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JoAnn et.al.; It’s amazingly difficult to get a man to notice something he is paid not to notice.

This will be a great deal of fun to observe; The elephant has just walked into the room, and all of those paid to deny the existence of the elephant (The elephant is a metaphor for natural variation trumping AGW) continue not to notice it.

Meanwhile, the elephant is really screwing up the place; The temperature continues NOT to increase, their data manipulations have been discovered, and are therefor no longer tenable. What fun, sorry this thread died though. It’s been great fun catching up as the AGW disciple continued his inane testimony in the face of deep scientific understanding to the contrary.

All for now.

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It warmed my heart that data from CDIAC has been rehabilitated to a level of trustworthiness such that you now include it in your own posts! Let me suggest that their tabulations of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions are likely accurate as well at ~8 Gt annual as of 2004, NOT the 26 Gt you attributed to your other “scientific source” back at post #467.

No one disputes the total emissions figures posted at the CDIAC site; indeed I rely on these from time to time. The fact that there is a rough parity between these emissions and the increase in atmospheric CO2 leads to a plausible hypothesis, to wit, that these same emissions are the cause of the observed rise. This is a testable hypothesis, and we will test it.

But first, let’s look at how and why these two parameters may plausibly be asserted to have a causal link. The assumption made by the believers is that each unit of CO2 released to the atmosphere stays there a long time so that releases that are ‘unexpected’ by the natural system tend to accumulate. If this assertion about the residence time is true, then a simple tabulation of total anthropogenic emissions is all we would need to reconstruct the current atmosphere; this will become our first ‘test’ of the assertion that CO2 has a long residence time. All we need do is start with the ‘original’ (pre-industrial, 280ppm) atmosphere, add the tabulated total from CDIAC and (if the assertion about residence time is right) Voila! You get 380ppm. Oh how the believers WISH it worked out this way! Instead, when we do the tabulations, and we include the anthropogenic sources AND all the NATURAL sources of CO2 (can’t forget those; they would share the same residence time, you know!) we get ~800ppm instead of 380ppm! This ‘problem’ is admitted by the IPCC who nevertheless insist that some “mystery sink” must be gobbling up all the extra CO2 they can’t seem to find.

We can mark this as the first failed test of the assertion: Failure to reconstruct.

Gosh, what went wrong?!

I’m going to just C & P the paragraphs from my previous post, #$416:

“The subject of the persistence of the greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 keeps coming up. Everyone should be aware that the residence time of CO2 is not a minor peripheral point in the AGW hypothesis, rather it is a foundational cornerstone. If CO2 has a long residence time, it will accumulate as a result of ‘incidental’ sources like volcanism and human industry. However if the residence time is short, it is IMPOSSIBLE for CO2 to accumulate on account of these incidental sources, and it’s Game Over for AGW, simple as that.

AGW proponents know this and obtained the long residence time needed (to lend plausibility to their assertions about the cause of recent CO2 increase) by simply assuming the corollary effects were already true and then working out what residence time would allow the observed CO2 rise. The number the modelers came up with is 50-200 years. Note that NOT A SINGLE measurement study was used to obtain this supposed long residence time of atmospheric CO2. The FACT that this long residence time is based on computer modeling is freely admitted and not controversial.

The problem with this approach is that we already knew the real, measured residence time of atmospheric CO2 because of the many atmospheric CO2 residence time studies already completed; some recent, some several decades old.

Below is a list of the 35 studies that actually measured the CO2 residence time expressed as half life with their results summarized:….”

A list of the 35 studies followed. They average to about 5.6 years, BTW, NOT “50-200 years”.

The next test will be as follows:

Given that ‘fossil’ carbon and recent terrestrial and pelagic carbon have markedly different isotopic signatures of -26.0 and -7.0 0/00 PDB respectively, and assumed in the AGW hypothesis that “all or nearly all” recent CO2 rise is due to anthropogenic emissions from the burning of fossil fuels,

Then the atmosphere must now contain ~25% fossil carbon (105/385), which would give us a isotopic signature of -11 to 11.5 0/00 PDB.

So what do we actually observe?

The current atmosphere reads about -7.5 to -7.8 0/00 PDB, NOWHERE NEAR the amount expected if all or nearly all of the 105ppm CO2 rise since the industrial baseline of 280ppm was attributable to anthropogenic emissions. This figure amounts to about 3% fossil sourced.

I count this the second failed test of the assertion: Isotopic signature missing.

Jorge,

If you can find an isotopic mass-balance study that shows the ‘expected’ signature of fossil carbon is present in our atmosphere which supports the “all or nearly all” attribution, please cite it. All the ones I’ve seen, including

Also, if you know of a study of CO2 residence time (an empirical measurement study please, NOT one based on computer model outputs) that shows that the residence time is long, please cite it.

Jim Rennison

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You claim that it is not testable that CO2 concentrations have not increased due to human activity. Sorry but the rapid increase in CO2 emissions due to human activity are perfectly proven, tested and published by all respected scientific teams, see the data by the US department of energy, source of data:
“Marland, G., T.A. Boden, and R. J. Andres. 2007. Global, Regional, and National CO2 Emissions. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, United States Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.

From this US department of Energy it is clearly stated that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentrations of most of the greenhouse gases have increased. For example, the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by about 36% to 380 ppmv, or 100 ppmv over modern pre-industrial levels. The first 50 ppmv increase took place in about 200 years, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to around 1973; however the next 50 ppmv increase took place in about 33 years, from 1973 to 2006.

There is in nobody’s head a doubt that concentrations have increased and the discussions is closed. Some people claim Elvis is still alive too and will forever, but this is really well established.

The fact of hot spots etc… story is always the same, you misunderstand the wrong from the possible. Hot spots do not invalidate the greenhouse effect link, many things affect the temperature, but we have put more CO2 in the atmosphere and this add to any other effect.

On the rest, now I cannot go for the data and publications, which abound, because I need to do a job now, so I am off…

But I feel that you are cherry picking at monumental scale for anything that may minimally put any doubts on anything. You seem to invalidate the AWG position because of uncertainties. Well, I go back and say that claims of the opposite are also full of uncertainties.

I just remember the actual figures well 26 GT of CO2 out from human activities, compared to 770 non-human. The second were managed well by the ecosystem in place, the human extra is in part not and is accumulating.

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do you think it is actually possible to construct an experiment that would give you the empirical evidence that any warming that is occuring is the result of extra CO2 in the atmosphere. Just what could you do to actually demonstrate that it is the CO2 and not some other hitherto unknown climate forcing.

Matt,

I know you directed this question to Jo, but allow me to address this question.

As I’ve pointed out, each facet of the AGW hypothesis is by itself a testable sub-hypothesis. The assertion that humans have caused the increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last~100 years is testable, and it fails.(equilibrium concentration, mass balance studies)

The assertion that the warming observed over the last ~100 years is due mostly or entirely to a change in the greenhouse effect is testable, and it fails the test. (‘hot spot’ missing)

The assertion that the admittedly small amount of additional greenhouse warming attributable to the observed CO2 increase causes a far greater warming by causing the atmosphere to retain more water vapor is also testable, and it also fails.(Outgoing longwave radiation increases during thermal perturbations; greenhouse effect actually diminishes. Assumption about the cause/effect of warming and clouds proved wrong; assumed causality reversed)

The question of whether or not CO2 causes warming on any timescale is really the core of your question. All we need do is find a data set which shows CO2 increases preceding temperature increases; the other way around won’t work as causes always precede effects. Since we can’t find any such data sets, we must count this as ‘failed’ also, except that believers will point to ‘confounding factors’ that make these failures invalid. So you can’t conclusively test the entire hypothesis; it’s just not practical. With so many variables affecting climate, there’s just no way to ‘distill’ a useful conclusion from all the inevitable ‘noise’. No matter what the result, one side or the other could always point to some ‘confounding factor’ that makes the test results invalid.

But it’s another story altogether with each individual facet of the AGW hypothesis; we CAN conclusively test each of these and as I’ve pointed out, they have ALL failed their respective tests. Why then, should we believe that the entire AGW hypothesis based on these individual assertions, that each turn out to be untrue, is still nevertheless true?

Jim Rennison

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It is simply wrong that they neglect the cost of acting. There have been many studies of this. And also it is negligible, nowhere near as harsh as the costs of adapting to climate change, even if that money could be found … which I think Bhutan shows that it can’t.

Please note that the UNFCCC is already demanding that wealthy nations pay the global cost of adaptation both in direct finance, and in technology transfer and free intellectual property. This provision has been in place since 2001 and looks set to remain in place regardless of whatever CO2 tax framework gets agreed.

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As to evidence, chapter 9 of the 2007 IPCC WG1 report gives an okay overview.

I’ve read this. There is no empirical evidence in it.
Name the paper Robin. Name the instrument the observation was measured with.

As usual, you makes no effort to explain what these mean, just flick us a googled list of papers you may not understand, 5/6 are easy to knock out, 1 is interesting, but very weak.

Global Cooling After the Eruption of Mount Pinatubo: A Test of Climate Feedback by Water Vapor
and
Effect of climate sensitivity on the response to volcanic forcing

Douglass found that the paradigm of assuming long response times to Pinatubo was wrong. Response times were 7 months, and he gets a negative feedback.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL022119.shtml
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/reply_WAST_2005GL023695.pdf

Using multiple observationally-based constraints to estimate climate sensitivity

Wow. He takes climate model results, applies Bayes Theory and produces a narrowing of wild guesses based on estimates and assumptions? Did you think this was empirical?

Climate sensitivity constrained by temperature reconstructions over the past seven centuries

It uses debunked hockey sticks. You must be joking?

The Climate Sensitivity and Its Components Diagnosed from Earth Radiation Budget Data

Better. At least this is empirical. But Forster and others assume that clouds don’t force the climate they only respond to it, which is invalid and produces a higher sensitivity than it should.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/global-warming-as-a-natural-response/
“But before a comparison to the PDO can be made, one must recognize that the total radiative flux measured by CERES is a combination of forcing AND feedback (e.g. Gregory et al., 2002; Forster and Gregory, 2006). So, we first must estimate and remove the feedback component to better isolate any radiative forcing potentially associated with the PDO.

As Spencer and Braswell (2008b) have shown with a simple model, the radiative feedback signature in globally-averaged radiative flux-versus-temperature data is always highly correlated, while the time-varying radiative forcing signature of internal climate fluctuations is uncorrelated because the forcing and temperature response are always 90 degrees out of phase. This allows some measure of identification and separation of the two signals.”

An Observationally Based Estimate of the Climate Sensitivity

Climate sensitivity constrained by CO2 concentrations over the past 420 million years

OK. This is interesting and I’d like others who have time to read it to comment on it. It’s paleocarb data back 420 million years suggesting (as usual) a big range for sensitivity of 1.5 – 6 degrees.But frankly, knowing that the oceans unleash co2 as they warm means that data from this far back can’t be used to calculate climate sensitivity, especially when temperature would respond within months. I mean seriously, we know temperatures have a major effect on CO2 so why the heck wouldn’t we see some correlation, but driven by temperature? It’s near impossible to know cause and effect at this distance. This is not evidence that co2 drives the climate. Indeed I’d say it counts pretty strongly against it.

I’d take Lindzen et al 2009 over an 400 million year analysis because of accuracy and because we can work on timescales where cause and effect is obvious.

So Robin, you can apologize any-time. Our “denial” amounts to what? You’ve found one weak paper and a bunch of irrelevant or poor papers? Is this what the oft stated “thousands of papers” comes down too?

Obviously the case for man-made global catastrophe is not well supported.

I know it’s hard for someone who reads the rabid name-calling AGW fan sites to switch out of it and treat us as human, but “sorry” is not that hard to say.

Then you can see if you can dig up any better papers supporting a climate sensitivity of 2 -11 degrees.

Joanne

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I am constantly asked to back my claims. I do not make claims, I read articles and research summaries from journals. So Russia has seen the temperature going up considerably (A FACT THAT HAS BEEN WIDELY REPORTED) so the methane under permafrost is getting nearer to be released in masses.

It is not only my responsibility to give you the links, but from you to start reading journals.

A study published in the September 7th issue of Nature authored by Katey Walter of the University of Alaska, and Jeff Chanton of Florida State University reports that greenhouse gas is escaping into the atmosphere from permafrost in the US and risking to go soon out in Russia.

Ah, you may now say the temperature rise is not caused by human emissions of CO2… then the permafrost problem is not our to deal with… well read the reports that say the opposite, there are more than enough scientific ones.

What you mean in fact is that the entirety of the results from the IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the equivalents in many other nations, with regards to climate change, is “junk science”.

I can then blindly also claim that any report that denies climate change is junk science… it is easy, lest decide what we want and shout it. I personally do not believe any longer that all these serious academies of science can any longer or are getting it wrong… sorry.
Well, no comment, quite a big statement.

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