example) use to establish their much higher CO2 forcing numbers. To quote from the correction, "The conclusion that global mean surface temperature is in near equilibrium with the applied forcing continues to hold."

Edit to add: I don't want to misrepresent Dr. Schwartz' position, of course. His primary research is in Aerosol forcing, and he has publicly stated his concerns about AGW, especially in light of aerosols ability to mask the CO2 forcing signal. He has stated his support of the IPCC report's range of 2C-4.5C for CO2 forcing, even if some of his research points to the lower end.

Nir Shaviv's recent paper on oceans and solar forcing modulated by clouds is very illuminating. I referenced it fully much earlier in the thread.

[Trakar]

I completely agree you: Stroller did not comply exactly with the request. But you were making an appeal to specific authority, and though he failed, he did do his best to comply. Please give him a break!


He did not attempt to comply, he tried to sidestep the issue and palm off a completely different category of andcharacter of response as though it were an adequate response to the challenge.



It's relatively easy to argue the case for AGW, I really don't see the need for such semantic one-up-manship.

"Show me a US climatologist who graduated from the University of Wisconsin on a Tuesady, who doesn't believe in AGW. Incidently, he mustn't have a criminal background."

"Er..."

"Can't can you? Ha!"


all rouge ichy strawmen aside, he was presented with a specific and legitimate challenge to present support for any one of the multiple and mostly self-contradicting anti-AGW arguments as representative of mainstream scientific understanding, he has yet to present any evidence indicating that there is any support for any of these proposals among the national or international mainstream scientific organizations of standing.

I am simply asking Stroller and others to demonstrate rigourous and verifiable support for their claims and assertions, that is not a standard that should be considered too high in any science oriented forum.

[Trakar]

There are some responses appearing in between my responses to other posts, this means some duplication of requests and counter requests, I'm going to give things a chance to settle down a bit and then I will go through and try to respond where apprpriate, hopefully with less "crossing in transit."

So far, the skimming, however seems to indicate nothing much new, just more of the same old ducks popping back up after they were knocked down the last time around.

[PraedSt]

all rouge ichy strawmen aside...
I was hoping you wouldn't notice. :D

Anyway, I said I was staying out from arguing from now on, and I will.

All I can say is I'm perfectly happy with what climatologists have put out so far, even though I'm aware of the limitations of using models and predicting the future. And I fully respect their right to change and improve their models as time passes and more evidence comes in.

But I wish some of the hyperbole and evangelism from both sides would stop!

[lomiller1]

Like I said, simple math here. Mean temperatures have only risen 0.5C-0.7C while CO2 rose from around 280ppm to around 380 ppm; that corresponds to a CO2 forcing of around 1.5C.



There are a few mistakes with that calculation. First, we haven’t seen the full warming from the current 390 ppm of CO2, second it ignores the effect of aerosols, which have a strong but short lived cooling effect that is overlaid on top of the warming from CO2. Aerosols may be cover up as much as 1 deg C of the current warming from CO2, but they only have a lifespan of ~10 years so unless production grows exponentially the CO2 will always dominate.




Clearly there is high correlation between solar forcing and temperature, excluding the period since 1970.


There is also a high correlation with anthropogenic forcing over that period. You should realize that the scales in your plot were selected specifically to make the correlation seem visually greater then it is.





The question is how long it takes for the ocean temperature to reach a new equilibrium.


Consider this. The increase in solar activity between the late 1880’s and the 1950 is about 0.1%. Without significant positive feedback amplification this only injects enough energy into the atmosphere to warm it and the top 100m of the ocean by ~0.05 deg per decade. It would take 2 decades just to rise above the 0.1 deg nose threshold.

[Demigrog]

So I'm not sure where you are deriving this interpretation form?

You're right, I didn't read the links and they were not the kind of papers I thought they were. I'd read the Tung et al article before, and I'm skeptical of using short-term or periodic responses to estimate climate response; the longer term feedbacks are not present, and may significantly alter the estimated ranges on both ends (though I'd say probably upwards, which doesn't support my 1.5C hypotheis. :) )




This presumes much, and you offer no support for that conclusion.
For instance one of the assumptions it relies upon is that it assumes CO2 is the only postive forcing factor involved, that there are no negative forcing factors and that all other variables in the climate equations are steady and without fluctuation or variance over the period of consideration. This set of assumptions is demonstrably false.
Forgive my lack of detail, I clarified somewhat in my follow up post. It is also a "back of the envelope" calculation; however my point is merely that the total forcings have to add up to something that matches the historical temperature record--and 3C for CO2 doubling either requires a lot of negative forcing or a really large thermal inertia.

[Demigrog]

There are a few mistakes with that calculation. First, we haven’t seen the full warming from the current 390 ppm of CO2, second it ignores the effect of aerosols, which have a strong but short lived cooling effect that is overlaid on top of the warming from CO2. Aerosols may be cover up as much as 1 deg C of the current warming from CO2, but they only have a lifespan of ~10 years so unless production grows exponentially the CO2 will always dominate.

Posting simultaneously is a pain; I just clarified that in a follow up.

Edit to add: Actually, you are quoting my clarification, but leaving out the part where I say the exact same thing you're saying. :rolleyes:




There is also a high correlation with anthropogenic forcing over that period. You should realize that the scales in your plot were selected specifically to make the correlation seem visually greater then it is.

Actually no, the correlation is very well established statistically (ie read the Max Planck Institute site that the graph is on), and I'm mostly interested in the correlation prior to anthropogenic forcing becoming significant.




Consider this. The increase in solar activity between the late 1880’s and the 1950 is about 0.1%. Without significant positive feedback amplification this only injects enough energy into the atmosphere to warm it and the top 100m of the ocean by ~0.05 deg per decade. It would take 2 decades just to rise above the 0.1 deg nose threshold.
I'm not one of the nutters trying to argue solar forcing is causing global warming; I'm only interested in calculating temperature response to known levels of forcing. I've been searching for peer-reviewed studies on this aspect without much luck (bearing in mind I have a day job). Similar studies have been done, like the Tung et al article mentioned above (which looked at temperature response to solar cycle, whereas I want to see the same thing with the reconstructed solar irradiance on a longer scale).

[lomiller1]

Read the paper I linked in post #1254 for details on how much warming can be attributed to solar activity and how much can be attributed to other factors.

[Demigrog]

Read the paper I linked in post #1254 for details on how much warming can be attributed to solar activity and how much can be attributed to other factors.

You're missing my point; there is some debate over the thermal inertia time constant in global climate models (ie my earlier post (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-42.html#post1500157)). As a hobby I'm looking for papers that independently establish CO2 forcing levels. One area that occurred to me was to empirically examine temperature response to solar variations, similar method to the Tung et al (http://www.amath.washington.edu/research/articles/Tung/journals/solar-jgr.pdf) paper. The response to CO2 forcing should be roughly the same as solar forcing per W/m^2. This would be a model independent measurement of CO2 forcing that would take all feedbacks into account. I'd be surprised if there wasn't a paper somewhere on the subject, I just haven't found it yet. I also want to know the time constant for temperatures to reach equilibrium after a change in solar forcing. That would be highly relevant to the question of thermal inertia and how much warming is "in the pipeline" for existing CO2 levels, which could in turn mean CO2 forcing is "merely" 1.5C-2.5C instead of 3C. Not exactly ATM, just the lower end of the mainstream range.

[HenrikOlsen]

Very objectionable. Your post has been reported to the moderators.
Stroller, this post is a violation of rule 16, do not again comment on reports made.
This is an official warning, next step up is suspension.

[HenrikOlsen]

Sorry if this is the wrong thread, but what's the consensus on biomass? I came across this today:

Wood is the new coal (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a8qIgRjqKhWY&refer=exclusive)

Are these trees already dead? If not, do they account for the CO2 that they would have removed in they hadn't been cut down? I presume so...

So yeah, I know, the numbers sort of make sense, but somehow burning trees just seems a bit daft to me. :wall:
Not really, they'll die eventually anyway and when they do they'll rot and release the same amount of CO2 as they would if burned, so by burning them instead of letting them rot you get to replace some fossil coal that would otherwise have been burned, which means less total CO2 in the air than would have been it it had simply rotted.
A mature forest is essentially CO2 neutral as there's alway as much rotting as there's growing, the way to make it absorb CO2 is to keep it young by removing biomass.

Living trees only remove CO2 temporarily and only to the extent that they increase in mass, so the optimal is actually to get the while young, which is when they increase the most and the most CO2 is removed.

In Denmark the optimal way to get biomass was found to be willow trees, harvested every three years.
That is where the total biomass harvested per area per year is best, and willow has the added advantage that it'll grow in soil that can't be used for food production, either because it's waterlogged or too salty.

[Joe Durnavich]

Joe Durnavich, and anyone else who is interested, here is an update on EU carbon trading:

http://www.eea.europa.eu/pressroom/newsreleases/2009-greenhouse-inventory-report

The EU's emissions have dropped 9.3% below 1990 levels and they are on track to meet their Kyoto treaty commitments. The current carbon price is 15.21 Euros a ton.

If I am interpreting the graphs and tables right, most of the change occurred early in the 1990s long before the emissions trading scheme was put in place in late 2002.

The report attributes some of the decrease to:
"The use of fossil fuels (i.e. oil, gas and coal) decreased further (– 10.1 %), particularly in households, mainly due to a lower number of heating degree days. Germany reported the highest emission decrease (– 22.9 %), as a result of a warmer winter, meaning fewer days requiring heating (– 7.1 %); a fuel tax increase in 2007, which encouraged accrual of stocks in 2006; and a sharp increase in nominal gas prices for households in 2007."Public electricty and heat production showed a substantial increase between 2006 and 2007.

I don't get the impression from the report that governmental measures were the dominant factor. Nor do I get the impression that it was inexpensive since fuel price increases were responsible for some of it. Heck, if warmer winters help, I'll gas up the SUV and take a few spins around the block.

Edit to Add: Between 1997 and 2004, US emissions grew slower than 75% of the Kyoto signers. And this is with deadbeats like me falling asleep with the TV on and my killer 300-watt halogen light that you will have to pry from my cold, dead hands in the quest to save the planet. I suspect that this lends weight to the notion that wealthier nations tend to become more efficient over time. I worry that the new cap-and-trade proposals work by reducing wealth rather than increasing it.

US emissions grow slower than 75% of Kyoto signers (http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/12/kyoto_schmyoto.html)

[Ronald Brak]

Oops! Sorry, didn't see this.

Not what I meant. I was trying to show you that 100% of production and distribution requires energy, and a good proportion of that requires high power outputs.

Pretty much everything can be traced back to heat engine, and most of those are run on fossil fuels.

Building a home or an office? You need a furnace. I'd like to see someone make a glass plate with a fuel cell.

Wind turbines? Fossil fuels to melt the steel.

Solar panels? How do you make the wafers? Fossil fuels to melt silicon.

Eating out at McDonalds? Gas powered cooking!

Chemical, industrial or otherwise? Fossil fuels to boil water.

Teleconferencing? Fossil fuels for electricity.

All the goods in your local Walmart? Arrived with the help of petrol engines and huge gas turbines.

Face it: Hybrids, solar panels on your roof, teleconferencing, wind farms, wave farms, etc- don't cut the mustard.

I don't understand what point you are trying to make here. Are you saying that because we use a lot of fossil fuels we can't use less fossil fuels? If you are that's like saying because Australians drink a lot of beer they can't drink less beer.

You list a number of things that you say won't cut the mustard, among them wind farms. Are you suggesting that the construction of a wind turbine will emit as much CO2 as the construction and use of coal capacity capacity producing the same number of kilowatt-hours? If so, that's not the case, for then one of the wind turbines on Star Fish hill not far from where I am now would have required at least 30,000 tons of coal to build. That represents a cube of coal about 27 meters across,or to put it another way, a cube about nine stories high.

You say hybrids don't cut the mustard either. Do you think that if a person replaces a car that gets 10 km per liter with a hybrid that gets 30 kilometers per liter they won't reduce their CO2 emissions compared to replacing it with another car that gets 10 km to the liter?


1. Money circulates. Spending $10,000 on X means spending $10,000 less on Y. Fact of life!

Money does tend to circulate, but I don't see why this would prevent people from reducing carbon emissions.


2. The reason growth will decline is not that it will cost money to shift from fossil fuels to other sources (see 1). Growth is growth in output per head. It will decline (initially, and for how long I don't know) because you are substituting an efficient process for an inefficient process (at current technology). You will produce less output per head, or at the very least less output than you would have done if you'd carried on using coal plants, gas plants, turbines, petrol engines, etc....

I take it you are saying that switching away from fossil fuels will cost money. We agree on this and I have mentioned this in my posts.

To provide some perspective on costs, last year people in the United States spent under $200 billion on generating (not distributing) electricity. It was about 1.3% of GDP or $600 per American. So, just as an example, and note I'm not saying this is going to happen, if electricity wholesalers raised their prices by 10% to pay for the cost of gradually decarbonizing, then the the price increase would be about $60 per year per American.

[Trakar]

(...)
Forgive my lack of detail, I clarified somewhat in my follow up post. It is also a "back of the envelope" calculation; however my point is merely that the total forcings have to add up to something that matches the historical temperature record--and 3C for CO2 doubling either requires a lot of negative forcing or a really large thermal inertia.


Or, a mixture of both, which is actually what the evidence seems to indicate, which is why the "simple math" answers to such complex system issues rarely provides much useful insight into the mechanics of the situation.

The danger of the extremely large thermal inertia is that once it begins to swing, it is very difficult to reverse, and one of the reasons most who study the problem say that even if we completely stopped all anthropogenic CO2 emissions today and could freeze atmospheric CO2 ratios at their present levels (both of which are "magic wand" fantasies), the average temperature would continue to rise (albeitly at a gradually declining rate of increase) for much of a century.

Most of the damage due our environment and civilization as a result of actions already taken and CO2 already emitted, lies in our future, and yet we keep pushing harder on the accelerator, steadily increasing the rates of emissions, building up the toll, it seems both maniacal and suicidal, perhaps a fitting proof of Fermi's Paradox, there a few generations ago we were all afraid it would be the actinic flashes and hot isotopic poisons of big boy toys and bad tempered territorial brawls that would spell the major resetting or end of technological civilization, the potential of climate change makes global thermonuclear war look minor in comparison. The transitional growing pains from a level 0 to a level 1 civilization are apparently much bigger than Kardashev adequately portrayed!

[Ronald Brak]

Two of the most extreme examples in Europe, France and Switzerland, produce huge amounts of CO2. Europe, as a whole, produces millions of tonnes annually.

Well, yes. One one hand France and Switzerland produce large amounts of CO2. I wouldn't want their yearly production suddenly appear in my town. But on the other hand France only emits about 6% as much CO2 as the United States and Switzerland emits less than one percent.

Here is a list of countries by CO2 emissions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

Per capita France emits about 30% as much CO2 as the United States and Switzerland emits about 27%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_ capita


Moving to a carbon zero economy requires replacing all fossil fuels within an effective time span. Moving to a carbon negative economy also requires removing all the carbon we've put into the atmosphere; again within an effective time span.

Stabilizing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will require cutting emissions by about 80%. The level of CO2 will stabilize because natural carbon sinks should be able to absorb the reduced level of emissions. Fossil fuel use will need to be reduced but not eliminated. If done by 2050 this should limit warming to about 2 degrees. This amount of warming is still enough to have major effects, but it won't be nearly as bad as three degrees of warming, or four or seven.

Moving to a zero carbon economy doesn't mean all fossil fuel use has to be eliminated. Fossil fuels burned in say airplanes could be balanced by carbon removed from the atmosphere elsewhere. This may be easier and less expensive than trying to eliminate all fossil fuel use.

Going carbon negative doesn't mean all carbon we have added to the atmosphere has to be removed, just some. Just how much we want to removed can be decided if and when we get to that point.


You think this will be cheap?

On one hand I definitely don't think it will be cheap. It will cost around the world around $11 trillion, quite possibly more, to cut CO2 emissions by 80+%. But done over two decades the cost per year is not high as a percentage of world GDP, around 0.1% a year. And compared to the cost of not doing anything it's a bargain. Already global warming is having many negative effects (I would appreciate it no one tries to tell me it's not, I'm Australian) and it's only going to get worse.

I do think that going carbon negative and removing large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere would be extremely expensive if there are no significant improvements in technology. But we are a long way from that point so I won't go into it further right now.

[Ari Jokimaki]

Like I said, simple math here. Mean temperatures have only risen 0.5C-0.7C while CO2 rose from around 280ppm to around 380 ppm; that corresponds to a CO2 forcing of around 1.5C. For that to be all CO2, there has to be very little forcing from solar variance, other greenhouse gasses, direct warming by human activity, land use changes, and local weather pattern changes--or at least a combination of negative forcing like aerosol pollution to offset these other forcings.
In this thread I have previously pointed out these papers having to do with this issue:

Lean & Rind (2008) (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Lean_Rind.pdf) show that aerosols indeed have strong role (see fig. 2d) in masking the effect of greenhouse gases.

Hofmann et al. (2006) (http://research.eeescience.utoledo.edu/lees/papers_PDF/Hofmann_2006_Tellus.pdf) show that of greenhouse gases, only CO2 has had strong role in increasing global temperature between 1979-2004.

[Stroller]

Lindzen was a fairly prominent climatologist, but he hasn’t published much in this century.

Here's a link to his latest presentation given just a couple of days ago.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/richard-lindzen-3.ppt

The graphs towards the end are telling, where the model's results are seriously at variance with the observed data, leading to a serious overestimation of climate sensitivity. The observational data suggests a climate sensitivity of around 0.5C per doubling of co2, rather than the 1.5-5C suggested by the models.

[PraedSt]

A mature forest is essentially CO2 neutral as there's alway as much rotting as there's growing, the way to make it absorb CO2 is to keep it young by removing biomass.
Living trees only remove CO2 temporarily and only to the extent that they increase in mass, so the optimal is actually to get the while young, which is when they increase the most and the most CO2 is removed.
Good two points.
I thought of something else. Increasing the rate of tree cutting means you have to increase the rate of tree planting (if done correctly). This means that at any one time, the total stock of alive trees will be larger. A winner!
So yeah, this is one of those things that intuitively seem daft, but actually seems to work. Like quantum electrodynamics. :lol:

[PraedSt]

...
Let's agree to disagree.

[Ronald Brak]

I don't get the impression from the report that governmental measures were the dominant factor. Nor do I get the impression that it was inexpensive since fuel price increases were responsible for some of it.

You can see that people respond to prices so why would putting a price on carbon emissions, which is what carbon trading does not have an effect? (Note an increase in fossil fuel prices will push down the cost of carbon allowances in a carbon trading scheme as less CO2 is emitted.


I worry that the new cap-and-trade proposals work by reducing wealth rather than increasing it.

A portion of people's efforts will go into reducing CO2 emissions. This will result in a small decrease in the amount of effort that can go into other areas. But the amount is very small, about a tenth of a percent of GDP. And since unchecked global warming has the potential to inflict massive amounts of damage this expense acts to protect wealth. We will be richer in the future if we cut greenhouse gas emissions than if we don't.

I don't see any reason why carbon trading would destroy wealth that was needed to adapt to it. There was an oil price spike not too long ago and rather than detroying people's ability to adapt it spurred the development of hybrid and electric cars and convinced many people to give up on buying fuel guzzelers. It took a financial crises rather than oil prices to tank the economy (although the high oil prices didn't help). The effect of the carbon trading scheme will be much, much less and won't destroy the ability to change.

[Stroller]

For anyone interested in a counterpoint to the IPCC AR4 report,
the NIPCC report is out and available in pdf formt here. (8 Meg download)

http://www.heartland.org/publications/NIPCC%20report/PDFs/NIPCC%20Final.pdf

[Gillianren]

Here's a link to his latest presentation given just a couple of days ago.

Was it peer reviewed?

[jlhredshift]

Open Access article in GSA Today on sea level rise.

Back to the future: Greenland's contribution to sea-level change (http://www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1130%2FGSATG40A.1)

Abstract:


The Greenland Ice Sheet is presently making a significant contribution to global sea-level rise. Predictions for the future suggest that this will continue and likely accelerate during the remainder of this century. However, a comprehensive understanding of ongoing mass balance flux has only become possible in the last decade or so, following the development of satellite and other new observational technologies. As a result, it is not clear whether the patterns observed today are typical of the past or not. In this paper, I review predictions for Greenland's contribution to future sea-level rise and then place these estimates in the context of the evidence for change during the twentieth century, the last few millennia, and the Eemian interglacial. There is evidence that the ice sheet responds sensitively to changes in conditions in the adjacent North Atlantic, leading to a hypothesis that annual and decadal fluctuations in Atlantic air and sea surface temperatures shape the ice sheet's contribution to global sea-level change. The recent loss of ice needs also to be seen in the context of an overall increase in ice sheet size and the related advance of the ice sheet margin by tens of kilometers during the past few millennia. I conclude by arguing that in order to better constrain the role of the Greenland Ice Sheet in future sea level, improvements in our understanding of present-day change in the ice sheet must be matched by equal strides in understanding how the ice sheet evolved in the past.

My Bold

That is all I ask for.

[lomiller1]

Here's a link to his latest presentation given just a couple of days ago.

And you don't have a problem with him running arround presenting things he doesn't think are good enough to publish?

[Stroller]

And you don't have a problem with him running arround presenting things he doesn't think are good enough to publish?

He is one of the most eminent climatologists in the world. I think he is happy to have his work reviewed by the peers he presents it to. I for one am pleased I can read his work without having to give money to one of the journals operating the pal review system.

[lomiller1]

He is one of the most eminent climatologists in the world.

I’ve lost track of how many people you’ve held up as “preeminent experts” simply because they were saying something you want to be true.


I think he is happy to have his work reviewed by the peers he presents it to.

Unfortunately those “peers” seem to be bloggers rather then scientists. Imo Lindzen is showing all the signs of “ageing scientist syndrome” where a once respected scientist can’t let go of their failed hypothesis long after mainstream science has passed them by.

[lomiller1]

in other news, so much for arctic sea ice recovery...

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png

[Ronald Brak]

He is one of the most eminent climatologists in the world.

No, he really is not. He has done valuable work in the past but he is definitely not highly regarded now.

[HenrikOlsen]

I thought of something else. Increasing the rate of tree cutting means you have to increase the rate of tree planting (if done correctly).
That depends on the trees, eg. for willow and hazel, cutting every three years results in an essentially coppiced (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing) forest where new planting isn't needed as growth happens from the old stumps.

[Stroller]

in other news, so much for arctic sea ice recovery...

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png

The satellite the NSIDC has been using is borked. Try the DMI unit instead,

http://1.2.3.10/bmi/ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_2009.png

You will notice that extent converges for all the last 5 years around the start of June. The fat lady won't be onstage with the microphone until late august.

[Stroller]

I’ve lost track of how many people you’ve held up as “preeminent experts” simply because they were saying something you want to be true.



Unfortunately those “peers” seem to be bloggers rather then scientists. Imo Lindzen is showing all the signs of “ageing scientist syndrome” where a once respected scientist can’t let go of their failed hypothesis long after mainstream science has passed them by.

How about we discuss his assessment of climate sensitivity rather than indulging in character assassination?

[Trakar]

Here's a link to his latest presentation given just a couple of days ago.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/richard-lindzen-3.ppt


You do understand the very real and big differences between a "presentation" and "publication in a recognized and relevent scientific journal" don't you?

Strange that Lindzen doesn't mention or reference Wong et al 2006, Journal of Climate (http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/~tak/wong/f20.pdf), or perhaps not so strange, as it completely invalidates most of his entire dataset. The rest is effectively dealt with in ERBE S10N_WFOV ERBS Edition3 Data Quality Summary (http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/PRODOCS/erbe/quality_summaries/s10n_wfov/erbe_s10n_wfov_nf_sf_erbs_edition3.html). But then perhaps he simply wasn't aware of these published and widely discussed results. It will be interesting to see how he addresses this when it is brought to his attention, but if the past is any guide, the reaction should prove largely uninteresting.

[PraedSt]

That depends on the trees, eg. for willow and hazel, cutting every three years results in an essentially coppiced (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing) forest where new planting isn't needed as growth happens from the old stumps.
I think it works for coppiced forests too.

Say you have a stock of T trees, which support a cropping of B units of biomass per period.

If you increase your cropping rate to B*r, you need a stock of T*r to support it.

This is at first glance...

[Trakar]

He is one of the most eminent climatologists in the world. I think he is happy to have his work reviewed by the peers he presents it to. I for one am pleased I can read his work without having to give money to one of the journals operating the pal review system.

So I take it by your "pal review" remark that you lend credence to the "Science conspiracy to silence detractors" line of thought? Whether stated out-right or continuously and insiduously implied, this is yet another reason why I feel that the entire anti-AGW spectrum of argument should be relegated to ATM

[Stroller]

So I take it by your "pal review" remark that you lend credence to the "Science conspiracy to silence detractors" line of thought? Whether stated out-right or continuously and insiduously implied, this is yet another reason why I feel that the entire anti-AGW spectrum of argument should be relegated to ATM

Have you seen Jeff ID's falsification of Steig et al's antarctic warming paper which made the front page of 'Science' yet?

[lomiller1]

Stroller NSIDC has been very clear about sensor issues and has immediately taken down any data where it has been a problem. They now say the problem is fully resolved, yet you suggest that isn’t true. I find it interesting that you seem to think the mere suggestion Lindzen should publish papers that back up his blogosphere opinions is somehow character assassination yet readily accuse a respected scientific organization of fraud when their data disagrees with ideology. I don’t mean interesting in a good way either.

[lomiller1]

Have you seen Jeff ID's falsification of Steig et al's antarctic warming paper which made the front page of 'Science' yet?

Has "Jeff ID" subjected his work to peer review?

[Trakar]

Have you seen Jeff ID's falsification of Steig et al's antarctic warming paper which made the front page of 'Science' yet?

Who is "Jeff ID"? Were his comments and refutations published in the letters section of Science? Where were they published? Many if not most published findings are eventually shot down, corrected, amended or modified, after they are published, that is how science works. Peer-review prior to publication is only the first, and usually least important, hurdle any research faces. Serious and widespread peer-review occurs after publication when the entire body of one's scientific field critically examines and considers one's work. I have no idea whether "Jeff ID"'s criticisms are pertinent, but finding flaws in a published paper in no way invalidates or even reflects upon the quality of the journal nor the more general peer-review process (which is a fundemental offshoot of the basic tenets of the scientific method itself). So again, I ask, with your "pal-review" remark, are you insinuating a conspiracy inherent to the global scientific community to suppress what you feel to be the "truth" about climate change?

[Stroller]

Has "Jeff ID" subjected his work to peer review?

I believe many eminent climate scientists are encouraging him to try to get it published. Naturally this would be an uphill struggle with 'Science' for example, who used Steig et al's colourful graphics as their cover story.

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/

[Stroller]

Stroller NSIDC has been very clear about sensor issues and has immediately taken down any data where it has been a problem. They now say the problem is fully resolved, yet you suggest that isn’t true.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything. As far as I know, the NSIDC are using data from another satellite, due to the problems they've been having with their own bird. Please stop trying to steamroller me.

[lomiller1]

It’s not just extents. Look at how much melting has already occurred in the artic basin compared to the record low years of 2007 and 2008.

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=06&fd=03&fy=2008&sm=06&sd=03&sy=2007

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png

[lomiller1]

BTW for a discussion over the actual issue in Stieg’s paper I suggest this:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/on-overfitting/

essentlay the issue is the number of PC’s that should be retained. Stieg makes a convincing case that his choice is more reasonable, and the guys from the blog Stroller linked concede that their analysis doesn’t mean much without peer review.

[Stroller]

BTW for a discussion over the actual issue in Stieg’s paper I suggest this:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/on-overfitting/

essentlay the issue is the number of PC’s that should be retained. Stieg makes a convincing case that his choice is more reasonable, and the guys from the blog Stroller linked concede that their analysis doesn’t mean much without peer review.

And for a fully rounded view see also the PC discussion on Climate Audit.

http://www.climateaudit.org/

[lomiller1]

Once again I see a pattern here. The people at climate audit have a long history of making grandiose claims about what they have “proved” while refusing to take their case the peer review literature while glibly accepting the supposition of anonymous posters who say the things they want to hear.

[Gillianren]

How about we discuss his assessment of climate sensitivity rather than indulging in character assassination?

Oh, for heaven's sake. You can't bring up someone as an expert and expect their expertise to remain unexamined. If he is no longer publishing in the relevant field, that's worthwhile information to bring up. If his opinion is (in the case of your last "expert") an outlier in the organization whose opinion you claim he represents, that's worthwhile information to bring up. If you yourself keep bringing up "experts" who are proven not to be, that is worthwhile information to bring up the next time you mention one.

[Stroller]

Oh, for heaven's sake. You can't bring up someone as an expert and expect their expertise to remain unexamined. If he is no longer publishing in the relevant field, that's worthwhile information to bring up. If his opinion is (in the case of your last "expert") an outlier in the organization whose opinion you claim he represents, that's worthwhile information to bring up. If you yourself keep bringing up "experts" who are proven not to be, that is worthwhile information to bring up the next time you mention one.

No-one disputed my point that just because Antonino Zuchichi hasn't published extensively in the field of climatology, it doesn't mean he can't spot an incoherent and invalid mathematical model when he sees one.

Richard Lindzen currently holds the title of Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT.
Please could you show me where I claimed his opinion represented an institution or retract your accusation.

[Gillianren]

Richard Lindzen currently holds the title of Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT.
Please could you show me where I claimed his opinion represented an institution or retract your accusation.

I wasn't referring to Lindzen, as well you know. I asked you twice about Zuchichi.

[Stroller]

I wasn't referring to Lindzen, as well you know. I asked you twice about Zuchichi.

Then why quote my the part of my reply which is about Lindzen (who is indeed the "last expert" I mentioned), rather than the part of my reply which is about Zuchichi?

[Trakar]

No-one disputed my point that just because Antonino Zuchichi hasn't published extensively in the field of climatology, it doesn't mean he can't spot an incoherent and invalid mathematical model when he sees one.

Richard Lindzen currently holds the title of Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT.
Please could you show me where I claimed his opinion represented an institution or retract your accusation.

Technically, the title is "Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences" ain't tenure grand?

[Stroller]

Who is "Jeff ID"? Were his comments and refutations published in the letters section of Science? Where were they published? Many if not most published findings are eventually shot down, corrected, amended or modified, after they are published, that is how science works. Peer-review prior to publication is only the first, and usually least important, hurdle any research faces. Serious and widespread peer-review occurs after publication when the entire body of one's scientific field critically examines and considers one's work. I have no idea whether "Jeff ID"'s criticisms are pertinent, but finding flaws in a published paper in no way invalidates or even reflects upon the quality of the journal nor the more general peer-review process (which is a fundemental offshoot of the basic tenets of the scientific method itself). So again, I ask, with your "pal-review" remark, are you insinuating a conspiracy inherent to the global scientific community to suppress what you feel to be the "truth" about climate change?

This post merits a serious reply.

Let me by way of illustration offer a small case study.

Syd Levitus is a lead author at the IPCC

1 Warming of the World Ocean. Levitus et al, Science vol 287 2000
2 Anthropogenic warming of Earth’s Climate System. Levitus et al,
Science v 292 2001

I don’t know whether it’s common knowledge or old news, but it seems Levitus et al may have overestimated ocean heat retension by a factors of 25%, according to this old thread I found on the sci.geo.oceanography newsgroup:

Quote:
“Has anyone else here used the data presented in these papers? A
colleague and I have, but we cannot reproduce the net heat gain of
18.2 x 10^22 J in the worlds’ oceans for the period 1955-1996 which
was mentioned in [2].

According to [2], this number comes from a straight line fit to the
5-year averaged ocean data from 1957.5 to 1994.5 (the year index
refers to the mid-point of the 5 year averages), extrapolated out to
cover the original 41 years 1955-1996. Ie a trend of 0.44 x 10^22 J
per year. The data are presented in Fig 4 of [1], and available from
the authors.

We get a much lower answer of 13.5 x 10^22 J, ie 0.33 x 10^22 J per
year. It’s only a least squares fit, so I don’t see what we could have
done wrong. But our number is a long way off the published value, and
also a long way short of the model result (which was 19.7 x 10^22 J).

James

> Have you contacted the authors?

Yes, I got the data from one of them in the first place, and he
explained how they had calculated the figure (the description in the
paper isn’t brilliant). But as soon as I pointed out the error, he
stopped replying.

> Have you written to 'Science'?

They have a six month cut off date for corrections.”

You can see the full exchange here:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.geo.oceanography/browse_thread/thread/a59a3509ecef9344/34d38d81f1734eaf?hl=en&lnk=st&q=#34d38d81f1734eaf

To cut a long story short, the 25% error which should have been picked up in peer review or subsequently by colleagues goes on to support the IPCC AR4 report, which as we all know, is not peer reviewed.

Now lets look at Levitus et al 2009 where they 'reconstruct' ocean heat content. ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat08.pdf

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/02/anomalous-spike-in-ocean-heat-content/

Bill Illis:
(According to the Levitus et al reconstruction), between 2002 and 2004, the ocean heat content increased from around 6.5 * 10^22 joules to about 12.5 * 10^22 joules.
Obviously, the ocean heat content did not nearly double over two years so there is a problem with splicing two different datasets.

Craig Loehle:
Bob Tisdale: you are exactly correct, the spike does not appear in the other reconstructions you mention, nor in the SST data.

Further discussion of the paper is available at Roger Pielke’s site:

http://climatesci.org/2009/05/18/comments-on-a-new-paper-global-ocean-heat-content-1955%e2%80%932008-in-light-of-recently-revealed-instrumentation-problems-by-levitus-et-al-2009/

Now since these obvious errors have been spotted by 'Anonymous blog commentators' but not by the peer reviewers or publication editors, perhaps a little more general all round respect might be in order? Hmmm??

[Gillianren]

Then why quote my the part of my reply which is about Lindzen (who is indeed the "last expert" I mentioned), rather than the part of my reply which is about Zuchichi?

Anyone who speaks coherent English would have recognized that the use of "last expert" referred to the one previous to the one then under discussion.

[Stroller]

Anyone who speaks coherent English would have recognized that the use of "last expert" referred to the one previous to the one then under discussion.

Thanks for the grammar lesson Ma'am.

Ambiguity is great for creating contention isn't it?

"She asked him for a double entendre, so he gave her one."

[Trakar]

This post merits a serious reply.


Actually, no it doesn't, some anonymous poster claims to have found an unspecified error that is not independently confirmed, supported or corroborated.

and then you quote a set of the usual suspects claiming errors and making errors but doing so in blogs where they can dismiss or ignore those peers who bother to attempt and show them their mistakes or errors, instead of in the proper journals and through the typical peer review process where they are officially culpable for their work.

If you have one specific argument where you fully understand all of the details on both sides of the issue and wish to go over it so we can see where the mainstream perspective is wrong and the alternative view is correct let's go over it in slow and careful detail and see whats there! After we get the results from that then we can discuss how that issue impacts the overall mainstream understanding of climate change.

[Stroller]

usual suspects

Lets just agree to disagree. Your contempt for serious and capable thinkers doing science outside the 'official channels' is matched only by my contempt for data fudgers and mutual back patters inside the 'climate clique' so lets leave it at that.

[Stroller]

It’s not just extents. Look at how much melting has already occurred in the artic basin compared to the record low years of 2007 and 2008.

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=06&fd=03&fy=2008&sm=06&sd=03&sy=2007

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png

Cryosphere today has been sharing the satellite problems too.

Here's my preferred graph:

http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png

[Swift]

Everyone knock off the snippy comments. And I could care less about who started it - I don't want to see anyone doing it. Stop providing evidence that there should be a moratorium on AGW discussions.

[Torsten]

And then there's the AMSR/E sensor data available from JAXA (http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm#top).

For the sake of highlighting yearly differences during the melt season, in the linked chart I have restricted the time axis to the period April-September.

I don't think there is any point in speculating where this year's weather will take the ice extent. I'll look at it again in late September.

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/th_AMSR-E_Apr-Sep_20090603.png (http://s259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/AMSR-E_Apr-Sep_20090603.png)

FYI:
They explain the annual "blip" in the curve that happens June 1:
"The apparent blip arises due to switching of some parameters in the processing on those dates. The parameter switching is needed because the surface of the Arctic sea ice becomes wet in summer due to the melting of ice, drastically changing the satellite-observed signatures of sea ice. We will soon improve the processing to make the graph much smoother."

[Trakar]

Lets just agree to disagree. Your contempt for serious and capable thinkers doing science outside the 'official channels' is matched only by my contempt for data fudgers and mutual back patters inside the 'climate clique' so lets leave it at that.

So you do feel that there is a conspiracy of "insider science" trying to silence and lock out all opposing view points?

[Trakar]

Everyone knock off the snippy comments. And I could care less about who started it - I don't want to see anyone doing it. Stop providing evidence that there should be a moratorium on AGW discussions.

Acknowledged, I didn't realize I was being snippy, but if I've personally insulted or offended any posters here, that was not my intention and I apologize to them.

[Stroller]

Likewise, I don't like it when things descend to abuse, sorry if I got snippy too.

[Stroller]

"Update: May 26 2009 The daily image update has been temporarily suspended because of large areas of missing data in the past week. NSIDC currently gets its data from the SSM/I sensor on the DMSP F13 satellite, which is nearing the end of its operational life and experiencing intermittent problems.

NSIDC has been working on a transition to a newer sensor on the F17 satellite for several months. At this time, we have more than a year of data from F17, which we are using to intercalibrate with F13 data. The F17 data are not yet available for near-real-time updates. We will resume posting daily updates as soon as possible, either from F13, if the present problem is resolved, or from F17, when the transition is complete.

Actually the data going back several months has problems causing the removal ofNOAA 15 data from the record. The NOAA 13 replacement then failed but fortunately NOAA 17 is flying so eventually that will be the satellite data for the continuing record."

[lomiller1]

While it’s good to see you acknowledge that the troubled sensor was in fact replaced back in may when the new satellite took over the fact remains that the NSIDC has been very good in it’s treatment of the data, pulling it’s numbers for a week in January while the old sensor was recalibrated then again in may after which it was replaced.

[Stroller]

So you do feel that there is a conspiracy of "insider science" trying to silence and lock out all opposing view points?

I don't think it's a conspiracy so much as a tacit understanding. When a young science develops it's first major Paradigm, it tends to defend it vigorously, in order to present a united front in the face of criticism. Scientists whose work threatens to invalidate the fundamental underpinnings of the paradigm become casualties of this process, not because those coalescing around the paradigm bear them ill will (unless they won't shut up after rejection), but because they threaten (in the case of AGW) a fragile and as yet untestable theory.

See Pielke senior's recent post on the 'short circuiting of the scientific process' (http://climatesci.org/2009/06/04/short-circuiting-the-scientific-process-a-serious-problem-in-the-climate-science-community/)

[Gillianren]

I don't think it's a conspiracy so much as a tacit understanding. When a young science develops it's first major Paradigm, it tends to defend it vigorously, in order to present a united front in the face of criticism. Scientists whose work threatens to invalidate the fundamental underpinnings of the paradigm become casualties of this process, not because those coalescing around the paradigm bear them ill will (unless they won't shut up after rejection), but because they threaten (in the case of AGW) a fragile and as yet untestable theory.

I'm not sure how you get that it's untestable. After all, it's not AGW that's the new field, of course; it's climatology as a whole. Climatology makes lots of testable predictions. In this particular case, the theory is that a human-induced increase in certain gases, most notably CO2, will increase global average temperature. As global average temperature is, in fact, going up, it seems pretty well tested to me. But then, you dispute the data. This is different.

[Ara Pacis]

It's called the "Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons" (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/the-tragedy-of-climate-commons/). And if everyone has the viewpoint expressed by Joe Durnavich (and, I suppose, Ara Pacis, though I can't really figure out where that sarcasm is heading), then we're all screwed, and not just by climate change.

Nah I'm not in the commons. I was answering an absurd statement with an absurd, albeit true, exploration of how increasing efficiency is its own reward. Of course, I don't mean the efficiency of catrching fish, but the efficiency of using what you do catch to support more people with less.

Sorry for the late reply, I've been ill.

[Ari Jokimaki]

I don't think it's a conspiracy so much as a tacit understanding.
If you would think that, you wouldn't continue to accuse climate scientists of dishonesty.


When a young science develops it's first major Paradigm,...
Beginning of climatology can be traced back almost 1000 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatology). Then there's meteorology, which is very relevant to climatology, reaching back to the time of Aristotle (who for example discussed the hydrologic cycle which is important in climatology): timeline of meteorology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_meteorology)

"Young science" indeed...


...it tends to defend it vigorously, in order to present a united front in the face of criticism.
Go ahead and show us that "young sciences" have a tendency to defend their first major paradigms vigorously.


...but because they threaten (in the case of AGW) a fragile and as yet untestable theory.
Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere increases ... testable ... tested
Source of the additional carbon dioxide content is human actions ... testable ... tested
Carbon dioxide has ability to absorb thermal radiation ... testable ... tested
Increasing carbon dioxide content absorbs even more thermal radiation ... testable ... tested
Double-check above mentioned carbon dioxide properties in the atmosphere ... testable ... tested
All this should make Earth's temperature to increase ... testable ... tested

[Stroller]

As global average temperature is, in fact, going up...

Chart hosted at www.klimadebat.dk (http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/glotempmay092.gif)

[Stroller]

Double-check above mentioned carbon dioxide properties in the atmosphere ... testable ... tested
All this should make Earth's temperature to increase ... testable ... tested

Check temperature measuring network is sufficiently accurate (http://www.surfacestations.org) to determine century long trend of 1C as claimed .... tested .... falsified

Check temperature is increasing with increasing co2 (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2002/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:2002/offset:-362/scale:0.03/mean:12) ... tested .... falsified

Check model's necessary prediction of tropical tropospheric hotspot (http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/who-expects-a-tropical-tropospheric-hot-spot-from-any-and-all-sources-of-warming/) for AGW to be feasible .... tested ... falsified.

Check claimed climate sensitivity to co2 is commensurate with warming beyond possible natural variation (http://chronos-st.blogspot.com/2009/04/proof-that-co2s-warming-effect-is.html) ... tested ... falsified

[Stroller]

continue to accuse climate scientists of dishonesty.

I've shown some cases where I think they are wrong. Whether it's dishonesty, incompetence, or the result of preconcieved notions and groupthink, I won't speculate.

Then there's meteorology
But Ari, weather is not climate.


"Young science" indeed...

How many departments of climatology are there in the worlds universities Ari? Compared to Biology, Mathematics, Physics and chemistry say?


Go ahead and show us that "young sciences" have a tendency to defend their first major paradigms vigorously.

Take a look at the Machiavellian machinations T. H. Huxley employed to get evolutionary biology accepted.

As Newton famously said,
"I have studied it. You sir, have not."

[lomiller1]

Stroller, I'll review what's already been posted many times

There isn’t a single peer reviewed analysis that casts any doubt on the surface temperature record and the surface station record is in excellent agreement with other sources like satellite lower troposphere data.


Peer reviewed climate attribution and paloclimate studies show a clear relationship between CO2 and temperature. Plots of short term noise do not even constitute a test, let alone a test that has falsified anything.

Troposphereic “hotspots” are a feature models predict from any warming not just anthropogenic warming, and the error bands on all but the most recent measurements are too wide to determine if they exist or not. Newer more precise measurements do show said hotspots, which confirmes that the eart is warming but we already knew that.

Low climate sensitivity predicts that ice ages are impossible. Since ice ages clearly happen climate sensitivity cannot be low.

[technoextreme]

Chart hosted at www.klimadebat.dk (http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/glotempmay092.gif)
Since when has seven years constituted a trend?

[Stroller]

Stroller, I'll review what's already been posted many times
It doesn't matter how many times incorrect arguments are presented. They are still incorrect.


There isn’t a single peer reviewed analysis that casts any doubt on the surface temperature record and the surface station record is in excellent agreement with other sources like satellite lower troposphere data.

There is no satellite record prior to 1979. The surface record is in doubt for many reasons, and has suffered many upward ajustmaents at the modern end, and downward adjustments at the older end.



Peer reviewed climate attribution and paloclimate studies show a clear relationship between CO2 and temperature.

And they all show that temperature leads, co2 follows.


Troposphereic “hotspots” are a feature models predict from any warming

Go back and read IPCC AR4. Or are you claiming the IPCC is wrong? The graphs are at this link (http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/who-expects-a-tropical-tropospheric-hot-spot-from-any-and-all-sources-of-warming/)


Low climate sensitivity predicts that ice ages are impossible. Since ice ages clearly happen climate sensitivity cannot be low.
CO2 doesn't cause ice ages, nor does it lift the Earth out of them. Show me a single paleo study where co2 rises before temperature. The lag is between 800 - 2800 years. Get your understanding of cause and effect sorted out.

[Gillianren]

But Ari, weather is not climate.

Oh, I do so like the fact that you left out the thousand-year history of climatology mentioned just before this.


How many departments of climatology are there in the worlds universities Ari? Compared to Biology, Mathematics, Physics and chemistry say?

And how many are there in Classics these days? Heck, there are only a half-dozen or so universities in the US that offer a Masters in Library Science, and I don't think there are any that offer an undergraduate degree in the field. But libraries aren't exactly a new thing, either.


Take a look at the Machiavellian machinations T. H. Huxley employed to get evolutionary biology accepted.

Are you saying evolutionary biology is wrong? I'd also like to point out that the scientific community didn't take "Machiavellian machinations," just really looking at the evidence. Look how quickly Mendelian genetics took hold once anyone bothered reading the poor man's paper.


As Newton famously said,
"I have studied it. You sir, have not."

It was obvious when Newton had.

[lomiller1]

The adjustments required to produce the surface temperature record are well documented in the peer review literature. Conspiracy theory bloggers aside no one has put forward any challenge to those adjustments, and there certainly hasn’t been any challenge to the in the peer review literature.

Changes in temperature are expected to lead changes in CO2 when temperature changes are not *initiated* by CO2 changes and CO2 is only acting as a feedback. The paleoclimate data reflects this prediction.

The “tropical hotspots” are not a characteristic of anthropogenic climate change. Full stop. Your blogger references a part of the IPCC AR4 that doesn’t even mention them. (it does talk about the expected pattern of troposphereic warming and stratospheric cooling which is not associated with tropical troposphereic hotspots and is well documented. Apparently your blogger didn’t know the topic enough to understand the difference)

Without the warming effect of CO2 Milankovic Cycles are *far* to small to start or end ice ages. If you supposed CO2 doesn’t have a warming effect it’s been *measured* to have you would need to find another feedback with the exact same warming characteristics as CO2, that changes exactly the way CO2 does as the earth enters and leaves periods of glaciation. Clearly Occams razor applies...

[Stroller]

Since when has seven years constituted a trend?

Where did I claim it did?

I posted the graph in response to Gillian's assertion that:

"global average temperature is, in fact, going up"

http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedha...tempmay092.gif
Does it look to you like it's going up?

Take your time.

By the way, it's eight years not seven.

[Stroller]

Are you saying evolutionary biology is wrong?

No.



I'd also like to point out that the scientific community didn't take "Machiavellian machinations," just really looking at the evidence. Look how quickly Mendelian genetics took hold once anyone bothered reading the poor man's paper.

You never told me what your qualification was, after I told you I had a degree in the History and Philosophy of science. Come on, 'fess up. :)

[Unbalanced Squid]

Stroller - would you care to explain the context of the graph you posted from: http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedha...tempmay092.gif

I can't read Danish, which that forum is apparently written in and without context (and preferably the data from different lengths of time) it is impossible to distinguish your claim from a claim made by Michael Duffy and debunked here: http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/05/selective_data_and_global_warm.php

It's especially interesting to look at the graph halfway down the page in the scienceblogs link.

[Gillianren]

Welcome, Unbalanced Squid! Read the rules and stay a while.

And good luck at getting answers.

[Stroller]

Stroller - would you care to explain the context of the graph you posted from: http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedha...tempmay092.gif

I can't read Danish, which that forum is apparently written in and without context (and preferably the data from different lengths of time) it is impossible to distinguish your claim from a claim made by Michael Duffy and debunked here: http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/05/selective_data_and_global_warm.php

It's especially interesting to look at the graph halfway down the page in the scienceblogs link.

Hi Squid, and welcome to the forum.
1) Please could you tell me what claim I've made. I posted the graph without comment in response to Gillian's claim that "global average temperature is, in fact, going up". Do you think it's still going up?

2) The context of the graph is that it's composed of the four main global indices. These are publicly available and published monthly. The linear trends shown are just that. Simple linear trends. Not the best way to interpret the data in my opinion, but simple and unequivocal.

3)The graph you refer to on the page you link is indeed interesting for several reasons.

i) It shows how far the Gistemp dataset has diverged from the others (and reality). This data series is controlled by Jim Hansen, the guy who goes to anti coal protests in the snow to tell the crowd about "death trains" and "holocausts". I think he is personally biased in the debate, and I don't trust his data.

ii) It shows that the warmista have selection bias too. Notice how the author of that piece is careful not to show any linear trends from anywhere near the peak of the '98 el nino, (Even though an eight year trend from the '98 peak to the 2006 el nino peak would be a perfectly reasonable choice of timeframe) and only shows one after 2000, from the bottom of the trough following the '98 peak. On a more general note, notice the graph starts around 1975, just neatly avoiding the 1945 - 1975 cooling period the AGW theory can't explain convincingly. Notice also the author chooses to use the only dataset out of the four which places the 2006 el nino peak above the '98 el nino peak.

iii) The only places in the graph where there are downtrends are around the Pinatubo and El Chichon volcanic erruptions. But we haven't had any big volcanic erruptions for the last 17 years which could cause temperatures to fall like they have been over the last eight years.

Every picture tells a story, and the story the graph I posted tells is:

On average, global temperature has been falling for the last eight years according to all the four global data series.

If you see anything you think is wrong with that statement, or if you'd like to provide a counter statement based on a different timescale, please feel free to post it.

[Stroller]

Welcome, Unbalanced Squid! Read the rules and stay a while.

And good luck at getting answers.

Hey Gillian! How about answering my questions?

Do you still think "global average temperature is, in fact, going up" ?

What is your qualification or experience which make you confident about your claim that "the scientific community didn't take "Machiavellian machinations," just really looking at the evidence." ?

------

Stroller. BA Joint Hons Computer Sci/Hist&Phil Sci

[Ari Jokimaki]

Check temperature measuring network is sufficiently accurate to determine century long trend of 1C as claimed .... tested .... falsified
You are ignoring that there are other records (satellites for example) showing the same thing. Your "test" has nothing to do with the theory of AGW. Even if your claim would be correct and there wouldn't be other records or indicators showing the warming, we wouldn't be in a situation where theory of AGW would have been falsified, because according to your own words our measurents wouldn't be accurate enough to know what the situation actually is. However, we have seen time and time again how these claims of surface temperature record inaccuracy have turned out to be very minor issues globally (http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements.htm) (and your link seems to be about USA only). Also, before we would even consider abandoning any theories, these claims should be presented in scientific media.

So, are you really claiming there haven't been any global warming in recent decades?


Check temperature is increasing with increasing co2 ... tested .... falsified
I see that you just want to insult our intelligence... Easterling & Wehner (2009) (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/csi/images/GRL2009_ClimateWarming.pdf) show that there can be periods of cooling without theory of AGW suffering:


We show that the climate over the 21st century can and likely will produce periods of a decade or two where the globally averaged surface air temperature shows no trend or even slight cooling in the presence of longer-term warming.
All this have been told you many times but you just keep parroting the same claim over and over.


Check model's necessary prediction of tropical tropospheric hotspot for AGW to be feasible .... tested ... falsified.
Wrong (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/10/tropical-tropopshere-iii/). Even if there would be some some local feature that climate models wouldn't be able to reproduce, we wouldn't know if it's the AGW part that is wrong, so your conclusion would be wrong at any case. Besides, as carbon dioxide effect is a slow global warming trend, this claimed local feature wouldn't be probable to have any effect to carbon dioxide forcing in the theory. Instead, I would expect some modifications to some other factors, such as oscillations, which are local processes, for example.


Check claimed climate sensitivity to co2 is commensurate with warming beyond possible natural variation ... tested ... falsified
So, you cite some cloud observations. If you want to look at effect of carbon dioxide, you should look at the observations of carbon dioxide, such as Griggs & Harries (2004) (http://www.ggy.bris.ac.uk/staff/personal/JennyGriggs/paper_4.pdf) and Chedin et al. (2003) (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003JD003439.shtml) ("Moreover, the annual trend inferred corresponds to the known increase in the concentration of CO2 as a result of human activities.").



I've shown some cases where I think they are wrong. Whether it's dishonesty, incompetence, or the result of preconcieved notions and groupthink, I won't speculate.
Really? Let's look at some of the things you have said (just a few examples, there are plenty more):

- "Clearly, when top climatologists advise their colleages to eschew the data and their scientific integrity in order to 'be effective' the public doesn't need access to the data to be able to see they are being conned." LINK (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-10.html#post1429758)

- "'Climatologists' such as Gavin Schmidt and James Hansen play fast and loose with the physics of thermodynamical processes,..." LINK (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-12.html#post1431316)

- "The 'high impact journals' to which you refer are bringing discredit on themselves by failing to properly review and test the submissions made by AGW proponents. Indeed they dismissed the only reviewer who ever asked for the data so he could replicate the claims made. These same journals repeadedly use reviewers who are part of a relatively small group of pro AGW "experts" who recommend the rejection of papers containing data which is inimical to AGW theory. The process of peer review and journal publication has become tainted by partisan interests and thus they are skewed. Therefore, appeals to who has peer reviewed papers published and who has been featured on the cover of Nature prove nothing except the bias that has crept in." LINK (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-13.html#post1432143)

- "Hanson and the climate catastrophe caballeros have abandoned real scientific debate and hide in their cloistered and censored domains, emerging only to write unsupported propaganda pieces in the mainstream media." LINK (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-15.html#post1436357)

To me it seems that you have already speculated. And speculated. And speculated. And...

[Ari Jokimaki]

But Ari, weather is not climate.
I did explain why I mentioned it, but curiously you left that part unquoted from my post.


How many departments of climatology are there in the worlds universities Ari? Compared to Biology, Mathematics, Physics and chemistry say?
Evasive tactics, has nothing to do with the age of the science.


Take a look at the Machiavellian machinations T. H. Huxley employed to get evolutionary biology accepted.
I knew you were going to offer just one vague example (without any specific reference of course). One example doesn't establish a "tendency" which you claimed, try again.

[Stroller]

You are ignoring that there are other records (satellites for example) showing the same thing.
I did point out that in a century long supposed rise of 1C the satellite record only extends back 3 decades. Do try to keep up.


So, are you really claiming there haven't been any global warming in recent decades?

Where did I claim that? Stop trying to put words in my mouth please. The positive phases of the pacific decadal oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and a sun which has been at it's most active in the last several thousand years have all played a part in the modest temperature increase of around 0.4C of the 30 years from 1975 to 2005. How much is left for the supposed effects of Co2 is the question at issue here.



I see that you just want to insult our intelligence... Easterling & Wehner (2009) (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/csi/images/GRL2009_ClimateWarming.pdf) show that there can be periods of cooling without theory of AGW suffering:

Indeed the natural variations don't seem to have too much trouble overcoming the effect of Co2. Which makes the supposed climate sensitivity of 3-8C warming per doubling utterly unbelieveable.



All this have been told you many times but you just keep parroting the same claim over and over.

And I've asked you several times where the heat hides during the cooling periods, but you can't answer.


http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/10/tropical-tropopshere-iii/

This article is debunked by Lucia in the link I provided above.


So, you cite some cloud observations. If you want to look at effect of carbon dioxide, you should look at the observations of carbon dioxide, such as Griggs & Harries (2004) (http://www.ggy.bris.ac.uk/staff/personal/JennyGriggs/paper_4.pdf) and Chedin et al. (2003) (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003JD003439.shtml) ("Moreover, the annual trend inferred corresponds to the known increase in the concentration of CO2 as a result of human activities.").

Yes, It does seem that the proponents of AGW are always able to get the output of their computer models to agree with the data.

Thanks for reiterating some of my objections to AGW by the way.

[lomiller1]

Right… An internet posting by a mechanical engineer with no background in climate science or computer molding “debunks” a scientist with dozens of recent papers on the topic in high impact journals that combine for hundreds perhaps thousands of citations. Does this seriously pass the smell test to anyone?

Stroller is the victim of a classic bait and switch here. The discussion over troposphereic hotspots is a very specific feature some claim not to be present (but newer papers has shown to exist.). The IPCC discussion is regarding the troposphere as a whole, *not* the top of the troposphere in the tropics where the hotspot feature exists. Basically Lucia doesn’t know what she is talking about and Stroller never bothered to check his facts.

Realclimate runs the GISS model with both solar and greenhouse forcing and shows conclusively the tropical tropospheric hotspots appear in both. Unlike Lucia the contributors are realclimate combine for several hundred recent papers in high impact journals that received thousands of citations.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/langswitch_lang/fr

[Stroller]

Stroller is the victim of a classic bait and switch here.

I wouldn't disagree with that.



Realclimate runs the GISS model with both solar and greenhouse forcing and shows conclusively the tropical tropospheric hotspots appear in both.

But only if the solar forcing is raised many times above what it is. Which the lowly mechanical engineer points out to the great climatologist in the link I gave you.

By the way, I have an engineering qualification too. I find it gives me a wonderfully uncluttered view of obvious tripe.

[lomiller1]

You’re begging the question. Basically you are saying only accept model results that show current solar conditions are suffice to explain the observed warming.

Realclimate used a 2% increase in solar activity which is on par with the forcing in W/m^2 that a doubling in greenhouse gasses would cause. The only way an increase in solar activity of less then 2% could cause that warming is if climate sensitivity were much higher then currently believed. You have made it quite clear you believed the opposite and that climate sensitivity is much *lower* then currently believed.

[Ari Jokimaki]

I looked a bit on that website Stroller linked to, the surfacestations.org (http://www.surfacestations.org/). Stroller thinks that the information there means that our surface temperature measurements are not accurate enough to determine the trend we have seen in recent decades. So, there are measurement stations being evaluated and then divided to different bins. The bins then supposedly have certain value of error. The worst bin supposedly has an error > 5 degrees C. Looking at their statistics, it seems that most stations are not in the worst bin, so most stations have an error that is less than 5 degrees C.

Now, what if we assume that all the stations have an error of 5 degrees C? Let's look at the situation for the temperature of USA from USHCN network. They say that there's 1221 stations. If we would take a simple mean of the measurements of all the stations, it would mean that one measurement would have a standard deviation of the mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation) of: 5 degrees C / sqrt(1221) = 0.143 degrees C. If we would take only one measurement per day for each station, then our monthly mean would have a standard deviation of the mean of: 5 degrees C / sqrt(30 * 1221) = 0.026 degrees C. Our yearly mean would then have a standard deviation of the mean of: 5 degrees C / sqrt(30 * 12 * 1221) = 0.0075 degrees C.

Even if we would assume that all stations would have 5 degrees C error, we would have an end result that is clearly accurate enough.

[orionjim]

I looked a bit on that website Stroller linked to, the surfacestations.org (http://www.surfacestations.org/). Stroller thinks that the information there means that our surface temperature measurements are not accurate enough to determine the trend we have seen in recent decades. So, there are measurement stations being evaluated and then divided to different bins. The bins then supposedly have certain value of error. The worst bin supposedly has an error > 5 degrees C. Looking at their statistics, it seems that most stations are not in the worst bin, so most stations have an error that is less than 5 degrees C.

Now, what if we assume that all the stations have an error of 5 degrees C? Let's look at the situation for the temperature of USA from USHCN network. They say that there's 1221 stations. If we would take a simple mean of the measurements of all the stations, it would mean that one measurement would have a standard deviation of the mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation) of: 5 degrees C / sqrt(1221) = 0.143 degrees C. If we would take only one measurement per day for each station, then our monthly mean would have a standard deviation of the mean of: 5 degrees C / sqrt(30 * 1221) = 0.026 degrees C. Our yearly mean would then have a standard deviation of the mean of: 5 degrees C / sqrt(30 * 12 * 1221) = 0.0075 degrees C.

Even if we would assume that all stations would have 5 degrees C error, we would have an end result that is clearly accurate enough.


Ahhh nice try Ari. The calculations you went through would be ok if the error was in the actual device or thermometer, independent of the rest of the location that it resides on. If that were the case all they would need to do is buy better thermometers.

The CRN rating is an estimated rating of the system of the site and while it does give an estimated temperature rating it doesn’t break that rating out into precision and bias. You dumped it all into precision, if the problem lies in the surrounding area such as heat emitting devices or heat retaining surfaces then that would cause a bias, and the bias could/would be leaning all in one direction.

Actually the CRN rating is really a rating of the quality of the site the equipment is placed. And with 67% of the total sites rated in the US; 69% are on locations that are poor or worst. This data says that NOAA and NESDIS are doing a poor job. It can be taken as a statement of how important the quality of temperature data is to these organizations.

Actually if one were to sit back and look at the discussions going on; you have two groups, one defending the righteousness and quantity of the papers published and the other group questioning the quality of what is presented. Me, I prefer quality over quantity any day.

BTW, quality is an established science so nobody needs to write a peer reviewed paper on the subject. What needs to happen is the people working in the field of climatology need to take the time to study quality.

[orionjim]

[...]
Now, what if we assume that all the stations have an error of 5 degrees C? Let's look at the situation for the temperature of USA from USHCN network. They say that there's 1221 stations. If we would take a simple mean of the measurements of all the stations, it would mean that one measurement would have a standard deviation of the mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation) of: 5 degrees C / sqrt(1221) = 0.143 degrees C. If we would take only one measurement per day for each station, then our monthly mean would have a standard deviation of the mean of: 5 degrees C / sqrt(30 * 1221) = 0.026 degrees C. Our yearly mean would then have a standard deviation of the mean of: 5 degrees C / sqrt(30 * 12 * 1221) = 0.0075 degrees C.

Even if we would assume that all stations would have 5 degrees C error, we would have an end result that is clearly accurate enough.

Ari, I forgot to mention that you did the math wrong on your example.

Since the number you were working with was the error number estimated based on the true value being ‘0’ then the calculation should be:

sqrt(sum(0 – errors) 2 /number samples)

n1= number of CRN1 substations with error 0 = 24
n2= number of CRN2 substations with error 0 = 65
n3= number of CRN 3 substations with error 1 = 161
n4= number of CRN 4 substations with error 2 = 468
n5= number of CRN 5 substations with error 5 = 89

Notice that I used the low end of the error range.

Total sub stations checked so far = 807

errvsq=((0 – 0)2 * n1)+((0-0)2)*n2+((0-1)2*n3+((0-2)2*n4+((0-5)2*n5) = 14634

stdeverr =sqrt( errvsq/807) = 2.297

For whatever reason you only used one error value of 5 for (30 * 12 * 1221) readings. I think you have been reading too many of the Mann & Steig papers.

[Stroller]

You’re begging the question. Basically you are saying only accept model results that show current solar conditions are suffice to explain the observed warming.

Realclimate used a 2% increase in solar activity which is on par with the forcing in W/m^2 that a doubling in greenhouse gasses would cause. The only way an increase in solar activity of less then 2% could cause that warming is if climate sensitivity were much higher then currently believed. You have made it quite clear you believed the opposite and that climate sensitivity is much *lower* then currently believed.
I'm not begging any question. I'm pointing out realclimate's subterfuge.

The climate's sensitivity *to co2* is much lower than Jim Hansen and the IPCC would have us believe.

The sun's effect is enhanced by cloud feedback, by about an order of magnitude, according to Nir Shaviv's excellent and studiously ignored peer reviewed paper on the subject. I provided a full citation and an excerpt from the conclusions about 20-25 pages ago.

[lomiller1]

Stroller 2% increase in solar activity is equivalent to doubling of CO2, this is simple fact.

You are asking us to believe that the earth’s climate is somehow more sensitive to one source of energy then to another. Clearly an extraordinary claim like that required extraordinary proof. BTW “cloud feedback” is essentially arguing that the energy emitted by the sun plays no role in the earths climate.

[lomiller1]

Orionjim, you should really consider why there are *no* published papers suggesting the “issues” you are introducing error into the surface station measurement.

The reason why “siteing” doesn’t come into play with temperature trends should be obvious. A site that was reading warm 40 years ago do to siteing issues will still have been reading warm 20 years ago and 5 years ago. When you calculate the temperature change at a location look what happens


T1 = “real” temperature 40 years ago
T2 = “real” temperature now
E = how much the data is skewed by site related problems


(T2 + E) – (T1 + E) = T2 – T1

IOW as long as the site *doesn’t change* any problems with the site cancel out when you calculate temperature trends. Changing sites on mass like your blogs are promoting would introduce serious error into the data.

[mugaliens]

You are asking us to believe...

Actually, I think he's trying to point you back towards: "...Nir Shaviv's excellent and studiously ignored peer reviewed paper on the subject" which he referenced earlier.

So am I.

[Stroller]

Stroller 2% increase in solar activity is equivalent to doubling of CO2, this is simple fact.
No it's not.
A 0.1% 'increase in solar activity' (actually the real world observed swing in TSI over the Schwabe cycle) is amplified (probably through cloud modulation) to produce around a 1C swing in ocean temperature. This *is* observed fact.

No-one knows how much change in temperature a doubling of co2 in the atmosphere would produce, but estimates range from 0.4C (Lindzen) to around 8C (Hansen in his wilder moments). But the higher estimates derive from 'models' and are not observed fact.



You are asking us to believe that the earth’s climate is somehow more sensitive to one source of energy then to another.

No I'm not. I'm asking you to see the difference between actual observation and incorrectly parameterized mathematical models which don't in any case have sufficient resolution to accurately emulate the earth's atmosphere and it's heat transport mechanisms.

[Ari Jokimaki]

I did point out that in a century long supposed rise of 1C the satellite record only extends back 3 decades. Do try to keep up.
Nevertheless, the satellite records give almost exactly the same results during those 3 decades...


So, are you really claiming there haven't been any global warming in recent decades?

Where did I claim that? Stop trying to put words in my mouth please.
Where did I claim you did? Where did I put words in your mouth? I asked a question, I did not make any claims.


The positive phases of the pacific decadal oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and a sun which has been at it's most active in the last several thousand years have all played a part in the modest temperature increase of around 0.4C of the 30 years from 1975 to 2005. How much is left for the supposed effects of Co2 is the question at issue here.
It has been shown that oscillations and sun have very little role (Lean & Rind, 2008 (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Lean_Rind.pdf)) in recent global warming.


Indeed the natural variations don't seem to have too much trouble overcoming the effect of Co2.
Not overcome, but disturb the ongoing trend a little.


Which makes the supposed climate sensitivity of 3-8C warming per doubling utterly unbelieveable.
Nonsense. The trend doesn't change from these short time variations. You didn't even take a peek at the Easterling & Wehner (2009) then?


And I've asked you several times where the heat hides during the cooling periods, but you can't answer.
It is not hiding anywhere. In this post (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-38.html#post1497196) I already showed you that during last decade, temperature has been rising by about 0.2 degrees C. In the same post I also already answered this "hiding" question of yours. You didn't respond to that by either acknowledging that I was correct about that, or by showing how my answer was wrong, but instead you just keep parroting the same claims over and over.


This article is debunked by Lucia in the link I provided above.
False. I linked to a late 2008 blog entry in RealClimate, your source talks about a 2007 RealClimate blog entry.


Yes, It does seem that the proponents of AGW are always able to get the output of their computer models to agree with the data.
I'm glad you agree that the results of theory of AGW agrees with the data (however, it is not nice once again to see your accusations of dishonesty of climate scientists). We have also shown that it is testable, as even you yourself suggested some tests.

[Ari Jokimaki]

Ahhh nice try Ari. The calculations you went through would be ok if the error was in the actual device or thermometer, independent of the rest of the location that it resides on. If that were the case all they would need to do is buy better thermometers.
Well, I presented an hypothetical calculation about what the accuracy of the measurement for the temperature of USA (because the offered website addressed that) would be if the measurements would have an error of 5 degrees C. I don't see anything wrong in showing an example like that when there's individual station problems highlighted as if it would show global temperature measurements false (that basically was Stroller's claim).

You also missed the meaning of my result it seems. I showed that even with that bad precision, we would still have sufficiently accurate end result. So we wouldn't need to buy better thermometers.


The CRN rating is an estimated rating of the system of the site and while it does give an estimated temperature rating it doesn’t break that rating out into precision and bias. You dumped it all into precision, if the problem lies in the surrounding area such as heat emitting devices or heat retaining surfaces then that would cause a bias, and the bias could/would be leaning all in one direction.
If a measuring station has bias, then there's two possibilities how to deal with already existing measurements; first, you can correct for the bias for that station, second, you can add the bias to the uncertainty of the measurements. Second option is not the preferrred option, but it is not wrong to do either, it just makes the measurement of that station more inaccurate. If the end result is such that we can live with it, then it is ok to do so.

Only if you can show that there's lot of stations all biased to same direction by a bias that hasn't already been accounted for, then that should be added to the analysis.


Actually if one were to sit back and look at the discussions going on; you have two groups, one defending the righteousness and quantity of the papers published and the other group questioning the quality of what is presented. Me, I prefer quality over quantity any day.
Oh, so the other group doesn't care about the quality at all? And, for the record, do you agree with Stroller's conclusion about this?


BTW, quality is an established science so nobody needs to write a peer reviewed paper on the subject. What needs to happen is the people working in the field of climatology need to take the time to study quality.
Are you claiming they aren't? Have you checked if they are already doing that (with their reference networks and all)?


Ari, I forgot to mention that you did the math wrong on your example.
No, you are calculating different thing than I did. I calculated the standard deviation of the mean, which tells how the accuracy of the measurement improves when you add more measurements of the same thing. You calculated the standard deviation of the sample's distribution which is a different thing.


For whatever reason you only used one error value of 5 for (30 * 12 * 1221) readings. I think you have been reading too many of the Mann & Steig papers.
And I think you didn't read my post very well. I made an assumption that all stations would have an error of 5 degrees C, which is in my opinion roughly a worst case scenario. The last value I calculated was the accuracy for a one year mean (if we would have only one measurement per day) of the temperature of USA. I used the equation (given later in the Wikipedia page of standerd deviation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation) I linked to) of sigmamean = sigmasample / sqrt(N), where N is the sample size and the sigmasample is the standard deviation of the sample's distribution. I chose a constant value for the sigmasample to make things simpler, but you made a more precise calculation of the sigmasample, so we could use that also, but that only makes the end result even more accurate.

[Jetlack]

Stroller 2% increase in solar activity is equivalent to doubling of CO2, this is simple fact.

You are asking us to believe that the earth’s climate is somehow more sensitive to one source of energy then to another. Clearly an extraordinary claim like that required extraordinary proof. BTW “cloud feedback” is essentially arguing that the energy emitted by the sun plays no role in the earths climate.

Of course the earth reacts differently to different types of energy. How you've come to the conclusion that the energy from the sun and energy from locally produced CO2 are one and the same, with an equivalent effect on earths temperature is beyond me.

Its well established that different frequencies of energy absorb in the atmosphere at different rates. What you are suggesting is ATM. Perhaps you meant something else.

[lomiller1]

Jetlack, we are not talking about absorption. Stroller is claiming that 1 additional watt of net energy will behave differently based on whether that energy comes from to sun or from energy prevented from exiting the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses.

The IPCC AR4 places the amount of additional energy flowing into the earths atmosphere from a doubling of CO2 at 4.5 W/m^2, which is very close to 2% increase in solar activity. (don’t forget the shape of the earth or it’s albedo!)

[lomiller1]

I see no particular reason to discuss an ATM paper that was debunked many long ago. What is worth noting is that the effect is 100 times to small (http://www.physorg.com/news161268877.html) to have any effect on the earths climate.

[orionjim]

...
The reason why “siteing” doesn’t come into play with temperature trends should be obvious. A site that was reading warm 40 years ago do to siteing issues will still have been reading warm 20 years ago and 5 years ago. When you calculate the temperature change at a location look what happens


T1 = “real” temperature 40 years ago
T2 = “real” temperature now
E = how much the data is skewed by site related problems


(T2 + E) – (T1 + E) = T2 – T1

IOW as long as the site *doesn’t change* any problems with the site cancel out when you calculate temperature trends. Changing sites on mass like your blogs are promoting would introduce serious error into the data.

Nice try. The problem is that there were from 181 to 225 sites under the older CO-OP program, but that number increased to 1221 today under the USCRN program starting in 2002. That’s almost five times as many prior to the USCRN program. NOAA/NESDIS saw the problem and published this document explaining the importance of why high accuracy and precision is important in this paper defining CRN sites.

http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/documentation/program/X030FullDocumentD0.pdf

Unfortunately it appears the execution of the program has failed adding a tremendous amount of error into the data. Error that cannot be adjusted out based on older records.

The plan was great but it had terrible execution.

BTW, the problem with site biasing was explained in this Karl et al paper 1986:
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0450/25/2/pdf/i1520-0450-25-2-145.pdf

[orionjim]

...

And I think you didn't read my post very well. I made an assumption that all stations would have an error of 5 degrees C, which is in my opinion roughly a worst case scenario. The last value I calculated was the accuracy for a one year mean (if we would have only one measurement per day) of the temperature of USA. I used the equation (given later in the Wikipedia page of standerd deviation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation) I linked to) of sigmamean = sigmasample / sqrt(N), where N is the sample size and the sigmasample is the standard deviation of the sample's distribution. I chose a constant value for the sigmasample to make things simpler, but you made a more precise calculation of the sigmasample, so we could use that also, but that only makes the end result even more accurate.


Ari, I read and reread your post. I am a retired statistician and unless they have rewritten every book on statistics that I have ever read your post is utter nonsense. Your complaints of Stroller are nonsense.

If I took two days to explain every place you made an error I would at my very best not be able to equal the very link you provided. It appears to me that you had decided what the answer was to be and took one of the better wiki articles that I have ever read and totally destroyed it to fit your agenda.

Try reading this again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

Also this might help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_and_precision

[lomiller1]

Unfortunately it appears the execution of the program has failed adding a tremendous amount of error into the data. Error that cannot be adjusted out based on older records.


Exactly. Site error can be removed from the data using well documented techniques. so why are some bloggers so worked up over it again?

[lomiller1]

BTW, the problem with site biasing was explained in this Karl et al paper 1986:
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0450/25/2/pdf/i1520-0450-25-2-145.pdf

ToD is accounted for in the surface station data. Ironically Stroller and orionjim have complained about that very correction, insinuating it’s part of some conspiracy. Measurements today are taken during a cooler part of the day, so when you correct for it you end up warming more recent measurements.

[orionjim]

Unfortunately it appears the execution of the program has failed adding a tremendous amount of error into the data. Error that cannot be adjusted out based on older records.




Exactly. Site error can be removed from the data using well documented techniques. so why are some bloggers so worked up over it again?

My Bold

Excuse me, but when you have five times as many CRN stations as you had before, then where are you going to get the data to use as a base? There are no older records!


What are the well documented techniques to generate this data? And if this well documented technique really works then why did they install the newest 1000 CRN stations? They wouldn’t be needed; simply use the few old stations and just generate the missing data.

[lomiller1]

The process of adding new and better weather stations has been going on for 150 years. It simply does not follow that because we continue to do this we must discard all the data collected thus far.

[lomiller1]

the GISS home page has considerable documentation on what adjustments are applied and why.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Hansen_etal.pdf

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1999/1999_Hansen_etal.pdf

[orionjim]

The process of adding new and better weather stations has been going on for 150 years. It simply does not follow that because we continue to do this we must discard all the data collected thus far.

You don’t need to discard any of the older data; the problem is with mixing the new data with the old. There are guidelines for where to install the new stations. These guidelines say where the best place to put them and where the poor or worst places to put them relative to biasing the data. If you put them in the CRN4 or CRN5 rated locations then these stations according to the NOAA documents will tend to produce a bias in the data.

The data from the http://www.surfacestations.org site is suggesting that there is a problem with CRN station placements, and if their information is correct then it “could” cause a biasing of the data.

Like I said before, it’s a quality system problem. The intent was great! If the surfacestation.org site is correct, then the execution of site selection was poor.

[lomiller1]

surfacestations.org is just an extension of a blog. They don't publish anything in peer reviewed journals and don't have anyone on staff who has ever published anything in peer reviewed journals.

What they need to do, but refuse to attempt, is quantify and publish. Again there is nothing whatsoever in the peer reviewed literature to suggest the corrections GISS or HadCRU apply to surface station record is inadequate.

[lomiller1]

in other news, the Greenland ice sheet is mealting even faster then anticipated and sea level rise now exceeds 3mm/year

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090612092741.htm

[lomiller1]

and this paper documenting that there is a farily simple relationship between CO2 and global warming

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610154453.htm

[orionjim]

surfacestations.org is just an extension of a blog. They don't publish anything in peer reviewed journals and don't have anyone on staff who has ever published anything in peer reviewed journals.

What they need to do, but refuse to attempt, is quantify and publish. Again there is nothing whatsoever in the peer reviewed literature to suggest the corrections GISS or HadCRU apply to surface station record is inadequate.

That makes as much sense as me connecting to a new cable service and after it was installed I found out that the reception was lousy, and to get the reception corrected I would need to write a peer reviewed paper. It’s a system quality problem! I didn’t just discover the underlying physics for quantum mechanics. All I discovered was the cable service I selected has bad service in my area.

There is a whole world outside peer review that copes with simple problems with simple fixes.

[Jetlack]

Jetlack, we are not talking about absorption. Stroller is claiming that 1 additional watt of net energy will behave differently based on whether that energy comes from to sun or from energy prevented from exiting the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses.

The IPCC AR4 places the amount of additional energy flowing into the earths atmosphere from a doubling of CO2 at 4.5 W/m^2, which is very close to 2% increase in solar activity. (don’t forget the shape of the earth or it’s albedo!)

Absorption must be accounted for in both cases. Neither form of energy acts in isolation of the overall system and since absorption is a major function it has to be a variable in any analysis. A net watt of energy directly from the sun will undergo a different set of processes than a net watt of energy already inside the atmosphere. One is penetrating the atmosphere and the other is already trapped inside. Their net effect on global tempertaures will be quite different having been processed.

[Demigrog]

and this paper documenting that there is a farily simple relationship between CO2 and global warming

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610154453.htm

I'd prefer to read the actual paper, but the summary implies that there is a linear relationship between CO2 and temperature. That is totally wrong, unless it was an approximation over a fairly small range of CO2 values. Clearly the relationship is logarithmic. I don't see how a simple approximation is worthy of an article in Nature though.

[lomiller1]

Jetlack by definition heat energy, and therefore temperature, increases by power (in Watts) * Time, that’s a fundamental physical relationship.

[lomiller1]

I'd prefer to read the actual paper, but the summary implies that there is a linear relationship between CO2 and temperature. That is totally wrong, unless it was an approximation over a fairly small range of CO2 values. Clearly the relationship is logarithmic. I don't see how a simple approximation is worthy of an article in Nature though.

He isn't saying that temperature response to CO2 is linear, he is saying the response to emissions are linear. I.E. they obey superposition so you get the same amount of warming from giben emissions no matter what the rate of emissions.



Matthews and colleagues show that despite these uncertainties, each emission of carbon dioxide results in the same global temperature increase, regardless of when or over what period of time the emission occurs.

[Ari Jokimaki]

I am a retired statistician and unless they have rewritten every book on statistics that I have ever read your post is utter nonsense.
Usually comments like these are followed by a detailed explanation of what is wrong, especially when one tries to declare himself as "expert" of the matter. One thing that might be off in my explanation is the terminology used. I might have confused the standard deviation of the mean with the standard error of the mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_error_(statistics)), but I don't think that is very bad mistake as both have practically same formula. Basic principle that I argued for - that taking a mean of many measurements makes the derived value more accurate - is definitely correct and easily demonstrated. I'll show it by couple of graphs from Woodfortrees website:

Random noise pattern - raw data (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/noise)
Random noise pattern - mean of 25 samples (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/noise/mean:25) - note how amplitude is clearly smaller, which means that the standard deviation also got smaller.
Random noise pattern - mean of 100 samples (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/noise/mean:100) - again amplitude and standard deviation are much smaller.

If you look at the amplitude values, you will notice that on average they agree quite well with these ("a" = amplitude):

a25 = araw / sqrt(25)
a100 = araw / sqrt(100)


Your complaints of Stroller are nonsense.
Whether I'm right or wrong about these calculations, Stroller's conclusions are false anyway (too far-reaching in the face of available evidence).


If I took two days to explain every place you made an error I would at my very best not be able to equal the very link you provided. It appears to me that you had decided what the answer was to be and took one of the better wiki articles that I have ever read and totally destroyed it to fit your agenda.
How nice. Even if you would be able to show I was wrong in my calculation, why it is a sign of dishonesty? Is it so that anyone who argues for AGW, cannot make an honest mistake? You, on the other hand, declared yourself as an expert of the matter, but very carefully avoided talking about the specifics of the matter. I like to evaluate expertise from actions.

You also ignored all my questions.

[mugaliens]

You, on the other hand, declared yourself as an expert of the matter, but very carefully avoided talking about the specifics of the matter.

He's provided many specifics - why are you ignoring them?


You also ignored all my questions.

You're making this allegation on the basis of less than 24 hours response? (check the date/time stamps of the posts).

If his previous behavious is any indication, he's simply taking the time to thoroughly read the posts and forumulate an appropriate response.

Let's get back to discussing the details and stay away from the fallacious arguements, ok?

[Ari Jokimaki]

He's provided many specifics - why are you ignoring them?
No, he provided links to couple of general documents, but didn't talk about specifics why my calculation would be wrong.

[HenrikOlsen]

Chart hosted at www.klimadebat.dk (http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/glotempmay092.gif)
Chart from the Danish Institute for Meteorology (http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dmi.dk%2Fdmi%2Fden_globale_midd eltemperatur&sl=da&tl=en&history_state0=), showing the mean temperature change over the last 150+ years, which shows why using a graph for only the last 7 years amounts to gross cherrypicking. Note that the link is to a machine translation to English from the original Danish, if there are sentences that looks strange I'd be happy to provide a better translation.

[Stroller]

Chart from the Danish Institute for Meteorology (http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dmi.dk%2Fdmi%2Fden_globale_midd eltemperatur&sl=da&tl=en&history_state0=), showing the mean temperature change over the last 150+ years, which shows why using a graph for only the last 7 years amounts to gross cherrypicking.
Cherrypicking?

I posted the graph, without comment, in response to Gillian's assertion that "global temperature is in fact, rising".

It isn't.

I pointed out in a previous post that the current cooling is unusual in the last few decades in that it is not associated with a major volcano. What other major negative forcing agent could be responsible? The earthshine project has observed an increase in global albedo after 1998, which has not reduced again. By 2003 the oceans stopped gaining more heat (ARGO - Willis' corrected results), and the global average temperature (all 4 major agencies averaged) has dropped around 0.5F in the last 4.5 years.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2005/trend/plot/wti/from:2005

It's pretty obvious therefore that clouds are a much stronger negative forcing on the climate than co2 is a positive forcing. Since water vapour is a much more potent and prevalent greenhouse gas than co2 is anyway, it's clear that our planet's temperature is driven by insolation, and regulated by changing cloud cover and evaporation, convection and precipitation. A nice accessible and clearly written essay on the subject for those interested can be found here:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/

Co2 is a very minor bit player along for the ride. Radiative processes in the atmosphere are orders of magnitude smaller in energy terms than what's going on in the ocean - evaporation -cloud -precipitation cycle. The Earth can be considered as a giant Carnot cycle heat engine with ocean and atmosphere as the working fluids. Heat goes in at the tropics and out at the poles. The heat enrgy is moved around and converted to work energy by wind, currents, water vapour, and clouds. The 0.039% of the atmosphere made up of co2 gets swooshed around with everything else by the leviathons that are the Hadley circulatory systems and major ocean currents.

The tail does not wag the dog.

As I said before, every picture tells a story, and you are as free to post the picture that tells the story you want to have heard as I am. I won't get all accusatory and start bandying words like 'cherrypicking' around either.

By the way, it's eight years, not seven.

[Stroller]

surfacestations.org is just an extension of a blog. They don't publish anything in peer reviewed journals and don't have anyone on staff who has ever published anything in peer reviewed journals.


Why would anthony Watts want to publish before the survey is complete and all the data is in?

We've seen enough half baked ideas foisted on us by climatologists with inadequate data already IMO.

This very day Anthony Watts said:

"...as of last night, we have now surveyed 981 stations out of the 1221 USHCN weather station network, for 80.3% of the total. With only 19 stations to go to reach 1000 surveyed, I have no doubt we’ll bat 1000 soon.

Of those 981 stations surveyed, we have been able to assign ratings to 972 of them. Lots of quality control has gone into the recent work to ensure that the surveys we are getting are the correct stations, and accurate in the rating."

"The intent is to publish, with detailed analysis. I have a publication team lined up that includes people with statistical experience that far exceeds my own. – Anthony"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/15/surfacestations-now-at-80-of-the-network-surveyed-illinois-and-florida-ushcn-surveys-complete/

So, not only methodical, orderly and careful, but wise enough to know his own limitations with data handling.

If only Michael Mann was as humble and realistic, we wouldn't have the hockey stick fiasco and the antarctic warming rubbish he co-authored with Eric Steig.

[orionjim]

Usually comments like these are followed by a detailed explanation of what is wrong, especially when one tries to declare himself as "expert" of the matter. One thing that might be off in my explanation is the terminology used.

[...]

How nice. Even if you would be able to show I was wrong in my calculation, why it is a sign of dishonesty? Is it so that anyone who argues for AGW, cannot make an honest mistake? You, on the other hand, declared yourself as an expert of the matter, but very carefully avoided talking about the specifics of the matter. I like to evaluate expertise from actions.

You also ignored all my questions.

OK. Here goes...

The first thing to understand is what does the error number assigned to a CRN station mean? The answer is that this error number is an estimated value of the complete measurement systems’ bias of the data. Therefore the mean used in the formula in the wiki article is “0” or the true value. And the error is the estimated distance from “0”. For every reading that is taken the error is put into the formula; like this: (mean – error) since we are working with a measurement system the mean is “0” and the error is the CRN value. So using 5 as the error value the starting formula is (0 – 5) or (-5) the next step is to square that value so (-5)2 = 25. So for every reading that is taken at a CRN4 station with an error of 5 you add 25 to the running total.

You used a number of readings of (30 * 12 * 1221) = 439,560 so for each of these readings our running total gets increased by 25. 439,560 x 25 =10,989,000.

Now let’s calculate the Standard Deviation:
Stdev = sqrt(10,989,000/439,560) = 5

Standard Deviation is basically the average of the error in two dimensions (the variance) then brought back to one dimension. So we squared all of our errors then averaged them and took the square root. This leaves us with 5 for a CRN4 site.

If you think I am wrong then I have a simple test for you to try. Use your method for a CRN1 site and tell me the answer.

The methods you linked to deal with precision or variability and in a set of data when larger samples are drawn from the same population will yield values closer to the actual mean value of the data. The difference between these links and the CRN error values is we are talking about a measurement system that has an error or bias and you can take a million readings and as long as that bias is there, it will affect every reading that is taken. It’s like having a ruler that has 5cm cut off the starting end; everything you measure will measure 5cm longer than it actually is regardless of how many times you measure it. That’s what the error value is in the CRN numbers.

Like I said before you want to find a method that fits what you want the results to be. If you go to the first wiki site you linked to and read that and then the other one I linked to you will see the problem. You just ignored them because they didn’t help you prove your point and kept searching until you found some formulas that did.

[Gillianren]

Cherrypicking?

I posted the graph, without comment, in response to Gillian's assertion that "global temperature is, in fact, still rising".

It isn't.

Maybe you just don't understand what "cherry picking" means.

[Stroller]

Maybe you just don't understand what "cherry picking" means.

Do enlighten me.

[captain swoop]

Selecting the little bit that supports your position and ignoring the remainder that doesn't.

[Stroller]

Selecting the little bit that supports your position and ignoring the remainder that doesn't.
Gillian's statement was about the present, not the distant past.

"average global temperature is in fact, rising".

It isn't, and hasn't been for at least the last eight years on average.

http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/glotempmay092.gif

Selecting a graph at this timescale enabled me to show the monthly data with some clarity, as well as the linear trends.

People always choose the data representation which demonstrates their point to maximum effect, and warming alarmists are no exception, so why bother taking anyone on either side to task for it?

My choice of graph was perfectly appropriate for it's purpose. If anyone else wants to choose a different timescale and argue their case, they should go right ahead and do their thing.

[Ari Jokimaki]

The first thing to understand is what does the error number assigned to a CRN station mean?
Actually, no. In the case of my calculation I have assumed that there is a random error of 5 degrees C (or to use more correct terminology, I have assumed that the sample standard deviation is 5 degrees C) and then I have calculated how the precision improves with increasing sample size. You can argue that my assumption is not exactly correct in practise but that doesn't mean that my calculation is "nonsense" because I presented it as a hypothetical calculation to begin with.


Now let’s calculate the Standard Deviation:
Stdev = sqrt(10,989,000/439,560) = 5

Standard Deviation is basically the average of the error in two dimensions (the variance) then brought back to one dimension. So we squared all of our errors then averaged them and took the square root. This leaves us with 5 for a CRN4 site.
My calculation is not about standard deviation of a single station or even whole sample, it is about the standard deviation of the mean (or standard error of the mean) of the sample.


The methods you linked to deal with precision or variability and in a set of data when larger samples are drawn from the same population will yield values closer to the actual mean value of the data.
And that is what I have tried to calculate. I originally talked about "standard deviation of the mean", which was the term used in the Wikipedia page for the standard deviation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation). There it says: "If we want to obtain the mean by sampling the distribution then the standard deviation of the mean is related to the standard deviation of the distribution by:", followed by the equation I was using. In my last post I also added some empirical evidence (the graphs I showed) that my calculation seems to produce at least roughly correct results. But you just went ahead and continued to accuse me of dishonesty (but didn't answer my questions about your previous accusation):


Like I said before you want to find a method that fits what you want the results to be. If you go to the first wiki site you linked to and read that and then the other one I linked to you will see the problem. You just ignored them because they didn’t help you prove your point and kept searching until you found some formulas that did.
At least have courtesy to back up these statements, where is your evidence of my dishonesty?


The difference between these links and the CRN error values is we are talking about a measurement system that has an error or bias and you can take a million readings and as long as that bias is there, it will affect every reading that is taken. It’s like having a ruler that has 5cm cut off the starting end; everything you measure will measure 5cm longer than it actually is regardless of how many times you measure it. That’s what the error value is in the CRN numbers.
You talk about a bias, but there is no evidence for biases here. You cannot determine a bias by a single visit to a measuring station. Take for example the "CRN4" from the surfacestations.org (http://www.surfacestations.org/). It seems to be a 2-5 degree error caused by "artificial heating sources <10 meters". The presence of artificial heating sources can indeed cause an error to the station's absolute temperature value. However, we are still a long way from bias. All we know that we have a potential offset to the measured temperature. To determine bias you would need to know how much heat those artificial heating sources have produced through times. Did they produce more before than today? Did they produce less than today? You are claiming a bias but have very little to show for it.

There is no evidence that these reported errors are anything but offsets. Offsets don't really matter when dealing with temperature anomalies (which show the amount of change which offset doesn't affect). But, even if there would be biases in single stations, there's no proof that all the stations go to same direction, which then means that we can treat the biases as a source of random error when we are dealing with large amount of stations. And if we take a mean of large amount of stations, the precision of the mean gets far better than single station errors, even if all stations would have large errors.

Also, it should be mentioned here that when global temperature anomalies are determined, the process already contains a quality control. For example, here's one paper dealing with GISS quality control (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1999/1999_Hansen_etal.pdf) (see especially chapter 3). Another point to note is that while surfacestations.org concentrates on USHCN version 1 (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html), GISS uses USHCN version 2 (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/):


Version 2 data were produced using a new set of quality control and homogeneity assessment algorithms.
The linked page contains interesting stuff about data processing in version 2, for example the "urbanization effects" section seems to be interesting in the context of this discussion, one quote from there:


In contrast, no specific urban correction is applied in HCN version 2 because the change-point detection algorithm effectively accounts for any "local" trend at any individual station.
So, the individual stations are already corrected in version 2.

[PraedSt]

Excuse my interruption.

The WSJ on the current status of the policy debate in Washington (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124519462073620871.html). The debate is cap-and-trade versus research spending.
The argument over whether climate change is a real problem is largely settled in Washington. What to do about climate change? That debate is at a boil.
...
Europe has been using this approach, dubbed "cap and trade," for several years. But it is far from clear whether the system will win over U.S. lawmakers. One reason is that some political leaders are listening to the kind of doubts about the effectiveness of a cap-and-trade system put forward by a number of prominent thinkers on environmental issues.

Some of them assert that Europe's experience with cap and trade shows that the system on its own has a negligible impact on pollution. It would make more sense, they say, to spend money on developing clean-energy technology. Others say the focus on cap and trade has diverted attention from the need for better strategies to reduce energy use.More there.

[Ronald Brak]

Unfortunately the universe is under no obligation to provide us with an energy source that is cheaper than coal no matter how much we spend on research over the coming decades.

[PraedSt]

So true. We should go with clean coal. :D

[Ronald Brak]

Unfortunately that's not cheap. And besides, I tried to scrub a piece of coal clean with a brush and soapy water once and all I ended up with was a bucket of filth.

[PraedSt]

More from that article above. :lol:

In a 2008 book, Prof. MacKay dismisses what he calls the "codswallop" in the energy debate, such as government campaigns to get citizens to turn off their cellphone chargers. In face of the enormous challenges posed by global warming, he says, such small changes amount to "a feeble gesture, like bailing the Titanic with a teaspoon."

"Cap and trade," he says, "is acceptable because it achieves so little."

[Ronald Brak]

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Achieving so little is better than achieving nothing.

[orionjim]

Actually, no. In the case of my calculation I have assumed that there is a random error of 5 degrees C (or to use more correct terminology, I have assumed that the sample standard deviation is 5 degrees C) and then I have calculated how the precision improves with increasing sample size. You can argue that my assumption is not exactly correct in practise but that doesn't mean that my calculation is "nonsense" because I presented it as a hypothetical calculation to begin with.
...

(My Bold)

Ok…. Using your example you have a substation measurement system that has a standard deviation of 5 degrees C.

What that means is if I could somehow hold the temperature constant at 15c or 59f and make 1000 measurements my data would be a fairly normal distribution with the lowest reading of 0c/32f to a highest reading of 30c/86f.

Now if you made a 1000 more measurements you would still have a distribution with about the same readings. And since this measurement data is random there would be no way to make any corrections.


Your assumption says that the 6 sigma variability of the measurement system is 30c.

Yes the average reading will get closer to the true temperature, but do you really think NOAA would allow a system with 30c degrees variability?
See your link again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation)

That’s what you are saying! And you want me to say that this is not nonsense?

[orionjim]

One more thing Ari,

If there is an artificial heat source near the temperature sensor causing it to warm, then every reading you take will be affected by this warming.

And you can take a million readings and the mean will converge on this biased temperature.

Let’s face it the people at NOAA and NESDIC are not stupid.

[Gillianren]

If there is an artificial heat source near the temperature sensor causing it to warm, then every reading you take will be affected by this warming.

From that one sensor, yes. And if that one sensor is constantly running hot, and it constantly runs hot by about the same amount, surely any rising of temperature detected in that sensor is still different from the heat source it's near, right?

[orionjim]

From that one sensor, yes. And if that one sensor is constantly running hot, and it constantly runs hot by about the same amount, surely any rising of temperature detected in that sensor is still different from the heat source it's near, right?

Of course! The sensor can still tell you that the temperature is changing. The sensor can’t tell you the amount of heat coming from the artificial source and how much is coming from the actual temperature.

The CRN rating system tries to estimate the amount of site bias and I assume corrections can or could be applied to remove some of the bias. Ari is trying to say if you keep measuring the temperature you can remove the bias.

The system set up by NOAA and NESDIC is well thought out system. If the numbers on the surfacestation site are correct then I think the implementation of that system was poorly done.

Jim

[Gillianren]

Of course! The sensor can still tell you that the temperature is changing. The sensor can’t tell you the amount of heat coming from the artificial source and how much is coming from the actual temperature.

It can if the amount of heat from the artificial source if fixed, though, right?

[orionjim]

It can if the amount of heat from the artificial source if fixed, though, right?

If it were a fixed number then the thermometer might have or could have an adjustment mechanism to correct the bias. That would be the simplest case. But you really need to read the NOAA/NESDIC documentation because the site bias is really not that simple to correct. See:
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/documentation/program/X030FullDocumentD0.pdf

To me the answer would be to place the substations in the CRN1 or CRN2 locations. Knowing that this would be impossible to do, I believe is what drove the CRN numbering system.

What I find strange is according to the http://www.surfacestations.org site that 11% fall in the ideal locations (less than 1c error), 20% fall in sites with 1c to 2c error and 69% are at sites greater than 2c error. I would have thought it would have been the other way around.

There are 414 more sites to be checked and I would guess that the numbers from these will improve the percentages of the better sites.

Jim

[lomiller1]

Simply taking the differential, as GISS and HadCRU do will entirely remove any bias from a nearby heat source. In the absolute worst case all you get is a greater uncertainty in the sites data.

Unless that uncertainty is extremely large, however, there is still a usable temperature change signal that can be extracted. If it is extremely large it will be recognizable in the data and the site can be discarded.

[Joe Durnavich]

in other news, the Greenland ice sheet is mealting even faster then anticipated and sea level rise now exceeds 3mm/year

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090612092741.htm

Are there areas in the world where people can see that the sea level has risen? With all these stories about the rising sea, there has to be accounts of the consequences, even something minor like, say, a beach chair being washed out to sea or people having to walk around with their pants rolled up.

[Ari Jokimaki]

Your assumption says that the 6 sigma variability of the measurement system is 30c.

Yes the average reading will get closer to the true temperature, but do you really think NOAA would allow a system with 30c degrees variability?

...

That’s what you are saying! And you want me to say that this is not nonsense?
I'm not suggesting that the situation is real. Like I said, my calculation is about a hypothetical situation where all stations are grossly inaccurate. I made that assumption in order to show that even with grossly inaccurate measurements we can have an end result (global temperature reading) that is sufficiently accurate. You seem to be looking at this from different perspective than I am. I am looking at this from global temperature analysis perspective. I do agree that it would be nice to have all individual stations in very good shape, but I'm just saying that for global temperature analysis it is not a must.


If there is an artificial heat source near the temperature sensor causing it to warm, then every reading you take will be affected by this warming.

And you can take a million readings and the mean will converge on this biased temperature.
But, assuming constant contribution from the artificial heating source, it won't cause the temperature to change through times, it just adds an offset and therefore will not show in the temperature anomaly. For local weather report it would be nice to have accurate reading there, but for global temperature analysis it doesn't cause any change.

An example:

We have 10 measurements:

5, 7, 4, 6, 3, 5, 6, 4, 5, 7

Let's compute the anomaly with reference to the fifth value of the series (which is 3). We get:

2, 4, 1, 3, 0, 2, 3, 1, 2, 4

Now, let's add offset of 2 to the original series:

7, 9, 6, 8, 5, 7, 8, 6, 7, 9

Let's compute the anomaly with reference to the fifth value again (which is now 5). We get:

2, 4, 1, 3, 0, 2, 3, 1, 2, 4

As you can see, the anomaly is still the same.

[Stroller]

"But assuming constant contribution from the artificial heating source, it won't cause the temperature to change through times"

Yeah, but those air conditioners and tarmacced carparks weren't there in 1920. And the jet passanger planes taxiing past the thermometers at airports used in the climate record were phased in postwar. The upward bias has crept in a bit at a time in ways which are not removed by 'step change algorithms'.

[lomiller1]

Individual sites do not creep upwards over time due to urbanization. The building of that air conditioner or car park creates a distinctive discontinuity in the data. The methods used to identify and remove that discontinuity are documented in the peer review literature.

[Gillianren]

"Creeping upward" would not be a behaviour pattern one would reasonably expect of a sensor if it were the man-made factors around it changing, certainly. When the air conditioner is turned on, that would be a step up, not a creep up. When the tarmac is laid, that would be notable in the record. And so forth.

[lomiller1]

"Creeping upward" would not be a behaviour pattern one would reasonably expect of a sensor if it were the man-made factors around it changing, certainly. When the air conditioner is turned on, that would be a step up, not a creep up. When the tarmac is laid, that would be notable in the record. And so forth.

The effect of urbanization is recognized (and accounted for) but it’s only a “steady increase” on mass. I.E. as you get a site here and there with a step increase due to urbanization the average temperature at those sites grows at a steady pace.

There are several papers that show this effect is fairly small, but it’s accounted for in GISS and HadCRU anyway. It's also worth considering what will happen if an open field is paved and then trees planted around it grow. It's entirely conceivable that the final bias is negative rather then positive.

[Stroller]

These comments may be plausible if the movement of the local natural temperature signal were smoothe enough to differentiate the step which may be caused by an aircon unit being installed would cause, but it isn't. Weather data is noisy as all hell. Added to which, wind direction is going to be a major factor in determining whether an aircon exhaust is going to affect a temperature reading that day or not.

I think you are defending the indefensible. There are many other issues we haven't even touched on yet, like the loss of most of the stations of record since the early 1990's. I have no doubt lomiller will be able to trot out the usual line of "there's a peer reviewed paper which explains why it doesn't matter" but really it does, and they know it.

Which is why the USHCN is currently scurrying around trying to clean up the remaining sites before Anthony Watts and his volunteers get to them. Hence Orion Jim's comment about the remaining stations getting better ratings.

[lomiller1]

If the bias introduced by an air conditioner being installed is to small to be detected it's to small to effect the temperature record. A static DC bias is very easy to pick out from noise.

I won't bother responding the the pew-pewing of the importance of peer review, but the USHCN has always sought to improve their data. This process did not begin because of some blogger no how large his delusions of grandeur.

[orionjim]

...

But, assuming constant contribution from the artificial heating source, it won't cause the temperature to change through times, it just adds an offset and therefore will not show in the temperature anomaly. For local weather report it would be nice to have accurate reading there, but for global temperature analysis it doesn't cause any change.

An example:

We have 10 measurements:

5, 7, 4, 6, 3, 5, 6, 4, 5, 7

Let's compute the anomaly with reference to the fifth value of the series (which is 3). We get:

2, 4, 1, 3, 0, 2, 3, 1, 2, 4

Now, let's add offset of 2 to the original series:

7, 9, 6, 8, 5, 7, 8, 6, 7, 9

Let's compute the anomaly with reference to the fifth value again (which is now 5). We get:

2, 4, 1, 3, 0, 2, 3, 1, 2, 4

As you can see, the anomaly is still the same.

That's almost correct Ari!

The numbers will change pretty much the same based on your reference value. That reference value is the bias. So you can change the bias and the rest of the numbers will maintain the same relationship between each other. NOAA calls this ‘bias’ the ‘error’.

The only problem is all readings will be off by this bias value.

But as Gilliaren said; if you know this bias or error then you can calculate something close to the actual temperature and that is correct.

Thats assuming the bias doesn't change; if it does change over time then you need a something more sophisticated.

[lomiller1]

If it changes over time it’s not a bias, but that’s really just semantics. Considerably effort is put into identifying just such signals, and these results are published in peer review journals. Every published source of effort is accounted for in the current data corrections.

[orionjim]

If it changes over time it’s not a bias, but that’s really just semantics. Considerably effort is put into identifying just such signals, and these results are published in peer review journals. Every published source of effort is accounted for in the current data corrections.



http://www.blogsmithcdn.com/avatar/images/21/114221_64.jpg


Help Me Obi Wan Kenobi
You're My Only Hope

[danscope]

" I don't remember ever owning a droid before."

[Ari Jokimaki]

The numbers will change pretty much the same based on your reference value. That reference value is the bias. So you can change the bias and the rest of the numbers will maintain the same relationship between each other. NOAA calls this ‘bias’ the ‘error’.

The only problem is all readings will be off by this bias value.
In global temperature analysis, which uses temperature anomalies, readings will not be off. The anomaly stays the same. Your own text here shows that you agree with that (the upper paragraph I quoted). So, why are you insisting with the "readings will be off" claim, when you obviously understand that I'm talking about anomalies instead of absolute readings?


Thats assuming the bias doesn't change; if it does change over time then you need a something more sophisticated.
Are you claiming that there is not anything more sophisticated in the quality control of USHCN, GISS, and others?

(Just adding couple more questions to your non-answered question queue, which is getting rather long...)

[Klausnh]

I don't think it's a conspiracy so much as a tacit understanding. When a young science develops it's first major Paradigm, it tends to defend it vigorously, in order to present a united front in the face of criticism. Scientists whose work threatens to invalidate the fundamental underpinnings of the paradigm become casualties of this process, not because those coalescing around the paradigm bear them ill will (unless they won't shut up after rejection), but because they threaten (in the case of AGW) a fragile and as yet untestable theory.

See Pielke senior's recent post on the 'short circuiting of the scientific process' (http://climatesci.org/2009/06/04/short-circuiting-the-scientific-process-a-serious-problem-in-the-climate-science-community/)Because you have such respect for Pielke, here (pdf) is a 11/2008 (http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-334.pdf) statement by him on human influence on climate change

There is a need to minimize human disturbance of the climate by limiting the amount of CO2 that is emitted into the atmosphere by human activities, but the diversity of human climate forcings should not be ignored.

[Stroller]

the USHCN has always sought to improve their data.

By installing Aircon units near the sensors?

[Stroller]

Because you have such respect for Pielke, here (pdf) is a 11/2008 (http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-334.pdf) statement by him on human influence on climate change

And in the same paper he also says the radiative forcing estimated by Hansen et al are well over the top.

Well worth a read.

I respect Pielke's precautionary views, and I think in his position he is wise to maintain them. I don't agree, but that's fine.

[orionjim]

In global temperature analysis, which uses temperature anomalies, readings will not be off. The anomaly stays the same. Your own text here shows that you agree with that (the upper paragraph I quoted). So, why are you insisting with the "readings will be off" claim, when you obviously understand that I'm talking about anomalies instead of absolute readings?

When the bulk of the temperature stations that have been installed recently (since the mid 1980’s) have a bias of 2c to 5c degrees and these recently added stations make up the bulk of the total number of temperature stations; there is a problem. Especially since the temperature change being detected in the past 25 years is only .5c degrees.


Are you claiming that there is not anything more sophisticated in the quality control of USHCN, GISS, and others?

No, I’m saying that there is no quality control. If there was a real quality control system then the surfacestation.org site would have been stopped in the very beginning. They (NOAA) would have had the records of each station that would be able to answer questions of even the harshest critics. When you set up a system as extensive and expensive as the new satellite temperature monitoring system you would ensure that there would be way to monitor and audit it.

I am not saying that there haven’t been any adjustments to the data attempting to remove the bias; there have been. I say this because the data shows adjustments have been made.
The easiest way to silence a critic is to demonstrate that what was done was done properly, and have the data and information to prove it.

All that the critics are getting is silence, and this isn’t a good sign.


(Just adding couple more questions to your non-answered question queue, which is getting rather long...)

As far as you declaring that I have not answered your questions, most all of them were nonsense about how you can make multiple measurements to remove bias; which you seem now to understand can’t be done. I know you forgot to thank me, but you are welcome.:)

Ari, I have been very polite, putting up with your numerous insults. While I did succeed in getting you to understand bias I’m afraid I will never succeed in you overcoming your lack of understanding in what and how measuring systems work.

Sorry Ari, I'm tired of the insults.

[Ari Jokimaki]

When the bulk of the temperature stations that have been installed recently (since the mid 1980’s) have a bias of 2c to 5c degrees and these recently added stations make up the bulk of the total number of temperature stations; there is a problem. Especially since the temperature change being detected in the past 25 years is only .5c degrees.
I already showed that if the error is random, then the accuracy is sufficient even if all stations would have a standard deviation of 5 degrees C. I also showed that if it's an offset, then it doesn't show in global temperature analysis which uses anomalies instead of absolute temperature readings. It has also been argued here that it hasn't been shown that there are real biases (you can't determine them by a single visit to the station) and that even in the case of real biases it is likely that the biases get corrected by the quality control processes already existing. The only problem assuming that the situation you describe would be true, as already acknowledged by me before, is that the individual stations might show wrong absolute temperature reading. This is a local weather report problem, not global climate problem. However, it also hasn't been demonstrated that these claimed errors in absolute temperature readings are not corrected already.

Furthermore, you seem to be hypercritical toward organizations handling these measurements, but you don't seem to be critical at all toward that website making these claims about errors of many degrees, you seem to be accepting everything there without a doubt. And yet they haven't published their methodology. It was said here that they haven't published the methodology because they don't want to publish unfinished product, but there they are publishing their results anyway in the website. Curiously, it seems that if some don't publish their methodology (or at least are claimed not to publish them) they get accused of all kinds of nasty things by some people, but then some others who don't publish their methodology get praised by the same people.


No, I’m saying that there is no quality control. If there was a real quality control system then the surfacestation.org site would have been stopped in the very beginning.
Are you sure? There are plenty of websites all over Internet making all sorts of unfounded claims about climate science, why would this website be an exception?


They (NOAA) would have had the records of each station that would be able to answer questions of even the harshest critics. When you set up a system as extensive and expensive as the new satellite temperature monitoring system you would ensure that there would be way to monitor and audit it.
Are you claiming that there isn't a way to do those things?


The easiest way to silence a critic is to demonstrate that what was done was done properly, and have the data and information to prove it.
Yes, I agree, but you have to think a bit about what exactly is a critic? These days, when just about everyone has access to Internet and can publish their thoughts, you have huge amount of "critics" publishing all kinds of rubbish about climate science. Should climate science demonstrate that all those claims are false, or should they use their time to something more constructive and concentrate only to those critics who have decency to give their critic in scientific manner?


As far as you declaring that I have not answered your questions, most all of them were nonsense about how you can make multiple measurements to remove bias; which you seem now to understand can’t be done.
Here are my questions:
"Oh, so the other group doesn't care about the quality at all?"
"And, for the record, do you agree with Stroller's conclusion about this?"
"Are you claiming they aren't?" (studying quality)
"Have you checked if they are already doing that (with their reference networks and all)?" (studying quality)
"Even if you would be able to show I was wrong in my calculation, why it is a sign of dishonesty?"
"Is it so that anyone who argues for AGW, cannot make an honest mistake?"
"At least have courtesy to back up these statements, where is your evidence of my dishonesty?"
"Did they produce more before than today? Did they produce less than today?"
"So, why are you insisting with the "readings will be off" claim, when you obviously understand that I'm talking about anomalies instead of absolute readings?"
"Are you claiming that there is not anything more sophisticated in the quality control of USHCN, GISS, and others?"

As you can see, none of them were about making "multiple measurements to remove bias". Why would you make such a false claim when it is so easy to check? I also have explained many times that I assumed that sample standard deviation is 5 degrees C for my calculation, so it should be very obvious that I wasn't addressing the question of bias with my calculation.


Ari, I have been very polite,...
Is it polite to accuse someone of dishonesty without evidence of such? And is it polite to ignore questions about these accusations so that the person one accuses doesn't even get a chance to defend themselves? Is it polite to repeat the dishonesty accusations again without any evidence of dishonesty?

[Gillianren]

Are you sure? There are plenty of websites all over Internet making all sorts of unfounded claims about climate science, why would this website be an exception?

And it's hardly as though it's just climate science, either. No specifics, of course, but I don't really have to give any. Pick some aspect of the entire universe. Look for a website opposing established knowledge. You will find it.

[Stroller]

And it's hardly as though it's just climate science, either. No specifics, of course, but I don't really have to give any. Pick some aspect of the entire universe. Look for a website opposing established knowledge. You will find it.

What established knowledge? There is an AGW hypothesis with a lot of observational evidence and basic physics that refutes it.

For example, AGW hypothesis proponents claim the down welling radiation from co2 in the atmosphere is responsible for the warming of the oceans over the last few decades, when it's a well known physical fact that the longwave radiation co2 emits doesn't penetrate water by more than a few micro meters.

[nauthiz]

For example, AGW hypothesis proponents claim the down welling radiation from co2 in the atmosphere is responsible for the warming of the oceans over the last few decades, when it's a well known physical fact that the longwave radiation co2 emits doesn't penetrate water by more than a few micro meters.

I see no contradiction there. Presumably the warming in question is surface warming. The surface includes the top few micrometers. Besides, basic physics suggests that it's at least plausible that even if radiation is only directly heating the top layer, convection and conduction could move it deeper.

It's not entirely unlike how my apartment's heating system is capable of keeping the whole place warm in the winter even though the steam never gets outside of the radiator.

[Ronald Brak]

For example, AGW hypothesis proponents claim the down welling radiation from co2 in the atmosphere is responsible for the warming of the oceans over the last few decades, when it's a well known physical fact that the longwave radiation co2 emits doesn't penetrate water by more than a few micro meters.

So if I leave the door to the fridge open my beer won't get cold because longwave radiation can't penetrate more than a few micrometers into it? That's good to know.

[Stroller]

So if I leave the door to the fridge open my beer won't get cold because longwave radiation can't penetrate more than a few micrometers into it? That's good to know.

I'm sorry to hear your fridge is under water.

It will keep the beer cool at least.

[Stroller]

I see no contradiction there. Presumably the warming in question is surface warming. The surface includes the top few micrometers. Besides, basic physics suggests that it's at least plausible that even if radiation is only directly heating the top layer, convection and conduction could move it deeper.

It's not entirely unlike how my apartment's heating system is capable of keeping the whole place warm in the winter even though the steam never gets outside of the radiator.

Except in one case we're talking about the effect of longwave radiation on water and in the other it's effect of heating air.

So not entirely unlike, no.

There's an interesting discussion on climate audit back in 2005, that Gavin Schmidt actually joins in!
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=213

The response from Willis Eschenbach is particularly interesting and worth reading in full.
Here's a taster:

"During the day, warm water (whether warmed by visible or IR) rises to the top and stays there. At night, the surface water radiates and evaporates, cools, and sinks. This is the main (although not the only) driver of vertical circulation in the upper mixed layer of the ocean (usually ~ 100m).

During the day, then, IR strengthens the vertical thermal stratification in the upper ocean. It leads to higher daytime ocean skin temperatures, particularly in the critical free surface temperature. This leads to increased losses through radiation (radiation increases by T^4). It leads to increased losses through convection (through greater ocean/atmosphere temperature differences and greater instability). It leads to greater evaporative losses (through Clausius-Clapeyron [exponential with T] plus greater wind-driven evaporation [linear with wind speed]).

This means that during the day, the bulk temperature of the mixed layer is immaterial to the rates of radiation, convection, and evaporation. All that matters is the skin temperature. I live, surf, and dive in the deep tropical Pacific. At certain times when the wind and sea are calm, I can be swimming in toasty warm water. But with each stroke of my arms as I paddle, my hands plunge through the surface warmth into much cooler water a half metre down. And during those times, I can feel the extra warmth in the top centimetre. (I imagine I can feel the yet higher free surface temperature, too … but probably that's just me.)

This means that during the day much more of the absorbed IR is immediately lost, compared to the the visible radiation. Visible radiation is absorbed at depth. It heats the bulk of the mixed layer.

By contrast, IR is absorbed at the very surface. In the tropics much of that IR energy just breaks water molecules loose from the surface. In a funny way, this absorbed radiation should never even be counted in the oceanic energy budget. It is absorbed by a water molecule and breaks it free from the ocean. The energy never heats the ocean in the slightest.

The net daytime result is to ensure that the majority of absorbed IR is immediately returned to the atmosphere."

[nauthiz]

Except in one case we're talking about the effect of longwave radiation on water and in the other it's effect of heating air.

So not entirely unlike, no.

But in both cases we're talking about heating a fluid medium using something that can only directly affect a very small portion of the volume of that medium at any one time.

And it's an analogy. The analogues don't need to be any more simple than is necessary to help illustrate the basic principle being described - that a medium itself can transfer heat, in that case.

And I suppose that it is true that they don't really go into the details about how mixing works until the advanced physics classes. So maybe you are right that basic physics refutes the idea. . . but in that case I would suggest that using basic physics to refute a theory that was put together by people who know advanced physics isn't necessarily such a hot idea. Head over to the ATM forum to see where that leads.

Going with what a knowledgable scientist says like in the rest of the post is a good idea . . . but given that the author is one of the major contributors to RealClimate and a supporter of the AGW theory, I'm not even close to willing to jump to the conclusion that his explanation provides any support to your belief that the standard climatological theory on how longwave radiation affects the upper layer of the ocean is refuted by basic physics. Indeed, if there's any dissonance between what Dr. Schmidt describes and what you say "AGW hypothesis proponents claim", it's probably that Dr. Schmidt's explanation is a better representation of the mainstream and your description of the idea is a misrepresentation. Besides, this supposed "Gavin Schmidt" was a poster who made one tiny post under the username "Gavin" and everyone assumes it's him. . . I'd be a little bit less certain about who it really was myself.

Also, in reference to the Eisenbach bit you quoted and how it relates to your initial claim - "most" and "all" mean different things. It would be easier to relate Eisenbach's version of the story to yours (and to the real science) without seeing some numbers. Without, I can see where it's possible for all three to be true. . . as well as basic physics.

[Stroller]

provides any support to your belief that the standard climatological theory on how longwave radiation affects the upper layer of the ocean is refuted by basic physics.

I'm genuinely interested to know what the "standard climatological theory on how longwave radiation affects the upper layer of the ocean" is, because I haven't found one yet. Your response would indicate that you know what it is. So please do tell.

[nauthiz]

I don't really know exactly what it is. Shouldn't you? You're the one who broached the topic. (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-48.html#post1513353)

How can you say the mainstream theory contradicts basic physics if you don't even know what the mainstream theory is?

[mugaliens]

Uh-uh, that cannot be good:

Oceans are 'soaking up less CO2' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7053903.stm)

My, oh my, oh my. This is interesting. Of the two major CO2 sinks in the world, the oceans being one, are absorbing half the CO2 they were 20 years ago. And "scientists believe global warming might get worse if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas."

Nice link, Kullat. I can't help but wonder if these are the same scientists who're claiming the rise in CO2 is due to man-made production? If so, wouldn't that additional CO2 produced by man actually increase the ocean sequesterization of CO2, as do all self-stabilizing cycles on our planet?

If not, then perhaps it's not man's CO2 production which is raising atmospheric CO2 levels after all. Perhaps it's the ocean's refusal to sequester half the CO2 it did a decade or so ago which has resulted in the rise in atmospheric CO2.

Naturally, this raises the question of WHY?

Is it that the oceans have reached their CO2 absorbtion limit? Or is it that some other mechanism is going on in the oceans which have reduced their ability to absorb CO2?

What role does pollution play in either the ocean's inability to absorb CO2, or in it's life form's inability to process absorbed CO2 into fixed carbonaceous forms???

[Stroller]

I don't really know exactly what it is. Shouldn't you? You're the one who broached the topic. (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-48.html#post1513353)

How can you say the mainstream theory contradicts basic physics if you don't even know what the mainstream theory is?

What I said was:

For example, AGW hypothesis proponents claim the down welling radiation from co2 in the atmosphere is responsible for the warming of the oceans over the last few decades, when it's a well known physical fact that the longwave radiation co2 emits doesn't penetrate water by more than a few micro meters.

Do you see me using the words 'theory' or 'standard' in there?

You said:
"standard climatological theory on how longwave radiation affects the upper layer of the ocean"

You are the one who implied there is a "standard theory"

I was the one asking you what it is.

Now you say you don't know what it is. Fair enough, you simply assumed there must be one. Presumably because you assumed proponents of the AGW hypothesis wouldn't make those sorts of claims otherwise.

[Ari Jokimaki]

Radiation transfer in ocean water: Average penetration depth of a photon flux in a fixed time interval - Kirk (2007) (http://www.kirkmarineoptics.com/JGR%20Oceans%202007.pdf), it seems that photons can penetrate almost 100 meters of water.

[Stroller]

Radiation transfer in ocean water: Average penetration depth of a photon flux in a fixed time interval - Kirk (2007) (http://www.kirkmarineoptics.com/JGR%20Oceans%202007.pdf), it seems that photons can penetrate almost 100 meters of water.

True Ari, and indeed photons from the sun penetrate the ocean to a depth of several tens of meters and warm the near surface waters.

However, all photons are not equal. Those emitted by co2 in the form of downwelling infrared radiation cannot get further than a small fraction of an inch into the ocean.

The ocean has more than a thousand times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, and covers 70% of Earth's surface, and changes in air temperature lag behind changes in sea near surface temperatures.

Given a relatively stable humidity, isn't it clear that air temperature is a function primarily of the emission of heat from the oceans rather than the concentration of a trace gas such as co2?

Co2 is a relatively weak greenhouse gas compared to water vapor, which accounts for over 90% of the 'greenhouse effect'. Water in it's various forms is clearly what governs the climate through heating, evaporation, condensation and precipitation. These processes move far more energy around the globe than puny co2 does.

[nauthiz]

What I said was:

For example, AGW hypothesis proponents claim the down welling radiation from co2 in the atmosphere is responsible for the warming of the oceans over the last few decades, when it's a well known physical fact that the longwave radiation co2 emits doesn't penetrate water by more than a few micro meters.

Do you see me using the words 'theory' or 'standard' in there?

No, you didn't use those precise words, but if you're not arguing against the standard climatological theory, which is what AGW is based on, then what exactly are you arguing against?

Besides, don't try to dodge the issue by quibbling about words. What I'm trying to address is specifically what you wrote in that paragraph, and the fact that you have not demonstrated that there's any contradiction between the idea that longwave radiation can heat water and the fact that it is absorbed quickly.

In fact, the point you make that it is absorbed fairly well by water should illustrate that it can heat water, according to the first law of thermodynamics. To argue that it can't possibly heat water, what you'd need to show is that the water gets rid of all that incoming energy very quickly.

[Stroller]

No, you didn't use those precise words

Besides, don't try to dodge the issue by quibbling about words.

Tell you what nauthiz. You don't attribute words to me that I didn't use, and I won't quibble about them.

OK?


what you'd need to show is that the water gets rid of all that incoming energy very quickly.

I don't need to show anything. I'm not the one putting forward the hypothesis.

AGW hypothesis proponents need to show how half co2's share of 340W/m^2 (about 1.7W/m^2) which can't penetrate the surface more than 1mm can raise the temperature of the oceans by 0.5C in 30years.

[nauthiz]

OK, but my question stands, then: What are you arguing against, if not that?

I'd also like to know what you think about my comment that the fact that water absorbs longwave radiation very quickly should, by itself, indicate that it is possible for longwave radiation to heat water. Some of it gets re-emitted, sure, but does all of it get shed so quickly (and in an upward direction, so as to not simply be carrying the energy deeper into the water) that there's no net increase?

[William]

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/big-chill-in-churchill-47992231.html



Prolonged cold snowy conditions in the Hudson Bay area are expected to obliterate the breeding season for migratory birds and most other species of wildlife this year. According to Environment Canada, the spring of 2009 is record-late in the eastern Arctic with virtually 100 per cent snow cover from James Bay north as of June 11.

May temperatures in northern Manitoba were almost four degrees C below the long-term average of -0.7, and in early June, temperatures averaged three degrees below normal. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration images confirm snow and ice blanket all of northern Manitoba, part of northern Ontario and almost all of the eastern Arctic as of June 12. U.S. arieal flight surveys confirm the eastern Arctic has no sign of spring so far.

"I have lived in Churchill since the 1950s, and this the latest spring I have ever seen here," said local resident Pat Penwarden. "The spring of 1962 was almost this bad."

Six-foot snowdrifts blocked Churchill-area roads. A thick blanket of snow, in places three- and four-feet deep, coated 90 per cent of the local taiga in northern Manitoba. Ecotourists, who normally flock to northern Manitoba every June to see birds and other wildlife, cancelled their plans this June "in droves," according to local ecotourist specialists. Snowy conditions are largely to blame.

"It is like a winter landscape," said Ruth Baker, a Michigan tourist who spent June 9 to 12 at Churchill. "I couldn't believe the snowdrifts, like mountains of snow".

[nauthiz]

Further down in that article:


According to NOAA scientists, although the Arctic is warming, more frequent annual oscillations in temperature are likely to occur, often resulting in late springs.

"Such major oscillations are part of a bumpy ride toward global warming," said Thomas Karl of the National Climate Center. "For awhile at least this will be the shape of things to come."

and


"People often confuse climate with weather, and this spring is a weather phenomenon," said an Environment Canada spokesperson.

[Stroller]

OK, but my question stands, then: What are you arguing against?


Well one thing is for sure, I'm not arguing against "standard climatological theory" (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=Psx&q=%22standard+climatological+theory%22&btnG=Search&meta=)



I'd also like to know what you think about my comment that the fact that water absorbs longwave radiation very quickly should, by itself, indicate that it is possible for longwave radiation to heat water.


I think you need to do some reading up on evaporation.

[nauthiz]

Here, I found a fairly in-depth description of how it works. Turns out that the gist of the mechanism isn't that heat from absorbed longwave radiation propagates down deeper into the ocean, it's mostly just that it prevents heat that's deeper in the ocean from escaping, thereby magnifying the effect of radiation in other parts of the spectrum.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/why-greenhouse-gases-heat-the-ocean/

[Stroller]

Here, I found a fairly in-depth description of how it works. Turns out that the gist of the mechanism isn't that heat from absorbed longwave radiation propagates down deeper into the ocean, it's mostly just that it prevents heat that's deeper in the ocean from escaping, thereby magnifying the effect of radiation in other parts of the spectrum.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/why-greenhouse-gases-heat-the-ocean/

Thanks Nauthiz, I'll check this carefully, but my first coupleof reactions are:

1) Gavin states:
The slope of the relationship is 0.002ºK (W/m2)-1. Of course the range of net infrared forcing caused by changing cloud conditions (~100W/m2) is much greater than that caused by increasing levels of greenhouse gases (e.g. doubling pre-industrial CO2 levels will increase the net forcing by ~4W/m2), but the objective of this exercise was to demonstrate a relationship.

So the approx 1.7W/m^2 claimed by the IPCC as the human emitted co2 forcing will make a difference of 0.0034K assuming the observationsare accurate.

2) Where are the error bars on Gavin's graph?

3) Did this 'study' make it through peer review?

[nauthiz]

1. I'm not sure you can extrapolate a study on the influence of one particular kind of change in radiative forcing on a ~1mm thick layer of the ocean to mean global temperatures quite so easily.

2. The writeup was written by Peter Minnett, not Gavin Schmidt. That said, the article itself states that the instrument's absolute precision is "much less than 0.1ºK."

3. According to the commentary section, the data had not been written up in a formal paper as of the time of the writing of the blog post. However, the author has done more work on the subject since the time that that post was written, you can view his publication history here (http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/personal/pminnett/Recent_Publications/recent_publications.html).

[Klausnh]

And in the same paper he also says the radiative forcing estimated by Hansen et al are well over the top.

Well worth a read.

I respect Pielke's precautionary views, and I think in his position he is wise to maintain them. I don't agree, but that's fine.So you accept Pielke's criticism of Hansen but refuse to accept Pielke's conclusion about AGW? Stroller, what would it take for you to accept the peer-reviewed papers instead of the the blogs on AGW? If Watts declared that the evidence for AGW is strong enough for him to change his mind would you also change your mind?

[Stroller]

So you accept Pielke's criticism of Hansen but refuse to accept Pielke's conclusion about AGW? Stroller, what would it take for you to accept the peer-reviewed papers instead of the the blogs on AGW?

I believe in my own capability to use my acquired skills in assessment, reason and logic to form my own views. The AGW hypothesis is a crock. It's premises fail the test of empirical observation and logical scrutiny. It's models fail the test of successful prediction, and it's proponents fail the test of openness preventing the fundamental requirement of replicability.



If Watts declared that the evidence for AGW is strong enough for him to change his mind would you also change your mind?

If Obama ceded the US to france tomorrow would you start whistling La Marseilleise?

[Stroller]

1. I'm not sure you can extrapolate a study on the influence of one particular kind of change in radiative forcing on a ~1mm thick layer of the ocean to mean global temperatures quite so easily.


Amen to that.

[Gillianren]

I believe in my own capability to use my acquired skills in assessment, reason and logic to form my own views. The AGW hypothesis is a crock. It's premises fail the test of empirical observation and logical scrutiny. It's models fail the test of successful prediction, and it's proponents fail the test of openness preventing the fundamental requirement of replicability.

But that doesn't answer the question at all. What would it take to change your mind?

[nauthiz]

I must have misread. . . to me the answer was a very clear "Nothing will change my mind."

[Ronald Brak]

I believe in my own capability to use my acquired skills in assessment, reason and logic to form my own views. The AGW hypothesis is a crock. It's premises fail the test of empirical observation and logical scrutiny. It's models fail the test of successful prediction, and it's proponents fail the test of openness preventing the fundamental requirement of replicability.

Is CO2 a greenhouse gas?

[Torsten]

pssst . . . Ronald. . . . "At all scales, temperature leads, CO2 follows". Assessment, reason and logic make it clear that the rise in CO2 is at most 5-10% anthropogenic. Get with the program!

[nauthiz]

We can measure the amount of additional CO2 in the atmosphere as a result of fossil fuel combustion and cement mixing by observing the ratio of 12C to 13C in the atmosphere. The ratio for carbon from fossil fuel and cement mixing is markedly different than for other sources.

These measurements indicate that 60% of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1950 and 70% since the 1970s is due to fossil carbon sources alone, a number that is both much higher than 5-10% and still less than total anthropogenic emissions.

(Assessment, reason, and logic are nice and all, but when it's hard numbers you want it's hard to beat a spectrometer. ;) )

Anyway, the anthropogenic contribution from land use changes is harder to pin down, but estimates vary between 6% and 39% of the total increase over the course of the 1990s. Combining those numbers, we can produce a back of the envelope estimate of somewhere in the region of 70-100% of the change in atmospheric CO2 concentration being due to anthropogenic influence.


(AR4 WG1 section 2.3.1)

[Stroller]

Oh no, Groundhog Day again.

You all seem very keen to change the subject of the inability of co2 to cause a significant rise in ocean temperature.

Since the oceans cover 70% of the planet and have a thermal capacity of over 1000 times that of the entire atmosphere, of which co2 is 0.039%, and air and land temperatures lag changes in ocean temperature by several months, it's clear that it is thermal emission from the oceans which have caused what little global warming there has been.

But just as cause and effect is ignored by proponents of the AGW hypothesis in the case of changes in co2 level following changes in temperature, they also ignore the law of cause and effect with respect to changes in ocean temperature preceding changes in atmospheric and land temperature.

This is not very scientific.

In fact it is profoundly unscientific.

Lets hear an oceanographer for a minute.

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/ocean.html


"In our joint statement, which I paraphrase here, we noted that “To single out one variable, namely radiation through the atmosphere and the associated ‘greenhouse effect,’ as being the primary driving force of atmospheric and oceanic climate, is a simplistic and absurd way to view the complex interaction of forces between the land, ocean, atmosphere, and outer space.”

Furthermore, we stated, “climate modelling has been concentrated on the atmosphere with only a primitive representation of the ocean.” Actually, some of the early models depict the oceans as nearly stagnant. The logical approach would have been to model the oceans first (there were some reasonable ocean models at the time), then adding the atmospheric factors.

Well, no one in ICSU nor the United Nations Environment Program/World Meteorological Organization was ecstatic about our suggestion. Rather, they simply proceeded to evolve climate models from early weather models. That has imposed an entirely atmospheric perspective on processes which are actually heavily dominated by the ocean.

[Klausnh]

Oh no, Groundhog Day again.

You all seem very keen to change the subject of the inability of co2 to cause a significant rise in ocean temperature.

Since the oceans cover 70% of the planet and have a thermal capacity of over 1000 times that of the entire atmosphere, of which co2 is 0.039%, and air and land temperatures lag changes in ocean temperature by several months, it's clear that it is thermal emission from the oceans which have caused what little global warming there has been.

But just as cause and effect is ignored by proponents of the AGW hypothesis in the case of changes in co2 level following changes in temperature, they also ignore the law of cause and effect with respect to changes in ocean temperature preceding changes in atmospheric and land temperature.

This is not very scientific.

In fact it is profoundly unscientific.

Lets hear an oceanographer for a minute.

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/ocean.htmlHow do the oceans get the thermal radiation they emit?

[nauthiz]

Stroller, that article is pushing 10 years old, and is almost certainly based on the state of the art from at least 10 years ago. Do you have any idea how much the science in question (including modeling techniques) has changed in that time period?

Besides, I pointed you to an article that describes the exact mechanism for how an increase in incident longwave radiation can cause the oceans to warm. You haven't done a thing to argue against it except complain that a blog post in which a researcher mentions what he'd been working on lately had not been submitted for peer review*, and then quietly drop the subject when I pointed you towards a source where you can read refereed papers related to the experiment in question and also, by all appearances, caught you in the act of not really having read the article in question. This is after you trying to quibble about words in an unseemly effort to dodge my challenge to your initial assertion.

To be clear, that is most certainly not a refutation or a sufficient response on your part, and the ball remains in your court.

If you'd like to use some more basic physics to show that the mechanism described couldn't work, then please do. If you'd like to accept that the mechanism makes sense and does not contradict basic physics, then please do. What I would ask you to please not do is pretend the conversation did not happen, and what I would further ask you to do is not change the subject while accusing others of doing so in the same post.


* Why you should expect such a thing to have been refereed remains beyond me, though frankly my suspicion is that you were just going through the motions. (http://www.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html)

[Ari Jokimaki]

Given a relatively stable humidity, isn't it clear that air temperature is a function primarily of the emission of heat from the oceans rather than the concentration of a trace gas such as co2?
Why quess? Go ahead and search for papers on the subject and see for yourself.


Co2 is a relatively weak greenhouse gas compared to water vapor, which accounts for over 90% of the 'greenhouse effect'.
"Water vapor, which contributes 36–70%" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect), but perhaps you will show your reference for the "over 90%" value, a denialist blog entry as usual?

For AGW theory it doesn't matter if water vapor causes the largest proportion of the greenhouse effect, the important thing is to know which factor is causing the increasing greenhouse effect and that has shown to be the anthropogenic carbon dioxide by observations directly from atmosphere.


Water in it's various forms is clearly what governs the climate through heating, evaporation, condensation and precipitation. These processes move far more energy around the globe than puny co2 does.
Again, it is not about the normal amount of energy moved, it is about the change from normal to exceptional, and that has happened to carbon dioxide concentration by human actions.


3) Did this 'study' make it through peer review?
Asks a person who almost exclusively quotes from non-peer reviewed sources, and badmouths peer review process.


You all seem very keen to change the subject of the inability of co2 to cause a significant rise in ocean temperature.
If you refuse to back up your claim with anything real, what is there to talk about? We'll just add it to the big pile of stuff that Stroller tried to pass as facts without actually knowing anything about the subject.

Since when we have an obligation to discuss only the things you want? After all, it is you who keep on jumping from subject to subject here, and generally your interest to subjects vanishes immediately when someone responds to the subject you brough up.


Since the oceans cover 70% of the planet and have a thermal capacity of over 1000 times that of the entire atmosphere, of which co2 is 0.039%, and air and land temperatures lag changes in ocean temperature by several months, it's clear that it is thermal emission from the oceans which have caused what little global warming there has been.
Even if it would be so, the ocean has been warmed by human actions (Pierce et al., 2006 (http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~pierce/docs/pierce_et_al_jcli939_rev2B.pdf)), and you are still in square one.


But just as cause and effect is ignored by proponents of the AGW hypothesis in the case of changes in co2 level following changes in temperature, they also ignore the law of cause and effect with respect to changes in ocean temperature preceding changes in atmospheric and land temperature.
Says a person who her/himself ignores most of the arguments and questions presented to her/him.

[Stroller]

How do the oceans get the thermal radiation they emit?

From solar radiation which *can* penetrate the ocean by several tens of metres, unlike IR which penetrates about four orders of magnitude less.

[Stroller]

Stroller, that article is pushing 10 years old, and is almost certainly based on the state of the art from at least 10 years ago. Do you have any idea how much the science in question (including modeling techniques) has changed in that time period?

Besides, I pointed you to an article that describes the exact mechanism for how an increase in incident longwave radiation can cause the oceans to warm. You haven't done a thing to argue against it except complain that a blog post in which a researcher mentions what he'd been working on lately had not been submitted for peer review*, and then quietly drop the subject when I pointed you towards a source where you can read refereed papers related to the experiment in question and also, by all appearances, caught you in the act of not really having read the article in question. This is after you trying to quibble about words in an unseemly effort to dodge my challenge to your initial assertion.

To be clear, that is most certainly not a refutation or a sufficient response on your part, and the ball remains in your court.

If you'd like to use some more basic physics to show that the mechanism described couldn't work, then please do. If you'd like to accept that the mechanism makes sense and does not contradict basic physics, then please do. What I would ask you to please not do is pretend the conversation did not happen, and what I would further ask you to do is not change the subject while accusing others of doing so in the same post.


* Why you should expect such a thing to have been refereed remains beyond me, though frankly my suspicion is that you were just going through the motions. (http://www.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html)

Most of this post amounts to an unwarranted ad hominem attack.

The article you pointed to on realclimate, posits a gradient of 0.002K.

Do you think this is enough to warm the oceans SST by half a degree in 30 years? I thought it was pretty evident that it isn't, but maybe you disagree?

Even the author/Gavin didn't try to claim that, they merely claimed that it established some sort of (incredibly weak) relationship.

And this is in theoretical calm sea conditions. With waves rupturing the 'skin' of the ocean continually, the supposed effect would completely change. It's one thing to sit in front of a computer and theorise basic physics. It's another to overlay that on reality.



that article is pushing 10 years old,

I doubt if the laws of nature or the fact that the thermal capacity of the ocean is >1000 times that of the atmosphere have changed much since.

[Stroller]

Why quess? Go ahead and search for papers on the subject and see for yourself.


"Water vapor, which contributes 36–70%" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect), but perhaps you will show your reference for the "over 90%" value, a denialist blog entry as usual?

For AGW theory it doesn't matter if water vapor causes the largest proportion of the greenhouse effect, the important thing is to know which factor is causing the increasing greenhouse effect and that has shown to be the anthropogenic carbon dioxide by observations directly from atmosphere.


Again, it is not about the normal amount of energy moved, it is about the change from normal to exceptional, and that has happened to carbon dioxide concentration by human actions.


Asks a person who almost exclusively quotes from non-peer reviewed sources, and badmouths peer review process.


If you refuse to back up your claim with anything real, what is there to talk about? We'll just add it to the big pile of stuff that Stroller tried to pass as facts without actually knowing anything about the subject.

Since when we have an obligation to discuss only the things you want? After all, it is you who keep on jumping from subject to subject here, and generally your interest to subjects vanishes immediately when someone responds to the subject you brough up.


Even if it would be so, the ocean has been warmed by human actions (Pierce et al., 2006 (http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~pierce/docs/pierce_et_al_jcli939_rev2B.pdf)), and you are still in square one.


Says a person who her/himself ignores most of the arguments and questions presented to her/him.

Another ad hominem rant.

But precious little in the way of evidence that IR can warm the oceans.

As it happens, I did search for papers which showed warming of the oceans by IR radiation, and found very little. This is why I raised the discussion here.

I will take a look at the paper you quote and get back to the discussion. It would be great if it could be conducted by people on the other side of the debate with decency and decorum, rather than the spit and vitriol I see being displayed by you.

[Stroller]

update: Pierce et al

"Comparing the
observations with results from two coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models (PCM and
HadCM3) that include anthropogenic forcing shows remarkable agreement between the
observed and model-estimated warming."

I can show a remarkable correlation between the rise in the price of stamps and global SST's too.
Nowhere in the paper is there any proposed mechanism for downwelling IR radiation to heat the ocean. There is simply an assumption that it must, in order to save the models.
Also there is no discussion of the effect the 30 year positive trend in the natural oceanic cycles, particularly in the S.E. Pacific and the Atlantic would have had on the results.

These two natural cyclic variations can account for most of the warming of the last 30 years.
Take account of the El Chichon and Pinatubo erruptions, and the case becomes even more obvious.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/has-global-warming-accelerated.html

One interesting thing which does come out of the paper, is that Pierce et al observe that the ocean is emitting 2.2W/M^2 more than atthe start of their time period. How does this square with the mechanism posited by Gavin et al that increased downwelling IR caused by the co2 increase inhibits energy release from the oceans?

Considering what the oceanographer said, and that the oceans have more than 1000 times the thermal mass of the atmosphere, is it not more likely that the oceans increased heat emittance accounts for 2.2W/M^2 of the 3.7W/m^2 increase they claim is observed in the downward flux of IR, the balance being accounted for by heightened solar activity and the increase in co2 among other natural variables?

This would seem more likely than the atmospheric tail wagging the >1000 times larger oceanic dog.

[nauthiz]

The article you pointed to on realclimate, posits a gradient of 0.002K.

Do you think this is enough to warm the oceans SST by half a degree in 30 years? I thought it was pretty evident that it isn't, but maybe you disagree?

I honestly couldn't be sure without grinding through the equations. I didn't think that was necessary, since your initial claim was that warming simply wasn't possible according to basic physics and so I thought it was sufficient to simply show that it is possible. I'll take your dodge of the suggestion that you might want to challenge the physics behind the mechanism as an admission that the mechanism is plausible, and therefore that your initial claim that basic physics precludes the possibility that longwave radiation could have a warming influence on oceans was erroneous. While it may have been less than gracious, I do thank you for that concession.

Going back to the question of quantifying what the impact on heat transfer rate would end up being - Since my intention was to shoot for the goalpost at its original location and not this one and since, in light of your history of making me do your research for you and never giving any thanks or acknowledgement in return, the prospect of grinding through a system of differential equations for your benefit strikes me as a less-than-worthwhile use of my time. I'll leave it to you to provide your own calculations, or find someone else's - whichever you prefer.

I'd further state that it is not necessary to show that it it is the case, since longwave radiation is not the only proposed mechanism that drives sea surface temperatures. It's not even proposed to be the primary driver. The author (who, as I mentioned before, is not Gavin Schmidt) presumably didn't try to suggest that it is because he doesn't believe that it is. That's certainly the direction I lean in. So while such an endeavor might be worthwhile for the sake of satisfying your own curiosity, it's doubtful in the extreme that a negative result would do a thing to bolster your case against anthropogenic climate change.

[Stroller]

I honestly couldn't be sure without grinding through the equations. I didn't think that was necessary, since your initial claim was that warming simply wasn't possible according to basic physics and so I thought it was sufficient to simply show that it is possible. I'll take your dodge of the suggestion that you might want to challenge the physics behind the mechanism as an admission that the mechanism is plausible, and therefore that your initial claim that basic physics precludes the possibility that longwave radiation could have a warming influence on oceans was erroneous. While it may have been less than gracious, I do thank you for that concession.

Going back to the question of quantifying what the impact on heat transfer rate would end up being - Since my intention was to shoot for the goalpost at its original location and not this one and since, in light of your history of making me do your research for you and never giving any thanks or acknowledgement in return, the prospect of grinding through a system of differential equations for your benefit strikes me as a less-than-worthwhile use of my time. I'll leave it to you to provide your own calculations, or find someone else's - whichever you prefer.

I'd further state that it is not necessary to show that it it is the case, since longwave radiation is not the only proposed mechanism that drives sea surface temperatures. It's not even proposed to be the primary driver. The author (who, as I mentioned before, is not Gavin Schmidt) presumably didn't try to suggest that it is because he doesn't believe that it is. That's certainly the direction I lean in. So while such an endeavor might be worthwhile for the sake of satisfying your own curiosity, it's doubtful in the extreme that a negative result would do a thing to bolster your case against anthropogenic climate change.

Well since the study's findings would seem to be contradicted by Pierce et al anyway, it's probably a waste of both our time. Which is why I didn't spend much time on it after you put it forward.

Going back to the realclimate article:

"The slope of the relationship is 0.002ºK (W/m2)-1. Of course the range of net infrared forcing caused by changing cloud conditions (~100W/m2) is much greater than that caused by increasing levels of greenhouse gases (e.g. doubling pre-industrial CO2 levels will increase the net forcing by ~4W/m2), but the objective of this exercise was to demonstrate a relationship."

This doesn't seem like a very high hill of beans, given that cloud cover can vary on interdecadal timescales.

In any case I didn't say downwelling IR couldn't affect SST at all, I said it couldn't penetrate the surface more than a small fraction of an inch, which is true. The point is, it can't heat the oceans to any significant degree relevant to recent climate change 1980-2003. This basic fact remains.

What are the other mechanisms for driving sea surface temperatures you allude to please?

[Stroller]

Just as a footnote to the debate on temperature data quality and Jim Hansen's GIStemp series, here's a plot of the last 12 years from all the four major global temp data outlets:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1997.5/plot/uah/from:1997.5/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.5/plot/rss/from:1997.5/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/trend

All four show a trend of around 0.01C/decade for this period. Only thing is, Jim Hansen's GIStemp has it opposite sign to the other three...

[lomiller1]

Stroller, you hypothesis is a non-starter. If IR/atmospheric heat can’t heat a liquid then any liquid placed in a warm dark room would never warm up. Clearly this would violate any number of well understood physical laws and of course all common sense. *Clearly* the depth of penetration of an IR photon is not a limiting factor in the warming of a liquid.

The problem is that you are confusing quantum events with macro effects. You can’t switch back and forth between the two willy nilly and expect to get results that make sense.

[Stroller]

http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/JRD/MET/intro4.php
"Satellite instruments measure the surface skin temperature of the ocean. Because of the surface fluxes, the surface skin of the ocean is normally a few tenths degree C cooler than the near surface water."

This also seems to contradict the article on realclimate linked by Nauthiz.

But I've also found out that there are a whole heap of other effects on heat absorption and radiation involving phytoplankton which haven't been fully investigated.

As usual, the science is not settled. Fascinating stuff though. :)

[Stroller]

Stroller, you hypothesis is a non-starter. If IR/atmospheric heat can’t heat a liquid then any liquid placed in a warm dark room would never warm up. Clearly this would violate any number of well understood physical laws and of course all common sense. *Clearly* the depth of penetration of an IR photon is not a limiting factor in the warming of a liquid.

The problem is that you are confusing quantum events with macro effects. You can’t switch back and forth between the two willy nilly and expect to get results that make sense.

If you go backto Willis Eschenbach's post I quoted earlier, you'll see there is a discussion of molecules being 'broken free' of the surface, and the energy exchanges taking place.

Regarding your cup of water in the dark room. This warms through conduction via the vessel containing the water much more than by any IR radiation hitting the surface of the fluid. However, the sides and bottom of the ocean are not accessible to downwelling atmospheric IR, although there is volcanic activity to consider.

So much for Kitchen cupboard common sense.

[lomiller1]

and just how deep below into the water do you suppose the vessel extends?

In any case there is an easy test for whether the heat is entering through the vessel or not. Take two identical insulated containers and put a cold liquid in them, put the lid on one and leave the lid off the other. If your hypothesis about the heat entering from the vessel is correct the one with the lid on should warm more slowly.

[Ronald Brak]

Stroller, their is a mechanism that is quite good at transferring heat from air to water or vice versa. It is called conduction:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_conduction

Via this process warm air can make cooler water warmer.

[Stroller]

Stroller, their is a mechanism that is quite good at transferring heat from air to water or vice versa. It is called conduction:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_conduction

Via this process warm air can make cooler water warmer.

Ronald, true, but it's mostly happening the vise versa way round. You see, the oceans have more than a thousand times the thermal capacity of the atmosphere, and they soak up and retain solar energy to a far greater degree than the atmosphere. Added to which, there is no insulated roof on the atmosphere, and it adjoins it's immediate neighbor, interplanetary space, which is very, very cold.

Maybe we could all get a bit more out of the discussion if we take the time to study this graph
http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/JRD/MET/PDF/njch3af_2d.pdf

And if there is more time to spare, the document it is from
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/12/9/pdf/i1520-0442-12-9-2856.pdf

A reasonably comprehensive overview of the planetary ocean heat budget.

[nauthiz]

Even when the water is warmer than the air, warmer air means that the rate at which heat conducts out of the water will be lower, which means that the water will retain more of the energy it has absorbed.

I'm not sure why you're bringing up space. Heat does not conduct into the rarefied environment of space very well, which is the main reason why the bigger problem for spacecraft and space suits is shedding excess heat rather than retaining heat despite space being so cold.

[William]

http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png

http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png

http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic

http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/weather-watch/2009/6/23/frosts-giving-way-rain/?c_id=10&objectid=10580195


But the frosty weather appears to only have a couple of days left (at least for the short term!) with a potentially big rain maker on the way. In fact, this next low may create rain heavy enough to cause flooding in northern and western regions of both islands and its development is one I'll be watching very closely. It's going to form in the northern Tasman Sea sucking in sub-tropical air and deepening rapidly. Yesterday some computer models showed it may even be a weather bomb (which is very rare). We often hear 'weather bomb' in the news but actually the technical description of one means they don't happen very often. A "weather bomb" is when the air pressure falls 24hPa's in 24 hours (1 hPa per hour).

If I just lost you then let me try and explain what hPa is. hPa stands for hectopascal (they're also known as millibars) this is the unit used for measuring the air pressure - just like when you're at petrol station checking the pressure in your car tyres.

[William]

Further down in that article:

and

Nauthiz,
What would convince you that the planet is abruptly cooling? Observational data?

Did you notice the arctic sea ice?

Did you notice the unusually cold weather this winter in Austria and New Zealand?


http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/big-chill-in-churchill-47992231.html

Prolonged cold snowy conditions in the Hudson Bay area are expected to obliterate the breeding season for migratory birds and most other species of wildlife this year. According to Environment Canada, the spring of 2009 is record-late in the eastern Arctic with virtually 100 per cent snow cover from James Bay north as of June 11.

May temperatures in northern Manitoba were almost four degrees C below the long-term average of -0.7, and in early June, temperatures averaged three degrees below normal. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration images confirm snow and ice blanket all of northern Manitoba, part of northern Ontario and almost all of the eastern Arctic as of June 12. U.S. aerial flight surveys confirm the eastern Arctic has no sign of spring so far.

"I have lived in Churchill since the 1950s, and this the latest spring I have ever seen here," said local resident Pat Penwarden. "The spring of 1962 was almost this bad."

Six-foot snowdrifts blocked Churchill-area roads. A thick blanket of snow, in places three- and four-feet deep, coated 90 per cent of the local taiga in northern Manitoba. Ecotourists, who normally flock to northern Manitoba every June to see birds and other wildlife, cancelled their plans this June "in droves," according to local ecotourist specialists. Snowy conditions are largely to blame.

"It is like a winter landscape," said Ruth Baker, a Michigan tourist who spent June 9 to 12 at Churchill. "I couldn't believe the snowdrifts, like mountains of snow"

[Torsten]

As I recall, the last time William posted a chart showing northern hemisphere sea ice it was the ice extent from NSIDC (http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html). Yes, this chart (http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png).
(And my archive of it as it appeared today (http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/N_timeseries_20090623.png).)

Did you know that June 23, 2007, the AMSR/E sensor showed the arctic sea ice extent was 2% higher than for the same date in 2006, and yet 2007 finished the melt season 26% lower than 2006?

Isn't it interesting how close the annual lines track at this time of year?
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/th_AMSR-E_Apr-Sep_20090623.png (http://s259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/AMSR-E_Apr-Sep_20090623.png)

In fact, over the time this instrument has been in use, the minimum inter-annual range in readings occurs in late December-early January, and again from about the third week of May to the fourth week of June. So displaying these charts at this time of year is about the most useless thing you can do to get an idea of the rate of melting relative to other years, let alone a sense of how things will look in September.

I noticed you did not report on the record high temperatures we had in this province several days last month. I guess it doesn't make the news in Calgary, and certainly wouldn't show up when searching for examples of cold weather.

[nauthiz]

What would convince you that the planet is abruptly cooling? Observational data?

A trend of global cooling that happens for a long enough period of time that we can be sure it isn't like any of the previous shorter-term periods of cooling that I have pointed out to you many times in the past would be a start.

At one point I pointed out to you in a graph that you used to show the earth had been cooling over the past few years that there was a range of time that was the same size during which the earth was apparently warming by a truly astounding rate. (It turned out that was just another wiggle, too.) Tell me, if you had been looking at graphs 10 years ago, during that period, instead of now, would you be stocking up on air conditioned underpants?

[nauthiz]

Here's a (probably overly, admittedly) simplified example of why I don't find that line of reasoning compelling:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2456/3659275896_2a3f699ac4_o.png

Would you expect y to be greater than or less than 15 when x = 50? How about 60? Note that y is the lowest it's been since x was 38, and if we average over the time between x=33 and x=41, we'll see that x has dropped during that period.

[Ari Jokimaki]

Well, since William wants to discuss weather, let us see global temperature from 2008 onwards:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2008/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2008/to:2010/plot/rss/from:2008/to:2010/plot/uah/from:2008/to:2010

And then we ask William: what cooling?

[mugaliens]

Even when the water is warmer than the air, warmer air means that the rate at which heat conducts out of the water will be lower, which means that the water will retain more of the energy it has absorbed.

Did you forget radiation as a means of ocean cooling?


I'm not sure why you're bringing up space. Heat does not conduct into the rarefied environment of space very well...

No, but it radiates exceptionally well, which is why dry deserts with highs of 110 cool down to 70 at night. More humid areas, such as oceans, don't radiate nearly so well due to the H20 radiative thermal blanket they're under.

[Ari Jokimaki]

update: Pierce et al

"Comparing the
observations with results from two coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models (PCM and
HadCM3) that include anthropogenic forcing shows remarkable agreement between the
observed and model-estimated warming."

I can show a remarkable correlation between the rise in the price of stamps and global SST's too.
The paper studies the vertical temperature distribution, and finds out that it cannot be caused by natural variation, anthropogenic forcing by greenhouse gases is needed. You are welcome to recreate that with your price of stamps record.


Nowhere in the paper is there any proposed mechanism for downwelling IR radiation to heat the ocean. There is simply an assumption that it must, in order to save the models.
Go ahead and show where the "assumption" is made in the paper.


Also there is no discussion of the effect the 30 year positive trend in the natural oceanic cycles, particularly in the S.E. Pacific and the Atlantic would have had on the results.
Are you once again claiming that oceanic cycles are ignored by models? Don't be ridiculous, they are included in the analysis, and Pierce et al. also discuss them.


These two natural cyclic variations can account for most of the warming of the last 30 years.
Nonsense. Pierce et al. show that oscillations have not warmed the global ocean, it is anthropogenic carbon dioxide. You can link to your denialist websites all you like, but cherry picked graphs and twisted facts don't science make.

[Stroller]

I noticed you did not report on the record high temperatures we had in this province several days last month. I guess it doesn't make the news in Calgary, and certainly wouldn't show up when searching for examples of cold weather.

Oh, they will if you search for all temperature records, if you can find them among the torrent of reports about record cold temps being broken over the whole of this year...

Lets see how much your several days of record highs affected Canada during may.

Canada anomaly may 1st - 24th

http://1.2.3.10/bmi/icecap.us/images/uploads/MayTemp.jpg

Lol. :)

[Stroller]

Here's a (probably overly, admittedly) simplified example of why I don't find that line of reasoning compelling:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2456/3659275896_2a3f699ac4_o.png

Would you expect y to be greater than or less than 15 when x = 50? How about 60? Note that y is the lowest it's been since x was 38, and if we average over the time between x=33 and x=41, we'll see that x has dropped during that period.


It seems to be really difficult to get you guys to see the difference between cyclic/chaotic climate systems and linear computer games.

[Stroller]

Well, since William wants to discuss weather, let us see global temperature from 2008 onwards:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2008/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2008/to:2010/plot/rss/from:2008/to:2010/plot/uah/from:2008/to:2010

And then we ask William: what cooling?

Nice cherry pick. :)

Lets go back a year and look again:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2007/plot/wti/from:2007/trend

Or if we want to get away from annual/biannual swings how about the last 12 years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1997.5/plot/uah/from:1997.5/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.5/plot/rss/from:1997.5/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/trend

Is 12 years still 'just weather' ?

[Stroller]

Pierce et al. show that oscillations have not warmed the global ocean, it is anthropogenic carbon dioxide. You can link to your denialist websites all you like, but cherry picked graphs and twisted facts don't science make.

Repeating the same unsupported nonsense doesn't make science either.

Bob tisdale shows very clearly how the more frequent el nino's during the 30 year long positive phase of the PDO have affected global temperature:


The step changes and their causes are discussed in my two part post that Anthony ran back in January. Here are the links to my copies of “Can El Nino Events Explain All of the Global Warming Since 1976”:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of.html
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of_11.html

The upward steps can also be seen in the North Atlantic SST anomaly data:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/02/there-are-also-el-nino-induced-step.html

And the lingering effects of the 1997/98 El Nino is very visible in my post on the RSS MSU TLT Time-Latitude plots here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/rss-msu-tlt-time-latitude-plots.html


Any putative effect of co2 on ocean temperature is dwarfed by natural variation as Gavin himself admits. As we have seen, ocean heat content is a function of insolation and cloud cover not co2. land and global temperature lags sea surface temperature by several months. as does co2 concentration.

your inability to understand cause and effect means it is unlikely you will 'get it' however.

[Stroller]

(the atmosphere) radiates exceptionally well, which is why dry deserts with highs of 110 cool down to 70 at night. More humid areas, such as oceans, don't radiate nearly so well due to the H20 radiative thermal blanket they're under.

they are however managing to get rid of 30W/M^2 more than the oceanic models can account for:

http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/12/9/pdf/i1520-0442-12-9-2856.pdf

[Stroller]

The average arctic temperature has still not risen above melting point this year. The latest in the year for the average temperature to remain below freezing in 50 years of record keeping. Sea ice area is currently about 12% greater than this time last year.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/25/arctic-temperature-is-still-not-above-0%C2%B0c-the-latest-date-in-fifty-years-of-record-keeping%E2%80%A6%E2%80%9D/

The article is by Jo D'Aleo, a fellow of the American Meteorological society.

By the way Ari, this 'denialist blog' is science blog of the year. It polled around 4 times the number of votes realclimate got. Not that this proves anything, except perhaps that Joe public has got wise to the global warming hoax.

If you have any specific criticisms of the data presented on that blog, be specific about them. Just damning it as a 'denialist blog' makes you look a bit bombastic and silly.

[nauthiz]

Did you forget radiation as a means of ocean cooling?
No. We had discussed radiation earlier. Now we're discussing conduction.

[nauthiz]

It seems to be really difficult to get you guys to see the difference between cyclic/chaotic climate systems and linear computer games.

Stroller, I can't help but remember that this response is coming from a person whose opinion on the value of computer modeling can make wild and unexpected shifts in the course of only a couple days, with the only noticeable predictor for when these swings will happen being whether you think the most recently-mentioned paper that involves computer modeling supports or contradicts AGW.

You certainly never have managed to articulate an objection to computer modeling that's any more cogent than complaining that I'm making an unfair ad hominem attack by pointing out your extreme level of intellectual inconsistency on the topic.

But, more importantly, you seem to have failed to understand that the graph I made was meant to be a rough analogy and nothing more. . . even though I made that painfully clear in the first sentence of my post, which I'm sure you read since I quoted it.

[nauthiz]

Nice cherry pick. :)

It's a deliberate cherry pick for the purpose of calling more attention to the fact that William is a chronic cherry-picker.

[Stroller]

No. We had discussed radiation earlier. Now we're discussing conduction.

Whilst I understand the warmies desire to get away from the radiation discussion as fast as possible, it isn't over as far as I can see. We are discussing heat loss from the ocean/atmosphere system, which includes radiation and convection, conduction, latent heat of evaporation etc etc.

do have a read of
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/12/9/pdf/i1520-0442-12-9-2856.pdf


It's good background to informed debate.

[nauthiz]

they are however managing to get rid of 30W/M^2 more than the oceanic models can account for:

http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/12/9/pdf/i1520-0442-12-9-2856.pdf

:eh:

Did you read that paper at all? It doesn't talk about what you seem to think it talks about.

[Stroller]

:eh:

Did you read that paper at all? It doesn't talk about what you seem to think it talks about.

I certainly spent a lot longer studying it than you have.

What I said was that it's good background to informed debate.

[Stroller]

you seem to have failed to understand that the graph I made was meant to be a rough analogy and nothing more.

No, you invited William to make a prediction about the future based on it. Past trends are no indicator of future trends, especially in non-linear/chaotic systems which historically show cyclical reversals.

What the actual real world observational data shows is that the earth has been gradually cooling for the last 12 years, and more recently it has been cooling more abruptly, as William correctly points out.

But play with your computer graphs and fiddle while Canada freezes if you wish.

[HenrikOlsen]

Nauthiz,
What would convince you that the planet is abruptly cooling? Observational data?
Something other than 37 of the last 38 months having temperatures higher than average in the country I live in.

Which is observational data that directly contradicts your claim, at the timescale you normally argue.

[nauthiz]

Whilst I understand the warmies desire to get away from the radiation discussion as fast as possible, it isn't over as far as I can see. We are discussing heat loss from the ocean/atmosphere system, which includes radiation and convection, conduction, latent heat of evaporation etc etc.

Here's a quick recap of the history of the conversation:


However, we have already discussed how radiation affects the system. You acknowledged that the effect exists but complained that it would be too small to account for the entire change in temperature, at which a 'warmie' pointed out to you the existence of convection and conduction (which makes it humorous see that you're now trying to lecture us about its existence).

This is the point at which the conversation switched to talking about conduction. . . nobody forgot the existence of radiation, we just changed the subject.

Anyway, now that we were talking about conduction, you said that wouldn't work because, in short, oceans are usually warmer than the air above them. I pointed out that that's fine, because if the oceans started off warmer than the air then he air doesn't need to heat the oceans to cause them to get warmer over time, it just needs to absorb less energy from the water. This would happen if the air itself had warmed. You also point out that space is cold, to make a point that I don't entirely fathom, but it seemed to be about conduction rather than radiation given that you mentioned insulated roofing and the rest of the paragraph was about conduction, so I pointed out that space doesn't conduct heat well.

Then mugaliens, apparently not having been following the conversation until seeing my post this morning, comes in and tries to some finger-wagging and next thing I know my attempt to try to keep our treatment of the physics coherent is turned into my being clueless, apparently because you mistook his misinterpretation of the conversation for a sign of amnesia on my part.

[nauthiz]

I certainly spent a lot longer studying it than you have.
OK fair, maybe you spent all night studying it, but the fact remains that that paper is about measurement technique, and climate modeling is only mentioned incidentally in a few spots where the authors say "we've gotta take better measurements otherwise our models won't be very reliable 'cuz GIGO."

So my primary criticism remains - that paper is not about what you seem to think it's about.

[nauthiz]

No, you invited William to make a prediction about the future based on it.

Yes. In order to illustrate a point about William's mode of reasoning.

Like I said before - analogy.

[Stroller]

OK fair, maybe you spent all night studying it, but the fact remains that that paper is about measurement technique, and climate modeling is only mentioned incidentally in a few spots where the authors say "we've gotta take better measurements otherwise our models won't be very reliable 'cuz GIGO."

So my primary criticism remains - that paper is not about what you seem to think it's about.

What do you think I think it's about?

[Stroller]

Yes. In order to illustrate a point about William's mode of reasoning.

Like I said before - analogy.

No. William is making an observation about abrupt cooling which is observationally confirmed as already happening. You are the one on about future projections.

[Stroller]

Something other than 37 of the last 38 months having temperatures higher than average in the country I live in.

Which is observational data that directly contradicts your claim, at the timescale you normally argue.

Depending on the baseline of your average, your observation and William's are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

[orionjim]

Yes. In order to illustrate a point about William's mode of reasoning.

Like I said before - analogy.

And you proved William's point:
http://www.e-huh.com/baut/nauthiz.gif

:rolleyes:

[nauthiz]

What do you think I think it's about?

Your initial description indicates that the paper is about a disconnect with modeling predictions and the observational record.

[nauthiz]

No. William is making an observation about abrupt cooling which is observationally confirmed as already happening. You are the one on about future projections.
Both you and William have made predictions that suggest you think the earth will continue to cool - in your case, within the past couple hours. I'm not the only one talking about future projections. I'm just making a comment about the importance of not arbitrarily cherry-picking your data when drawing conclusions about what the future will look like.



And you proved William's point:

You fit some lines by hand and you're trying to say that a little dip below one of them at the very end means an abrupt change in the nature of the function? What would you have done with those lines if I had continued the function out to 45, or stopped it at 35? Would the lines you fit have stayed the same?

[orionjim]

You fit some lines by hand and you're trying to say that a little dip below one of them at the very end means an abrupt change in the nature of the function?

Hey it’s your chart not mine! You are belittling William for saying something has changed and I just asked myself could William be correct. I took your chart and bound your data and there it was; no magic on my part.


What would you have done with those lines if I had continued the function out to 45, or stopped it at 35? Would the lines you fit have stayed the same?

Well now you are making Stroller’s point aren’t you?